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The May 2009 update of the Oxford DNB adds biographies of 87 men and women active between the eleventh and late twentieth century. In addition to new biographies, the update includes 20 ‘reference group’ essays—our expanding selection of well-known networks in the British past.
A full list of subjects is also available, along with the editor’s introduction to the new update. Online access to all of the new biographies—together with the Oxford DNB’s 56,862 existing entries—is now freely available, at home, via nearly all UK public libraries.
Gardeners: profession and national pastime
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May’s update includes 30 biographies of men and women who shaped the history of British gardening. Many made their name cultivating now popular garden plants, including the ‘daffodil king’ Peter Barr and Henry Eckford, ‘father of the sweet pea’. Plant cultivation is also the legacy of Christopher Leyland, breeder of the fast growing, and controversial, cypress fir: leylandii. |
| Other new lives include James Barnes, who pioneered the growing of exotic fruits; the plant-hunters Thomas and William Lobb; and the gardening broadcaster Fred Streeter who began his career, aged twelve, washing plant pots. |
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Garden design was the focus of the Tremayne family (at Heligan, Cornwall) and of Thomas Hanbury who bequeathed Wisley in Surrey to the Royal Horticultural Society.
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The 30 lives added in May conclude a project to extend the ODNB’s coverage of garden history. A selection of these new biographies published in 2008-09—plus some gardening lives already included in the dictionary—is now freely available via this interactive map. |
Engineers of everyday life
May’s update also records those who transformed British domestic life in ways we now often take for granted.
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The names of the sanitary engineer and manufacturer, John Shanks and Thomas Twyford, will be familiar to many; they like George Jennings—creator of Britain’s first public lavatories—dramatically changed standards of domestic hygiene. |
| Improved public health was the concern of James Simpson, developer of water purification, and also of Jesse Dawes, the pioneer of waste management and salvage—in which Britain led the world during the mid-20th century. |
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Other newcomers are remembered as recorders and preservers of natural life: among them the botanical artist Lilian Snelling and the taxidermists Walter Potter, known for his anthropomorphic tableaux of British wildlife, and Rowland Ward, whose exotic models became a feature of upper-class interiors.
| May’s update also extends the ODNB’s coverage of the British empire and Commonwealth with 15 new biographies, including Eugenia Charles, the ‘Iron lady of the Caribbean’, the anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Joseph—described by Nelson Mandela as both a ‘revolutionary’ and a ‘lady of the British empire’—and Dadasaheb Phalke, father of the Indian film industry. |
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May’s update also adds to the dictionary’s complement of pre-Reformation bishops, among them John Harewell, bishop of Bath and Wells. Harewell’s generosity paid for two cathedral bells (known as Great and Little Harewell), though his fine tomb later prompted jibes about his unbecoming corpulence.
Groups in history
| New group essays in May include the:
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There are now 250 groups available in the Themes area of the online ODNB (available with subscriber access).
Electronic Enlightenment
May’s update also includes more than 1000 reciprocal links between Oxford DNB biographies and entries in Oxford University’s new online resource, Electronic Enlightenment. Electronic Enlightenment offers the searchable correspondence of eighteenth-century thinkers and writers, and the publishers and booksellers who promoted their ideas. Links are available in the left-hand margin of relevant Oxford DNB entries and are an excellent way for eighteenth-century scholars to further their research.
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