Who gets a biography in the Oxford DNB?

The Oxford DNB is a collection of 56,000 men and women from all walks of life who shaped British history worldwide, from the 4th century BC to the year 2004. It includes not just the 'great and the good', but people who have left a mark for any reason, good, bad, or unusual.

Everyone in the Victorian DNB and its supplements keeps their place in the new edition. These articles have been re-written or revised to reflect a century of new research.

Along with the 38,500 subjects from the old DNB, the Oxford DNB has added a further 16,500 new subjects from all periods who have come to light in histories of art, business and labour, medicine, engineering, science, crime, sport, and popular culture. Key areas of new coverage include:

Women's lives: the Oxford DNB now has more than 5700 biographies of women, from Boudicca (d. 60/61AD) to the politician, Barbara Castle (d. 2002). Female lives range from saints and monarchs to servants like Fanny Coker (d. 1820) and pioneers such as Ivy Williams (d. 1966), the first woman barrister in England, or Lucy Walker (d. 1916), the first women to climb the Matterhorn (on a diet of sponge cake and champagne).

Britain in the round: the new dictionary pays much greater attention to those who left their mark on Scottish, Welsh, Irish, as well as English life, and to those whose regional influence is worthy of national recognition. From promoters of Cornish, Manx or Hebridean culture to 'local heroes' such as the Sutton Hoo archaeologist Basil Brown, the Southampton stewardess Mary Rogers, and the Bridlington air-raid warden (and first recipient of the George Cross), Thomas Alderson.

National influence worldwide: The Oxford DNB also recognizes Britain's worldwide influence through exploration, empire, and as a new home for those born overseas. Many first-time biographies place Britain in its international context:

• travellers and explorers: from Greek navigator Pytheas to Sir Vivian Fuchs (d. 1999)
  
• Americans to independence: 'first lady of liberty', Deborah Moody, to President Thomas Jefferson
  
• colonial figures who participated in or resisted British rule: from Molly Brant (d. 1796), leader of the Mohawk Indians, to the assassin Udham Singh (d. 1940)
  
• Americans in modern Britain: from escaped slave Josiah Henson to film-maker, Stanley Kubrick
  
• foreign visitors and exiles: Tahitian prince Omai (d. c.1780) to French empress Eugénie and Russian revolutionary, Peter Kropotkin

Modern lives: the dictionary now includes men and women who left their mark on contemporary Britain and who died in or before 2003. Discover more about famous figures from recent history—from Robert Maxwell to Princess Diana—as well as some of the lesser-known individuals who have shaped the way we live today: Concorde test pilot, Brian Trubshaw, package tour pioneer Erna Low, or Herchel Smith, the chemist whose research led to the manufacture of the contraceptive pill.

< About Oxford DNB  < Quick Guide

> The online edition
> Sample articles: Lives of the Week
> Free biographies by email: sign up for Life of the Day