English dictionary of biography

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edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee

The Dictionary of National Biography (or DNB) is a biographical reference for deceased persons notable in British history. The current edition of this work has been published online by Oxford University Press since 2004. The current electronic edition is not free, but is available through individual or library subscription. There is also a recent print edition.

Some earlier editions of this work are freely available online, and remain of historic interest. Below we link to free online volumes of the first and second editions, and some of their supplementary volumes.

First edition

The first edition was published in 63 volumes from 1885 through 1900 in London by Smith, Elder, and Co. (In the US, Macmillan also published many of the volumes in conjunction with Smith, Elder. These copies are noted in the list below with an "(M)" notation.) Various supplements, errata volumes, and indexes were published in the years to follow, prior to the second edition.

Google Books has various page image formats for all of the volumes, as does the Internet Archive. (The Google Books editions might not be readable in full outside the United States.) We give links to the first edition volumes below.

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First series

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The ODNB was first published in 2004, in 60 print volumes and online. Since 2004 a continuation project has extended and developed the ODNB’s online edition.

Updates are published monthly. Our January update is composed of biographies of people who have died in the very recent past (all people in the ODNB are deceased). Our other monthly updates are gathered around themes of related lives and also extend the Dictionary’s coverage across earlier periods in the light of recent scholarship and publications. Updates also revise existing biographies in response to new research. Since 2004 we have added around 5000 biographies and thematic essays.

Dictionary editors also run a programme of public engagement with other national institutions (museums, galleries, the National Trust, English Heritage, and national biographies worldwide), as well as with British public libraries and university research projects in the UK and the United States. The Dictionary's popular podcast series is available on itunes and via our website.

The Oxford DNB is a research and publishing project of the Oxford History Faculty and Oxford University Press. The work of commissioning, editing, writing, updating, and promoting the Dictionary is undertaken by a small team of Oxford historians: Mark Curthoys, A