LECTURE

BATH AND THE NEW DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY

Prof. H.C.G.Matthew, MA, D.Phil, FBA,on 27 January 1999

A Joint Meeting with the Bath Branch of the Historical Association

Professor Matthew is Professor of Modern History at Oxford University and Tutor at St. Hugh's College, Oxford. He has previously edited the 14-volume `Gladstone's Diaries' and written a book about Gladstone.

Biographical dictionaries have been produced since Sin Quan's `Historical Record' of 100BC which gave the family, career, positions held and dates of birth and death of the people in it. The information about the person has been obtained by sending out questionnaires as Anthony Wood did, for example, to John Evelyn in the 17th century and Professor Matthew does today.

The New Dictionary of National Biography (NDNB) was authorised in January 1992 when the speaker was appointed editor. It was to be based on the old version, a copy of which he bought in a Bath book shop in March that year.

The old DNB was founded by George Smith, an important publisher of books and of the Cornhill Magazine, who asked the editor of the magazine, Leslie Stephen, to undertake the task. He recruited Sidney Lee to assist and work began in 1885. Lee became the editor when Stephen became ill and organised the production of one volume a quarter until completion in 1900. Supplements have been added since, generally at ten-year intervals. It is still in print and on CD-ROM. It contains 4921 references to Bath; 106 to people born in Bath; 115 to those educated here and 247 to those who died here.

In 1907 the DNB was left by George Smith's family to the Oxford University Press, who accepted it reluctantly as it was getting out of date. By 1980 they decided a new or revised version was necessary and obtained money from the Government to support the production. Professor Matthew started work on the NDNB on 1 September 1992 and had to spend £¼ million of Government grant in six months, which he did by putting the DNB on computer to make analysis of it easier. The decision was taken to include all the old DNB in the new _ even the people, like Kirkman Finlay, who had never actually existed.

It was also decided :

- to extend the book by adding 17,000 new subjects and by including family and group entries, not just single persons;

- to draw contributors from all over the world;

- to divide it into 12 areas, each with a supervising editor. 470 associate editors would deal with a topic each and would recruit contributors.

Of these numerous potential contributors, 88 are in Bath and 102 in the BA postal district. In the 1/3rd of the dictionary which has been completed to date there are 3829 mentions of Bath (2385 in the text); 184 people born in Bath are included; 113 educated here; 115 dying here; 82 buried here. As an example, Professor Matthew showed the articles on Sir Jerom Murch, Thomas Baldwin, William Hoare and `Walking' Stewart, a character who continually walked round the Pump Room in the 18th century handing out leaflets.

The NDNB will comprise 55 volumes of one million words each, with 10,000 portrait illustrations, and will be issued in 2004 with a CD-ROM version which will have `tags' allowing cross-references and also linking with foreign dictionaries in various languages so that, as George Smith wanted in 1882, a global dictionary will become a reality.

In answer to questions he said that the CD-ROM version would probably not have the illustrations at first because of the cost, but they might be added, together with video clips and sound, later.

The DNB had few articles about women and it is a priority to include more in the new one. Five times as many have been included so far and the 20th century section is yet to be wholly commis_sioned. The DNB had one 99,000-word article, on Queen Victoria, but the NDNB has none this long and only five with more than 20,000 words _ on Queen Elizabeth I, the Duke of Wellington (the longest), Gladstone, Churchill and Cromwell. The shortest article in the DNB was just 19 words and the same entry is not much longer in the new.

Recommendations for new entries are made by the associate editors who are allocated a number of `slots' for their topic. This prevents any attempt to compare the worth of a new entry about a Saxon warrior with one about a modern writer.

The `tags' for the CD-ROM are defined carefully by the Style Manager in an 85-page manual, but there are still some problems, e.g. is `Lady Randolph Churchill' a title or a name?

The newly introduced group and family articles are valuable and fascinating. How else could you give information about the Scottish Douglases, the Tolpuddle Martyrs or Minor Officials of the Roman Army in Britain, for whom individual names are irrelevant? There is no reason why the BRLSI should not be included as a group entry, providing information on many people who would not merit entry as individuals.

A vote of thanks was proposed by Trevor Fawcett, who noted that many such dictionaries were best known by the editor's name, e.g. Grove's for music, and regretted that the NDNB would not perpetuate Professor Matthew's name as he deserved.

Don Lovell

The contribution in the NDNB about William Lonsdale, the first Curator of the BRLSI Museum, was written by Stella Pierce as a completely new entry based on unpublished papers which have recently been found.

Marta Inskip