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Dictionary of World Biography pdf download

DICTIONARY OF WORLD BIOGRAPHY
Book Title Dictionary Of World Biography
Book AuthorBarry Jones
Total Pages934
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LanguageEnglish
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Dictionary of World Biography by Barry Jones

DICTIONARY OF WORLD BIOGRAPHY

Introduction

In the mid-1950s I had been puzzled that no comprehensive biographical dictionary was available in paperback and I determined to fill the gap. I wrote to Penguin Books in London/Harmondsworth and received a thoughtful and encouraging letter from T. R. S. Glover, a classical scholar, and essayist.

The two generally available major biographical dictionaries, Chambers’s and Webster’s, both had significant weaknesses. One was too British, with a poor representation of names outside of Europe (a deficiency corrected in recent editions), and the second, while far more comprehensive, offered short entries, little more than concise lists of dates, offices held or works produced, with no interpretation or context provided.

 Both were heavy and expensive, while I planned a book that students could carry around.

As an undergraduate, I worked part-time as a draftsman in the Victorian Titles Office, and my fellow workers included John Landy, John Button, and other future public figures. I began to work systematically on collating material for a dictionary of biography. In practice, the TO clerks operated on a daily quota.

There was no point in breaking records for processing files because it would simply jam the system because ‘engrossing’ Certificates of Title was a slow, pre-Gutenberg process. So draftsmen (and they were all male at that time) devoted surplus time to their special interests, such as working out sophisticated betting systems for racing.

My specialty was developing lists of names that should be included in a reasonably portable paperback intended to be broader in range than existing hardcover biographical dictionaries.

I worked on this project on and off for many years. While largely relying on instinct, I would have backed my own judgment on the choice of names, and their relative length, against all comers.

My selections were influenced by my constant reading of biographies, noting how often a particular name would have multiple references in indexes in a random sample of books about, say, 20th-century politics.

However, I could check my judgment objectively by referring to The Biography Index, a cumulative list of biographical material in books and magazines, published quarterly by the H. W. Wilson Company, New York. (This was long before the Internet made the task of ranking name frequency so much easier.)

By the end of 1960, I had completed my first draft and had three bound volumes of typescript. I was then teaching at Dandenong High School and my long period on the television quiz ‘Pick-a-Box’ had just begun.

It was the time when Eisenhower, Khrushchev, Mao, de Gaulle, Macmillan, and Menzies held office, and (other than me) only Queen Elizabeth II is a link with that bygone era.

In January 1961 I took masses of material to London and arranged a meeting with Penguin Books. Charles Clarke began by asking to see my entry on the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, and this impressed him enough to offer me a contract and a generous advance.

Unfortunately, soon after the contract was signed Charles left Penguin for the Tavistock Institute, and years of uncertainty and confusion followed.

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