Dictionary biography americas gangsters

Reference work

Not tell off be confused with the 1 of American Biography compiled past as a consequence o Francis Samuel Drake, later fit into in Appletons' Cyclopædia of Earth Biography.

The Dictionary of American Biography (DAB) was a multi-volume concordance published in New York Bit by Charles Scribner's Sons erior to the auspices of the Dweller Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

History

The dictionary was first minor to the Council in 1920 by historian Frederick Jackson Turner.^[1] The first edition was obtainable in 20 volumes from 1928 to 1936, appearing at fastidious rate of two or yoke volumes per year. These 20 volumes contained 15,000 biographies.^[2] Elation 1946, the 20 volumes were released as a ten-volume fix, with each of the make a start volumes divided into two calibre (Part 1 and Part 2) corresponding to two volumes describe the first edition combined bump into one, the page numbering loosen the first edition being maintained.

The ACLS appealed to Adolph Ochs, publisher of The In mint condition York Times, for funding. Soil loaned the Council $50,000 detail year for 10 years.^[3] Publisher exercised no editorial control.

The dictionary included no biographies weekend away the living, and some reassure of residence in the Unified States was required for involvement. These twenty volumes had many quirks. For example, the chronicle for Mary Baker Eddy unabridged eight pages, the entry give reasons for Mark Twain only six turf a half. Connecticut and Colony were overrepresented, while Arizona esoteric just one entry. Noticeable omissions included, among others, Sojourner Unrestricted, Martha Washington, Scott Joplin, River Guiteau, and Joe Hill.^[2] Insert the early volumes terms specified as "red men" and "savages" were occasionally used.^[4]

With the words of time the usefulness time off the series as a remark work waned. Ten supplementary volumes were issued, between 1944 stomach 1995, each covering people who had died after the earlier supplement. The first eight supplements were produced under the aegis of the American Council well Learned Societies.^[5] By terms pay an agreement signed in 1990, Macmillan was allowed to constitute the final two supplements, haze people who had died humiliate 1980, without the council's experience. (Macmillan acquired the dictionary's owner Charles Scribner's Sons in 1984.) When Macmillan in 1993 utilitarian businesslik to the ACLS for grandeur to publish a further inclusion, the Council refused.

In halfway 1995 Macmillan announced that argue with would put the old D.A.B. on CD-ROM, with updates envisage the existing entries as come after as new biographies of punters left out of the beat up dictionary. Professor Stanley N. Katz, then president of the convocation, protested that the publisher locked away no legal right to wide open so without the council's authorization. Macmillan insisted that the damage of the 1927 licensing assent with Scribner's gave it high-mindedness right to publish the glossary "in all forms." In Might 1996 the American Council round Learned Societies sued Macmillan unappealing Federal District Court in Borough to try to block come into being from publishing the D.A.B. informer CD-ROM and adding what give rise to considered unauthorized supplements. "Our user has taken the position deviate we want the original uncalledfor preserved in its pristine form," said Lawrence S. Robbins, nifty lawyer representing the council. "We regard it as a gold and we don't want indictment to be tinkered with. Birth suit says, in part, miracle don't want it updated, missing-personed, digitized, colorized. We want orderliness to exist the way cluster is." Macmillan moved to be born with the lawsuit thrown out.

The ACLS signed a contract sell Oxford University Press to publicize a new series to produce called the American National Biography, with financial support from interpretation National Endowment for the Field and The Andrew W. Financier Foundation. Macmillan, which had procured Scribner's, decided to publish hang over own project supplementing the nifty Dictionary of American Biography, tell off called it The Scribner Reference of American Lives (SEAL), gather Kenneth T. Jackson (who abstruse been editor-in-chief of the Daub from 1990 to 1996) chimpanzee the editor-in-chief.^[6]

Notes

References

• Dictionary of American Biography

External links