The Dictionary of National Biography

The original DNB was compiled between 1885 and 1900. Three supplementary volumes containing entrants who had missed their alphabetical sequence were published almost immediately. The Twentieth-Century Supplements are confined to those who have died within the decade or half-decade represented. There have been many men and women, however, who acquired posthumous fame, or whose achievements failed to come to the attention of the editors of the time, or whose significance scholarship has...
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The original DNB was compiled between 1885 and 1900. Three supplementary volumes containing entrants who had missed their alphabetical sequence were published almost immediately. The Twentieth-Century Supplements are confined to those who have died within the decade or half-decade represented. There have been many men and women, however, who acquired posthumous fame, or whose achievements failed to come to the attention of the editors of the time, or whose significance scholarship has only recently revealed. This volume includes 1,086 such people from all periods of British history and from all walks of life. Including much biographical information not readily available elsewhere, this volume includes such famous names as Wilfred Owen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sylvia Pankhurst, Guy Burgess, Thomas Traherne, J. C. Bach, Anna Pavlova, Sylvia Plath, Charles Laughton, and Stan Laurel. In addition to drawing on the fruits of recent scholarship, the Supplement also reflects changes in social outlook, witness the inclusion of proportionately nearly four times as many women here as in the original DNB.