Steve Ely

More print biography resources

I noted earlier that I was getting better acquainted with some print biographical resources on the shelves at Cornette.  There I only took the time and space for Who Was Who and the Dictionary of American Biography.  Here I want to take a look at a couple of comparable works, the American National Biography and the National Cyclopedia of American Biography.

The American National Biography is 24 volumes, with the indexes included in the last volume of entries.  Similar to the Dictionary of American Biography, the entries are arranged alphabetically across the entirety of the work.  Bushrod Washington is in Volume 22.  Here, also, he has just over a page.  There is a very good and informative, if brief, bibliography following the article.  The article is signed by author W. Hamilton Bryson.  The article in the Dictionary of American Biography, on the other hand, is signed only with the initials of the author.  (In this case, G.W.G.) 

The indexing is similar to the Dictionary of American Biography in listing entries by subject, by contributor, by place of birth, and by occupations and “realms of renown” (a wonderful phrase).  In this case, though, there is no index by schools and colleges, nor an index of topics covered.  It eventually dawns on me, though, that in many ways it’s similar enough to the much earlier Dictionary of American Biography to be a successor work. Indeed, they are both “published under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies.”

In fact, this connection was almost certainly mentioned by the instructor of my reference class at Pitt and a supervisor in my internship at Hillman.  It’s definitely discussed in the textbook I used, Reference and Information Services in the 21st Century by Kay Ann Cassell and Uma Hiremath. It notes that it’s a “companion” to the Dictionary of American Biography, which published its last supplement in 1985, but a completely new work rather than an update.  As with the older work, all the subjects are deceased. 

According to Cassell and Hiremath, the newer work’s 17,500 biographies include more women, minorities, and non-U.S. citizens than its precursor, but it also leaves out a number of those included in the previous item’s 19,000 biographies.  In fairness, though, the one was produced over the course of almost 60 years; the other has been published for less than ten. 

In a way, it seems similar to the circumstances with Who Was Who, which has value if someone is included there and not in the Dictionary of American Biography.  Likewise here, the Dictionary of American Biography is mostly relevant if someone is included there and not in the American National Biography (or if the latter is somehow not available, of course).  If both are options and only one will be used, it seems sensible to opt for the one that had the advantage of the greater amount of scholarship over the years to draw upon.

Cassell and Hiremath say of The National Cyclopedia of American Biography that its “uniqueness…is that it lists many people who are not in other biographical sources such as prominent business people, clergy, etc.”  It’s also unique for the way the subjects seem to be in no real order.  Cassell and Hiremath correctly note that the articles are not in alphabetical order, resulting in each volume, as well as the whole set, having its own index.  What they don’t mention is what order the entries are in.  Personally, I can’t fully discern any real order altogether.  In the introduction to the whole thing, the editors note that they’ve grouped individuals “with reference to their work and its results[, a]rranging the presidents of a college, the governors of a state, the bishops of a diocese, etc., so as to present a progressive narrative.”  That aim becomes apparent in places with a little attention, given the way each subject’s name has an occupation listed after it, and a lot of people noted as soldiers or Supreme Court justices or clergymen are grouped together.  There are no category headings to set these groups off from one another, though, or any clues to indicate why someone is the first or last person, for instance, in a given group.  At one point, this sequence appears, and it’s difficult to find a reason: financier, lawyer, journalist, Walt Whitman, ship-master, insurance president, astronomer and historian, author and lawyer, congressman, college president, banker, clerical pioneer, journalist, manufacturer and railroad builder, poet. 

This peculiarity of order is complemented in the early volumes, beginning in 1891, by a voice very much of its time. The Bushrod Washington piece, for instance, contains a few phrases that couldn’t appear in a present-day version.  This gives the reader a glimpse into the nineteenth-century minds of the articles’ authors and a kind of window into the past that doesn’t come from an article written in the present.   It’s a secondary/tertiary source on its biographical subject but also a kind of primary source on the thinking of the 1890s. Intriguing as this is in its own right, for a biography of any specifically sought person, we may do well to complement it with a more modern counterpart.  

It does achieve something with quantity, though. With its long history, the Cyclopedia far exceeds the number of entries found in the Dictionary of American Biography or American National Biography.  In the preface to its 1984 volume, the latest on our shelves, it claimed 66,500 biographies in 74 volumes of two series. That number still isn’t as many as Who Was Who, but the entries are certainly longer and more substantive than that. 

The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, especially in the very early volumes, is actually pretty interesting and enjoyable to read aimlessly, which is as intended, I suppose.  It’s a bit tough to accept the way the “progressive narrative” feels as if it’s meandering blindly.  But perhaps that’s part of the point: greater immersion in the story by giving up control of where it’s going.  In any event, it seems great for discovery of previously unknown historical figures and makes for good pleasure reading as much as a good reference source.