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E-book Dictionary of World Biography
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 A. S. B. Glover, a classical scholar and editor. 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 somewhat in later 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 speciality 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.
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