The New DNB

If universal dictionaries were the characteristic consequence of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, dictionaries of national biography were their equivalents for the liberal nationalism of the nineteenth century. They emphasised both the nation state and the role of individuals within it. The Germans were, not surprisingly, first into action, with the first volume of the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie being published in 1875, a tribute to the modified triumph of National Liberalism in the formation of the German empire of 1871. In Britain, George Smith (1824- 1901), founder of the publishing firm of Smith, Elder, publishers of the Brontes, Trollope and the Cornhill Magazine, commissioned work on a Dictionary of National Biography. Smith made a fortune from publishing, and enjoyed using it for innovatory projects. He became interested in biographical dictionaries and inquired into the possibility of a new, English-language version of the Biographie Universelle, first published in France in the mid-eighteenth century.