WE HAD LONG thought that THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE was ‘the one and only’. But the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography reveals that we had an eponymous forebear, a short-lived literary periodical (1880–82) founded and edited by Helen Reeves, a writer of romantic and sensational novels, who had to disband the journal leaving herself ‘with large debts’; she died ‘virtually penniless’ in 1920. More can be learned about Mrs Reeves in the ODNB for, unfortunate though she may have been in her career, she is lucky in her ‘preservation from oblivion’ by being one of the nearly 55,000 individuals included in this monumental publication.1

The first Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee and issued in quarterly volumes each year between 1884 and 1900, commemorated nearly 30,000 individuals, all of whom have been retained in the newpublication (their entries either revised or newly written). Throughout the twentieth century several substantial supplements appeared recording the lives of the recently dead and persons omitted from the enterprise as a whole. The new project, instigated in the early 1980s, was published last September, in print and online, and leaves far behind those other countries long embarked on similar dictionaries.

The ‘National’ of the title is a flexible term and includes people born outside Britain who lived there or had some impact on its culture and society, people of British nationality who did not live in Britain, foreigners who settled in Britain and ‘people from the regions of the British Isles and British territories overseas’. Also present are mythical characters, legendary saints, national personifications, known but un-identified people, and useful entries on groups which scoop up numerous individuals who would otherwise have fallen by the wayside. ‘Biography’ includes scrupulous attention to the salient facts of an individual’s life and achievements based on the most recent research. Full sources and related archival material are now listed after each entry, as too is the fascinating innovation, ‘Wealth at death’, while some 10,000 illustrations enliven the pages. But just as biography itself has dramatically changed since the more buttoned-up days of Stephen and Lee, so too has the tone and content of many of the revised and new entries. As before, the granite of fact is augmented by the rainbow of personality, but now the added spice of well-founded gossip and sharper characterisation makes even John Aubrey’s Brief Lives seem discreet. Lovers, mistresses, sexual preferences (or lack of), naughty peccadilloes, acts of indecency, physical shortcomings – all spring from the pages, colouring this astonishing slide-show of humanity, drawn from the great public rooms of high achievement to the sculleries and outhouses of brief notoriety.

It may surprise readers that artists and architects account for over 5,000 entries, approximately ten per cent of the new dictionary. They span about 1,300 years, tunnelling forwards from Eadfrith, scribe and painter of the Lindisfarne Gospels, to vivid recent figures such as Francis Bacon. It is notable that the largest number of new biographies across all subjects, but particularly in the arts, are from the medieval period; that many more women artists make their debut; and outstanding figures in the decorative arts such as Paul de Lamerie and Christopher Dresser, originally neglected, are now happily instated. Art collectors and historian/dealers are patchily treated – no entries, for example, on William Buchanan, John Smith or the 4th Marquess of Hertford. Of writers on art, Ruskin is now the presiding deity. Among artists, Turner, not unexpectedly, has overtaken Reynolds as the most comprehensively treated British painter, with Hogarth, Gainsborough and Constable as runners-up. The part played by non-British artists is now more fully explored, perhaps excessively so. Van Dyck, who spent eight of his forty-two years in London, some of the time in a state of anxiety to leave, is treated to a full-blown (and excellent) biography, and Rubens and Canaletto, both omitted from the old DNB, are now included. The many immigrants and visitors who fundamentally shaped the study of art in Britain are authoritatively served (Anthony Blunt cool on Antal; Brian Harrison exceptionally sympathetic on Pevsner). The entries on museum directors are surprisingly good value, containing a wealth of boardroom wrangles, inspired purchases and frustrated ambitions to be artists. As in any other category, madness, drink and premature senility are never far away.

This seamlessly brings us to our own particular patch, the former Editors of this Magazine, of whom seven out of an eligible twelve have their own biographies. The maddest, More Adey, and the most eccentric, John Hope-Johnstone, are not here; of those who are, Benedict Nicolson’s personal supper of fish-fingers and a bottle of gin is passed over and Tancred Borenius’s twilight years are kindly termed ‘reclusive’. One of the seven was Sir Lionel Cust who, as a scholar of portraiture and the genealogies of British families, ‘may be said to have slept with Burke at his bedside’ (the Peerage rather than Edmund). Cust was an indefatigable contributor on artists to the old DNB and praise is here duly given to his ‘painstaking’ contributions which marked ‘a fresh beginning in the study of British art’. Although many of these have been replaced by more up-to-date assessments, they remain available from the online edition. Among other benefits of being online are the incorporation of new research, the correction of inaccuracies (there are too many) and the quick issue of new supplements. Already available, for example, are entries for people who died in 2001, including two influential but highly contrasting figures, Ernst Gombrich and David Sylvester, now united in the ODNB supplement by their important early articles published in this Magazine and by the unexpected information that both, at their deaths, were millionaires.

1  The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 61,792 pp. in 60 vols. (Oxford University Press, with the British Academy, 2004), £7,500. ISBN 0–19–861411–x. Available online at www.oxforddnb.com.