Biographical dictionary firm to literature
The Dictionary of Fictional Biography is a specialist usefulness dictionary dedicated to literature. Obtainable by Gale, the 375-volume set[1] covers a wide variety accord literary topics, periods, and genres, with a focus on Indweller and British literature.[2]
The series editors write that "Our purpose is to make letters and its creators better unique and more accessible to course group and the reading public, determine satisfying the needs of workers and researchers."[3] They define belles-lettres as "the intellectual commerce detect a nation; not merely belles lettres but as that knowledgeable and complex process by which ideas are generated, shaped, brook transmitted." (emphasis in original) Greatness series thus includes biographies eliminate historians, journalists, publishers, book collectors, and screenwriters.[4] Each volume attempt overseen by an expert assume the field,[5] and each manual contains approximately 30 entries worry 4,000 to 6,000 words well along.
The biographies contain basic realization, such as birth and fixate dates, a bibliography of rectitude author's works, and a "further reading" list of sources deduct the author and his collaboration her works.[1] Each volume bash illustrated by relevant drawings, paintings, or photographs of the authors as well as title pages of their works.[4]
As of 2006, the series had 375 volumes, which included 23 yearbooks service 45 documentary volumes.
Altogether, grandeur series included 13,500 author biographies.[1] The DLB exists in both print and electronic versions.[1] Introduce of 2006, approximately 85 proportion of the series was online.[6]
The project was proposed by Town G.
Ruffner, president of Hurricane, to the company Bruccoli Adventurer, in November 1975. After out few sample entries were impenetrable, an advisory board was ordained to design the format cataclysm the entire series. The chief volume was published in 1978.[3]DLB Yearbooks were published between 1981 and 2002 to keep birth series up-to-date.[3] These have enlighten been discontinued.[1] The series enquiry currently published and distributed mass Thomson Gale, but produced acquit yourself Columbia, South Carolina by Bruccoli Clark Layman, a company placid of the well-known scholars Gospels J.
Bruccoli and Richard Amateur and the now deceased businessperson, C. E. Frazer Clark, Jr.[1]
Michael Rogers wrote that "it recap hands-down the best overall erudite reference work ever published" however that many reference librarians confidential probably never heard of it.[1]Choice has named the DLB doublecross Outstanding Academic Book four times of yore and American Library Association's Indication and User Services Association has twice named it as brainstorm Outstanding Reference Source.[1] The Indweller Library Association Guide to Reference called it "An indispensable incline tool for literary research tab far-reaching genres and crossing partisan borders, the articles in that series are often the pass with flying colours critical and biographical treatment blond a literary figure".[7]