Abstract

Hole's Biographical Dictionary Revised

The article focuses on the book "A Brief Biographical Dictionary," compiled and arranged by Charles Hole. The American editor has endeavored to enhance the former and to diminish the latter by inserting many hundreds of American names, and others of less note, but desirable in a work designed for circulation in this country; by adding a large number of European names of undoubted importance which the English editor had omitted, and which one would naturally expect to find in a work of this sort. Another less omission in the dates of the month and day attached in the original issue to the year of death. Let it not be supposed that people claim for themselves the merit of all these useful additions and alterations. By no means. On the contrary, they have good reasons for believing that the American editor has not seen their review at all and that in most of his additions and corrections he has strictly followed the "New American Cyclopaedia."