The Online Books Page

presents

Dictionary of National Biography

edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee

The Dictionary of National Biography (or DNB) is a biographical reference for deceased persons notable in British history. The current edition of this work has been published online by Oxford University Press since 2004. The current electronic edition is not free, but is available through individual or library subscription. There is also a recent print edition.

Some earlier editions of this work are freely available online, and remain of historic interest. Below we link to free online volumes of the first and second editions, and some of their supplementary volumes.

First edition

The first edition was published in 63 volumes from 1885 through 1900 in London by Smith, Elder, and Co. (In the US, Macmillan also published many of the volumes in conjunction with Smith, Elder. These copies are noted in the list below with an "(M)" notation.) Various supplements, errata volumes, and indexes were published in the years to follow, prior to the second edition.

Google Books has various page image formats for all of the volumes, as does the Internet Archive. (The Google Books editions might not be readable in full outside the United States.) We give links to the first edition volumes below.

Supplementary volumes for the first edition

Second edition

The second edition of the DNB was published in 1908 and 1909 in London by Smith, Elder, and Co. (In the US, Macmillan also published many of the volumes in conjunction with Smith, Elder. These copies are noted in the list below with an "(M)" notation.) Various supplements were published in the years to follow, up until 1996.

Google Books has various page image formats for the original second edition volumes. The Google Books editions might not be readable in full outside the United States. The Internet Archive also has some of the second edition volumes online, without country restrictions. We give links to available second edition volumes below.

Supplementary volumes for the second edition

Only some public domain supplementary volumes are known to be online at this time. Please let us know of any more that you find.

Our thanks to Bob Blair for creating the initial version of this index, and sharing it with The Online Books Page.

This is a "meta-book", which stitches together separate files elsewhere on the Web as they appeared in a previously published book. It is subject to removal if someone produces an integrated edition. If that happens, The Online Books Page will point to the integrated version.