Dictionary of Literary Biography
The Dictionary of Literary Biography ( DLB for short ) is an English-language author's lexicon in 349 volumes so far (as of August 2008). It contains biographical essays on important authors from various fields, for example writers , journalists , essayists , screenwriters and historians . Due to the large scope of the work, less important authors and those who are hardly known today can also be taken into account. The DLB is being published by Thomson Gale Publishing from Farmington Hills , Michigan , USA , a suburb of Detroit .
history
The first volumes appeared in 1978 and contained exclusively North American authors. British and later non-English speaking authors joined the group in the early 1980s .
The DLB is constantly being expanded; several volumes appear each year. In addition to the printed version, there is also an online version.
Structure of the article
The articles begin with a list of the author's works and possibly a selection of important secondary literature. This is followed by a description of life and work, the length of which depends on the meaning of the author. Many texts are illustrated, e.g. B. black and white photos, facsimile manuscript pages or front pages of the first editions. In total, the articles are between three and 30 pages long.
Overall structure of the lexicon
The lexicon is not arranged alphabetically but thematically. One volume is dedicated to a specific topic, e.g. B. the authors of a certain genre in a certain epoch in a certain country or language area. Each volume is edited by a specialist in the relevant field, who also writes a foreword for the volume. At the end of the volume there is an alphabetical index with the articles of all volumes published so far.
Related ranks
From 1980 to 2002 the DLB Yearbook was published annually , which documented the literary business of the year. It contained new publications, reports on the award of literary prizes, conferences, a necrology, etc.
From 1982 to 1998 the DLB documentary Series was published , a series of volumes each dedicated to a smaller group, a single author or a work.
For smaller libraries, the publisher published the six-volume Concise dictionary of American literary biography , which includes the most important American authors, in 1987-89 . A corresponding work on the most important British authors is the Concise dictionary of British literary biography , which appeared in eight volumes in 1991–92.