Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography
Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography is a six-volume collection of biographies of famous Americans. It was published between 1887 and 1889 by D. Appleton and Company, New York. The general editors were James Grant Wilson (1832-1914) and John Fiske (1842-1901); the managing editor was Rossiter Johnson.[1] A seventh volume, containing an appendix and supplementary lists, and thematic indexes to the whole work, was issued in 1901.
Overview
The Cyclopædia included the names of over 20,000 native and adopted citizens of the United States, including living persons. Also included were the names of several thousand citizens of all the other countries of North and South America. The aim was to embrace all noteworthy persons of the New World. The work also contained the names of nearly 1,000 people of foreign birth who were closely identified with American history. The Cyclopædia was illustrated with about sixty full-page portraits supplemented by some 1,500 smaller vignette portraits accompanied by facsimile autographs, and also several hundred views of birthplaces, residences, monuments, and tombs famous in history.[2]
None of the articles are signed either with names or with initials. The clue to authorship is obtained, when obtained at all, through a list of contributors and their contributions arranged alphabetically as to contributors. One reviewer found this a rather inconvenient method, complaining that the finding of the author of a particular sketch often involved a voyage of discovery through the entire list. These lists are searched in vain, however, for the authors of many sketches, including the one of President Cleveland.[3]
Fictitious biographies
Although a major reference for Americana, the Cyclopædia is also notorious for including some 200 biographies of fictitious persons.[4] The first to discover these fictions was John Hendley Barnhart, in 1919,[5] who identified and reprinted, with commentary, 14 biographical sketches of supposed European botanists who had come to the New World to study in Latin America. By 1939, 47 fictitious biographies had been discovered, though only the letters H and V had been systematically investigated.[6] The status of fictitions in Appletons' Cyclopædia was assessed by Margaret Castle Schindler, of Goucher College, in 1937.[7] According to Schindler
The writer (or writers) of these articles must have had some scientific training, for most of the creations were scientists, and sufficient linguistic knowledge to have invented or adapted titles in six languages. He was certainly familiar with the history and geography of South America. Most of the places visited by his characters are real places, and most of the historical events in which they participated are genuine. However, he sometimes made mistakes by which his fraudulent work can be detected.[8]
Contributors to Appletons' Cyclopædia were free to suggest new subjects and were paid according to the length of the article. Articles were only checked for form by the editorial staff.[9] While conceding that Appletons' Cyclopædia was a "valuable and authoritative work," and that her results should not reflect on the many authentic articles, Schindler noted that articles on Latin American subjects should be used cautiously until verified against other sources.[10]
The Cyclopædia was republished, uncorrected, by the Gale Research Company in 1968.[11]
See also
Notes
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- O'Brien, Frank M. "The Wayward Encyclopedias", New Yorker, XII (May 2, 1936), pp. 71-74. (This is a summary of Barnhart's article.)
- Dobson, John Blythe. "The Spurious Articles in Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography—Some New Discoveries and Considerations." Biography 16(4) 1993: 388-408.
External links
The Cyclopædia, being out of copyright, has been scanned and OCRed multiple times, is available from several sources, and has been used as the basis of biography collections at several other websites.
