The Handy Dictionary of Biography (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Handy Dictionary of Biography

For the proper study of history, literature, or art, a biographical dictionary is scarcely less important than an English dictionary is for those who desire to become thoroughly acquainted with the English language. No doubt one may acquire a very considerable knowledge of English by listening to conversation and by reading; but if he has no other aids than these, there will often be an indistinctness and uncertainty in his knowledge of words which would be fatal to any claim he might wish to make to being - we do not say a thoroughly educated, but even a respectably educated, person.

In like manner, though one might acquire, by reading, an extensive knowledge of history, literature, or art, yet questions or doubts will not unfrequently arise in the minds even of those who are generally well informed, as to the exact date of some important event or the correct spelling of a name, or, it may be, the particular line or field in which the person about whom information is sought has distinguished himself. It then becomes eminently desirable, if not absolutely necessary, to have at hand some convenient resource by which all doubt or difficulty may be at once removed.

The aim of the present work has been to furnish in a comparatively brief compass and at a moderate price, a book of biographical reference sufficiently full for all ordinary occasions. Particular attention has been given to the notices of those persons who have quite recently risen to distinction, both because the generality of readers naturally take a deeper interest in such characters, and because it is precisely this class of persons about whom it is especially difficult to obtain the information which one requires.

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