A Monument to the Victorian Age? Continuity and Discontinuity in the Dictionaries of National Biography 1882-2004.

The article focuses on the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). According to the author, Lord Roseberry described DNB as the greatest literary monument of the Victorian age. It is a characteristically Victorian production as agreed by critics and historians. Its coverage was deliberately extended until the last day of 1900 including at a memoir of Queen Victoria, who died on January 22, 1901, and therefore, furnished a better historical landmark