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A Comparison of the Dictionary of American
Biography and the American National Biography. |
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Dictionary of American Biography (DAB) |
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20 original volumes |
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Published in 1937; project started in 1926. |
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Additional supplements cover figures that died
after 1937. |
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Written by 2,243 authors. |
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American National Biography (ANB) |
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24 volumes |
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Published in 1999; project started in 1986. |
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Written by 61,000 authors. |
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Dictionary of American Biography |
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Published by Scribner & Sons. |
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Project directed by (newly created) American
Council of Learned Societies. |
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Editorial Board consisted of leading historians
and members of the Carnegie Institution. |
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Mostly men contributed to the entries with women
serving as library assistant and copy editors. |
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American National Biography |
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Published by Oxford University Press. |
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Chief Editors- John A. Garraty-Prof. Emeritus of
history -Columbia University & Mark C. Carnes- Prof of History- Barnard
College. |
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Project
directed by American Council of Learned Societies. Stanley Katz, the president emeritus of
the council helped with the publication of the new source and states in his
forward that it is “the major reference work of American biography of our
generation.” |
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The editorial board consisted of 14 renowned
American Historians; including 4 women. |
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Women were among senior editors, contributors,
project editors and copy editors. |
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Dictionary of American Biography |
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Focused on people who had lived in the U.S. and
made significant contributions to this country. |
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Made efforts to expand coverage of older
biographies and include people in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and
literature. |
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Although it included many women the introduction
shows a male dominated philosophy. |
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“The length of the article has not been
determined solely by the relative importance of the man, but also by the
amount of available authentic material, by the nature of his career…” |
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Yet, it
shortchanged women by omitting important aspects of their careers. |
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American National Biography |
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Included 17,500 biographies. |
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The goal was to replace the DAB with a fresh
source that included many people that were overlooked. |
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Focused on ordinary men and women who made some
contribution to the county’s history. |
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“The ANB brings together the diverse voices of
the past without claiming that they blend harmoniously…priority was given
to persons, especially women and minorities, about whom information or new
ways of interpreting old data had become available.” |
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It won the Dartmouth Medal in 1999- This is
presented by RUSA for reference works of outstanding quality and
significance. |
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Many reviewers praised the efforts to include
previously underrepresented people. |
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“In addition to the icons of American history…
we find biographies of women from all walks of life: first ladies,
midwives, suffragists and scientists.” - Dudley Barlow |
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“This is the charm of our craft: The search to reconstruct what went
before, a quest illuminated by those ever changing prisms that continually
place old questions in new light.
To this search the ANB makes a dazzling contribution. It tells us about the American past, and
it tells us about ourselves.”
-Arthur Schlesinger Jr. |
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The ANB included detailed biographies of all 24
women selected. |
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Women left out of the DAB |
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Ida Barnett-Wells- editor and antilynching
activist |
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Sojourner Truth- Black abolitionist and women’s
rights activist. |
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Sallie Holley- abolitionist and educator. |
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Angelina Grimke- leading abolitionist (The DAB
includes her under the entry of her sister and leaves out her major
contributions.) |
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Ellen Gates Starr- co-founder of Hull House. |
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While the entries for the other women are in the
DAB, the biographies in this work are shorter and neglect major
contributions. |
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Entries on these women generally include chauvinistic language, information
unrelated to the woman’s contribution and have a condescending tone. |
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This mentions her frail health frequently. Also notes “Her tact in handling people,
and social situations, her affection for children…disarmed criticism and
attracted love, and her physical disability and precarious health made it
natural for friends to want to protect her.” |
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It suggests that as a spinster she was
unconventional. |
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This work focuses on her many important achievements. |
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At College, she was class president, editor of
the school’s magazine, president of the literary society and valedictorian. |
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She became the first woman president of the
National Conference of charities and Correction, a vice president of the
National-American Woman Suffrage Assoc., a founding member of the NAACP and
the first U.S. woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. |
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In two newspaper polls in 1913, Addams was
listed first or second as providing the most value to the country. |
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This notes that the world considered Dr.
Blackwell as either “mad or bad” because she became a doctor. |
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Comments that her influential work helping to
organize field nurses during the Civil War “did much to help win sympathy
for the feministic movement in medicine.” |
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This work provides a more expanded view of her
achievements with a more modern analysis. |
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In 1849, she received her medical degree and was
the first woman in the U.S. or Europe to accomplish this. |
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Her conception of her gender influenced how she
thought about and later taught medicine. |
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Opposing the increased use of gynecological
surgery to cure women, she accused male doctors of being irresponsible and
claimed they were making women sterile unnecessarily. |
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This sources describes her as only a
humanitarian. |
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After listing the many books that she wrote, it
adds “She was, however, nervous, overstrained, and delicate, with incipient
lung trouble.” |
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It includes the quote “I am naturally timid and
diffident, like all my sex.” |
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This work gives a vastly different portrayal
describing her as a strong social reformer. |
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This work includes the quote “ I implore. I demand pity and protection for those
of my suffering , outraged sex.” |
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This account describes how her far reaching
reforms changed the way the mentally ill were treated in the United States
and Europe. |
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It also notes her many other reform initiatives
on behalf of other causes. |
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Despite the fact that she was a strong advocate
for women’s rights and abolition, this source includes a quote describing
her appearance: “She is described by those who knew her as an attractive,
kindly person with unassuming manners, and a good housekeeper.” |
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Describing Foster as more radical this source
contradicts the analysis included in the DAB by noting that she found
staying at home for an extended period of time “perfectly killing.” |
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This source also explores her radical views in
more detail. |
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“Whatever ways and means are right for men to
adopt in reforming the world are right also for women to adopt in pursuing
the same object.” |
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It notes that she asserted that women could only
become free of their reliance on men by becoming self-supporting. |
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This source attempts to describe the
contributions of both sisters in the same entry. |
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In this way, it neglects important contributions
of both sisters and fails to depict them as important abolitionists on
their own. |
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This source also states that Sarah influenced
Angelina to take up the abolitionist cause. This is incorrect. |
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Notes her remarkable achievements. |
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Was the first white Southern woman to speak up
publicly against slavery, she persuaded Sarah to join her in the
anti-slavery crusade, was the first woman to speak at the Massachusetts
State House- spoke for 3 days. |
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She was a strong proponent of women’s rights and
wrote: “Women should be allowed not only help write the laws of the land
but to sit in the seats of its government.” |
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She was one of the first reformers to link the
ideas of abolitionism and feminism. |
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This source notes that her Epistle to the Clergy
of Southern States provided a strong refutation of the Southern arguments
for slavery. |
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The explanation of her other works shows that
she was a serious historian and had an acute understanding of the current
conditions of women in the U.S. and in Europe. |
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The notions that she asserts in her works shows
that she voiced radical views on women’s rights calling upon women to “rise
to the degree of dignity…and to maintain those rights and exercise those
privileges which every woman’s common sense…tells her are inalienable.” |
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This source glosses over her many activities on
behalf of woman’s suffrage and only describes them generally. |
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It then
adds a description of her physical appearance which serves to diminish her
achievements. “Her strong and
undaunted manner made her very impressive, though she was short in stature,
not exceeding five feet three inches.
Her skin was fresh and fair, and the good-natured expression of her
face was accentuated by the merry twinkle rarely absent from her clear,
light blue eyes.” |
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This source offers a more detailed perspective
on Stanton’s complex views on women’s rights and reveals her denouncement
of black suffrage. |
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She demanded rights for married women, including
rights to property, wages and the ability to leave an abusive
marriage. She argued that women
should have the right to decide with whom and when to bear children. |
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She urged women to reject churches and ministers
who insisted on asserting their inequality. |
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Through she was a leading advocate for women’s
suffrage, she suggested that allowing black men to vote endangered white
women and questioned why black men should obtain suffrage before white
women. |
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Here she is identified as only a writer. |
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The source describes her as “Tall, grave sturdy
and alert….Never a profound political analyst, but a remarkably sensitive
reporter to an early twentieth-century audience eager for ethical
instruction” and includes her as part of the “secular clergy” of the age. |
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This source underestimates her contribution as
well as her skill as a leading muckraker. |
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Identified as an investigative journalist and
historian, this source praises her as “the most outstanding female
investigative journalist that America has ever produced.” |
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It notes that she was the only woman in her
freshman class at Alleghney College. |
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This describes her exposé of Standard Oil as
contributing to the company’s dissolution and encouraging government
legislation. |
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It credits her Life of Abraham Lincoln series
for helping McClures’s magazine prosper. |
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This source provides a short description, devoid
of important details. |
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It includes a newspaper reporter’s description
of her appearance in her thirties and follows this by noting that in her
later years, “her face was lined, angular, and somewhat austere, but
lighted with the spiritual beauty which life-long devotion to high purposes
often imparts. She was of the
militant type, and…she not infrequently displayed some of the less pleasant
characteristics which such warfare is likely to produce in a soldier.” |
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This condescending description fails to do
justice to her achievements. |
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Exploring her activities more in depth, this
source describes her tireless efforts as she constantly traveled throughout
the country to deliver lectures. |
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It also remarks that she went beyond women’s
suffrage by using her fame to give any women’s organization access to a
national platform. She also
promoted the idea of universal suffrage. |
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It asserts that she dedicated herself to
ensuring that the history of the women’s movement survived. She accomplished this through her
biography, based on a large archive she accumulated, and the 3 volume, History
of Woman Suffrage, to which she contributed. She personally sent these works to thousands of academic and
public libraries. |
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In many ways the modern American National
Biography gives American women the historical credit they deserve. |
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It not only includes more women, but offers
biographies that explore their full accomplishments and contributions. |
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It uses modern scholarship to include the most
important details on the figures that it portrays. |
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The extensive bibliographies, that follow each
entry, list most primary sources available, as well as their
locations. They also include
accessible and current secondary source treatment of each figure. |
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