Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/13

 PREFATORY NOTE

Supplement to the 'Dictionary of National Biography' contains a thousand articles, of which more than two hundred represent accidental omissions from the previously published volumes. These overlooked memoirs belong to various epochs of mediæval and modern history; some of the more important fill gaps in colonial history to which recent events have directed attention.

But it is the main purpose of the Supplement to deal with distinguished persons who died at too late a date to be included in the original work. The principle of the undertaking excludes living people, and in the course of the fifteen years during which the publication, in alphabetical sequence, of the sixty-three quarterly volumes of the Dictionary was in progress, many men and women of eminence died after their due alphabetical place was reached, and the opportunity of commemorating them had for the time passed away. The Supplement contains nearly eight hundred memoirs of recently deceased persons, who, under the circumstances indicated, found no place in the previously published volumes.

Since the resolve to issue a Supplement to the Dictionary was first announced, more than four times as many names as actually appear in the supplementary volumes have been recommended to the Editor for notice. Every suggestion has been carefully considered, and, although the rejections have been numerous, the Editor hopes that he has not excluded any name about which information is likely to be sought in the future by serious students. Reputations that might reasonably be regarded as ephemeral have alone been consciously ignored. The right