Oxford’s Pricey Biography Set Reportedly Rife with Errors
-- Library Journal, 3/14/2005 2:00:00 AM
The British press is reporting that Oxford University Press’s massive—in size and price—Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is fraught with factual errors. The Observer quotes Jane Austen scholar Deidre Le Faye, who claims that “there are some 70 factual errors, wrong names, wrong family relations, wrong dating of events” in the DNB’s Austen profile. Entries for Florence Nightingale, George V, and Edward VIII reportedly also are havens of inaccuracy. Constitutional scholar Vernon Bogdanor told the publication that the £7500 ($13,000) 60-volume set “has done damage to the university,” adding that entries in his area of expertise “seem to have been written by the constitutionally illiterate.” Alex Attewell, director of London’s Florence Nightingale Museum said that the Nightingale entry included two errors in the opening paragraph alone, and author Nikolai Tolstoy asserted that the listing on his stepfather, Patrick O’Brien, was “entirely fictitious.” DNB editor Lawrence Goldman said that he has contacted critics about correcting entries, but Tolstoy refused and Bogdanor hasn’t yet responded. He also pointed out that earlier editions also contained errors that were amended in an erratum and that the online version will be corrected.
