What’s New at Schaffer Library

Oxford updates the Dictionary of National Biography with a special focus on gardeners and engineers of everyday life. This update includes entries on 87 men and women who died before 2000, plus 20 New ‘reference groups.’

NEW BIOGRAPHIES
• Gardeners—national profession and pastime
This month brings you 30 biographies of men and women who shaped the history of British gardening.
Many made their name cultivating and promoting now popular plants, including the ‘daffodil king’ Peter Barr and Henry Eckford, ‘father of the sweet pea.’ There’s also Christopher Leyland who gave his name to the rapid-growing, conifer, Leylandii—now a controversial feature of domestic gardens but originally an ideal plant for Leyland’s Northumberland estate.

• Engineers of everyday life
You’ll also find ten inventors and pioneers of modern forms of domestic and public sanitation. Household names include Thomas Twyford and John Shanks, together with George Jennings, whose public conveniences for the Great Exhibition gave rise to the term ’spend a penny.’ They are joined by figures associated with public health, including James Simpson —inventor of water filtration beds—and Jesse Dawes, the pioneer of modern refuse collection and salvage—in which Britain once led the world.

• Preservers of nature
In Darwin’s anniversary year, the Oxford DNB looks at those who enabled flora and fauna to be studied before photography. New subjects include taxidermists Rowland Ward and Walter Potter —creator of anthropomorphic tableaux—and botanical artist, Lilian Snelling.

GROUPS IN HISTORY
As well as biographies, this update adds 20 new groups in Themes.

TOPICAL LIVES FROM THE OXFORD DNB
Further biographies are available in the complete Oxford DNB now available—free, online, and at home—via your public library or daily with our Life of the Day service and bi-monthly podcast.

See May 2009 Update for further details.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has been updated, with new content now available at http://www.oxforddnb.com. This update adds biographies for 215 men and women who shaped Britain’s past and who died in 2005.

NEW BIOGRAPHIES
The update is notable for including biographies of two British prime ministers – the Conservative politician Edward Heath (1970-74) and the Labour politician, James Callaghan (1976-9) who was defeated by Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Both figures oversaw, and failed to overcome, a decade of economic decline — a theme now much discussed in the UK media, not to mention incredibly relevant here across the pond as well.

Also added to the ODNB are the controversial royal commentator Harold Brooks-Baker, the motor manufacturer John DeLorean (best known for a doomed, and corrupt, luxury car venture in Northern Ireland, which unfortunately did not lead to advancements in time travel), and the actress Constance Cummings (Wings, 1979 and 1983).

Click here for a full list of new lives added this month.