This, the largest of all national collections of biography, owes its existence to the enterprise and munificence of the late GEORGE SMITH, who founded it in 1882. The work was produced by the co-operation of a large number of scholars acting under the direction of the late Sir LESLIE STEPHEN, with whom was afterwards associated Mr. SIDNEY LEE; and the latter half of the work was produced under Sir SIDNEY LEE’s sole editorship. It was produced in sixty-three quarterly volumes, 1885-1900, the arrangement being alphabetical; and the lives of those who died too late to be admitted in their alphabetical place were included by the issue of three supplementary volumes, which brought the work down to the death of Queen Victoria and just past the close of the nineteenth century. The sixty-six volumes were later reissued, with corrections, on thinner paper, three volumes being converted into one; and this edition in twenty-two volumes constitutes the main dictionary from the earliest times to the close of the Victorian era, in the form now on sale. It contains, in rather more than 30,000 pages, some 30,000 lives, each equipped with a select bibliography. The roll of contributors includes many famous names; conspicuous among the articles are those of Sir Leslie Stephen himself, which are models of form and substance, and those of the present Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, Dr. C. H. Firth, whose Life of Cromwell is an acknowledged classic. Continuing the work of the founder, Mrs. George Smith undertook a Supplement covering the years 1901-1911, which was produced by Sir Sidney Lee in 1912-13. This, as the first of a series of twentieth-century volumes, inaugurated what may be regarded as a second and distinct work. Further, in 1903 was published in one volume an _Index and Epitome_ to the Dictionary, giving within 1,500 pages 30,000 succinct biographies. The value of this compendium, to the very large non-professional public to whom the main work in twenty-two bulky volumes is not readily accessible, need not be emphasized. It has been thought proper, however, to lay stress upon its usefulness as an independent work of reference, which may fairly be expected to take its place, upon thousands of shelves, along with other compendious dictionaries and encyclopaedias; the Index and Epitome, therefore, along with the Index and Epitome to the Supplement of 1901-11, bound with it, is now issued under the short title of _Concise Dictionary of National Biography_.