General Dictionary, Historical and Critical

The General Dictionary, Historical and Critical was a biographical dictionary published from 1734 to 1741 in London in 10 volumes.

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The dictionary derived from the Dictionnaire historique et critique of Pierre Bayle, already translated into English in 1710 by Pierre des Maizeaux as An Historical and Critical Dictionary,^[1] but expanded the material with many biographies of English figures, this work being assigned largely to Thomas Birch.^[2] The other two main editors were John Peter Bernard, whose efforts led to his admission as a Fellow of the Royal Society,^[3] and John Lockman, who undertook a fresh translation of Bayle's work.^[4]

The publishers were Richard Chandler and Caesar Ward.^[5]

The work has been described as the "first important ancestor" of the Dictionary of National Biography.^[6]

^ George Watson, The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 2; Volumes 1660-1800 (1971), p. 1969. Google Books
^ Miller, David Philip. "Birch, Thomas". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2436. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ Carter, Philip. "Bernard, John Peter". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2246. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ Sambrook, James. "Lockman, John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16912. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ Dictionary of National Biography, Chandler, Richard (d. 1744), printer and bookseller, by H. R. Tedder. Published 1887.
^ Osborn, James Marshall (1938). "Thomas Birch and the "General Dictionary" (1734-41)". Modern Philology. 36 (1): 25–46. doi:10.1086/388346. JSTOR 434476. S2CID 161864763.

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