[单项选择]Why should anyone buy the latest volume in the ever-expanding Dictionary of National Biography I do not mean that it is bad, as the reviewers will agree. But it will cost you 65 pounds. And have you got the rest of volumes You need the basic 22 plus the largely decennial supplements to bring the total to 31. Of course, it will be answered, public and academic libraries want the new volume. After all, it adds 1,068 lives of people who escaped the net of the original compilers, Yet in 10 years’ time a revised version of the whole caboodle, called the New Dictionary of National Biography, will be published. Its editor, Professor Colin Matthew, tells me that he will have room for about 50,000 lives, some 13,000 more than in the current DN B, This rather puts the 1,068 in Missing Persons in the shade.
When Dr Nicholls wrote to The Spectator in 1989 asking for names of people whom readers had looked up in the DNB and had been disappointed not to find, she says that she received some 100
A. the editors had clear rules to follow.
B. there were too many criminals in the entries.
C. the editors clearly favored benefactors.
D. the editors were irrational in their choices.