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This remarkably ambitious work is a guide to biographies of eminent or prominent men and women cited in more than fifty encyclopedic publications in existence at the time of the work's original appearance in 1916. With coverage of all countries and all generations, and drawing on sources in English, French, and German, A Dictionary of Universal Biography can claim to encompass all persons of celebrity from the dawn of history until the early twentieth century. In order to confine the work within manageable limits, the author was constrained to limit his coverage, in the majority of cases, to the subject s name, nationality, country of adoption, and profession. In all, a staggering 110,000 biographies can be found within the pages of this vast work.