In the first full revision since 1900, more than a tenth of the 50,000 entries are for women, compared with just under 5% in the original version.
Some critics have accused the editors of the 60-volume dictionary of artificially boosting the importance of women. Pop culture figures such as Linda McCartney are given entries alongside Elizabeth I. The society mistress Pamela Harriman, who became a naturalised American, is another new entry.
The historian David Starkey said the greater prominence of women in the dictionary, published by Oxford University Press this week, reflected modern political correctness.
“It is neither surprising nor deplorable as history and biography reflect each age,” he said. “But I think there’s a certain political correctness in consciously looking for more women, particularly in the arts.”
However, Brian Harrison, editor of the new dictionary, which runs to 60m words and has taken 10,000 contributors to compile, said many women’s achievements had previously been overlooked because they had been far less public than those of men.
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The dictionary, which has taken 13 years and cost £25m to produce, has also increased the space devoted to famous women included in the first version. George Eliot is up from 4,900 to 13,500 words, Jane Austen’s from 1,400 words to 19,400. “That’s not because they were women, but because they are great novelists,” said Harrison.
Anyone included in the new Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) must have died before 2002.
The American-born McCartney, the DNB argues, qualifies for inclusion not because she married Paul McCartney, the Beatle, but because she was a noted photographer in her own right who later sang in the pop group Wings with her husband.
Figures such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Jomo Kenyatta are included because they were British subjects before respectively leading India, Pakistan and Kenya to independence.
Harriman — appointed American ambassador to France by Bill Clinton — was born in Kent in 1920. She first married Randolph Churchill, Sir Winston’s son, before becoming mistress to the likes of Ed Murrow, the American broadcaster; Prince Aly Khan; and Gianni Agnelli, the owner of Fiat. The Harriman entry notes that she had plastic surgery to improve her looks.
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Some critics believe the DNB has still failed to reflect the full breadth of female achievement. “So many reference books take their entries from too narrow a base,” said Bea Campbell, the feminist writer and historian. “They regard being a member of a profession as the most important criterion, but women were often excluded from these professions.”
The DNB, costing £7,500 for the full set, keeps in all the 37,000 entries from the original version and occasional supplements issued since. This means the retention of eccentrics such as King Sobhuza II of Swaziland, who was rumoured to have had at least 500 children; Angus Mackay, Queen Victoria’s lunatic bagpiper; and Jedediah Buxton, an 18th-century maths prodigy who correctly calculated the date of his death.
The new version reflects the rise of celebrity culture in the profiles of pop stars such as Freddie Mercury and Sid Vicious. Nor does Mercury’s entry pull its punches. “The use of his falsetto implied an underlying sexual ambiguity,” says the writer Sheila Whiteley.
In the past, sexuality was studiously avoided. The mistresses of the Liberal prime minister David Lloyd George were not mentioned, nor was the homosexuality of TE Lawrence and Oscar Wilde.
Although most contributors in the new edition are not household names, there are some distinguished writers, such as Yehudi Menuhin, who, before he himself died, wrote an entry for the cellist Jacqueline du Pré; and Alan Bennett, who compiled one for his friend Russell Harty, the chat-show host.