Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography

Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography is a six-volume collection of biographies of notable people involved in the history of the New World. Published between 1887 and 1889, its unsigned articles were widely accepted as authoritative for several decades. Later the encyclopedia became notorious for including dozens of biographies of people who had never existed. In nearly all articles about the Cyclopædia various authors have erroneously spelled the title as 'Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography', placing the apostrophe in the wrong place.^[1]

The Cyclopædia included the names of over 20,000 native and adopted citizens of the United States, including living persons. Also included were the names of several thousand citizens of all the other countries of North and South America. The aim was to embrace all noteworthy persons of the New World. The work also contained the names of nearly 1,000 people of foreign birth who were closely identified with American history. The Cyclopædia was illustrated with about sixty full-page portraits supplemented by some 1,500 smaller vignette portraits accompanied by facsimile autographs, and also several hundred views of birthplaces, residences, monuments, and tombs famous in history.^[2]

None of the articles are signed either with names or with initials. The clue to authorship is obtained, when obtained at all, through a list of contributors and their contributions arranged alphabetically as to contributors. One reviewer found this a rather inconvenient method, complaining that the finding of the author of a particular sketch often involved a voyage of discovery through the entire list. These lists are searched in vain, however, for the authors of many sketches, including the one of President Grover Cleveland.^[3]

Appletons' Cyclopædia is notorious for including 92 known biographies of fictitious persons, with at least a further 51 entries being deemed suspicious. ^{[4] [5]}

The first to discover these fictitious biographies was John Hendley Barnhart in 1919^[6][a] when he identified and reprinted, with commentary, 14 biographical sketches of supposed European botanists who had come to the New World to study in Latin America.

By 1939, 47 fictitious biographies had been discovered, though only the letters H and V had been systematically investigated.^[7] The status of fictitious biographies in Appletons' Cyclopædia was assessed by Margaret Castle Schindler of Goucher College in 1937.^[8] According to Schindler,

The writer (or writers) of these articles must have had some scientific training, for most of the creations were scientists, and sufficient linguistic knowledge to have invented or adapted titles in six languages. He was certainly familiar with the history and geography of South America. Most of the places visited by his characters are real places, and most of the historical events in which they participated are genuine. However, he sometimes made mistakes by which his fraudulent work can be detected.^[9]

While some of the entries, such as that of Huet de Navarre, were about a real person, in most details they were fictitious.^[8]

There are also significant issues within the fictitious biographies:

• The presence of details copied from various other sources, including legitimate biographies in the Cyclopædia.
• Various factual errors and anachronisms, including in relation to geography, language, honors, institutions and accomplishments.
• A remarkable disconnect between the profession attributed to a subject, his lifelong career, and his character and interests as suggested by the titles of his alleged literary works.
• A marked incompatibility between a subject's supposed nationality and the language used in the titles of alleged literary works written by them.
• Spelling, style and grammatical errors are present in some of the titles of alleged literary works, which would be highly atypical of prominent scientists, explorers and adventurers.

Joseph Cantillion identified the author of "phantom Jesuit" articles as William Christian Tenner: he identified 43 wholly fictitious subjects in this genre, including a highly fictionalised biography of Rafael Ferrer.^[10] Dobson suggests Hermann Ritter, who appears as the source of "Articles on South and Central Americans" beginning with volume III, as a likely author of the fictitious articles. Dobson notes that the first two volumes, where Juan G. Puron appears in this role, are practically free of problem articles, although Barnhart identified an article on "Dávila, Nepomuceno" as suspicious (but not fictitious beyond a shadow of a doubt), while "Chel-Ab-Ku-Kil", "Chignavitcelut" and "Oxiquieb Chiguaihue" are also listed as suspicious.

An article on "Zénon de Rouvroy, Charles-Albert", which is sometimes mentioned as "de Rouvroy, Charles-Albert Zénon", was found by Williams to be fictitious. ^[11]

Contributors to Appletons' Cyclopædia were free to suggest new subjects and were paid according to the length of the article, with articles only being checked for form by the editorial staff.^[12] While conceding that Appletons' Cyclopædia was a "valuable and authoritative work", and that her results should not reflect on the many authentic articles, Schindler noted that articles on Latin American subjects should be used cautiously until verified against other sources.^[13]

Appletons' Cyclopædia incorporated Francis S. Drake's Dictionary of American Biography (not to be confused with the more comprehensive 20th century Dictionary of American Biography). Drake's Dictionary was published in 1872 with 10,000 biographies.^[14] He worked on a second edition but died in 1885 without completing it. His first edition, original material, latest corrections, and all material he had gathered for the new edition were used in Appletons'.^[15]

The first edition of the Cyclopædia was published between 1887 and 1889 by D. Appleton and Company of New York City. The general editors were James Grant Wilson and John Fiske; the managing editor from 1886 to 1888 was Rossiter Johnson.^[16][17] A seventh volume, containing an appendix and supplementary lists, and thematic indexes to the whole work, was issued in 1901.

The Cyclopædia was republished, uncorrected, by the Gale Research Company in 1968.

• The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography
• Universal Cyclopaedia

• O'Brien, Frank M. (May 2, 1936). "The Wayward Encyclopedias". New Yorker. Vol. XII. pp. 71–74. (This is a summary of Barnhart's article.)
• Dobson, John Blythe (1993). "The Spurious Articles in Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography — Some New Discoveries and Considerations" (PDF). Biography. 16 (4): 388–408. doi:10.1353/bio.2010.0511. S2CID 162057750.

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Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography

• Appletons' Cyclopædia at Internet Archive – full views of all volumes:
  • Volume I. AARON–CRANDALL (1887) – facsimile
  • Volume II. CRANE–GRIMSHAW (1887) – facsimile
  • Volume III. GRINNELL–LOCKWOOD (1887) – facsimile
  • Volume IV. LODGE–PICKENS (1887) – facsimile
  • Volume V. PICKERING–SUMTER (Revised Edition, 1900)
  • Volume VI. SUNDERLAND–ZURITA with Supplement and Analytical Index (1889) – 1968 facsimile
• Appletons' Cyclopædia as 7 volumes at HathiTrust Digital Library – "Note: Vol. 7, a supplementary volume, edited by J.G. Wilson, is the same as v. 7 of the 1898–1900 Revised Edition"