Talk:Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men

Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 3, 2010.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 6, 2008	Good article nominee	Listed
June 22, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed
July 5, 2008	Featured article candidate	Promoted
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 23, 2008. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the contributions of Mary Shelley (pictured) to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men are considered early works of feminist historiography?
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Passed as GA

See Talk:Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men/GA1 for the review. Cirt (talk) 08:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Similar books and tradition of biographical encyclopedias

Was anyone here aware of Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects? That was published in 1550. Was the title of encyclopedia inspired by that title? The only other work with a similar title where I can find an article on Wikipedia is Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1781) by Johnson. Incidentally, this article says "a biographical style made popular by the eighteenth-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81)", so the dates need fixing or clarifying in one or the other place, and the title seems to vary as well (English gets dropped sometimes, unless there was a separate volume for English Poets?). I've fixed the link in the article by creating this redirect. I also used the prefix index to throw up the following articles on books with similar titles and purposes.

Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Plutarch)
Lives of the Sophists (two titles, Philostratus and Eunapius)
Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Giorgio Vasari)
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (Samuel Johnson)
Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (Mary Shelley)

On the Life of the Caesars (Suetonius) and Augustan History (collection of works, reputedly) are interesting, but don't have the similarity of title or content. The others above are more strictly biographical. Category:Biographical dictionaries might also be of interest. Hope some of that helps. Carcharoth (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Johnson's work is usually referred to as "Lives of the Poets" and was published over the course of several years, so that solves those mysteries. The years in this article are correct. I have now fixed the stub. The formulation "Lives of...." was common for centuries, so I don't think we can draw any conclusions from those title similarities, unfortunately. Thanks for taking care of the redirect housekeeping, etc.! Awadewit (talk) 16:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! But what about the "Most Excellent" -> "Most Eminent" similarity! I've had a look, and it seems that the Vasari title is also translated as 'Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'. There are other titles as well (The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects - By Allan Cunningham; Lives of the Most Eminent Foreign Statesmen - By George Payne Rainsford James, Eyre Evans Crowe). Some of those are from the Cabinet Cyclopaedia (and we should have at least a stub on that). Wasn't there some Wikipedia article that became a cause celebre at some point for pointing out loads of books that used a similar formulation in the title? I really should be able to remember which article that was! Anyway, I do wonder whether the "Most Eminent" formulation has more of a direct link? Obviously if no-one has made the link, we can't directly do so, but there could at least be a "see also" or a mention or a category or, failing everything else, <ahem>, a talk page discussion... Carcharoth (talk) 16:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't know how important the connection is, really. There really are hundreds, if not thousands, of books with this title. At most, these books are part of tradition of Lives, but that doesn't really say much when that tradition stretches from Plutarch to the nineteenth century. Anyhow, as you say, we have noted it on the talk page! Awadewit (talk) 13:48, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I said, about Cabinet Cyclopaedia, that we "should have at least a stub on that". I must confess that I had failed to get beyond the lead section. I now see that the first section of this article is about the Cabinet Cyclopedia. Still, I am wondering if eventually there will be a separate article about the Cyclopedia, or whether this part is more notable (to use an oft-detested phrase) than the whole? Carcharoth (talk) 16:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wondered about that, too. However, I could find only one article about the Cyclopaedia (the Peckham) and I have only seen it discussed in relation to Mary Shelley's contributions. That does not mean that some of the other volumes aren't important. However, when I put various search terms into the MLA database and JSTOR, the only things that came up were the Peckham article and the articles on Mary Shelley. I have not done exhaustive research on the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, however. I think if someone were to find good sources for another volume, that would immediately convince me to break off the Cyclopaedia section into its own article and only retain a summary here. Since I haven't seen any other sources, though, I didn't see a reason to do that. Awadewit (talk) 13:48, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kudos

To all who helped produce this article: you all did a great job. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 15:34, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What a great article. Thankyou. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 18:35, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - it's always nice to hear from readers! Awadewit (talk) 18:59, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Politics

Her political views are most obvious in the Italian Lives, where she supports the Italian independence movement and promotes republicanism; in the French Lives she portrays women sympathetically, explaining their political and social restrictions and arguing that women can be productive members of society if given the proper educational and social opportunities.

This (from the lead, which is supposed to summarize the article) may be the justification for having this article at all; it's certainly a claim of notability. It would be nice to have these points actually discussed in the article text - preferably with examples. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:04, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cabinet Cyclopedia

In my opinion, the section headed "Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia" should be spun off into its own article named "Cabinet Cyclopaedia".—Finell 09:30, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cabinet Cyclopedia

I strongly agree and will do so in a fortnight if there is no disagreement. — Robert Greer (talk) 11:11, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Returning to this point, List of works in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia is now under development. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:31, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still cross-checking the bibliographical data. But it looks like this article could do with a fact-check. There were, it seems, two sets of Lives, each of five volumes, one British, the other for the Romance authors. So there should not be undue weight on Shelley's part. I of course agree that the Cyclopædia is worth its own article. If I haven't written much on the List page by way of introduction, it is because the material here can provide it. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:05, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A separate article would lovely, if there are the secondary sources for it. I myself don't have time to research them at the moment. I'd be happy to help refine the article once it is created, however. Wadewitz (talk) 22:25, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have made a start, adding the "main article" link to the initial section. WP:SUMMARY suggests that the section should now be cut back a bit, letting the other article take the strain. Obviously there should be some consensus reached about that.

There is also the issue of the scope of this article. The list gives the volumes LXXXIV, XCIII, CVI, CXII, and CXIX as another five-volume set that shares the title. A simple way would be to give this article a more precise title that excluded the Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Great Britain. Easier said than done though, and it would in some sense be more natural to include those volumes in some form. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:44, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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