ABSTRACT
I The first volume of the recently published Dictionary o f Business Bio graphy records the careers of 270 individuals, with surnames beginning with the letters A to C, who have been at the summit of business in Britain since 1860. Eventually over 1,250 business biographies will be covered in the D B B ’s six volumes, due out at six-monthly intervals in 1984-6. As the Introduction to Volume 1 explains, the DBB project3 is ‘the first compre hensive and systematic attempt to place generalisations about British entrepreneurs on a sure foundation of biographical data’. With this data base
it is hoped to present both qualitative and quantitive perspectives on Britain’s entrepreneurial leadership over the past century and thereby to provide the ‘hard’ evidence about the origins, career patterns, wealth and creative role of the nation’s entrepreneurs which historians (and policy-makers) may use with confidence.4
