Jones Barry. Dictionary of World Biography

9th edition. — Australian National University Press, 2022. — 1005 p.Certain categories were automatically included: most popes, all British sovereigns and prime ministers, French and German kings and presidents, American presidents, prime ministers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa. I wanted to avoid either including too many Australian entries, or overreacting and having too few. I had to be selective and tried to balance Australian and Canadian politicians, painters, novelists and poets. Inevitably, Israel and Ireland had, and have, a disproportionate international political and cultural significance, with more representation, say, than New South Wales and Victoria, which between them had the same population. My Dictionary had a higher proportion of female entries than Chambers’s or Webster’s but they accounted for less than 15 per cent. I felt that my explanation of ideologies was a strength and I tried to cover my areas of weakness, such as sport, popular music, ballet, ornithology, gardening and 14th-century Islamic tile making. I included some tightly compressed anecdotes and the occasional telling quotation, such as Artur Schnabel’s comment on Mozart’s piano sonatas.