Colin Matthew, editor of the New Dictionary of National Biography, gave this lecture to an audience in Cambridge in October 1995. His purpose was to show how the work of an eminent Victorian, Leslie Stephen, relates directly to a great scholarly undertaking by today's academic community. He charts the history of the original Dictionary of National Biography, explaining how and when this remarkable publishing phenomenon came into being. Unfortunately publication of one volume per quarter for fifteen-and-a-half years also played a major part in Stephen's own mental and physical decline. The tradition initiated by the founding editor of the DNB looks set to continue, as, in Matthew's own words, 'The New Dictionary of National Biography, like the old, will be the first point of reference for anyone interested in the British biographical past.'