The New International Encyclopædia/Allibone, Samuel Austin

AL'LIBONE, Samuel Austin (1816-89). An American author. He was born at Philadelphia, and although engaged in commercial pursuits, devoted considerable time to literature. It was therefore as an amateur that he began the literary work to which the best part of his life was devoted. This work, the Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, contains notices of 46,599 writers. The first volume appeared in 1854. Allibone was book editor and corresponding secretary of the American Sunday-school Union, from 1867 to 1873. In 1879 he was appointed librarian of the Lenox Library in New York, and held this position until 1888. He died at Lucerne, Switzerland, Sept. 2, 1889. Besides the Critical Dictionary, he compiled the following works: Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson, containing 13,600 passages, taken from 550 authors; Prose Quotations, from Socrates to Macaulay, with indexes to the 8810 quotations, containing the names of 544 authors and 571 subjects (1876); Explanatory Questions on the Gospels and the Acts (1869), An Alphabetical Index to the New Testament (1868), Indexes to Edward Everett's Orations and Speeches (1850-59).