Biographia Britannica was a multi-volume biographical compendium, "the most ambitious attempt in the latter half of the eighteenth century to document the lives of notable British men and women". The first edition, edited by William Oldys

William Oldys

William Oldys was an English antiquarian and bibliographer.The illegitimate son of Dr William Oldys, chancellor of Lincoln, London was probably his place of birth. His father had held the office of advocate of the admiralty, but lost it in 1693 because he would not prosecute as traitors and...

, appeared in 6 volumes (the sixth in two parts, the second sometimes catalogued as volume 7) between 1747 and 1766. Five volumes of an incomplete second edition, edited by Andrew Kippis

Andrew Kippis

Andrew Kippis was an English nonconformist clergyman and biographer.The son of Robert Kippis, a silk-hosier, he was born at Nottingham. Having gone to school at Sleaford in Lincolnshire he passed at the age of sixteen to the Dissenting academy at Northampton, of which Dr Philip Doddridge was then...

 with the assistance of Joseph Towers

Joseph Towers

-Life:He was born in Southwark on 31 March 1737. His father was a secondhand bookseller, and at twelve years old he was employed as a stationer's errand boy. In 1754 he was apprenticed to Robert Goadby of Sherborne, Dorset, a Whig supporter, and influential through his newspaper, the Sherborne...

, appeared between 1778 and 1793, and cover names commencing Aa through to Fa; a sixth volume was prepared for publication, and may have been published, but now seems to be lost.

Contributors included Thomas Broughton and John Campbell, compiler of Lives of the Admirals (1742).