To the historians, literary scholars, publishers, and journalists who knew Sidney Lee well, he was one of the foremost authorities on Shakespeare and Elizabethan times, a widely known advocate for the preserving of Britain's cultural heritage, and, above all, the archetypal editor. Through his many years as both editor and contributor with the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), as American publisher William Dana Orcutt recalled, Lee "knew everything about everybody" in contemporary British letters, scholarly endeavor, and cultural studies. Yet his geniality, discretion, and tact with others not only ensured the smooth pursuit of their shared interests but also earned Lee himself their respect and friendship.

Orcutt's anecdote of Lee's opposition, for example, to the publisher's intention to invite Alfred Austin, then poet laureate, to write an introductory essay for an important part of Orcutt's Shakespearean edition which Lee was to edit epitomizes Lee's clear expression of his...