The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Johnson, Allen
1870–1931, American historian, b. Lowell, Mass. He was professor of history at Iowa (now Grinnell) College (1898–1905), Bowdoin College (1905–10), and Yale (1910–26). He achieved a notable success in editing the “Chronicles of America” (50 vol., 1918–21), a series both scholarly in material and popular in style, to which he contributed Jefferson and His Colleagues (Vol. XV, 1921). This success was partly responsible for his being selected as editor in chief of the Dictionary of American Biography, published under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies. Six volumes appeared before his death, setting the style and standard for the remainder of the enterprise.
