Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851

The Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851 is a biographical dictionary of sculptors active in Britain in the period between the Restoration of Charles II and the Great Exhibition of 1851. It has appeared in three editions, published in 1953, 1968, and 2009 respectively: the 2009 edition adopts the amended title, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851. The first two editions were researched and written by Rupert Forbes Gunnis, and were often known simply as Gunnis. The third edition was edited by Ingrid Roscoe. The book is a major scholarly work, which rapidly established itself as a standard authority on British sculptors and sculpture.

The Dictionary was conceived and written by Rupert Forbes Gunnis (1899–1965), a civil servant in the British colonial Government of Cyprus, and later curator of Tunbridge Wells Museum. He originally hoped to write "a complete dictionary of British sculpture from the earliest times until the close of the last [the 19th] century", but realised that he needed to confine himself to a more manageable period. The finished volume nonetheless contained over 1,700 biographies, with lists of the artists' works. In addition to a considerable amount of archival research, Gunnis personally visited over 6,000 churches in Britain (and others in Ireland), and saw the great majority of the works mentioned in the book. The volume was completed in 1951 (the date of the preface), and published by Odhams Press in 1953.

Gunnis also edited the revised second edition, published by the Abbey Library in 1968. Revisions included the correction of errors, and the addition of some new material. Gunnis admitted, however, that he had been unable to add all the new information that he had accumulated in an additional thirteen years of research, "for had I done so the book would have been more than twice its original size".

Under the auspices of the Henry Moore Institute and the University of Leeds, work began in 2000 on revising the dictionary for a new edition, overseen by Ingrid Roscoe, with the assistance of co-editors Emma Hardy, a curator at the Geffrye Museum, and Greg Sullivan, curator of British Art 1750–1830 at Tate Britain. The Dictionary was published by Yale University Press in 2009 under the slightly amended title, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851.

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