The five-volume "Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography" is a collection of biographical sketches of thousands of Virginians who lived between the early seventeenth century and the twentieth century. Covering the entire spectrum of colonial, Revolutionary, and post-Revolutionary figures, the Encyclopedia treats the following personages: founders, immigrants, and early settlers, state councillors and burgesses, landowners, merchants, Revolutionary War figures, governors, justices, politicians, military and naval figures, and a host of prominent nineteenth-century personalities, including bankers, statesmen, farmers, professionals, businessmen, and Civil War soldiers.