While bulk properties of stable nuclei are successfully reproduced by mean-field theories employing effective interactions, the dependence of the centroid energy of the electric giant dipole resonance on the nucleon number A is not. This problem is cured by considering many-particle correlations beyond mean-field theory, which we do
within the quasiparticle time blocking approximation. The electric giant dipole resonances in 16-O, 40-Ca, and 208-Pb are calculated using two new Skyrme interactions.