Replacing Blackwell’s “Who’s Who in History” series, published in five volumes, 1960‐1974, the enlarged series, launched in 1988, comprising four new and four extensively revised volumes by the present publishers, is now completed by this last title. To quote an early publishers’ announcement:
Each volume paints a portrait of an age. The persons selected are not confined to those who made their mark on church or state, but extended to a wider cross‐section of society, including artists, explorers, scientists, entrepreneurs and eccentrics. The series differs from the conventional who’s who in two major respects: 1. entries are arranged in a broadly chronological rather than alphabetical sequence to facilitate reading about contemporaries; 2. each essay conveys more than the bare facts of the subject’s life; it places him in the context of his age and evokes what was distinctive and interesting in his personality and achievement.
And so it is here: 190 biographical essays, starting with Queen Victoria, the first English monarch to witness her name given to the period of her reign while still alive, and proceeding with the great and the good, to Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar (1832‐1914). No doubt there were grave problems of selection. To choose just 190 persons to represent 64 dramatic years of British history, in all fields of human endeavor, would task the most dedicated and knowledgeable historian who, of course, could be sure of only one thing: all other historians would have their own ideas as to who should be in and who should be out. For example, Lord Acton (1834‐1902), historian; Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829‐1902), historian; Sir Clements R. Markham (1830‐1916), geographer; Sir Thomas Augustus Henry Murray (1837‐1915), lexicographer; and Sir Anthony Panizzi (1797‐1879), librarian, all of whom might be regarded as epitomizing the Victorian period, but omitted here, would doubtless be on many historians’ preferred list of entrants.
But whoever is excluded, only the most stern of critics or reviewers could dispute the merits of those included in this present volume. Prince Albert of Saxe‐Coburg and Gotha, the Prince Consort, is joined by politicians and statesmen, clerics, reformers and campaigners, literary folk, industrialists, journalists, soldiers, but no sailors, not even Jacky Fisher, architects, composers, and many others, all crowding the Victorian canvas. The entries are at once lively and urbane, informative and analytical; many end with a monograph reference. The broadly chronological arrangement is not entirely convincing, with researchers and enquirers having first to consult the index to discover where to find a particular entry. Most people nowadays are accustomed to a dictionary arrangement. Whether the dubious benefit of gaining a supposed insight into a period of years compensates for this is open to debate. One niggling question remains: Why is there to be no “Who’s Who in Twentieth‐century Britain”? There would surely be no lack of suitable candidates of distinction, even if the DNB principle of inclusion only when deceased were to be applied.
