From Collected Biography to Prosopography

TO THE LIBRARIAN biographical dictionaries are useful works of reference, but to their compilers they can mean a great deal more. Take for instance the Rev. Henry Isham Longden, who when he died at the age of 83 in 1942 was in sight of the end of publication of Northants and Rutland Clergy: From 1500 (Northampton, 1938–1943) 15 vols. That a clergyman should spend such time and effort on an obscure historical project may seem a little strange to us, but it should not. Recently a friend who had been leafing through Crockford's expressed her surprise at the number of clergymen who had written books and how their subjects were immensely varied but only occasionally on religious topics. To someone from the last century the idea of a clergyman as an author would hardly have seemed strange, and examples of great books that have been written in country parsonages—such as Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population or White's Natural History of Selborne—are not hard to find.