Birthpangs of a bibliography

TWO MASSIVE works of scholarship recently published by the Clarendon Press—Edward Graves' A bibliography of English history to 1485 (1975) and H J Hanham's Bibliography of British History 1851–1914(1976)—have brought close to fruition a project originally proposed over ninety years ago by Henry R Tedder, for many years both secretary and librarian of the Athenaeum. In fact it was at the 1885 Plymouth meeting of the Library Association that he first read a paper advocating the preparation of a bibliography of national history.