"A wonderful project; truly indispensable for demographers, biographers, sociologists, economic historians, genealogists - indeed for every scholar seriously interested in 19th and 20th century history.'

—J. Mordaunt Crook, University of London

The only comprehensive reference work to the personalities of the Victorian age and the twentieth century to the Second World War - the most heavily researched 100 years in British history and a time when the biographical dictionary flourished as never before or since.

The collection makes available 272 dictionaries in 1,200 volumes, published between 1840 and 1940 and containing biographies of contemporary personalities. It republishes both general works and specialist, professional and regional dictionaries. Many of the titles were originally issued in small editions and very few libraries have more than a small selection of them.

The dictionaries are reproduced in their entirety, including plates, advertising and text additional to the biographical entries. The inclusion of complete dictionaries, particularly the regional ones, enables researchers to discover who was, and was not, included as well as to find a particular name. All volumes in a series are reproduced so that it is possible to see how the record of a person's life evolves - and how earlier information is sometimes later suppressed.

British and Irish Biographies offers libraries the opportunity to acquire scarce material and to conserve existing holdings by reducing the need to refer to or copy the original volumes. It is available as a complete collection, in six parts, or individually by title. Click here for a complete list of titles.