On 15 February 2011 20:18, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Arguably the answer is "yes", back to the
16th century at least. There
has actually been quite a lot of havoc onsite over stub MP biographies
during the past year, but it transpires that there are pretty good
sources back to 1660, and usually adequate sources in the century
leading up to that (if you work at it). The ODNB took a decision not to
include all MPs (it says somewhere, in terms that suggest that it was a
decision that did at least require a moment's thought).
There is a project (even longer-running and slower-burning than the
ODNB) to construct a reference work covering all MPs, at least as much
as they're known, along with various other bits and pieces:
http://www.histparl.ac.uk/about.html
In the past sixty years, they've managed to cover a little over half
the timeframe in twenty-eight (!) volumes. I have never seen their
work, I admit, but I'd be intrigued to...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk