On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 8:56 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.ukwrote:
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:
Or try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Parliament for some explanation of its history.
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...
I have the CD-Rom containing the volumes published up to 1998 and 12 volumes published since then are on a shelf just above the computer. They are very interesting studies, delving very deep into manuscript sources and using as their sources letters between various senior politicians preserved in the archives. They concentrate only on the subjects' Parliamentary and political activities, so for example the only mention of the diary of Samuel Pepys (MP for Castle Rising 1673-79, Harwich 1679 and 1685-88) is that Pepys stopped writing it before he became an MP.