2 Swift, J., ‘On Poetry’ (1733) in Davis, H. (ed.), Poetical Works (1967), 576.Google Scholar

3 Raffald, (ed.), The Manchester Directory for the Year 1772 (reprint of first edn., 1889), x.Google Scholar And see Law, C. M., ‘Some notes on the urban population of England and Wales in the eighteenth century’, Local Historian, x. 1 (1972), 24.Google Scholar

4 A Directory of Sheffield, published by Gales and Martin in 1787 (facsimile reprint, 1889), preface, iv.

5 The Sheffield Directory, for example, announced an open register for additions and corrections, to be kept for general inspection in J. Gales's shop: Ibid., iv. A number of early directory compilers kept registry offices, as commercial employment agencies and clearing houses for news and general information: see the invaluable introduction to Norton, J. (ed.), Guide to the National and Provincial Directories of England and Wales, excluding London, published before 1856 (Royal Historical Society publication, 1950), esp. 4–5.Google Scholar

6 Directory compilers were conscious of the need to keep costs low, and some early volumes sold for as little as Is. Norton gives prices, where available: see Ibid., list of local directories, passim.

7 Anon., The Chester Guide;…to which is added a Directory (printed for P. Broster, 1782 edn), 2.Google Scholar Many of these authors were liberal borrowers from other works. The 1782 directory named Thomas Pennant's Tour through Wales as source for the account of Chester, while Cowdroy, W.'s Directory and Guide for the City and County of Chester (1789)Google Scholar embroidered some phrases from the earlier directory without acknowledgment (see e.g., p. 2). For problems of plagiarism, and pirated editions, see also Norton, op. cit., 22–4.

8 Parson, W. and Bradshaw, T. (eds.), Staffordshire General and Commercial Directory for 1818 (1818) I, xxix.Google Scholar

9 Bisset, J. (ed.), A Poetic Survey round Birmingham…Accompanied by a Magnificent Directory (1800), 21–36, 61–2.Google Scholar

10 Lee, S. (ed.), The Little London Directory of 1677,…reprinted from the Original (1863)Google Scholar, unpaginated. For the context and evolution of London listings, see the helpful analysis in Goss, C. W. F.(ed.), The London Directories, 1677–1855: A Bibliography with Notes on their Origin and Development (1932), esp. 11–16.Google Scholar Registry offices and commercial advertisement lists had been available in London from the early seventeenth century: see Norton, op cit., 3, and George, M. D., ‘The early history of registry offices’, Economic History, I (1929), 570–90.Google Scholar

11 Norton, op. cit., 6, citing Minshull, T.'s preface to The Shrewsbury Guide and Salopian Directory (1786).Google Scholar For Shrewsbury's population, see Law, loc. cit., 25.

12 Lee, op. cit, title page.

13 Kent, H. (ed.), The Directory (1736), title page and p. 3.Google Scholar This was a slim volume of 49 pp., on sale for only sixpence.

14 T, G.. and Shaw, I. (eds.), Liverpool's First Directory: A Reprint of the Names and Addresses from Gore's Directory for 1766 (1907)Google Scholar, title page.

15 Sketchley, J. (ed.), Bristol Directory (1775)Google Scholar, title page.

16 Norton, op. cit., 1–2, notes the first known Continental directory as Les adresses de la ville de Paris (1691), as an extension of printed advertising lists relating to the retail trade, a genre of publication known since the later sixteenth century.

17 Lists of professional men had been compiled by John Houghton in the 1690s (Norton, op. cit., 3) but the venture was not repeated for some decades. The Affidavit-Man had run to at least a fourth edition by 1740, and was followed later by Browne, 's General Law List (1777 et seq.), 12 volsGoogle Scholar; and by Hughes, J., the New Law List (1798–1802), 5 volsGoogle Scholar, subsequently published as the Law List (annually from 1841).

18 The Medical Register was published in 1779, 1780, and 1783; Bath also had lists of medical men in the 1770s, some 20 years before its first directory: Norton, op. cit., 10. The London and Provincial Medical Directory, that subsequently became the Medical Directory and General Medical Register, was first published in 1848, as a conflation of already established London and provincial lists.

19 The Clerical Guide was first published by F. C. and J. Rivington in 1817; the Clerical Directory, that eventually became Crockford's Clerical Directory, followed from 1858 and annually thereafter.

20 Pendred, J. (ed.), The Earliest Directory of the Book Trade, 1785 (Supplement to the Bibliographical Society's Transactions, no. 14, 1955).Google Scholar

21 Anon., Bill-Posters' Directory for 1888: A Complete Guide for Advertisers (1888), 169.Google Scholar It gives a town-by-town list of bill-posters, many of whom were also town criers; and itemizes local newspapers and public halls. See Ibid., 157 for Ramm and Sons' advertisement for the ‘Waterproof Sticker’.

22 Some early directory compilers came from these occupations. Elizabeth Raflfald, for example, had been a shopkeeper, inn-keeper, and coffee-house proprietor. Others included local printers or publishers, as well as registry office-keepers, and house- and insurance-agents: see Norton, op. cit., 19–20.

23 Simond, L., An American in Regency England: The Journal of a Tour in 1810–11 (ed. Hibbert, C., 1968), 26.Google Scholar

24 Brindley, R. (ed.), Plymouth, Stonehouse, and Devonport Directory (1830), v.Google Scholar

25 Anon., The Gloucester New Guide…together with a Directory (1802), vii.Google Scholar

26 Disraeli, B., Coningsby; Or, The New Generation (ed. Smith, S. M., 1982), 137.Google Scholar The editor suggests that the Guide may possibly have been Pigot's General and Classified Directory of Manchester (1832).

27 Chase, W. (ed.), Norwich Directory: Or, Gentlemen and Tradesmen's Assistant (1783)Google Scholar and Shaw, op. cit.

28 Norton, op. cit, 10–11.

29 See Boyle, P.'s Court and Country Guide, and Town Visiting Directory (1792 and annually thereafter)Google Scholar; and for the Kensington Directory, see Norton, op. cit., 11. (It has not, however, proved possible to trace the original; it is not Simpson's Kensington… Directory of that date.)

30 Chapman, R. W. (ed.), Boswell: Life of Johnson (1976), 627.Google Scholar

31 Dictionaries and word lists have long histories; but their number expanded considerably with the invention of printing, one of Caxton's early productions being a French—English vocabulary for travellers (1480). The first standard modern language dictionary was produced in Italy in 1612; a large crop of others followed. In eighteenth-century England, Bailey, N.'s An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721)Google Scholar was widely used; and Johnson, S.'s Dictionary of the English Language (1755)Google Scholar attained the most fame.

32 Important early works of synthesis (and controversy) were philosophical encyclopaedias by Louis Moréri (1674) and Pierre Bayle (1697), while more generalized in their contents were Harris, J. (ed.), The Lexicon Technicum; Or, an Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1704)Google Scholar and Chambers, E. (ed.), Cyclopaedia; Or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728Google Scholar; and later expanded, 1739–52). Most celebrated of eighteenth-century productions, out of a growing number and variety, was the Encyclopédic, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers, par une société des gens de lettres (Paris, 1751–1780), 35 volsGoogle Scholar, which evolved from an initial decision to translate and update Chambers's Cyclopaedia of 1728. Also important was the collaborative venture, edited by Zedler, J. H. and others, the Grosses Vollständiges Universal-Lexicon (Halle and Leipzig, 1732–1750), 64 vols.Google Scholar

In parallel, there were also a number of philosophical dictionaries, listing and defining key words and concepts. A number were published in Latin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Probably the first modern language volume was Walch, J. G. (ed.), Philosophisches Lexikon (Leipzig, 1726)Google Scholar; others followed in French, English, Italian, and Russian, in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the most notable being Voltaire, 's Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (Geneva, under false imprint of Londres, 1765).Google Scholar See Collison, R., Encyclopaedias: Their History throughout the Ages (1964)Google Scholar; Macmillan's Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (1967), VI, 170–83.Google Scholar

33 Lamb, C., ‘Detached thoughts on books and reading’, in Last Essays of Elia (1833; re-issued 1875), 18Google Scholar: ‘In this catalogue of books which are no books—biblia a-biblia—1 reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Almanacks,…Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which “no gentleman's library should be without.”’

34 Culpeper, N., A Directory for Midwives: Or, a Guide for Women in their Conception, Bearing and Suckling their Children (1651 and many later edns.).Google Scholar

35 Baxter, R., A Christian Directory: Or, a Sum of Practical Theology and Cases of Conscience, directing Christians how to use their Knowledge and Faith (1673).Google Scholar

36 Anon., A Directory for the Female Sex: Being a Father's Advice to his Daughter (1684)Google Scholar, s.s.fol.

37 Harris, 's List of Covent Garden Ladies, Or, Man of Pleasure's Kalender for the Year 1788 (1788)Google Scholar listed 92 ladies, promising (p. 14) ‘to suit every constitution, and every pocket, every whim and fancy that the most extravagent sensualist can desire’. Other lists of this kind have been preserved in the Place Papers in the British Library, including extracts from the Rangers' Magazine (published in London in the 1790s).Google Scholar

38 Norton, op. cit, 68, 82.

39 Ibid., 3–4.

40 Mortimer, T., (ed.), Universal Director: Or, the Nobleman and Gentleman's True Guide… (1763), vi–vii.Google Scholar

41 Evans, E. (ed.), Historical and Bibliographical Account of Almanacs, Directories, (etc.) published in Ireland from the Sixteenth Century (Dublin, 1897Google Scholar; facsimile ed., 1976), 124–5.

42 Norton, op. cit., 183, suggests that Sketchley had been influenced by Mortimer's Universal Director of the same year. Sketchley was a printer, bookseller, auctioneer, estate agent, pawnbroker and registry-office keeper; he and his family were also involved in the production of directories for Bristol and Sheffield.

43 Williamson, 's Directory for the City of Edinburgh, Canongate, Leith and Suburbs (Edinburgh, 1774)Google Scholar; Tait, J. (ed.), Directory for the City of Glasgow…(Glasgow, 1784).Google Scholar

44 Both Norton (op. cit, 15, n.2) and Goss (op. cit, 33) accepted that they may have missed some of the more ephemeral productions; and current research may well establish a higher total in due course. Some works were also difficult to classify, as on the margins between histories and directories; but Goss and Norton's attributions have been followed here.

There are additional problems in computing totals, particularly where sections of larger (county, national) directories were also published separately for local markets: for example, the Bristol and Bath Directory of 1787, of which a rare copy survives in Avon County Reference Library, Bristol, is a portion of Bailey's General Directory of England and Wales. These have, however, been noted as separate publications, when so appearing.

45 Pigot's Commercial Directory for 1814–15 covered 30 manufacturing towns in the north of England and was added to annually; but did not complete its survey of the British Isles for some years (Norton, op. cit., 43–58); W. White's series of county directories dated from 1826, although some individual volumes had been produced earlier (ibid., 65–67); and Kelly's county series of Post Office Directories began only in 1845 (ibid., 61–65).

46 Ibid., 30–9.

47 Very much the same point has been noted with reference to the production of local newspapers and town histories in the eighteenth century: see Cranfield, G. A., The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 1700–60 (1962)Google Scholar and idem, A Handlist of English Provincial Newspapers and Periodicals, 1700–60 (1952); and Clark, P., ‘Visions of the urban community: antiquarians and the English city before 1800’ in Fraser, D. and Sutcliffe, A. (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History (1983), 105–24.Google Scholar

48 Norton, op. cit., 71, 162.

49 The publishing history of these volumes was often very complicated, and it is difficult to trace all editions: for example, sometimes publishers referred to earlier volumes, of which no record has otherwise survived. The figures in table 2 follow Norton, op. cit., but again are liable to revision in the light of subsequent research.

50 Chase, op. cit., iii–vi, esp. iii.

51 Boyle, J. R. (ed.), The First Newcastle Directory, 1778, reprinted in Facsimile (1889).Google Scholar

52 For use of national directories to reconstruct transport networks in the early nineteenth century, see inter alia Bagwell, P., The Transport Revolution from 1770 (1974), 44, 46, 56Google Scholar; and for a comparable exercise for the seventeenth century, Chartres, J., ‘Road carrying in the seventeenth century: myth and reality’, Economic History Rev., 2nd ser. XXX (1977), 73–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Norton, op. cit., 16–22, has a helpful survey of methods of compilation.

54 Comparison of names and occupations in Chase, op. cit., with those in The Poll for Members of Parliament for the City of Norwich,…April 1784 (1784).

55 Thomas, D. S. (ed.), Three Victorian Telephone Directories (1970).Google Scholar

56 Attention has been drawn to the potential and pitfalls of directories by several contributors to the Local Historian: see especially, D. Page, ‘Commercial directories and market towns’, Ibid., XI (1974), 85–9; E. P. Duggan, ‘Industrialization and the development of urban business communities: research problems, sources, and techniques’, Ibid., XI (1975), 457–65; P. Wilde, ‘The use of business directories in comparing the industrial structure of towns: an example from the South-West Pennines’, Ibid., XII (1976), 152–6; G. Shaw, ‘The content and reliability of nineteenth-century trade directories’, Ibid., XIII (1978), 205–9; G. Timmins, ‘Measuring industrial growth from trade directories’, ibid., XIII (1979), 349–52; and C. W. Chilton. ‘“The Universal British Directory”—a warning’, Ibid., xv (1982), 144–6. A report on ‘Occupations and status in eighteenth-century town directories’ by Kelly, Serena (unpublished Conference paper, Easter 1983)Google Scholar and results of work in progress are also available on request from P. J. Corfield and Serena Kelly, Bedford College, University of London.

57 There are problems in classifying occupations, when a full job description is available; even more so, when only the occupational label is given. Many employments straddled the retail-manufacturing boundaries, as has long been known: there was a celebrated exchange between Charles Booth and William Ogle in 1886 over the census classification of such occupations, citing the hatters, who could be makers or vendors of hats or both: see Booth, C., ‘Occupations of the people of the United Kingdom, 1801–81’, J. of the (Royal) Statistical Society, xlix (1886), 314–435Google Scholar, and debate, 436–44. Many, though not all, historians of nineteenth-century occupations follow the helpful updating and reworking of Booth's data by Armstrong, W. A., ‘The use of information about occupation, part 2: an industrial classification, 1841–91’ in Wrigley, E. A. (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Society: Essays in the Use of Quantitative Methods for the Study of Social Data (1972), 226–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

See also discussions of interpreting occupational information from earlier periods, in Patten, J., ‘Urban occupations in pre-industrial England’, Trans. Institute of British. Geographers, n.s. II (1977), 296–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lindert, P., ‘English Occupations, 1670–1811’, J. Economic History, xl (1980), 685–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Katz, M. B., ‘Occupational classification in history’, J. Interdisciplinary History, III (1972), 70–80.Google Scholar

58 Matters for debate include the definitions of classes, their number and social boundaries, and their identification from broad-span occupational labels (such as ‘weaver’).

For a threefold grouping of eighteenth-century occupations into an ‘elite’, ‘middling sort’, and ‘lesser sort’, see Phillips, J. A., Electoral Behaviour in Unreformed England: Plumpers, Splitters, and Straights (Princeton, 1982), passim, esp. 321–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar And for a five-fold classification of nineteenth-century data, see W. A. Armstrong, ‘The use of information about occupation, part 1: a basis for social stratification’ in Wrigley, op. cit, 198–225.