Parliament biography

The history will principally consist of a prosopography , in which the history of an institution is told through the individual biographies of its members. After various amateur efforts the project was formally launched in and since has been funded by the Treasury. As of , the volumes covering the House of Commons for the periods —, —, and — have been completed and published in 41 separate volumes containing over 20 million words ; and the first five volumes covering the House of Lords from to have been published, with further work on the Commons and the Lords ongoing.

In the completed sections were republished on the internet. The publication in —79 of the Official Return of Members of Parliament , an incomplete list of the name of every member elected to serve in lower houses of parliaments in the United Kingdom and predecessor states, [ 1 ] gave a useful source on which Victorian historians could build, and there were several publications which identified and gave some biographical and genealogical details of the Members of Parliament for certain constituencies.

In — Wedgwood published the Staffordshire Parliamentary History. In , Wedgwood decided to take the subject further.

Parliament biography: Chris Bryant tells this epic tale

Together with other MPs who were interested in the subject, he wrote a memorial to the Prime Minister urging him to appoint a committee to prepare a complete record of the personnel of every parliament since The memorial noted that the Official Return was incomplete and inaccurate, and contained no information beyond a list of names; it attempted to head off Treasury objections to the cost, by pointing to the fact that pledges of voluntary assistance had been obtained.

Wedgwood quickly obtained the signatures of more than MPs. Baldwin agreed to take the matter under consideration. The committee so formed in March included academics as well as politicians, and it soon became riven by ferocious differences about the nature of the project with Wedgwood's romanticism alienating most of the historians.