Celebrating the 250th anniversary of The Annual Register 

“A reference magnum opus ... a tour de force”—American Reference Books Annual 2007

 

Winner of the SIPA (Specialized Information Publishers Association)—2008 Best Reference Award

The Annual Register 250th anniversary dinner was kindly hosted by Dr. Vincent Cable MP on Thursday 1st October 2009, in the Members’ dining room at the House of Commons, London.

Images below: (left) The Annual Register Board, ProQuest and editors of The Annual Register with Dr. Vincent Cable
(middle) The Annual Register 250th Anniversary Cake (right) Guests enjoying dinner

Images above: (left) Richard O'Brien and Philip Bell, Board Members
(middle) Bob Snyder, Chairman, Cambridge Information Group
(right) Dr. Vincent Cable cutting the anniversary cake with Dr. Alastair Niven, OBE

The Annual Register (originally subtitled "A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year ...") is a long-established reference work, written and published each year, recording and analysing the year’s major events, developments and trends throughout the world. It was first written in 1758 under the editorship of the eminent philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke, and has been produced continuously since that date.

In its current form the first half of the book comprises articles on each of the world’s countries or regions, while the latter half contains articles on international organisations, economics, the environment, science, law, religion, the arts and sport, together with obituaries, a chronicle of major events and selected documents. In addition to being produced annually in hardback, the book is also published electronically and its entire 249-year archive is available online from ProQuest.

History of The Annual Register

The Annual Register was created in 1758 by the publishers James and Robert Dodsley. On 24 April, 1758 the Dodsley brothers signed a contract with Edmund Burke (1729-97) to write and edit the material for The Annual Register, which was conceived as an annual publication which would review the history, politics and literature of the day.

In its original form, The Annual Register comprised a long historical essay on the “History of the Present War” (the Seven Years' War 1756-63), a Chronology, which gave an account of interesting and noteworthy events in Britain over the previous year, and a collection of “State Papers”, a miscellany of primary source material which included official documents, speeches, letters and accounts.

Given the conventions of the day, within which journalism was seen as a disreputable profession for a gentleman, Burke was publicly reticent about his connection with The Annual Register. However, his biographers are in agreement that Burke wrote and edited the book single-handedly until 1765 when he entered Parliament.

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, The Annual Register adopted a format which gave a number of chapters to the history of Britain and followed closely the proceedings of Parliament. There followed chapters covering other countries in turn, no longer confined only to Europe. Its expanded history section meant that there was less of the miscellaneous material which had characterised its earlier volumes. Nevertheless, poetry remained included until 1862 and the book continued to reflect topical issues of the day.

In 1947 The Annual Register acquired an Advisory Board for the first time consisting of the then editor, Ivison Macadam, the Assistant Editor, Hugh Latimer, and five representatives nominated by: the English Association, the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Royal Historical Society. Explaining this innovation, Macadam stated in the preface to the 1947 volume that it was “a recognition of the need for specialisation in these complicated times”.

The Annual Register today

The Annual Register is “an instance of contemporary history, safely renewed from year to year. It continues to provide a first serious historian’s look at each calendar year’s events, with addenda to establish the particular flavour of each year.”  M.R.D. Foot, The Annual Register 250th Edition: A Personal History

The Annual Register today has more than 80 contributors, including leading historians, writers, academicians and journalists who analyse and interpret the year’s major events and developments for each country in the world. They provide expert perspectives on trends in politics, the international economy, the environment, scientific research, the law, religion and the arts.

The Annual Register is currently edited by the historians D.S. Lewis and Wendy Slater, who are supported by an editorial board from six scholarly societies in the UK:

• Royal Economic Society
• Royal Historical Society
• Royal Institute of International Affairs
• Royal Society of Medicine
• British Association for the Advancement of Science
• British Council

The Board is chaired by James Bishop, former foreign news editor of The London Times.

The Annual Register 2009 edition contains several additional pieces to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the publication:

• A commemorative essay by M.R.D.Foot, professor of modern history at the University of Manchester 1967-73 and Royal Historical Society representative on The Annual Register board from 1972-2002.
• This year’s 2008: The Year in Review is written by Paul Rogers 
• A forward-looking speculative essay about how the world and The Annual Register might be 50 years from now. The article, called The Annual Register 300th edition: A Personal Future has been written by Richard O’Brien, the advisory board member from the Royal Economic Society and Partner at Outsights.
• A reprint of the first edition of The Annual Register: World Events published originally in 1758 and edited by Edmund Burke. This new edition features a major new introduction by Paul Langford, Professor of Modern History and Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.

The Annual Register and academic research

The Annual Register is still valued highly by academics and historians as it contains “an informed digest of what the world’s news media have presented as the principal events of the relevant year, before even contemporary historians have published much that bears on the subject...” M.R.D. Foot

Examples of the use and value of The Annual Register in academic research can be found in other publications and ProQuest databases, including these articles taken from journals in Periodicals Archive Online.

• Edmund Burke and The Constitution, by Russell Kirk in the Intercollegiate Review 21:2 (1985/1986 Winter) p.3

The Annual Register today is particularly valuable to scholars for its long and consistent publishing history which provides an unmatched archive of thousands of pages of facts, information and statistics for historical research.

The 250th edition of The Annual Register includes a list of major events for every year since the publication of the first edition in 1758.

The Annual Register Online

Scholars and historians can now access the complete back-file of all editions of The Annual Register online, making it possible to cross-search almost 250 years of history from one interface and view facsimile pages of the original print edition.

To find out more about The Annual Register Online, visit our Webpage.

To find out more about the value of The Annual Register Online for modern research, click here for additional insight.

Key anniversaries in 2009: First appearances in The Annual Register

2009 marks not just the 250th anniversary of The Annual Register, but also several other major anniversaries in world history. Readers of The Annual Register can find out how information relating to those original events were represented in their contemporary history.  The following are a sample of anniversaries being celebrated in 2009 and links to the original reference to these in their contemporary history in The Annual Register.

• The 200th anniversary of the birth of the naturalist Charles Darwin whose groundbreaking publication The Descent of Man was reviewed in The Annual Register for 1871. 
• The 200th anniversary of the birth of William Gladstone 
• The 150th anniversary of the installation of the bell Big Ben beside the Houses of Parliament at Westminster
• The 100th anniversary of the first aeroplane flight across the English Channel by Louis Blériot
• The 100th anniversary of the enactment of The Old Age Pensions act in Great Britain
• The 100th anniversary of Ernest Shackleton’s attempt to cross the South Pole  

For more information about The Annual Register, click on the links below:

• Wikipedia entry for The Annual Register 
• The marketing site for The Annual Register Online