TLS Centenary Archive - Introduction


		Initial Identification of Contributors
		Index of Contents
		Biographical Information
		Searches

Biographical Information

Wherever possible, biographical information is given for contributors of reviews, articles and other editorial items, though not of published letters or very short, ‘listings’-type notes on new books. Sources used are credited in each entry. We have drawn on standard reference works such as Who's Who, the Dictionary of National Biography, various Oxford Companions, library catalogues and Times obituaries. These are abbreviated in the database thus:

W1 =		Who was Who, vol I, etc.
W(1929) =		Who’s Who, 1929, etc
OCEL =		Oxford Companion to English Literature (latest version)
BP =		Burke’s Peerage
BLG =		Burke’s Landed Gentry
DNB =		Dictionary of National Biography (first edition)

Other book details are given in full in the relevant places.

The Times Archive yielded further information, especially on the significant number of contributors who worked on the staff of The Times and its Supplements. More elusive reviewers were pursued by various means, especially through lists of queries published in the TLS itself. Individuals who provided information are named in the acknowledgements.

Inevitably, some contributors remain mysterious. One of the advantages of electronic publication is that it enables new details to be added as they become known, and corrections to be made of any mistakes which may have slipped through. Additional information, emendations and comments will be welcome (see the address given at the end of the Acknowledgements section) and will be fully acknowledged. We would also welcome information about little-known letter-writers, in case an opportunity arises to make these details available at a future stage.

Names are given in as full a form as possible, and are standardized except in the cases where the author is best known under another form of his or her name. Hence T. S. Eliot appears as 'Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns)', rather than as 'Eliot, Thomas Stearns'; Virginia Woolf as 'Woolf, Virginia, Mrs (Adeline Virginia Stephen)'. The fact that the list of contributors can be searched electronically makes secondary cross-referencing unnecessary; so, for example, anyone looking for Lord Ernle can find him as 'Prothero, Rowland Edmund (later 1st Baron Ernle)' by searching under the name 'Ernle', even though there is no separate entry for 'Ernle, Baron see Prothero', as would be necessary in a printed book.