forwarded by
Angie
-------- Original Message --------
As some members of this list will know, I am co-editing a book
about gazetteers, especially future digital gazetteers; but also
authoring an introductory chapter which looks at the history of
gazetteers, a surprisingly little explored topic.
Our general point is that, although most people’s idea of a
gazetteer is simply a list of geographical names each with some
kind of coordinate and sometime with a simple “feature type”,
like “settlement” or “mountain”, there is an earlier history of
gazetteers which provide lengthy descriptions of each
place/feature.
We have computerised several of these for our web site, A
Vision of Britain through Time, and are currently working on
tidying up the seven-volume "Gazetteer of the
World, or Dictionary of
Geographical Knowledge,
published by Fullarton's of Edinburgh in 1856; this has
already been digitised within Google Books, but we are turning
it into clean database content. We estimate it contains around
80,000 entries and 7m words, so the average entry is a couple
of sentences, and many go on for several pages. Similarly,
this “entry” for Edinburgh in Groome’s Ordnance Gazetteer
of Scotland (1882-4) contains over 100,000 words:
SUCH BOOKS ARE NOT SO MUCH PLACE DICTIONARIES AS
PLACE ENCYCLOPAEDIAS. I HAVE BEEN EXPLORING THEIR EARLY
HISTORY, BUT THIS POSTING IS TO ASK ABOUT THEIR LATER HISTORY,
AFTER 1900.
My basic narrative at the moment is that
descriptive gazetteers, as distinct from itineraries, first
appear in the mid to late seventeenth century, and the
lengthiest examples come from the second half of the
nineteenth century — but they then pretty much stop — when I
have looked at the shelves of gazetteers in various libraries
I have mainly seen books from the 19th century, occasionally
earlier.
The exceptions seem to be:
— There are of course lots of atlases which also
include a gazetteer at the back (but this is about books which
are primarily text)
— Bartholomew have kept publishing revised
editions of their Gazetteer of the British Isles (but that has
relatively short entries, so more a place dictionary than an
encyclopaedia).
— Various guides aimed mainly at tourists are
organised as sets of alphabetically arranged entries about
places, with descriptions; for example, various Shell Guides.
However, map libraries are less likely to hold these.
IS THIS A FAIR NARRATIVE? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE
BIG DESCRIPTIVE GAZETTEERS AFTER 1900?
One suggestion is that they were supplanted by
broader encyclopaedias, a substantial fraction of whose
headwords are typically toponyms. I have sometimes suggested
that the world’s biggest and most widely used digital
gazetteer is now Wikipedia; I once sampled 100 randomly
selected Wikipedia articles, and about 30% had an associated
global coordinate.
I WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL FOR ANY THOUGHTS ANYONE
HAS. I continue to find it bizarre that so much has been
written about the history of maps and so little about the
history of gazetteers and itineraries.
With thanks,
Humphrey Southall
Reader in Geography/
Director, GB
Historical GIS
University of
Portsmouth
Geography Dept,
Buckingham Bldg,
Lion Terrace,
Portsmouth PO1 3HE, UK