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