Professor Christopher Elrington editing VCH texts in the old General Editor’s office at the IHR.
William Page was the first famous and influential General Editor of the Victoria County History. He succeeded H. Arthur Doubleday of the founding publishers, Constable & Co., who had had sole editorial responsibility from 1900 until Page became joint editor in 1902. Page spent 32 years as General Editor until his death in 1934, setting a precedent for longevity in post which meant that between 1902 and the retirement of Christopher Currie in 1999, the VCH had only five General Editors: Page, L.F. Salzman, Ralph Pugh, Christopher Elrington, and Christopher Currie. The requirement for the General Editor to coordinate the work of increasingly complex county organisations, while acting as an academic figure head, prompted a change in the role, which was combined with that of Director of the VCH, with Professor Anthony Fletcher and Professor John Beckett each holding the post for five years. Whilst work has continued for the last four years under the leadership of the Executive Editor Elizabeth Williamson, we are very pleased that the Institute of Historical Research is again looking to appoint a General Editor/Director to guide the VCH into an exciting future.
Alongside the General Editor/Director the red book series has also greatly benefited from the scholarship of a multitude of notable contributors. The consultants brought in by Doubleday to oversee the chapters in general volumes included the Romanist Professor Francis Haverfield, and J.H. Round whose knowledge of Domesday Book was very well employed in the series. Page’s reorganisation of the VCH office in 1904 meant that many of the general chapters were subsequently written by younger scholars, including Frank Stenton who was to become one of the finest medieval historians of the 20th century.
When the VCH was revived in 1933, work began on a new basis with parish histories produced by county teams, and far fewer general volumes which had, nevertheless, much material by established scholars. W.G. Hoskins signed up Rodney Hilton, Joan Thirsk, J.H. Plumb and Jack Simmons to write chapters in the general Leicestershire volumes, and although he wrote little on the county himself, he contributed to Wiltshire volumes, as did Lawrence Stone, Eric Kerridge, F.M.L. Thompson, E.M. Carus-Wilson, Julia de Lacey Mann, Maurice Beresford, Joel Hurstfield, and S.T. Bindoff, and two eminent archaeologists, Stuart Piggott and Barrie Cunliffe. Contributors to Cambridgeshire included H.C. Darby, Helen M. Cam, Herbert Butterfield, and Edward Miller. Asa Briggs was amongst the Warwickshire authors, while A.G. Dickens and the distinguished regionalist, G.C.F. Forster contributed to the volume on York.
You can read more about the history of the VCH and the people who have contributed to the series since 1899 in our publication The Victoria County History 1899-2012: A Diamond Jubilee Celebration available now from SAS publications.