The Annual Register - Subsequent Developments

Subsequent Developments

During the remainder of the nineteenth century The Annual Register was published without major difficulty. Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 it had 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”.

In 1994, after a century’s ownership by Longman, The Annual Register was transferred to Cartermill. In 1996 it was sold to a US publisher, Keesing’s Worldwide, which oversaw the process of digitising the book’s extensive archive and making this available for the first time to subscribers. In late 2005 the title was bought by another US publisher, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, which subsequently became ProQuest.