Walford's County Families

Walford's County Families is the short title of a work, partly social register, partly "Who's Who", which was produced in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, initially under the editorship of Edward Walford. It served as a guide or handbook to the British upper classes and landed gentry (in this case referred to in the title under the term, county families, for which see county family). Its coverage encompassed many of the most important rich, aristocratic or politically powerful of the people of the period, thereby serving to document to an extent the "cream of society", sometimes referred to loosely as Britain's upper ten thousand.

From edition to edition, the title of the annual volumes making up the series varied: the 1899 edition, was, for example, called Walford's County Families of the United Kingdom, or Royal Manual of the Titled and Untitled Aristocracy of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

Volumes in this series are also sometimes referred to simply as Walford or Walford's. According to the British Library catalogue, the works bearing this title were published from 1860 to 1920.

Famous quotes containing the words county and/or families:

    In the county there are thirty-seven churches
    and no butcher shop. This could be taken
    as a matter of all form and no content.
    Maxine Kumin (b. 1925)

    We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.
    Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)