A Guide to Burke's Landed Gentry
There are many editions of Burke's Landed Gentry (as it is coloquially known). The earliest edition was published in 1833 and the most recent in 2001 - there are nineteen editions in all. Getting your head around these editions and what they cover takes some work, but the Wikipedia entry is a good starting point to orientate yourself. Note that the first edition had a slightly different title and is referred to as the "Commoners" whereas later editions are known as the "Landed Gentry". But generically, the term "Landed Gentry" refers to all editions, including the first.
What's in the Landed Gentry?
In general, the series covers notable landed (i.e. land-owning) but non-peer families of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The division between countries varies through editions (early editions combined all four countries, some later editions split them separately).
Entries are arranged by surname and will also list the principal property of the family (e.g.
Reliability
One can presume that the reliability of these reference works improved through time. The impression one gets from the earliest works were that families submitted their own pedigrees and there would have been limited review performed by Burke's, simply by virtue of the very large number of families covered. One can imagine, too, that getting your family "into Burke's" was a mark of social standing that may have resulted in families embellishing their pedigrees to make them more interesting - a case of "wish fulfullment", it has been said. As the new editions were published, it's likely that more careful checking was made on the pedigrees and so as we come towards the present day, the accuracy is likely to be higher. That said, one of the difficulties with this set of works is that family pedigrees appear and disappear through time (as those families' importance waxed and waned). Thus the most recent (more accurate) editions may not cover the families you are researching.
In my own research, I have certainly found inaccuracies, but these have mostly been minor (giving the wrong line of work to someone, for instance) rather than major (giving someone the wrong parents). That said, I have also found cases of the latter. Of course, for old families there are no primary parish records available online, so the only sources of pedigree information are these works, plus further archival material that is only available through physical visits. In some cases, the researcher has to apply their own judgement and logic to determine the most likely correct pedigree, given the available sources.
How to use them
Entries start with the current senior member of the family (usually but not always male), followed by a genealogy descending to the present from a selected ancestor.
Many editions have been digitised and so will pop up when you do standard web searches for names using Google etc (i.e. a simple search for your ancestor's name may pop up results from Google Books or Archive.org. Unfortunately, not all volumes have been digitised, and not all digitised volumes have been OCR'd (which means you can't search the text). This means that you have to do a manual read through the Index for a given edition and see if you can find a match. Frustratingly, early editions frequently had no index. And to make matters worse, they were not in alphabetical order (or indeed any discernible order at all). For those, the only solution is to painfully page through the whole book, looking for a match.
The other thing to note is that families that do have an entry in one edition, may have a longer, or shorter, or no entry in prior or subsequent editions. So if you've struck gold and found your family, make sure to check other editions too because you may find a different version that has much more pedigree information in it. This makes it important to check as many editions as possible, rather than just relying on the first entry you find.
If you have access to burkespeerage.com, you can search for family names and obtain a list of matches, as well as an indication of which edition contains the canonical entry for that family.
Finding editions online
Many older editions are available online: for a full list, see the table below. In general, whilst not every volume of every early edition is available online for free, it is possible to find at least one version that has the required family in it. Early editions were in no apparent order, so finding entries is a painful job of paging through the whole volume, or making use of Google search tools (when the pages have been digitised and OCRd), or using my ReWoNaSe search tool.
All editions had an index, but finding it is not necessarily straightforward and even then, my genealogical work flow means that I flit between families quite frequently, and often forget which families I've found in Landed Gentry and which I haven't even looked for. I recommend keeping a list of all family entries you've found, to avoid the painful job of re-finding them at a later date.
The most recent edition was published in 2001 and was split into various regional volumes: Scotland, York, Wales and the North West and Ireland. For some reason, the rest of England has been ignored; perhaps a dedicated volume is in the works (though it's been nearly 20 years).
The table below lists the copies of the various volumes and editions of Burke's Landed Gentry that I have found online. An alternative list is available at Wikipedia. And of course, the most recent edition is available (for purchase or subscription) from burkespeerage.com.
Edition | Dates of Publication | Full Title | Number of Volumes | Notes | Online Availability |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Original | 1833-1835 | A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, enjoying Territorial Possessions or High Official Rank, but uninvested with Heritable Honours | Three | Not in alphabetical order, so see my indices below | |
New Edition | 1843-1849 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, a Companion to the Baronetage and Knightage | Three | Largely identical to the following edition | |
2nd Edition | 1850-1853 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland comprising particulars of upwards of 100,000 individuals | Three | Identical to New Edition, but with addition of new pages in the Addenda | |
3rd Edition | 1855-1858 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Two | A single-volume edition was also published in 1858 | |
4th Edition | 1862-1863 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Two | Later re-published as one volume (1863) | |
4th Edition revised | 1868 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | ? | With Supplement and Corrigenda |
|
5th Edition | 1871 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Two | ||
5th Edition (reissue) | 1875 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Two | With Supplements & Addenda |
|
6th Edition | 1879 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Two | ||
6th Edition re-issued | 1882 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Two |
|
|
7th Edition | 1886 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Two |
|
|
8th Edition | 1894 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Two |
|
|
9th Edition | 1898 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland | Three | The 3rd volume is dedicated to Ireland | |
10th Edition | 1900 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain | ? | From now on, Ireland was a separate publication |
|
11th Edition | 1906 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain | One | ||
12th Edition | 1914 | A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain | One | ||
13th and subsequent | 1914+ |
|