Personalities and Publishing: Two Aspects of the History of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1863–2013

Abstract

This anniversary article surveys the personalities of the leading members of the society over its 150-year history and relates their changing backgrounds to wider changes in society over the period. It then describes the various publishing ventures which leading members initiated, and which form the society’s permanent legacy to the history of Yorkshire.

Keywords:

• Yorkshire
• archives
• learned societies
• regional history
• Leeds
• record publishing

Thanks are offered to an anonymous referee for most helpful comments on the original.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian Barber

Brian Barber was awarded the John Nichols Prize in English Local History by the University of Leicester, and holds a doctorate from the University of Leeds where he was a research student of the late Professor Maurice Beresford. For three decades he was employed as an archivist in several Yorkshire record offices and in retirement is researching subjects of interest which arose from his work in archive cataloguing. He has published books and articles on aspects of the history of Doncaster, Leeds, Sheffield and Wakefield. His most recent book (2011) is the second edition of his guide to the quarter sessions of the former West Riding of Yorkshire, which is published by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. An article on ‘Yorkshire Archives and a League of Gentlemen: the Yorkshire Archaeological Society and Record-Collecting, 1863–2013’, written jointly with Kirsty McHugh, the Society’s archivist, will appear this year in the Journal of the Society of Archivists, and an article entitled ‘The Learned and Curious Charles Hornby (1670–1739)’ will be published in Archives.

Correspondence to: Dr B. Barber, 11 Clifford Road, Sheffield s11 9aq, UK.