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• What's in the Gentleman's Magazine
  
• Indexes for the Magazine
  
• Subscription offer
  
• Finding what you want
  

What's in the Gentleman's Magazine

The Gentleman's Magazine was published monthly from 1731 until the late 19th Century. The early editions of the magazine are of interest to genealogists because they contain details of many births, deaths and marriages. Frequently, biographical details were also included. Also, under the heading of "Accidents & Occurrences" are recorded the daily mishaps which befell individuals and which were recorded in the press. If you are lucky, you might find an interesting anecdote about an ancestor that you will not find elsewhere. Finally, there's a grim record of many executions.

In addition to these personal details, the magazine included selected essays, articles and historical passages. There are dozens of prints illustrating contemporary buildings and items of interest (e.g. fossils, brass monuments, etc). There is some poetry, and diverse lists - from books published to a meteorological record. Consequently, there is a huge amount of background information which could be of value to the genealogist, and also to the local historian.

The problem is that the volume of material is huge. Each monthly magazine started at around 50 pages in 1731, and had increased in size to around 100 pages by 1800. By 1804, a year's magazines occupy pp 1330.

Indexes

Luckily, indexes have been produced for the magazine. These cover the period from the start of the magazine in 1731 to 1818, which is certainly the most interesting period for the genealogist. We have already scanned these indexes, which can be obtained from this web-site. There are links direct to the indexes on our web-site from the table below, which provides a brief description of the contents of each index. However, in addition to publishing these indexes separately, we have also put all three indexes into one compendium set which we are offering at a significant discount (£17.50 including VAT as opposed to £35.25 including VAT if purchased separately), and we would obviously recommend this set as best value for anyone seriously interested in finding what they want in the Gentleman's Magazine.

Index Contents

• 1731 - 1786 (published by Samuel Ayscough)
  • Index to the essays, dissertations and historical passages (pp 494)
  • Index to poetry (pp. 62)
  • Index to names (pp 239)· Index to plates (pp 10)
  • Index to books (pp 118)
    
• 1787 - 1818 (published by John Nichols)
  • Index to the essays, dissertations and historical passages (pp 486)
  • Index to poetry (pp. 57)
  • Index to names (pp 519)· Index to plates (pp 17)
  • Index to books (pp 103) and books announced (pp 13)
  • Index to musical publications (pp 3)
• 1731 - 1818 (published by John Nichols) ·
  • Index to plates (pp 239)
    
• 1731 - 1780 (published by the British Record Society) ·
  • Index to names and surnames (pp 687)
    

Subscription offer

At the moment we have only scanned a few years of the Magazine (to see which years, click the link). The first two covered were 1731 (Volume 1 - the first year of publication), and 1804 (Volume 74 - which contained an illustration of the school which Tony Abrahams - the founder of this project - attended in the 1960's). Over time we will add to the collection, which has been kindly made available to us by the Birmingham and Midland Society for Genealogy and Heraldry.

However, if there is a particular year of which you would like to have a copy, and which is not currently available, you can order it now through this subscription offer. For the usual price of £11.75 including VAT we will undertake to send a copy of the year you have requested within two weeks of the date that you place this order. You would then need to allow for any postal delays, which will be a day or so within the UK, but would add a week for deliveries to Europe and North America. To place a subscription order, please follow the link.

Finding what you want

In order to find what you want in the Gentleman's Magazine, we would suggest the following approach:-

• Firstly, obtain the relevant index. We would strongly recommend that you purchase the compendium set, as this provides best value.
  
• The index gives a page number and volume number reference. Since a volume of Gentleman's Magazines was published each year, it is easy to work out which year the volume number references as follows:-
  
  • Volume 1 was for 1731
    
  • Volume 2 was for 1732, and so on
    ..... so Volume 74 was for 1804
    
• Once you have found the relevant entry in the index, then obtain the Gentleman's Magazine for the year of interest, either from the web-site or via the subscription offer