Summary

Primary source material.The Times has recorded notable deaths from its beginnings (as The Daily Universal Register) in 1785, and by the middle of the 19th century obituaries were established as one of the glories of the paper.

Primary source material.The Times has recorded notable deaths from its beginnings (as The Daily Universal Register) in 1785, and by the middle of the 19th century obituaries were established as one of the glories of the paper. There was no attempt at comprehensive coverage, and nothing like the daily obituary page of modern times, but under the 36-year editorship of John Thadeus Delane (1841-77) the paper began to respond to the deaths of significant national and international figures in a style - and on a scale - that none of its rivals could match. Great Victorian Lives brings together obituaries from the Times of Delane and his successors, and shows how some of the leading personalities of the 19th century were viewed by a paper that was itself one of the defining institutions of the age.