Crockford's Clerical Directory

[note 7] The editors explained in the preface that they wished it to be understood that it was "but the foundation of a great work which, with the Cordial aid of the clergy, we shall hope to make more and more perfect every year".

The 1858 issue was based on postal returns from the clergy in England and Wales, involving an outlay – as the preface pointed out – of "more than Five Hundred Pounds for Postage Stamps alone".

They also acquired much fuller indexes – along with outline maps of dioceses, and increasingly complete lists of bishops, dating right back to the earliest years of their sees.

For a time too clergy who made their livings though secular jobs were excluded from the biographies section, with the abbreviation NQ (Non-Qualifying Position) being used to cover such periods when clerics returned to parish work and were again eligible for inclusion.

An alternative to the main work, Crockford's Shorter Directory, focused almost entirely on the Church of England and omitting all past biographical details, was issued as a single edition in 1953–54.

The well-known tradition of having an extensive but anonymous preface offering a general review of events within the Anglican Communion – together with some occasionally sharp and controversial commentary – evolved gradually during the early part of the 20th century.

An anthology, Crockford Prefaces: The Editor Looks Back, anonymously edited by Richard Henry Malden[3] and covering the previous 25 years, was published by the Oxford University Press in 1947.

Crockford is referenced in Dorothy Sayers's 1927 detective novel Unnatural Death (chapter XI) where Lord Peter Wimsey uses "this valuable work of reference" in trying to trace a clergyman who is important for solving the book's mystery.

Another fictional character holding Crockford on his bookshelves was Sherlock Holmes, who during one of his final short stories ("The Adventure of the Retired Colourman"), consulted his copy before dispatching his colleague Dr Watson, together with another companion, to a distant part of Essex.

The character Dulcie Mainwaring prefers Crockford's format to Who's Who while reflecting on researching in the Public Record Office in London in Barbara Pym's No Fond Return of Love.

In a chapter entitled "The Visitor in the Night" by Freeman Wills Crofts of the book The Floating Admiral, Inspector Rudge looks up the background of Reverend Mount in a Crockford's.