Catalogue description War Office: Lieutenant General Henry George Hart: Correspondence and Copies of Hart's Army List

Henry George Hart, compiler of Hart's Army List from 1839 until his death in 1878, rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General in the 49th regiment. He launched the publication partly to fulfil, by the use of extensive footnotes, the need for a record of officers' war services, which he felt were inadequately covered in the official Army List. At first the work was published quarterly but from 1840 a fuller annual volume appeared in addition. The War Office records to which Hart was allowed access (principally the 1829 regimental returns which are preserved in WO 25) were the basis of much of his work, while each edition of the List appealed to officers to inform Hart of omissions and corrections.

Throughout these papers, too, is evidence of Hart's work on a military biographical dictionary, which he was engaged in compiling as early as 1836. It was advertised as forthcoming in the Army list from 1839 onwards and the edition of 1851 contained specimen pages from the first volume, which, it announced, would appear the following year, and would contain biographies of general and field officers currently holding rank and of those retired or deceased since the Peninsular War. The publication of the dictionary was, however, postponed from year to year and it never appeared.