In addition whilst most family historians are well versed in the use of parish registers this does of course require you know which parish the ancestor resided and which denomination of faith they practiced.

The author of this book Colin Chapman says that in reality the 1841 census was more of an end product, more the result of campaigning and correspondence, which had been pursued for decades. There had previously been many attempts made to persuade the various governments, and even Church, to conduct a national census but these always failed. Although the decennial census was introduced in 1801, prior to then there had been many local censuses undertaken for a whole variety of reasons.

The result of 17 years of research undertaken by Colin Chapman is now documented in this book, where within the 82 pages exists a complete index and explanation of all censuses containing names of individuals, and equally as important, where to find them.

The potential reader should note that in most cases the retention of the census documents is very small. Some counties of England are well served, for instance the county of Devon has census material from 1334, but the majority of other census material is for either the 18th century or early 19th century.

Readers should also note that this book does not contain the names of any person, it does however explain each individual census or collection of names prior to 1841 and where those records may be found.

The book is not laid out as a reference book in its entirety, in fact the body of the book makes for good reading. Many items of interest are within the chapters, for example a quotation from the chapter on 18th-century listings includes the following " ... at Puddleton Dorset, a census was taken of the parishioners in 1724 and 1725 by the vicar. The originals of this return are now deposited in County record office at Dorchester". It is difficult to know how one would have found such an item of interest had you not read this book. Whilst of course such information may be well-known to the local historians in Dorset, this fact is likely to be unknown by the majority of people whose ancestors could be traced to Puddleton in 1724 especially perhaps those whose ancestors had emigrated to the new worlds.

Both the contents list and index are brief, and focus on the name of the list and year, rather than the geographical location. Thus it is very difficult to use this book as a quick reference, and the reader is left with making time to sit down and read the material.

Another point that I wish to make is that readers should not take this book as the definitive reference for lists of names. The focus is on population listings for communities, and we should not forget that within communities many institutions, such as schools, created lists of names of pupils etc. Examples of this type of list are not included within this work.

There are two excellent appendices within the work. Appendix 1 identifies the pre 1841 censuses containing names of individuals, and appendix 2 identifies the decennial census returns from 1801 to 1831.