BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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Post (1885-1901), and The Times (1883-1901).
All of the above
publications along with The Primrose, a local Bournemouth paper
published between 1886-87 were examined at the Colindale branch of the
British Library.
The papers of several prominent statesmen were consulted.
Among these were the correspondence and records retained by the Marquis
of Salisbury, W.E. Gladstone, Lord Randolph Churchill, the Earl of
Iddesleigh, A.J. Balfour, and Joseph Chamberlain.
These archives and
others, however, yielded little.
More fruitful was my examination of local sources.
The records
of the Scottish Grand Council contained at the office of the Scottish
Conservative and Unionist Association in Edinburgh were especially
useful.
Materials derived from Habitations and retained by
Gloucestershire, Lancashire, Dorset, Hertfordshire, and Cumbria Records
Offices, as well as, the Birmingham Reference and Gloucester Public
libraries were also of interest.
While my use of documents appears in some instances to overlap
with the literature examined by both Ostrogorski and Robb, their
accounts of the League are so generalized as to render the minute books
and newspapers consulted an unexamined source.
For this reason I have
concentrated on these materials as the focus of my thesis, omitting a
broader, more sweeping treatment of my subject matter.
For it is
through these sources that I am able to provide the first precise and
detailed account of the operations of the Primrose League between 1883
and 1901.