The index to the thirteen text volumes of The Gladstone Diaries 1825-1896 has three parts.

First `Dramatis Personae', a list of the 20,500 people mentioned by Gladstone in his diaries.

Secondly `Gladstone's Lifetime Reading', a bibliography of the 20,000 books, pamphlets, and articles, whose reading he records in his diaries, with the dates when he read them. This is a bibliography of remarkable cultural interest. It is probably the most ambitious attempt by a public figure to note his or her reading and it is certainly unique as a printed record of the lifetime's reading of am eminent Briton.

Thirdly, a `Subject Index' which is the reader's most direct way into the extraordinary range of subjects covered in the thirteen text volumes. It is effectively an index to most of British public life from 1830 until 1896. About two hundred of the people who figure most prominently in the diaries are included in the Subject Index (in addition to the `Dramatis Personae') with detailed analytic entries. It also includes a bibliography of Gladstone's own writings as he recorded them in his diaries.

This is a culmination of H. C. G. Matthew's acclaimed edition of Gladstone's diaries, correspondence, and other papers. It is an invaluable reference tool and an essential key to a magisterial work of scholarship.