Continuation of the reference work that originated with Robert Dodsley, written and published each year, which records and analyzes the year’s major events, developments and trends in Great Britain and throughout the world. After 1815 the usual form became a number of chapters on Great Britain, paying particular attention to the proceedings of Parliament, followed by chapters covering other countries in turn, no longer limited to Europe. The expansion of the History came at the expense of the sketches, reviews and other essays so that the nineteenth-century publication ceased to have the miscellaneous character of its eighteenth-century forebear, although poems continued to be included until 1862, and a small number of official papers and other important texts continue to be reproduced.