Page "Social Register" Paragraph 2

In the enormously expanded wealthy society of the Gilded Age, the American institution of a Social Register filled a newly perceived void, one that was being served in the United Kingdom by Who's Who, which, since 1849, had identified public figures in Parliament and the professions as well as aristocrats and gentry, and by Burke's Peerage, which had appeared for the first time in 1826 to identify the members of the peerage of the United Kingdom and the baronets.

Burke's Peerage was extended beyond the peerage in 1833, when the first of the companion series of volumes that became known as Burke's Landed Gentry, was published.

Family backgrounds of those of purely celebrity status were not added to Burke's until the 1930s, when the family had lost editorial control.