Historians have long evinced considerable interest in the Edwardian period, political historians perhaps more than most. Early work by filie Halevy and George Dangerfield established the fifteen or so years before the First World War as crucially transformative of British politics, featuring – inter alia – the efflorescence of pressure group agitation, the rise of the modern-day Labour movement, and deep political crisis for Liberalism. More recent research has offered illuminating interpretations of the politics of these tumultuous years, and stimulated intense scholarly debate on many issues, from the effectiveness of the suffragette campaign to the political significance of New Liberalism and the Radical Right. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the electoral politics of this period have not escaped examination, with by-elections attracting their fair share of attention. The heavy involvement of pressure groups such as the Navy League in by-election contests has been analysed, as have the tactics of campaigners for women's suffrage. But perhaps most notably, by-elections provide heuristic tools for historians to investigate the emergence of the Labour party, as well as the broader questions of the emergence of three-party and class politics in Britain. They also offer the only hard psephological evidence on the much-debated question of the electoral strength of Liberalism before 1914.