A compendium or encyclopedia devoted to a single composer is the ultimate accolade from the scholarly community. After the complete works, the biographies, the critical and source studies and the scholarly conferences, a single volume consisting mainly of dictionary-style entries relating to various aspects of the life, works and reputation is a convenient way of summarising the accumulated scholarship devoted to a great composer. In Henry Purcell's case, this volume appears 30 years after the tercentenary of the composer's death in 1995, so it is a good moment to take stock. 1995 produced a spate of new Purcell biographies, none of them detailed and authoritative enough to replace Franklin B. Zimmerman's classic but ageing ZimPur – to use the bibliographic code explained below. Our brief Biography is intended only as a stopgap: there is an urgent need for a new full-length treatment, taking account of recent archival work and source studies, and in particular deploying a more sophisticated understanding than in the past of Purcell's milieu and his relationships with his family, colleagues and patrons. However, readers will notice that we frequently cite chapters from the two volumes of scholarly essays produced for the tercentenary, PurStu and PMHP, the latter the proceedings of a conference held at New College, Oxford in 1994.

A few years later, in 2000, Robert Shay and Robert Thompson revolutionised our knowledge of Purcell's manuscripts with ShaMan, work subsequently built upon by Rebecca Herissone in HerCre; in her invaluable online appendix HerCat; and in a series of ground-breaking articles, notably HerFow of 2006.