General Stud Book

---

title: "General Stud Book" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["horse-racing", "horse-breed-registries"] description: "Stub book for the British Thoroughbred horse breed" topic_path: "general/horse-racing" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Stud_Book" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Stub book for the British Thoroughbred horse breed ::

::callout[type=note] the breed registry in the United Kingdom ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Generalstudbookvolume6closed.jpg" caption="Volume Six of the ''General Stud Book'' published in London in 1857"] ::

The General Stud Book is a breed registry for horses in Great Britain and Ireland. More specifically it is used to document the breeding of Thoroughbreds and related foundation bloodstock such as the Arabian horse. Today it is published every four years by Weatherbys. Volume 49 was published in 2021.

In 1791, James Weatherby published Introduction to a General Stud Book, which was an attempt to collect pedigrees for the horses racing then and that had raced in the past. It was filled with errors and was not at all complete, but it was popular and led in 1793 to the first volume of the General Stud Book which had many more pedigrees and was more accurate. Volume one was revised many times, the most important being in 1803, 1808, 1827, 1859 and 1891.

The General Stud Book has been owned by Weatherbys ever since; the two horse racing authorities that cover the United Kingdom, the British Horseracing Authority in Great Britain (historically the Jockey Club) and Horse Racing Ireland for all of the island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland, do not maintain the registry. This differs from the American Stud Book which is owned by the United States Jockey Club.

Citations

References

• British Jockey Club Retrieved 30 August 2007
• Horse Racing Ireland Retrieved 25 January 2010
• Jockey Club History Retrieved 30 August 2007
• Weatherby's History Retrieved 30 August 2007
• Stud Book History Retrieved 19 April 2012
• The Stud Book Retrieved 19 April 2012

References

1. "History of the General Stud Book".
2. Lexa. (2022-02-15). "The magic of the printed word as Weatherbys keeps alive the spirit of 1791".
3. Montgomery ''The Thoroughbred'' p. 42
4. "Weatherby's History".
5. "British Jockey Club".
6. "Horse Racing Ireland".
7. [http://www.jockeyclub.com/registry.asp Jockey Club History]

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::