The ninth edition was published at the end of 1939, and in the preface Parker recorded that all London theatres had been closed by government order on the outbreak of the Second World War – the first time such an order had been made since the Great Plague in 1665. There were more than 400 new biographies in this edition, and the cumulative obituary section ran to more than 4,000 names. Alongside the main features, a brief article dealt with "University Rivalry", showing that of the performers featured in the edition 62 had been at Oxford and 51 at Cambridge.