Early Modern British History  

British History Online digital library contains some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.

Irish History Online is a guide to what has been written about the history of Ireland from earliest times to the present. It has been established in association with the Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History and London's Past Online. IHO contains items, drawn from Writings on Irish History from 1936 to 2002, plus all the Irish material currently held on the online Royal Historical Society Bibliography.

An international abstracting and indexing tool for research in the humanities, BHI indexes over 320 internationally respected humanities journals and weekly magazines published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as quality newspapers published in the UK, including the Economist, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, and the Times. With the Subject Index to Periodicals, BHI provides an unbroken index to the humanities in Great Britain since 1915.

The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) provides bibliographic data on historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, during all periods for which written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present. All titles included in The Royal Historical Society Bibliography on CD-ROM (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) are included in the database (with the exception of unpublished theses).

Eighteenth Century Fiction includes 77 complete works in English prose from the period 1700-1780, by writers from the British Isles.

Orlando provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies. Interacting with these materials creates a dynamic inquiry from any number of perspectives into centuries of women's writing.

The Index to Theses provides total bibliographic control of all theses ever produced by British and Irish universities (1716 to the present). Access is by author, title, university, degree, year, and keyword. Abstracts are included for titles written since 1970. Full text is not provided, but copies of the dissertations may be requested through interlibrary loan.

Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period includes more than 80 volumes of poetry by approximately 50 Irish women writing between 1768 and 1842. Compiled and edited by Stephen Behrendt of the University of Nebraska, the database also offers numerous biographical and critical essays prepared by leading scholars specifically for the project. New content is added to the collection on a regular basis. It currently contains over 9,000 pages of poetry.

Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period (SWRP) contains 60 volumes of Romantic Poetry, extensive contemporary critical reviews, as well as material specially written for this database by leading scholars.

The Dictionary of Irish Biography, a collaborative project between Cambridge University Press and the Royal Irish Academy, is the most comprehensive and authoritative biographical dictionary yet published for Ireland. It contains 9,014 signed biographical articles which describe and assess the careers of subjects in all fields of endeavour, including politics, law, religion, literature, journalism, architecture, painting, music, the stage, science, medicine, engineering, entertainment and sport.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the premier source for biographical information on persons connected with the British Isles from all periods of history. The qualifications for inclusion are that subjects not be living, that they inhabited or were connected with the British Isles, and that they were noteworthy.

A collection of original source material from British and European archives for the study and analysis of gender, leisure and consumer culture with 21 libraries for comparative study and research. Manuscripts, printed works and illustrations address the key issues from both masculine and feminine perspectives. Documents include ephemera, pamphlets, college records and exam papers, commonplace books, diaries, periodicals, letters, ledgers, account books, educational practice and pedagogy, etc.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English. Based on the Bell & Howell microfilm collections Early English Books 1475-1640 and Early English Books 1641-1700. The bibliographies behind these collections are the Short Title Catalogues compiled by Pollard and Redgrave (STC I) and Wing (STC II). The later collection also includes the Thomason tracts.

Early English Prose Fiction contains 211 works in English prose by writers from the British Isles from the period 1500-1700. The entire text of each individual work has been included, with all prefatory matter and annotation by the original author. All accompanying material, such as illustrations, contents pages, appendices, lists of subscribers, dedications, errata lists, etc. also appears. Advertisements for other texts from publishers have been excluded.

Portal to newspapers and periodicals c1685-1815 offers integrated access to the Hope Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Eighteenth Century Journals I), the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center University of Texas (Eighteenth Century Journals II) and the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, London and the Cambridge University Library (Eighteenth Century Journals III) and Chetham's Library, Manchester and Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (Eighteenth Century Journals IV).

The Grand Tour was a rite-of-passage for many aristocratic and wealthy young men of the eighteenth century: a phenomenon which shaped the creative and intellectual sensibilities of some of the eighteenth century’s greatest artists, writers and thinkers. These accounts of the English abroad, c1550-1850, highlight the influence of continental travel on British art, architecture, urban planning, literature and philosophy.

The HPB Database (previously called the Hand Press Book Database) is a steadily growing collection of files of catalogue records from major European and North American research libraries covering items of European printing of the hand-press period (c. 1455-c. 1830) integrated into one file. This makes it possible for information to be retrieved in one single search across all files.

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue is an international database of 15th-century European printing created by the British Library with contributions from institutions worldwide. The database records nearly every item printed from movable type before 1501, but not material printed entirely from woodblocks or engraved plates. 29,244 editions are listed, including some 16th-century items previously assigned incorrectly to the 15th century.

The Mundus Gateway is a web-based guide to more than four hundred collections of overseas missionary materials held in the United Kingdom. These materials, comprising the archives of British missionary societies, collections of personal papers, printed matter, photographs, other visual materials and artefacts, are held in a large number of libraries, record offices and other institutions in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The Dictionary of Art Online is a fully searchable copy of the print dictionary, including some but not all of the illustrations and photographs in the print version. The online dictionary provides an image search for images from the Bridgeman Art Library and also links to images elsewhere on the internet. Types of searches include an Article Search, which performs a search for an article on a specific topic, and a full text search which searches the entire text of the articles.

The manuscripts in this site were written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and they have been sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA. One of the key attractions of Perdita Manuscripts is that it brings together little known material from widely scattered locations. The provision of a powerful searching facility, biographical and bibliographical resources, and contextual essays by academics.

Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700, edited by Donald Wing et al. The Wing Short Title Catalog is the essential bibliographic database of extant books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in English between 1641 and 1700. The Catalog lists the title, author name, imprint and physical format as well as including bibliographic information and listings of selected libraries.

The newspapers, pamphlets, and books gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) represent the largest and most comprehensive collection of early English news media. The present digital collection, that helps chart the development of the concept of 'news' and 'newspapers' and the "free press", totals almost 1 million pages and contains approximately 1,270 titles. Many of the Burney newspapers are well known, but many pamphlets and broadsides also included have remained largely hidden.

Searchable full text of full runs of newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth-century Britain. This new collection includes national and regional newspapers, as well as newspapers from: established country or university towns; the new industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands; and Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Special attention was paid to include newspapers that helped lead particular political or social movements such as Reform and Chartism.

British Periodicals Collection I consists of journals spanning the late 17th through early 20th centuries, and covering a range of topics such as literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences. Derived from the UMI microfilm collection Early British Periodicals the collection will contain the equivalent of 5,238 printed volumes and over 3 million pages.

Access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images of
English Literary Periodicals and British Periodicals in the Creative Arts. Topics covered include literature, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.

An archive of digitized, full-image journal articles, international, scholarly literature in the humanities and social sciences disciplines from 1802 to 1995 with links to JSTOR enabled. Yale's Subscription includes access to these collections of titles that extend the range of JSTOR: English Literature (75 titles, 1813-1989), History (75 titles, 1813-1989) , British Periodicals Collection I (160 journals, 1681 - 1920).

The print edition of the Waterloo Directory was published in 10 volumes in 1998 and represents an expansion of the earlier one-volume Waterloo Directory of Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900. The latter title was published in 1976 with about 29,000 brief entries gathered from a number of extensive secondary sources: the Times’ Tercentenary Handlist of English and Welsh Newspapers, the British Union Catalogue of Periodicals, the British Library Catalogue, and Mitchell’s Newspaper Press Director

Historical Newspapers Online's index to The Times (London) is based on Palmer's Index to the Times, which covers the period from 1790 to 1905. Palmer's Full Text Online covers 1785-1870, providing access to the full articles referenced in Palmer's Index to The Times.

An ambitious digitization project that delivers every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain during the eighteenth century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.

A full, digital run of the London Times newspaper, from 1785-1985.

Extracts and transcripts of English and Irish newspapers, principally concentrating on Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, London, Lancashire, Middlesex, Surrey, Worcestershire, and Wiltshire.

This website, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, makes available a database of thousands of prints and book illustrations from early modern Britain in fully-searchable form. It also offers ancillary facilities aimed to enhance users’ understanding and appreciation of the material it presents, such as various resources contextualising prints and printmaking, as well as original research on British prints to 1700, including the ‘Print of the Month’ that appears on this page.

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries (BWLD) includes the immediate experiences of 91 women, as revealed in diaries and letters. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. The collection includes more than 100,000 pages of primary materials spanning more than 300 years. Each source has been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography.

With all collections enabled, HCPP now includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688. HCPP delivers page images and searchable full text for each paper, along with detailed indexing. HCPP is currently complete from 1801-2006. Records and papers from recent sessions of Parliament will continue to be added on a regular basis.

(Universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield). A fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

The Annual Register is a year-by-year record of British and world events covering 1758 to the present and including contemporary opinion, historical context and biographical information. From the American War of Independence, through western industrialisation and world wars, The Annual Register has chronicled and reported events across the globe from the perspective of a contemporary witness. The online version of The Annual Register enables cross-searching of volumes.

State Papers Online, 1509-1714 ('SPO') offers a completely new working environment to researchers, teachers and students of Early Modern Britain. Whether used for original research, for teaching, or for student project work, State Papers Online offers original historical materials across the widest range of government concern, from high level international politics and diplomacy to the charges against a steward for poisoning a dozen or more people.

Colonial State Papers provides access to thousands of papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Included is a digitized version of The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739, which contains bibliographic records and extracts for thousands of additional documents.

The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text.

BOPCAS stands for British Official Publications Current Awareness Service. It includes the House of Commons and House of Lords Hansard, full-text acts of Parliament from 1995 onwards, full-text statutory instruments from 1997 onwards, policy awareness discussion lists and links to UK government web sites. BOPCAS can be searched or browsed by policy / subject area or date.

Documents on British Policy Overseas provides users with access to a wide range of primary source documents from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, shedding light on throughout the twentieth century. Selected and edited by the official historians of the FCO, Documents on British Policy Overseas includes many documents specifically de-classified for inclusion in the series.

Burke's Peerage is the definitive historical guide to the UK & Irelands titled and landed families. There are more than 1 million names in 15,000+ family records.

This database, assembled from hundreds of primary sources, documents the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.

Contains legal treatises published from 1800-1926, from the Nineteenth-Century Legal Treatises and Twentieth-Century Legal Treatises microfilm collections. Includes more than 21,000 works on U.S. and British Commonwealth law. The nearly 10 million page images are fully searchable by keyword, author, title, date, subject, and full-text.

Anglo-Saxon manuscripts divided into volumes: vol.1 Books of prayers and healing, vol. 2 Psalters, vol. 3 Anglo-Saxon gospels, vol. 4 Glossed Texts, Aldhemiana, psalms, and vol. 5 Latin manuscripts.

This collection contains all of the society’s anti-slavery materials, including tracts, miscellaneous pamphlets, and other ephemeral documents, and some rare, early periodicals of the Thompson-Clarkson Collection, on which Thomas Clarkson based his ‘History of the Abolition of Slavery’.

Governmental issues about the colony of Australia. Topics include the massacre in New Zealand of the crew of the Boyd, correspondence with Charles Throsby, medical treatment of convicts, meeting minutes about orphan institutions, and other colonial issues.

Governmental and civilian letters received in the colony of Australia from 1788 to 1825. Topics included are agreements, dispatches, general orders, instructions, regulations, proclamations, memoranda, and reports.

Archives from Blenheim Palace. Includes the papers of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland, writings from John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, his correspondence with Lord Treasurer Godolphin and other officials and ministers, diplomats and foreign powers, personal papers of his wife, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough and her correspondence with Queen Anne, and their son-in-law, the 3rd Earl of Sunderland. Topics covered are continental war efforts, domestic policy, the Whig cause, etc.

Included in this British biographical archive are biographical entries from 324 reference books originally published between 1601 and 1929. Particular care was taken to include women in this collection, and there are many cross references. Like the other Saur biographical archives, the first fiches provide the title pages and prefaces from the source works. The entries are arranged in one alphabetical sequence.

Women authors writing about travel and the British Empire. Topics included are transforming gender roles, colonial attitudes, identity issues, colonialism, and national awareness within the colonies. Parts two and three are focused on “the Orient” including the Middle East, China, and Japan.

The personal papers of Richard Burton, James Agustus Grant, and John Hanning Speke discussing the Empire and masculinity in the Empire.

Books of fiction from Britain and Imperial India exploring colonial life, policy, and the colonial experience.

Manuscripts collection from the Cambridge University Library about Old English Literature (c.650-1000 CE). The scope of the material includes Anglo-Saxon and Latin tradition in literature, theology, and philosophy. Authors included are Aelfric, Aldhelm, Bede, Boethius, Gregorius and Wulfstan

Redgrave's Short-title catalogue as well as new titles from the revised edition of the catalog. The series fully documents the English Renaissance, the broadening of the known world, and the spread of printing and education.

A comprehensive collection of more than 800 early newspapers representing metropolitan London, areas outside London, and colonial possessions, excluding America. Most are from the eighteenth century, but seventeenth-century corantos, diurnals, and newsbooks are also included. The set preserves much of the British Library's Burney Newspaper Collection supplemented with holdings from the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

Material from the East India Company’s dealings in China and Japan. Sources include diaries, ledgers, shipping instructions, business papers, papers on Chinese debts, documents from commercial and factory consultations.

Documents from William Adams (1564-1620), Englebert Kaempfer (1651-1716), John Scattergood (1681-1723), Isaac Titsingh (1740?-1812), Heinrich Julius Klaproth (1783-1835), and East India Company: Ships’ logs, ledgers and receipt books, 1605-1701.

Also includes British Foreign Office Files for China, 1949-1976. Events covered are foundation of the People’s Republic, the deaths of Zhou Enlai and Mao, the arrest of the Gang of Four and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, population issues, the Marriage Law, the Agrarian Reform Law, Sino-Soviet relations, and British commercial policy in China.

The collection contains a broad spectrum of philosphical and religous publications, ranging from sermons, Bibles and prayer books, to moral and ethical debates and prescriptions for proper conduct. A variety of works are included, from the moral essays and correspondence of anonymous authors to the writings of more well-known philosophers and theologians such as John Locke, John Wesley, Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, George Berkeley, George Whitfield, Jeremy Bentham, John Newton, David Hume.

Materials concerning colonists’ relations with the native people, issues of race and empire, initial cultural contacts, cultural interchange, Commonwealth conferences for 1887-1955 and materials on colonial reform within the Empire. Sources include periodical literature, articles, conference minutes, and reports.

These papers are arranged by the country to which they relate, and are in the form of correspondence from emissaries, local governors and officials. They are addressed primarily to Lord Burghley, and after his death, to the Queen and to other government officials.

Group I consists of Votes & Proceedings of the Cape House of Assembly and the Legislative Council, and Annexures to the Votes and Proceedings (including Select Committee Reports), 1854-1910.

Newspaper and journal articles describing the Irish experience under British control from the years 1760-1922. Topics addressed include accession, famine, propaganda on issues such as Repeal, Home Rule, Land League, Pernallism, Irish nationalism, Irish self-awareness, seizure and censorship of the Irish press, Orange Order, Roman Catholic Church, literary revival, economic concerns, Easter Risings, Irish Nationalism, relationship between Irish abroad and the mother country.

The bibliography London Directories 1677-1855, published in 1932 by Charles W.F. Goss, was the starting point for this microfilm collection. These directories serve as a resource for genealogical and urban studies, showing the growth of the city of London over a span of three centuries.

Rare advice books, manuals and literary texts relating to masculinity between 1560 and 1918. Part 1 comprises 61 core texts from the collections of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

This collection provides the definitives annotated texts of records of royal and revolutionary governments in Massachusetts from the arrival of Governor Thomas Gage in May 1774 to the convening of the colony's first General Court in July 1775. The six principal categories of documents included are executive proclamations and correspondence, town records, Superior Court records, General Court journals and papers, county conventions, and Provincial Congress journals.

The period covered by the parish records of Lasswade (1650-1750), in the Lothian region of Scotland, was one of great social and economic change in lowland Scotland. Lasswade was chosen for this project as a particularly well-documented parish which, owing to its proximity to Edinburgh, highlights these changes. The records consist of the Poll Tax, giving information on the size, structure, wealth and distribution of Scotland's population; and parish registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths.

This collection assembles key historical documents of the administrative district, or parish, of Earls Colne. Included are manorial records, account books, a diary, and early 16th-century maps.

Commonplace book collection from the British Library from 1550 to 1700. Included are the personal writings of Sir Julius Caesar, John Milton, Sir John Gibson, Sir Walter Ralegh, Shakespeare, Thomas Harriot, and others. Materials included are poems, speeches, useful notes for lawyers and doctors, ideas, journals, political letters, notes on household management, proverbs, prayers, and common expressions. Topics included are personal response to social conditions of the day and social commentary.

Commonplace book collection from the British Library from 1550 to 1700. Included are the personal writings of Sir Julius Caesar, John Milton, Sir John Gibson, Sir Walter Ralegh, Shakespeare, Thomas Harriot, and others. Materials included are poems, speeches, useful notes for lawyers and doctors, ideas, journals, political letters, notes on household management, proverbs, prayers, and common expressions. Topics included are personal response to social conditions of the day and social commentary.

Material that relating to sex and sexuality from 1640 to 1940. Resources included are advice books, medical works, moral guides, erotic and pornographic literature, and literary critiques. Topics cover include prostitution, the sociology of sex, lesbianism, romantic friendships, and flagellation.

Sixteenth- and seventeenth- century newsletters that provide the English perspective on European events.

Manuscripts from 1540 to 1700 covering Parliamentary proceedings, political, religious and economic problems, royal projects, situations in both Ireland and Scotland, and naval reforms. Also included are the proceedings of the High Court for trying the King.

Prompt books from American Shakespearian productions from the 17th to 20th centuries.

George Thomason, a London book publisher and book seller, tried to save copies of literally everything that was being published in England from 1640 to 1661, from single broadsides to substantial dissertations. The microfilm is accompanied by two indexes, one arranged by British Library tract number and one done by the number in the Wing Short-title catalogue. Both give the same information.

Literary manuscripts, correspondence, and other writings of the British author Maria Edgeworth. The scope of the collection includes Anglo-Irish literature, female education, literary life, society, women’s writing, women’s reading, life in Ireland, and the history of the novel.