Historical Primary Resources

Digital collection of the newspapers, pamphlets, and books gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817). The resource helps chart the development of the concept of 'news' and 'newspapers' and the "free press", and includes nearly 1 million pages and approximately 1,270 titles.

Includes access to:

British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900:

Ranging from early tabloids like the Illustrated Police News to radical papers like the Chartist Northern Star, the 47 publications in Part I span national, regional, and local interests. Other notable papers of Part I include the Morning Chronicle, with famous contributors such as Henry Mayhew and John Stuart Mill; the Graphic, publishing both illustrations and news as well as illustrated fiction; and the Examiner, the radical reformist and leading intellectual journal.

British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900

Part II includes additional English regional newspapers with 22 additional publications. Researchers can find the newspapers of a number of towns and regions included in this collection: Nottingham, Bradford, Leicester, Sheffield, and York, as well as North Wales. The addition of two major London newspapers, The Standard and the Morning Post, captures conservative opinion in the nineteenth century, balancing the progressive, more liberal views of the newspapers that appear in Part I.

British Library Newspapers, Part III: 1741-1950

Part III includes 35 newspapers, encompassing provincial news journals like the Leeds Intelligencer and Hull Daily Mail, local interest publications such as the Northampton Mercury, and specialist titles such as the Poor Law Unions’ Gazette. Other noteworthy titles in Part III include the Westmoreland Gazette, whose early editor, Thomas De Quincy (of Confessions of an English Opium Eater) was forced to resign due to his unreliability.

British Library Newspapers, Part IV: 1732-1950

From early newspaper titles like the Stamford Mercury to what may be the oldest magazine in the world still in publication, the Scots Magazine, the 23 newspapers in Part IV offer local and regional perspectives from Aberdeen, Bath, Chester, Derby, Stamford, Liverpool, and York. In addition, Part IV includes the 1901-1950 runs of papers such as the Aberdeen Journal and Dundee Courier whose earlier newspapers are available in Part I and Part II.

British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746-1950

With a concentration of titles from the northern part of the United Kingdom, the 36 newspapers in Part V includes titles from the Scottish localities of Fife, Elgin, Inverness, Paisley, and John O'Groats, as well as towns just below the border, such as Morpeth, Alnwick, and more. Includes access to the Coventry Herald, which features some of the earliest published writing of Mary Ann Evans (better known as George Eliot).

The illustrated weeklies open a wide window on Russian cultural, social, and political life. Their editors traced the sweep of the Russian imagination at the apogee of Russian cultural power from the peak years of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to the modernist era and the chaos of 1917. They captured imperial expansion, cultural innovation, high fashion, graphic arts, performing arts, grand funerals and anniversaries, occasions of state, wonders of science, and domestic and foreign politics. In addition, the weeklies inscribed the changing image of Russia’s great cities, its landscapes, and its multinational citizenry, together with literary life and a visual and verbal chronicle of all and sundry occasions and events.

The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries knits together diaries, letters, and memoirs from more than 2,000 authors to provide fast access to thousands of views on almost every aspect of the war, including what was happening at home. The writings of politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, farmers, seaman, wives, and even spies are included. The letters and diaries are by the famous and the unknown, giving not only both the Northern and Southern perspectives, but those of foreign observers also. The materials originate from all regions of the country and are from people who played a variety of roles.

Focuses predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina.

From early topographical sketches and pioneers’ accounts, to photographs of Buffalo Bill and his ‘Wild West’ stars, explore the fact and the fiction of westward expansion in America from the early eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Within this resource you can use the chronology and data maps to discover facts and events in the history of the American West and view visual resources in bespoke, searchable galleries.

The U.K. Parliamentary Papers are part of the historical record of Britain, its former Colonies and the world in general. They provide detailed primary sources for the study of history and for an understanding of legislation, policy making and the political environment.