Research Guides: Modern Britain 1688-Present: Subscription Databases

Databases for Great Britain A-B

In addition to the databases highlighted on other tabs, here are some more databases Bobst subscribes to that are useful for research. You will need to log in with your NetID and password to use these from off'campus. Many items can also be found in HathiTrust (under H in the alphabetical list below), such as an extensive collection of Fabian Society Tracts. You have to authenticate as an NYU user, but all of them from the no. 1 in 1884 to 188 in 1919 are available full text to download (the remainder are search only).

African Diaspora, 1860-Present
African Diaspora, 1860-Present provides an understanding of Black history and culture, and allows scholars to study the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL)
The Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) indexes scholarship in the fields of English language and literature, folklore, and English-language film and television studies.
Antigua, Slavery, and Emancipation in the Records of a Sugar Plantation, 1689-1907
The Antigua, Slavery, and Emancipation in the Records of a Sugar Plantation, 1689-1907 collection contains records pertaining to the Tudway family’s ownership of an Antiguan sugar plantation during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The papers cover the period from the early slave trade to the post-slavery economy. The combination of statistical ledgers and narrative correspondence provides insight into the operation and eventual abolition of the slave trade in the West Indies.
Apartheid South Africa 1948-1980
Apartheid South Africa makes available British government files from the Foreign, Colonial, Dominion and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices spanning the period 1948 to 1980.
AP Newsroom
AP Newsroom (formerly AP Images) contains photos and audio gathered by Associated Press reporters around the world. Content is updated daily and continuously. The archive also includes the NYC Associated Press Daybook (the AP Daybook), the current year's photo report, and historical images dating from the 1500s. Photos and audio may be downloaded or printed.
AM (Adam Matthew Digital Collections)
Archive Explorer is a single search for all Adam Matthew content collections accessed by NYU Libraries.
Archive Finder
Archive Finder is a current directory which describes thousands of collections of primary source material housed in repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Archives Direct (Adam Matthew)
Archives Direct is a suite of collections sourced from The National Archives, Kew, the official archive of the United Kingdom. Containing diplomatic correspondence, letters, reports, surveys, material from newspapers, statistical analyses, published pamphlets, ephemera, military papers, profiles of prominent individuals, maps and many other types of document, it consists of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the British state’s point of view. Archives Direct also features a contextualising chronology spanning the date range of the entire suite of collections, and (for selected collections) map galleries showcasing the hundreds of colour maps included throughout the material.
Archives of Sexuality and Gender
The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history. The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program consists of four archives: 1. LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part I, 2. LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part II, 3. Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century, and 4. International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture.
ARTbibliographies Modern
ARTbibliographies Modern provides indexing to art, architecture and design journals, essays, books, exhibition catalogs and dissertations. Publications indexed date from approximately 1973 through the present, while the subject focus is late 19th-century to the present.
ARTstor
ARTstor is a repository of images of art, architecture, and design. The images are sourced from museums, libraries, archives, and photographers. ARTstor includes a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and teaching. ARTstor is supplemented by additional content, including publicly available image collections and locally-produced NYU collections.
Artstor has merged with JSTOR. You can now search for Artstor images through the JSTOR platform. This link directs you to the JSTOR image search.

In order to download images, users must create an account.
Atla Historical Monographs Collection
Provides history and religious studies researchers with over 10 million pages and 29,000 documents focused on religious thought and practice. Eleven thematic series provide researchers with specialized content spanning from the 13th century through 1922. The eleven series include: Biblical Research Perspectives, 1516-1922; Catholic Engagements with the Modern World, 1487-1918; Christian Preaching, Worship, and Piety, 1559-1919; Global Religious Traditions, 1760-1922; Global Theological Perspectives, 1322-1922; Islam in the Modern World, 1804-1918; Jewish Studies Perspectives, 1800-1918; Missions and Missionaries Around the World, 1611-1922; Perspectives on Ancient Civilizations, 1200-1922; Religion and Social Change, 1723-1921; Religious Leaders and Thinkers, 1516-1922.
BBC Shakespeare Plays
The BBC Shakespeare Plays features full-length performances of the complete corpus of William Shakespeare's plays, produced by the British Broadcasting Company for television between 1978 and 1985.
Bibliography of British and Irish History
The Bibliography of British and Irish History 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 55 BC to the present. It is the successor to the Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History, available online from 2002 to 2009. The complete database now contains just over 600,000 records, and is updated three times a year, usually in February, June and October.
Black Authors, 1556-1922
Created from the renowned holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Black Authors, 1556-1922, is the most complete and compelling collection of its kind. It offers more than 550 fully catalogued and searchable works by black authors from the Americas, Europe and Africa, expertly compiled by the curators of Afro-Americana Imprints collection, the largest existing collection of its kind. Found within are wide-ranging genres, including personal narratives, autobiographies, histories, expedition reports, military reports, novels, essays, poems and musical compositions.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
Includes 10,000 pages of diaries and letters revealing the experiences of approximately 500 women. The collection now includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
British Literary Manuscripts Online
British Literary Manuscripts Online is a digitized collection of manuscripts of British authors. It contains poems, plays, novels, diaries, journals, correspondence, and other papers from major library collections, reproduced in facsimile and searchable via detailed descriptive information.
British Online Archives (Microform Academic Publishers)
Contains a wide range of archival content including related to British history within the humanities and social sciences. The database includes the collections of British Labour Party papers; World News in Indian Newspapers, 1782-1908; Gender, Feminism, and the British Left, 1944-1991; and Power and Profit: British Colonial Trade in America and the Caribbean, 1678-1825.
British Periodicals
British Periodicals provides access to page images and searchable full text of periodicals from the British Isles, published from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth.

Databases for Great Britain C-D

Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920
Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920 provides access to searchable digitized copies of books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera pertaining to the Caribbean islands, from the 16th to the early 20th century, in English, French, Spanish, and other European languages. Materials in this resource have been assembled from the holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Caribbean Literature
Caribbean Literature is a searchable collection primarily of poetry and fiction, with a selection of non-fiction works, produced in the Caribbean islands or by authors from that region during the 19th and 20th centuries. It includes numerous hard-to-find works in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and regional creoles, as well as a set of reference works for Caribbean creole languages.
Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876
Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876 provides access to searchable digitized copies of newspapers printed in the Caribbean islands during the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily in English, with numerous titles in Spanish and French and some in Danish. Materials in this resource have been assembled from the holdings of the American Antiquarian Society.
Cecil Papers
The Cecil Papers are a privately held archive of sixteenth and seventeenth-century manuscripts, consisting principally of the correspondence of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598) and his son Robert, the 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563-1612). The collection documents their various official roles. In addition, the collection contains documents acquired by Robert Cecil that had belonged to his rival, Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex.
Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections
The Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections database contains several searchable, full-text digital collections of British and American literary works from the 16th to the 20th centuries, including fiction, poetry, and drama. This database also includes access to The Bible in English, the Annual Bibliography of American Literature (ABELL), and Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare.
Chatham House Online Archive
The research, publications, speeches and archives of the leading international affairs think tank, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London. High level analysis and research on almost 100 years of global events and issues. Includes 'behind the doors' insight into the real movers and shakers, influencers and deal brokers. For researchers of international affairs, economics, law, and business, diplomacy, security and terrorism, environment, development, war and peace studies.
Colonial America
Colonial America consists of over thousands of volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus extracted documents associated with them. This collection covers aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history, the early-modern Atlantic world, the Caribbean and the nascent British Empire. Covering the period 1606 to 1822, CO 5 constitutes the original correspondence of the the colonial governments with the Board of Trade, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, together holding responsibility for the British possessions in mainland North America and the Caribbean.
Colonial State Papers/Calendar of 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.Also includes 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.
Confidential Print: Africa 1834-1966
Confidential Print: Africa 1834-1966 originated out of a need to preserve the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. This collection contains single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports, and texts of treaties. The documents begin with coastal trading in the early nineteenth century and the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa.
Confidential Print: Latin America 1833-1969
Confidential Print: Latin America provides access to searchable digital facsimiles of documents generated by the British Foreign Office now held at The National Archives, U.K. It includes reports, dispatches, correspondence, economic analyses, and other documents covering Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, between 1833 and 1969. For certain periods and regions, only selective files are available; for precise coverage, users should consult the scope notes in the introduction to this resource (under "Quick Links" on the resource homepage or via this link here).
Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969
The Confidential Print series has been issued by the Foreign and Colonial Offices since c. 1820. The series originated out of a need for the Government to preserve all of the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. The content consists of reports, dispatches, correspondence, political summaries, economical analysis, and description of leading personalities The collection covers a broad sweep of history from c. 1839 to 1969, taking in the countries of the Arabian peninsula, the Levant, Iraq, Turkey and many of the former Ottoman lands in Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt and Sudan.
Confidential Print: North America
The Confidential Print series issued by the Foreign and Colonial Offices since c1820 originated out of a need for the Government to preserve all of the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. Some of these were one page letters or telegrams – others were large volumes or texts of treaties. In this resource one can review documents from the North American Confidential print series from 1824-1961.
Contemporary Women's Issues
Contemporary Women's Issues is a multidisciplinary, full-text database that brings together relevant content from mainstream periodicals, the alternative press, and "gray" literature (including hard-to-find newsletters, NGO research reports, and ephemeral publications from research institutes and grass roots organizations), with a focus on the critical issues and events that influence women's lives in more than 190 countries. It includes English-language titles from East and West Africa, Asia, and South and Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe. The records are indexed by 17 categories, including subject, region, article type, and publication type.
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 gathers the raw data about crime, its solutions, and the popular response into one archive. It is an archive comprising more than 2 million pages. It contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals, and rare printed matter. The archive's focus is on the most rapid period of evolution for crime and its associated legal/penal systems: the long nineteenth century, a period of major social upheaval and technological development, from wars to the Industrial Revolution.
Defining Gender
Defining Gender explores the study and analysis of gender, leisure, and consumer culture from 1406 to 1917. This collection of original primary source materials from British archives includes ephemera, pamphlets, college records and exam papers, commonplace books, diaries, periodicals, letters, ledgers, account books, educational practice and pedagogy, government papers from the Home Office and Metropolitan police, illustrated writings on anatomy, midwifery, art and fashion, manuscript journals, poetry, novels, ballads, drama, receipt books, literary manuscripts, travel writing, and conduct and advice literature. This broad range of documents is organized around the following themes: conduct and politeness, domesticity and the family, consumption and leisure, education and sensibility, the body. Manuscripts, printed works, and illustrations combine to address the key issues from both masculine and feminine perspectives.
Dictionary of Irish Biography
The Dictionary of Irish Biography, a collaborative project between Cambridge University Press and the Royal Irish Academy, contains over 9,000 signed biographical articles which describe and assess the careers of subjects in all fields of endeavor, including politics, law, religion, literature, journalism, architecture, painting, music, the stage, science, medicine, engineering, entertainment and sport.
Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts
For historians, theologians, political scientists, and sociologists studying the religious and social upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts gives researchers immediate, Web-based access to an extensive range of seminal works from the Reformation and post-Reformation eras.
Digital Library of the Caribbean
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. It provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical, and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections. Resources are in English, French, Spanish, and other Caribbean languages.
Documents on British Policy Overseas
The Documents on British Policy Overseas‎(1898 - 1990) database is composed of documents selected by official FCO historians. DBPO allows researchers to gain a more complete understanding of the tensions, motivations, and relationships that shaped Europe and the world in the 20th Century.

Databases for Great Britain E-F

Early Encounters in North America
Early Encounters in North America contains 1,482 authors and over 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters. Material has been indexed so that it can be used in new ways. For example, one can identify all encounters between the French and the Huron between 1650 and 1700.
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
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. Searchable full text is also available for a subset of the collection.
Early European Books
Early European Books Online encompasses European printed material, and material printed in European languages, from the early modern period. The contents are drawn from major repositories including the Danish Royal Library, the National Central Library in Florence, the National Library of France, the National Library of the Netherlands, and the Wellcome Library in London. The works encompass all the major fields of human endeavor, including science, medicine, philosophy, theology, literature, history, political science, travel and exploration. The database features full-color, high-resolution (400 ppi) facsimile images scanned directly from the original printed sources. Each book has been captured in its entirety, complete with its binding, edges, endpapers, blank pages and any loose inserts, providing scholars with a wealth of information about the physical characteristics and provenance histories of the original artifacts. The database also allows users to search for and zoom in on specific pages that feature illuminated lettering, marginalia, maps, portraits or other graphic features.
Early Experiences in Australasia: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1788-1901
Early Experiences in Australasia: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1788–1901 provides views of events in the region from the arrival of the first settlers through to Australian Federation at the close of the nineteenth century. Through first-person accounts, including letters and diaries, narratives, and other primary source materials, we are able to hear the voices of the time and understand the experiences of those in new lands.
Early Modern England: Society, Culture and Everyday Life, 1500-1700
The Early Modern England: Society, Culture and Everyday Life, 1500-1700 database provides access to sources for examining the lived experience of people who witnessed this pivotal era of English history. From 'ordinary' people through to more prominent individuals and families, these documents show how everyday working, family, religious and administrative life was experienced across England.
East India Company
This East India Company digital resource allows students and researchers to access a large collection of primary source documents from the India Office Records held by the British Library.
Economist Historical Archive
Economist Historical Archive contains searchable complete copies of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2012.
Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare
Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare contains searchable full text of eleven major editions of Shakespeare's works from the First Folio of 1623 to the Cambridge edition of 1863–66, plus contemporary printings of individual plays and poems, selected apocrypha and related works. The collection also includes adaptations, sequels, and burlesques from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Eight Centuries
Searches numerous indexes and web-based resources from 1106 until 1930 CE. It provides references and links out to periodicals, books, artworks, and government documents (US and UK). These cover all subject areas.
Some resources identified in this database may not be available directly but we could have access through another vendor. Please contact the library in those cases.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Eighteenth Century Collections Online provides access to facsimile page images and full text of works published in the British Isles (plus some from North America) during the 18th century. The collection includes books, pamphlets, and broadsides. Users can search within texts keyword and download them as PDFs.
Eighteenth Century Drama: Censorship, Society and the Stage
Eighteenth Century Drama is an archive of plays and documents associated with plays licensed between 1737 and 1824. The collection provides correspondence, playbills, and other documents that provide social context for the plays, and also includes the London Stage open access collection.
Eighteenth Century Journals
Eighteenth Century Journals brings together rare journals printed between 1685 and 1835, primarily in the British Isles (with some publications from India, the Caribbean, and Europe). Users can view and download page images and search transcribed full text for all journals in the collection.
Electronic Enlightenment
Electronic Enlightenment is a wide-ranging, online collection of edited correspondence from the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. The database provides immediate access to 70,057 historical documents, covering everything from religious tolerance to animal rights, vulcanology to classical archeology, economic modelling to celebrity culture.
Empire Online
Collection of digitized original documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world.
First World War
Drawn from archives across the globe, this wonderful collection of primary source documents offers a remarkable window on the lives and experiences of men and women during the First World War. The three available modules are 'Personal Experiences', 'Propaganda and Recruitment', and 'Visual Perspectives and Narratives'.
Food and Drink in History
From feast to famine, explore five centuries of primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition and food production.
Foreign Office Files: India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980
This collection consist of the British Government's files on the countries of South Asia from shortly before Indian partition and independence up to 1980. The papers in the files cover such issues as economic and industrial development, trade, migration, visits to South Asia by British politicians and by South Asian politicians to Britain and elsewhere, education, administrative reorganization, conflict over language, aid, political parties, agriculture and irrigation, and television and the press.
Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980
This digital collection makes available all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980. Allows access to eye-witness accounts, weekly and monthly summaries, annual reviews, reports and analyses, economic assessments, synopses on Chinese personalities, and more.
Foreign Office Files for Japan, 1919-1952
Published in three parts, this collection makes available extensive coverage of British Foreign Office files dealing with Japan between 1919 and 1952:

- Japan and Great Power Status, 1919-1930
- Japanese Imperialism and the War in the Pacific, 1931-1945
- Occupation of Japan, 1946-1952
Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981
Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981 includes Foreign Office Files for the Middle East Module I; Foreign Office Files for the Middle East Module II; and Foreign Office Files for the Middle East Module III - This collection is an essential resource for understanding the events in the Middle East during the 1970s. It addresses the policies, economies, political relationships and significant events of every major Middle East power. Conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli War, the Lebanese Civil War and the Iranian Revolution are examined in detail, as are the military interventions and peace negotiations carried out by regional and foreign powers like the United States and Russia. Commercial interests are also scrutinized, with in-depth analyses of Middle East nations’ economic stability and reviews of international arm sales policies. The activities of oil producing nations such as Saudi Arabia are closely monitored, with particular reference to the Gulf States and members of OPEC.
Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters
Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters is a digital collection of primary source documents that provides context for the anglophone world from 1650-1920. Users can discover documents like pamphlets, diaries, letters, and images that reveal the plight of colonizers and indigenous peoples.

Databases for Great Britain G-I

Gender: Identity and Social Change
Gender: Identity and Social Change includes primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. This collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics. Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. The earliest documents are from the nineteenth century and the latest from the early twenty-first century.
Gerritsen Collection--Women's History Online, 1543-1945
This database is the definitive cross-cultural resource for information on women's history. It spans more than four centuries and 15 languages and includes over two million pages in full image. Users can trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of that country's feminist movement on other countries and their movements. The Gerritsen Collection also provides immediate access to many primary sources from around the world that were previously available only in a limited number of rare book rooms.
Global Commodities
This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years.
Grand Tour
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. This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections. We include letters; diaries and journals; account books; printed guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings and sketches; architectural drawings and maps.
HathiTrust
HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository and highly functional access platform. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives. Bibliographic and full text search are available for all volumes in HathiTrust. Public domain volumes are freely accessible to the public and can be downloaded in their entirety with authentication by persons affiliated with partner institutions. NYU Libraries is a HathiTrust partner institution.
History Vault
ProQuest History Vault first launched in 2011 and consists of manuscript and archival collections digitized in partnership and from a wide variety of archival institutions. Major collection areas in History Vault focus on Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th Century, Southern Life and Slavery, Women's Rights, International Relations, American Politics and Society with a strong focus on the 20th Century, and labor unions, workers and progressive and radical politics in the 20th Century.
ICLR Online
ICLR Online has searchable texts and PDFs of the English Law Reports from 1865 to present, Weekly Law Reports, Industrial Cases Reports and Digests, Business Law Reports and Digests, and Public and Third Sector Law Reports and Digests. The present Law Reports series are the Appeal Cases, Chancery Division, Family Division, and Queens Bench Division. The Citator+ indexes and stores information about all cases published by leading English case report series, including but not limited to those cases published by the ICLR. Citator+ information includes appellate history and subsequent judicial consideration of the case and statutes and statutory words and phrases considered in the case.
India, Raj and Empire
These are manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland covering South Asian history between 1615 and 1947. These collections are browsable by manuscript reference, theme and date order.
Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period includes searchable full text and page images for volumes of poetry by approximately 50 Irish women writing between 1768 and 1842. The collection also offers numerous biographical and critical essays prepared by leading scholars

Databases for Great Britain J-M

John Johnson Collection: An Archive of Printed Ephemera
The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera provides access to selected items offering insights into the changing nature of everyday life in Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Categories include Nineteenth-Century Entertainment, the Booktrade, Popular Prints, Crimes, Murders and Executions, and Advertising.
John Milton Bibliography
Milton: A Bibliography, compiled by John Shawcross of the University of Kentucky, brings together all manuscripts and editions of John Milton's works and all studies and critical statements concerning his life and works, all allusions and quotations, and all significant imitations during the years 1624-1799.
Keesing's World News Archive
Keesing’s World News Archive is an archive of notable international events. The archive started in 1931-87 as Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, which was published in print, and continued as Keesing’s Record of World Events from 1987 to the present.
Left Index (EBSCO)
Search the diverse literature of the Left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Other topics covered include the labor movement, ecology and environment, race and ethnicity, social and cultural theory, sociology, art and aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law and globalization. Historically significant early Left publications such as The People (est. NY 1891) and The Class Struggle (1931-1937) along with classic texts by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and others, written in the formative years of the Left are also covered. Dates of coverage: 1984 to present.
Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals
The Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals database is a digital archive of newspapers covering topics from the perspective of the political left.
The Listener Historical Archive 1929-1991
Developed as the medium for reproducing broadcasts, The Listener (1929-1991) was the weekly newspaper published by the BBC. The complete archive of this landmark publication is an essential witness to the intellectual and cultural history of the twentieth century, and also to the golden years of radio and television.
Literary Manuscripts Leeds
Literary Manuscripts Leeds contains complete facsimile images of manuscripts of 17th and 18th century verse held in the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds. These manuscripts can be read and explored in conjunction with a database of first lines, last lines, attribution, author, title, date, length, verse form, content and bibliographic references for poems within the collection. Additional features include interactive essays, biographies, a palaeography section with transcriptions and alphabets, and color images demonstrating 17th and 18th century English handwriting.
Literary Print Culture: The Stationers Company Archive
Literary Print Culture: The Stationers’ Company Archive is a large collection of primary source documents from the Stationers' Company in London, from the 16th century to the present. Scholars can use these documents to study the workings of the early English book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions, and the history of bookbinding.
London Low Life
London Low Life is a full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London.In addition to the digital documents, London Low Life contains a wealth of secondary resources, including a chronology, interactive maps, essays, online galleries and links to other useful websites.
Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926
Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926 provides access to international and foreign law, including monographs on the laws of foreign jurisdictions. This resource includes titles from the 19th and early 20th century, as well as classics in European international law since the 17th century.
Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources, 1600-1970
Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources, 1600-1970 complements the collection of treatises found in Foreign, Comparative and International Law 1600-1926. Importantly, it provides an interpretive analysis with books on codes, the “primary sources” of law.
Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926
Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926 covers a vast range of legal history from the beginnings of the modern period to the early twentieth century.
The Making of the Modern World
The Making of the Modern World: Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature 1450-1850" provides digital facsimile images on every page of 61,000 works of literature on economic and business published from 1450 through 1850. Full-text searching on more than 12 million pages provides researchers unparalleled access to this vast collection of material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport.
MEMSO: Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online
MEMSO is a resource for the study of Britain and its place in the world during the medieval and early modern period (c. 1100-1800). It combines the key printed sources for English, Irish, Scottish and Colonial history with original manuscripts and the latest web technologies.
Migration to New Worlds
Migration to New Worlds provides access to digitized images of unique primary sources related to migration from Great Britain, Ireland, Europe and Asia to the Americas and Australasia over a 400-year period, with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. Materials include Colonial Office files on emigration, diaries and travel journals, ship logs, printed literature, objects, watercolors, and oral histories.
MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB)
The MLA International Bibliography provides bibliographic records for books, book chapters, journal articles, and dissertations published in the fields of modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Full text is available for some articles. The MLAIB covers items published from around 1920 to the present.
Music Index
The Music Index offers comprehensive indexing and abstracts for more than 660 journals in the field of music, with selective coverage for an additional 200-plus journals. The online database extends back to 1964; for publication dates 1949-1964, consult the physical print volumes in the Music Reference section (Bobst 7th floor), call number ML118.M987.
Music Periodicals Database
Music Periodicals Database (formerly International Index to Music Periodicals) is a research database for periodical articles in music from 1874 to the present, with indexing for more than 600 journals and full text for more than 220.

Databases for Great Britain N-P

Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals
Contains a wide range of British newspapers and journals published from 1800-1900. Includes material not only from Great Britain ( but not Wales) but also from a number of British possessions at the time, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Gale)
Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century, with archives releasing incrementally. ** The database includes the collections Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; British Politics & Society; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture; Children's Literature and Childhood; Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest; European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection; Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature; Photography: The World Through the Lens; Religion, Society, Spirituality, and Reform; Science, Technology, and Medicine: 1780-1925, Parts I and II; And Women: Transnational Networks. **
Nineteenth Century Literary Society
The Nineteenth Century Literary Society database provides access to the historic John Murray Archive. From book history to travel writing, politics to poetry, this newly digitized resource introduces a repository for nineteenth century culture and the literary luminaries who shaped it.
Nixon years, 1969-1974
The Nixon Years, 1969-1974 covers Richard Nixon's entire presidential term and allows scholars and researchers the opportunity to assess, from a British, European and Commonwealth perspective, Nixon's handling of numerous Cold War crises, his administration's achievements, as well as his increasingly controversial activities and unorthodox use of executive powers culminating in Watergate and resignation. Top level Anglo-American discussions and briefing papers dominate this collection, which provides complete FCO 7 and FCO 82 files from The National Archives, Kew.
Oral History Online
Provides in-depth indexing to more than 2,700 collections of Oral History in English from around the world. The collection provides keyword searching of almost 281,000 pages of full-text by close to 10,000 individuals from all walks of life.
Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Orlando provides information on women writers (primarily British) from the Middle Ages to the present. Entries include biographical information, contextual material, timelines, links to other writers in the database, and bibliographies. Users can explore networks of influence and allusion among writers, or create their own chronologies of literary history.
Oxford Art Online
Oxford Art Online allows searching across both the Benezit Dictionary of Artists and Grove Art Online. The Benezit Dictionary of Artists is a standard reference collection of artists' biographies. It is international in scope, and covers all periods and styles. In addition to biographies, many entries include bibliographies, auction sales data, and images of signatures, monograms, or other marks of identification. Grove Art Online is composed of signed, scholarly encyclopedia entries on all aspects of global art, design and architecture. Individual articles are updated periodically, and new articles reflecting contemporary developments in the arts are added on a regular basis.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
It is a collection of more than 56,600 specially written biographies, which describe the lives of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
The Oxford English Dictionary is the authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers,1500-1700
Perdita Manuscripts is a digitized manuscript collection produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. Users can browse page images of manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA.
Performing Arts Periodicals Database
Performing Arts Periodicals Database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 210 international journals in the performing arts dating from 1864 to the near present.
PhiloLogic
PhiloLogic, developed by the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago, allows for alternate and sophisticated search capabilities, as designed by ARTFL, to certain databases available through NYU. These databases include: African-American Poetry 1760-1900, American Poetry, American Poetry Full-Text, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, English Poetry, English Prose Drama, and Patrologia Latina Database.
Play Index
Use this source to locate plays published individually or in anthologies published from 1949 to the present. Play Index covers a wide range of plays written in or translated into English, including mysteries, pageants, plays in verse, puppet performances, radio and television plays, and classic drama.
Political Extremism & Radicalism
Political Extremism and Radicalism offers researchers a diverse range of rare primary-source content, including campaign materials, periodicals, propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera. This digital archive allow researchers to explore a wide variety of fringe groups from both the right and left of the political spectrum in new and innovative ways, supporting questions on philosophical, social, political, and economic ideologies as well as on contemporary issues surrounding gender, sexuality, race, religion, civil rights, universal suffrage, and much more. It contains three modules: 1. Far-Right and Left Political Groups in the U.S., Europe, and Australia in the Twentieth Century; 2. Far-Right Groups in America; and 3. Global Communist and Socialist Movements.
Polling the Nations
Polling the Nations is a compilation of public opinion data gathered by polling organizations in the United States and 100 other countries from 1986 to the present. Sources include Harris International, The Pew Center, television news organizations (e.g., CBS, NBS, Fox, CNN), and international polling organizations (e.g., Eurobarometer). Users can search by question and survey and export data in Excel format.
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975
Rock and Roll explores the dynamic period of social, political and cultural change between 1950 and 1975. The resource offers thousands of colour images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia from this exciting period in our recent history. It includes an interactive chronology, visual resources, video footage, and more.
Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain
Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain is a multi-archive collection, comprising collections from The National Archives at Kew, the British Library and Senate House Library. The collection navigates the complex social climate of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain between the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1834 and the eventual abolition of the workhouse system in 1930.
PUNCH Historical Archive 1841-1992 (Gale)
Provides the fully text searchable online archive of Punch magazine. The archive a resource for researching and teaching 19th and 20th century political and social history on key themes such as World War I and World War II; Wars and Conflicts; Colonialism, Imperialism and End of Empire; Impact of New Technology and Modernity; Public Health, Conservation and Environmentalism; Social Change; and The Role of Women.

Databases for Great Britain R-S

RAI
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is a scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense.
Revolution and Protest Online
Examine how revolutions, protests, resistance, and social movements have shaped and transformed the human experience globally from the 18th to 21st century.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
RILM Abstracts is a comprehensive research database of international scholarship in the field of music, with over 1 million records in 143 languages from 178 countries, including journal articles, books, dissertations, concert and record reviews, and more.
RISM Series A/II: Music Manuscripts after 1600
RISM Series A/II: Music Manuscripts after 1600, published by the Répertoire International des Sources Musicale (International Inventory of Musical Sources), is an annotated index of music manuscripts held in libraries, archives, monasteries, schools and private collections around the world. Other publications of the RISM project are in book form and may be found in the Music Reference section on the 7th floor of Bobst Library, call number ML113.I67.
Rock's Backpages Library
Rock's Backpages Library is a digital archive of articles, reviews, interviews and more for the study of rock, pop, r&b, hip hop, and other popular music genres since the 1950s.
Romanticism : Life, Literature and Landscape
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape provides access to digitized images of manuscripts, artworks, and correspondence from the Wordsworth Trust, focusing on William Wordsworth and his circle. This collection also includes the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth and manuscripts from Romantic writers including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey and Robert Southey.
Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926
Provides over 14,000 primary source titles based on Joseph Sabin's bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana. Materials describe every aspect of life in the Western Hemisphere from 1500 to the 1890s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more. Searchable in a variety of ways, including: author, title, year of publication, and subject.
Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period contains searchable full text of Romantic-era poetry composed by Scottish women, as well as contemporary critical reviews and numerous scholarly essays on the poets and their work.
Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War
Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War contains British government secret intelligence and foreign policy files from 1873 – 1953. The content enables rich research into the intelligence, foreign policy, international relations, and military history in the period of Appeasement, through the Second World War, and into the early Cold War. Provides insights into Britain’s spies, security agents, codebreakers, and more.
Service Newspapers of World War Two
Service Newspapers of World War Two is a digital resource that reveals the story of war as told by the newspapers that brought information, entertainment and camaraderie to the forces at home and overseas. Explore over 200 titles from key nations across the globe that took part in the world-changing conflict.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 - 1974
The Sixties is a full text resource consisting of diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice.In addition to the primary source documents there are secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
Slavery and Anti-Slavery includes documents from the United States and Europe, as well as other parts of the world. In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, Slavery and Anti-Slavery contains documents from several archives originally available only on microfilm.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law brings together essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. The cases go into the 20th century, because long after slavery was ended, there were still court cases based on issues emanating from slavery.
Slavery in Jamaica, records from a family of slave owners, 1686-1860
The Slavery in Jamaica collection contains records detailing the Goulburn family’s ownership of Amity Hall plantation and associated properties in Jamaica during the 17th and 18th centuries. Most of the papers concern the properties when they were administered by Conservative MP Henry Goulburn between 1805 and 1856.
Social Theory
Social Theory contains the full text of some of the most influential writing in social, political, and economic thought and theory from the eighteenth century to the present day. Included in the content are important works by such theorists as Auguste Comte, Max Weber, Theodor Adorno, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Jürgen Habermas, Frederick Engels, and Michel Foucault, among many others.
South Asian Records of the USPG (via British Online Archives)
The documents in this resource come from the archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). Some are true archives, arising from the work of the Society in India; some are manuscripts which cover the period when the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded in 1698 was working with the Royal Danish (Lutheran) Mission, founded in 1705. They chart the history of Anglican Protestant engagement in the region from shortly after the strategic turning point in the fortunes of the East India Company wrought by Colonel Robert Clive in the 1750s, through to the toppling of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the controversial changes to the EIC's charter in 1813, the Sepoy Rebellion of 1856-1857, and on right through to Partition in 1947. As with the Society's missions elsewhere in the world, the documents also trace the gradual shift that began in the early 19th century from a church dependent on English priests to one increasingly led by indigenous clergy.
South Asian Records of the USPG (via British Online Archives)
The documents in this resource come from the archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). Some are true archives, arising from the work of the Society in India; some are manuscripts which cover the period when the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded in 1698 was working with the Royal Danish (Lutheran) Mission, founded in 1705. They chart the history of Anglican Protestant engagement in the region from shortly after the strategic turning point in the fortunes of the East India Company wrought by Colonel Robert Clive in the 1750s, through to the toppling of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the controversial changes to the EIC's charter in 1813, the Sepoy Rebellion of 1856-1857, and on right through to Partition in 1947. As with the Society's missions elsewhere in the world, the documents also trace the gradual shift that began in the early 19th century from a church dependent on English priests to one increasingly led by indigenous clergy.
State Papers Online (SPO)
Part I: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Domestic; Part II: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Foreign, Scotland, Borders, Ireland and Registers of the Privy Council; Part III: The Stuarts and Commonwealth, James I - Anne I, 1603-1714: State Papers Domestic; Part IV: The Stuarts and Commonwealth, James I - Anne I, 1603-1714: State Papers Foreign, Ireland; Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 1: State Papers Domestic, Military, Naval and Registers of the Privy Council; Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 2: State Papers Foreign, Low Countries and Germany;
Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 3: State Papers Foreign, Western Europe; Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782, Part 4: State Papers Foreign, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Turkey; The Stuart and the Cumberland Papers from the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle.

Databases for Great BritainT-Z

Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive (TLS)
The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive contains every page of every copy of the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) published from 1902 to 2011. The database is searchable by author or contributor; the identities of the contributors to the TLS who were published anonymously until 1974 are disclosed for the first time and augmented by biographical sketches.
Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War
The trench journals and unit magazines of the First World War are a source of information on the common serviceman and woman’s experience of the war. These magazines were written by and for every type of unit from every combatant nation. As such they contain the hitherto unheard voices of hundreds of thousands of men and women writing from every facet of the conflict.
Twentieth Century Drama, 2nd Edition
Twentieth-Century Drama, Second Edition contains a collection of published plays from throughout the English-speaking world, covering the history of modern drama from the 1890s to the present day, alongside unpublished works by major writers and Pulitzer Prize winners.
UK National Archives
The UK National Archives database offers access to digitized records across a variety of subject areas.
**Users are required to register for a free account and be logged in to be able to download documents.**
Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels
Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels contains digitized images of comic books and graphic novels from the 1960’s to the works of modern sequential artists. The collection also contains materials about comics, including interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism from The Comics Journal and other secondary sources.
Victorian Popular Culture
Victorian Popular Culture is an essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The resource is divided into four self-contained sections: Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema; Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment; Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks; Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic.
West Indies: Slavery, Plantations and Trade, 1759-1832
The West Indies: Slavery, Plantations, and Trade, 1759-1832 collection contains business records, legal documents, and correspondence relating to plantation owner Nathaniel Phillips' activities in the West Indies.
Women in The National Archives
The finding aid brings together the results of a five year project by staff at Kew and enables researchers to quickly locate details of any document relating to women in the National Archives at Kew. It is far more detailed and extensive than anything available elsewhere on the web and has the benefit of ranging across all of the classes of material held at the National Archives. The original documents focus on the campaign for women's suffrage in Britain, 1903-1928, and the granting of women's suffrage in colonial territories, 1930-1962. Prominent suffragettes include Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, the Pankhursts, Emily Wilding Davison, Clara Giveen and Rachel Peace (alias Jane Short).
Youth and Popular Culture Magazine Archive
The Youth and Popular Culture Magazine Archive database provides access to periodicals from 1940s-present, highlighting topics and trends of youth culture like fashion, rock and roll, sexuality and dating, as well as youth portrayal in the media. At completion, this collection will have 200,000 pages from periodicals published in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Most of the periodicals within the collection are difficult to find and no longer published, such as Clarity Magazine from the 1940s and Petticoat from the 1960s, providing insight to the various content that influenced youth culture throughout the decades. Other titles include: 19, FLiP Teen Magazine, Fab 208, Intro Magazine, It's Here! And Now!, Letterman Magazine, and Look Now.