Selected Primary Source Periodical Indexes
- 19th Century British Library NewspapersConsists of 19th century newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent 19th century Britain. Includes national and regional newspapers (e.g., those from both established country or university towns and the new industrial areas of the manufacturing Midlands) as well as publications from Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
- Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003Full color facsimile run of over 260,000 pages, including specials and presentation pieces. Full-text searchable and browsable individual issues, including specials and supplements. Articles and pages can be saved in the marked list then bookmarked, e-mailed and printed.
- New York Times Historical EditionSearchable full-text of the NYT from ProQuest, with keyword searching and date limiting.
Poole's Index to Periodical LiteratureCall Number: Young Library Reference AI3 .P7 1963A systematic article-level index to the subject matter of 19th century periodicals, covering 479 British and American periodicals for the years 1802-1906. Also see 19th Century MasterFile (electronic resource).
- The Curran IndexAdditions, Corrections, and Expansions of The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals
- London Times Digital Archive 1785-1985Over two centuries on-line for full-text searching of the London publication, more than 7 million articles, from 1785-1985. Widely recognized as the source for authoritative reports on politics, law, business and society. Extensive coverage of parliamentary debates, royal doings, obituaries, official appointments. Does not include the Sunday Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Times Educational Supplement, the Times Higher Education Supplement.
- Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900Call Number: Young Library Reference Z2005 .H6
Primary Sources
These databases contain primary source materials of particular interest to the study of Great Britain in the Victorian period.
- Literary Manuscripts: BergThis collection contains the Victorian manuscripts from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. Each author collection is included in its entirety, allowing users to browse and search the manuscripts as they would in the Berg Reading Room. Authors represented include: Matthew Arnold, The Brontës, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.
- Database of Mid-Victorian Wood-Engraved IllustrationRecords and images of 868 literary illustrations published in or around 1862, from Cardiff University’s Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research
- Defining Gender, 1450-1910"Advice Literature for men and women." Access to approximately 50,000 images of original manuscript and printed material, including a strong core of documents from the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Ephemeral material such as ballads, cartoons and pamphlets are featured alongside diaries, advice literature, medical journals, conduct books and periodicals.
- Dickens Journals Online (DJO)Freely available digital editions of Household Words, Household Narrative, Household Words Almanac, and All The Year Round.
- Empire OnlineOver 60,000 manuscripts and documents covering the reach of the British Empire, all the way to Australasia, South Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Also includes references to biographies and chronologies.
- Hansard 1803-2005Printed, searchable transcripts of British Parliamentary debates.
- HathiTrust Digital LibraryDigital preservation repository and access platform. 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. Full-text searchable. Public domain titles available full-text with linkblue login at the HathiTrust site.
- Internet Archive (Archive.org)"The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public."
- Masculinity: Men Defining Men and Gentlemen, 1560-1918Sources from the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Available in microfilm.
- NCSE: Nineteenth Century Serials EditionA browsable and keyword-searchable edition of six nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers, including the Monthly Repository (1806-1837) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833); Northern Star (1838-1852); Leader (1850-1860); English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864); Tomahawk (1867-1870); and Publishers’ Circular (1880-1890).
- Sex & Sexuality, 1640-1940: Literary, Medical and Sociological PerspectivesSources from the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. Available in microfilm.
- Women's Language and Experience, 1500-1940: Women's Diaries and Related Sources byCall Number: Young Library Ready Reference - Microform Guides (B 2002-09)Publication Date: 1994-Available in microfilm: B 2002-09
pt. 1. Sources from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire County Records Offices (16 reels).
pt. 1. Sources from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire County Records Offices (16 reels) -- pt. 2. Sources from Birmingham Central Library and Birmingham University Library (24 reels) -- pt.3 Sources from Suffolk County Record Office and Cambridge University Library (25 reels) -- pt.4 (27 reels) -- pt.5. Sources from Essex Record Office (20 reels) - pt.6. Sources from Wiltshire, Somerset and Hampshire Record Office (26 reels).
Materials in UK Libraries' Special Collections Research Center
The Special Collections Research Center at UK Libraries contains a number of primary research materials that may be useful in your research, including journals such as the Westminster Review and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Of special interest is the W. Hugh Peal Manuscripts Collection, which contains personal writings (e.g., diaries, letters) of the writers of the Romantic Period and other European writers.
Many materials are listed in InfoKat Discovery, but since not all materials will be found there, also consult the following research guides or contact the Special Collections Research Center for more information.
What is a Primary Source?
A primary source is the uninterpreted original document that contains the words of the witnesses or the first recorders of an event or creative work. Some examples of primary sources:
- Artifacts (clothing, furniture, tools, buildings)
- Experiments & lab report
- First–person accounts (including newspaper accounts)
- Government publications (statistics, court reports)
- Historical documents
- Internet resources (especially digitized versions of historical documents)
- Manuscripts, journals, diaries
- Observations
- Official papers
- Recordings