fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
Access a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores. These rare documents were sourced from the British Library and other renowned institutions. Covering more than a century, British Theatre, Music, and Literature is without equal as a resource for 19th century scholars. The collection provides a detailed look at the state of the British art world with, for example, not only manuscripts and compositions, but also documents such as personal letters, annotated programs, meeting minutes, and financial records, offering scholars an unmatched glimpse into the inner workings of the arts world and life in Victorian Britain.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
Papers, notebooks and casebooks from the survey into London life and labour, 1886-1903. Booth family papers are also included.
An invaluable research tool providing biographical information about individual clergymen and the succession of clergy in individual parishes. You will also find details about patrons, schools and schoolteachers.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
This archive comprises more than 2 million pages from manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals. It unites a number of disciplines, from law, criminology, and history to studies of popular culture and fiction. The full story of a notable crime can be revealed via court transcripts, prison and transportation records, petitions, police advertisements, collections of newsprint cuttings, ballad broadsheets, and criminological comment. Digitally available for the first time is a wealth of English archival crime material, both rural, as with the Althorp papers, and urban, with collections of police correspondence from London and Manchester. The extensive notebooks of English judge John Duke Coleridge have also been digitized, and also collections of police correspondence from London and Manchester.
The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes and includes material in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.
This short video gives tips about using the archive.
ECCO is a searchable corpus of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800. It currently contains over 180,000 titles with over 32 million fully-searchable pages. It is a digitization of the 18th century section of the works catalogued in the English Short-title Catalogue (ESTC). The ESTC project has been recording all works published or printed in Britain, Ireland, territories under British colonial rule, and the United States. It also catalogues material printed elsewhere which contains significant text in English, Welsh, Irish or Gaelic, as well as any book falsely claiming to have been printed in Britain or its territories.
Explore primary sources for gender history, women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men's movement, the body, domesticity and the family. The records available include some from pressure groups giving details of 20th century lobbying and activism.
Watch this 40 minute webinar to understand more about the content available.
This video introduces you to what's available
Additional access instructions:
Authentication required for off campus access
Georgian Papers Online is a catalogue created by the Royal Archives to make available in digitised form the historic manuscripts held in the Royal Archives and Royal Library but it is not yet a complete catalogue of the Georgian Papers. The catalogue contains descriptions and digitised images of over 200,000 pages of documents dating from the reigns of George I to William IV, including personal letters, diaries, account books and records of the Royal Household. Check What's in the catalogue? in the left hand column for lists of documents available.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
This gives a wide range of statistics on population, education, (un)employment, agriculture, industry, motor vehicles, railways, TV and radio etc.
Data can be viewed as PDF (downloadable) or Excel format which can then be exported. Make sure to use the "Search within book" option, not Spinger's general search box at the top of the screen.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
An online archive of just under 68,000 printed items covering aspects of everyday life in Britain in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. You will find posters and handbills for theatrical and non-theatrical entertainments, broadsides relating to murders and executions, book and journal prospectuses, popular topographical prints, and a wealth of different kinds of printed advertising material.
Watch this short video introducing the collection.
Over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages providing historical records on over 3.35 million people. Facilities are provided to allow you to link together records relating to the same individual, and to compile biographies of the best documented individuals (free registration required if you want to do this).
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
Access a range of primary and secondary sources covering London from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. As well as documents, you will find interactive maps, illustrations and photographs to really bring the streets to life.
Watch this video for a quick overview
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
This archive contains primary sources covering the development of urban centres and the major restructuring of society that took place during the Industrial Revolution. The collections offer an understanding of key events such as Chartist agitation, Anti-Corn Law disturbances, the Peterloo massacre and tensions underlying policy formation and the nature of Victorian government. Home Office records reflect the varied responsibilities of the Home Secretary's office, including petitions to the Crown, appointments to public offices, disturbances and sedition, inventions, poor relief, prison administration, public health, public order, and the universities.
Get an overview in this short video.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
The national record of over 60,000 biographies, 72 million words, 11,000 portraits of significant, influential or notorious figures who shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century - extremely useful for detailed biographies about literary figures.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
Discover what life was like for the poorest communities in Victorian Britain, and explore the government policy, social reform movements and philanthropic efforts of charitable institutions that sought to alleviate poverty. This archive offers a multi-dimensional portrait of poverty from the perspectives of central state officials, local bureaucrats and inspectors, social policy makers, politicians and people working in private voluntary organizations. Documents cover the complex social climate of 19th and early 20th century Britain between the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1834 and the abolition of the workhouse system in 1930.
For a quick overview, watch this. If you want an in-depth introduction to this resource, watch this 1 hour webinar (information about this specific resource starts at 8 min 30 secs).
Additional access instructions:
Use VPN for off campus access
London's Central Criminal Court records 1674-1913 - just under 200,000 trial details are available.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
As the 19th century opened in Britain, William Paley published his Natural Theology (1802), a text that seemed to successfully integrate 18th century natural science and religious belief into a sophisticated scheme proving that the universe demonstrated its own divine design. Liberal Christianity, however, would not go uncontested. The 19th century, instead, was punctuated by economic, social, and intellectual events that birthed two powerful waves of evangelical revival waves that in turn sparked highly influential religious and secular responses of a rationalist, philosophically organicist, or countercultural character. These disruptive events included the demographic upheavals of the early and second industrial revolutions, the mid-century revolutionary political upsurges of 1848, early trade union activity, stratigraphic geology spawned by the mining industry, and the natural selection thesis forcefully argued by Darwin's Origin of the Species (1859). All three types of intellectual response were associated with powerful impulses toward moral or social reform. It is impossible to consider the topic of religion in the long 19th century without considering its relationship to the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, temperance, conditions of labor, utopian experiments in living, missions to aid the poor, and the emergence of Christian Socialism and the Social Gospel movement, which this collection illustrates.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
An extensive range of primary and secondary sources, plus thematic essays on multiple aspects of feminism from 1776 to 1928.
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
A wide ranging archive which includes US Supreme Court records, books, pamphlets, newspapers and facsimiles of letters by the English abolitionist William Wilberforce etc
fully searchable in EBSCO Discovery
An essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries containing everything from full-text books, to posters and performance tickets.
Watch this 90 second video about how to store items for later use.
This short video explains more.
Additional access instructions:
Use the VPN for off campus access
Login to access services restricted to University members including off-campus passwords, edissertations and interlibrary loans
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