British & UK History Digital Library

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The British Library

  • Collect Britain
    "Putting History in place: over 90,000 images and sounds from the UK and beyond."

1689: The English Bill of Rights

Act of Union Virtual Library
The Digital Resource for the Act of Union of 1800
"...is a unique collection of pamphlets, newspapers, parliamentary papers and manuscript material contemporary with the 1800 Act of Union between Ireland and Britain."

AIM25 - Archives in London and the M25 Area
"AIM25 is a major project to provide electronic access to collection level descriptions of the archives of over fifty higher education institutions and learned societies within the greater London area."

BOPCRIS
British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service
"You can use this web site to search and browse information from British Official Publications over the period 1688-1995. You can also read abstracts, and view detailed consistent subject indexing, of key documents. You can then read the digitised full-text version of a limited number of these documents...BOPCRIS currently [March 2002] contains 23,279 references to key British Official Publications 1688-1995."

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads
The allegro Catalogue of Ballads
"The Bodleian Library has unparalleled holdings of over 30,000 ballads in several major collections. The original printed materials range from the 16th- to the 20th-Century. The Broadside Ballads project makes the digitised copies of the sheets and ballads available to the research community."
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

British and Irish Legal Information Institute
"...provides access to the most comprehensive free and up-to-date collection of British and Irish primary legal materials on the internet. As at 14 May 2000, BAILII includes 17 databases covering 5 jurisdictions. The system contains around one gigabyte of legal materials and well over 100,000 searchable documents with about 2.5 million hypertext links."

The British Library

  • British Library Public Catalogue
  • British Library Newspaper Library
    • Newspaper Library Web Catalogue
      "...includes entries for over 50,000 newspaper and periodical titles from all over the world, dating from the 17th to the 21st century. The collections of the British Library Newspaper Library include: all UK national daily and Sunday newspapers from 1801 to the present; most UK and Irish provincial newspapers, some from the early 18th century onwards; selected newspapers from around the world in western and Slavonic languages, including extensive holdings from Commonwealth countries; and a wide range of UK and Irish popular periodicals, mainly weekly and fortnightly publications as well as some published less frequently, covering all subjects from fashion, pop music, and cinema, to sports, hobbies, and trades."

  • British Library Online Newspaper Archive
    The Online Facsimile Library
    Archives Newspapers, Magazines, Books, and Documents and can be searched for Ads, Articles, and Pictures.
    "...the world's first online archive of microfilmed historic newspapers.
    Newspaper issues from seven British dailies such as the Daily News, the
    Weekly Dispatch, and the Manchester Guardian have been selected due to
    their historic significance. They report an events like the Crimean War
    ending with the Treaty of Paris, the Boer War, and the armistice ending
    World War I...A digital archive of newspaper issues containing some 500,000 articles..." [description from press release]

  • British Library of Political & Economic Science (LSE)

  • National Sound Archive Catalogue
    "...includes entries for almost two-and-a-half million recordings held in the British Library National Sound Archive (NSA) and is updated daily. It is one of the largest catalogues of its kind anywhere in the world, covering both published and unpublished recordings in all genres from pop, jazz, classical and world music, to oral history, drama and literature, dialect, language and wildlife sounds."

British House of Commons Library Research Papers

British Official Publications Reader Information Service (BOPCRIS)
 "...contains 16,435 [as of 06/07/00] references to key British Official Publications 1833-1983, and is being developed as part of the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP)."

Cecil Slack and the Great War
"On it you will find a large collection of letters written and received by Cecil Moorhouse Slack, during the Great War of 1914 to 1918. Cecil's daughter-in-law, Lady Joan Slack, has put this collection into the public domain. These letters are a valuable source of information about the life of an infantry officer in the East Yorkshire Regiment in the 1914-1918 war, and about his fiancÈe, and their other friends and relations in Great Britain and Australia. On this site, you will also find activities for teachers and students, following National Curriculum Programmes of Study for Key Stages 2 and 3."
Maintained by Andrew Moore

COPAC Home Page
University Research Library Catalogue
"...provides FREE access to the merged online catalogues of 21 of the largest university research libraries in the UK and Ireland.."

The DiCamillo Companion To British & Irish Country Houses
"The Database is updated daily and currently lists over 6,900 houses, with images for over 850 houses. This undertaking will compile as many details as can be found about the houses, families who occupied them, and their estates, in a standardized format. The project will take many years to complete, but I believe that the Database is already a major resource, and the only comprehensive one online, for thumbnail information on these magnificent houses."
By Curt DiCamillo

Digital Library of Historical Directories
"...a digital library of eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century local and trade directories from England and Wales."
"Directories of counties and towns are among the most important sources for local and genealogical studies. They include lists of names, addresses and occupations of the inhabitants of the counties and towns they describe, and successive editions reflect the changes in the localities over a period of time...This online collection will bring together a greater number and range of directories than any one repository could provide."
- University of Leicester New Opportunities Fund

Edwin C. Bolles Collection, 1765-1921
A Digital Archive on the History and Topography of London
"The digital archive represents a comprehensive and integrated collection of sources and resources on the history and topography of London. Texts, images, and maps in the Bolles collection are all interconnected. Together they form a body of material, heterogeneous in form, but homogeneous in theme, that transcends the limits of print publication and exploits the flexibility of the electronic medium. The digitized maps are linked to each other, to relevant source texts, and to illustrations of the locations as they appeared a the time or at present. Similarly, the texts are linked to the maps and the images, and so on."
University Archives, Tufts Library, Tufts University

Electronic Journal of International History
(ISSN 1471-1443)
Published by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London

The Emancipation of Women: 1740-1920
"Biographies of 50 women who played a prominent part in the struggle for equality. The website also contains a database of written primary sources produced by, or about, these women and a collection of visual images that reflect the different views on the emancipation of women. The website also includes sections on Women in the 19th Century, Pressure Groups, Strategy & Tactics and Parliamentary Reform Acts.
From The Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia, British History 1700-1920

Encyclopaedia of British History: 1700-1930
"The encyclopaedia currently contains over 1,000 entries and is an attempt to show the history of Britain through the eyes of people from all levels of society."
Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia

Enemy Property
"This site contains summary details of some 30,000 records held at the Public Record Office relating to property in the United Kingdom seized between 1939 and 1945 from commercial organisations and individuals resident in countries with which the United Kingdom was at war."

English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century
Originally published in 1854 by Caroline Norton (1808-1877)
From the Victorian Women Writers Project Library

EU Parliaments Directorate General for Research

EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents From Western Europe
"The following links connect to Western European (mainly primary) historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. They shed light on key historical happenings within the respective countries (and within the broadest sense of political, economic, social and cultural history)."
By Richard Hacken, European Studies Bibliographer, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University

FamilySearch - Census Records
"You can choose the 1880 United States, 1881 British Isles, or the 1881 Canadian Census."
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Free Historic Maps
"Around 85,000 images are available for viewing using a standard Internet browser...The maps are dated between 1846 and 1899."
From Landmark Information Group

Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516
"The Gazetteer is a catalogue of markets and fairs in medieval England and Wales. This is the first comprehensive national survey. The project worked systematically through a range of sources to provide as much information as possible about each market and fair, with background information on places where they were held. The Gazetteer is valuable to those interested in all periods, as the markets and fairs established during the Middle Ages formed the core of the later network."
Compiled by Dr. Samantha Letters, Centre of Metropolitan History

History
The Web site of the Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London
"In addition to the evaluation and cataloguing of on-line resources in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, HISTORY provides high quality information about the history profession including books, articles, theses, seminars and historians (searchable as HISTORY On-Line)."

History in Focus
 Published by the Institute of Historical Research

History Today
Online edition

The Hockliffe Project
"...designed to promote the study of early British children's literature. It will provide internet access to the full texts of the Hockliffe Collection of Early Children's Books, owned by De Montfort University, and will accompany this archive with contextualising documents and research...The books in the Hockliffe Collection range in date from 1685 to the mid-twentieth century, although the majority of works were printed between 1760 and 1840."

Imperial War Museum - Online Exhibitions

Internet Library of Early Journals
"...is a joint project by the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford, conducted under the auspices of the eLib (Electronic Libraries) Programme. It aims to digitise substantial runs of 18th and 19th century journals, and make these images available on the Internet, together with their associated bibliographic data. 18th-century journals: Gentleman's Magazine ; The Annual Register ; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 19th-century journals: Notes and Queries ; The Builder ; Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.

Internet Modern History Sourcebook
"Like the long-established Internet Medieval Sourcebook, this project is intended to serve the needs of teachers and students in college survey courses in modern European history or modern Western Civilization."
Paul Halsall, Fordham University

Irish Penal Laws
Laws in Ireland for the Suppression of Popery
"The purpose of this site is not to discuss the historical context of the Penal Laws or their enforcement, or their effect, but simply to make the raw material accessible to historians, legal scholars, students, and other interested people...On this site you will find the text of those Penal Laws which were passed in Ireland during the reigns of William and Mary, William III, Anne, and George I and II, that is to say, from 1691 to 1760. In addition, the site contains certain English statutes relating to the status of Irish Catholics."
By M. Patricia Schaffer, JD Columbia University Law School

Library History Database
The British Isles to 1850
"A comprehensive series of files covering libraries, institutional, commercial and private in the British Isles from the late medieval period to the year 1850. The total number of libraries listed exceeds 25,000, with over 120,000 references to primary and secondary sources. Files include: all types of library searchable by type and by country; circulating libraries; subscription libraries; workplace libraries; country house libraries; private libraries"
By Robin Alston, Professor Emeritus, London University

Little Gidding: English Spiritual Traditions
"... The purpose of the site is to bring together texts and images that will provide a record of those rich and diverse traditions. The emphasis will be mainly on Anglican devotional and liturgical works of some literary distinctionórather than theological and doctrinal studiesóand the lives of the men and women who wrote them; but there will also be some attention paid to non-Anglican varieties of spirituality. My primary aim is to create a library of electronic texts that are accurate and typographically appealing.

 London Gazette, The - (dead link)

A London Provisioner's Day Book, 1635-1563 - Demonstration
"This web-page is designed to demonstrate a preliminary version of the interface for our online edition of the Day Book. Our goal is to electronically recreate the format and language of the original manuscript that was not conveyed in the sole published edition in 1848."

Maps of the French and Indian War
[Seven Years War]
From the Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society
Sections include: About the War ; About Maps ; Online Atlas ; View Maps.

Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873)



National Library of Australia

  • The George Raper Collection
    National Library of Australia Online Exhibit
    "In 1787, when only 17 years old, George Raper joined the crew of HMS Sirius.... Items in this collection provide wonderful insights into the life and work required of eighteenth-century midshipmen in the British Navy. Apart from their intrinsic value as an original record of hydrographic survey during the voyage of the First Fleet, the collection as a whole demonstrates the practical skills required by naval officers to master the theory of navigation. The collection brings together excellent examples of three types of documents of vital importance for sailorsócoastal profiles, maps and navigation calculations."

Nineteenth Century Children's Literature
 A bibliographic database of the the British Library's Children's Collection. The collection holds 2,369 titles on 5,527 fiches.
Edited by J. Barr

Penny Magazine
1832-1835
"...published every Saturday, was aimed at the working class. It was part of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge's program for liberal reform."

Picture Library Search
From UK's National Portrait Gallery
"...shows the most influential characters in British history portrayed by the finest artists of their generation...runs to some 10,000 items in our Main Collection, with a further 1,000,000 in the archive."

Roman Roads in Britain (etext)

Royal Historical Society Bibliography
"The Royal Historical Society bibliography, which is hosted by the Institute of Historical Research, is an authoritative guide to writing on British and Irish history from the Roman period to the present day...It contains over 300,000 entries including articles in journals and collective volumes, and including data from London's Past Online."

Statistical Accounts of Scotland
"The two Statistical Accounts of Scotland, covering the 1790s and the 1830s, are among the best contemporary reports of life during the agricultural and industrial revolutions in Europe. Learn more about the area in which you or your ancestors have lived, or use this key source to study the emergence of the modern British State and the economic and social impact of the world's first industrial nation...Based largely on information supplied by each parish church minister, the old (first) Statistical Account and the New (second) Statistical Account provide a rich record of a wide variety of topics: wealth, class and poverty; climate, agriculture, fishing and wildlife; population, schools, and the moral health of the people."

UK National Audit Office (NAO)

Victorian Times Project
"Victorian Times is a NOF-Funded Digitisation project examining social, political and economic developments in Victorian Britain (1837-1901)."

Victoriana Online
The Library includes "Hundreds of pages of transcribed original Victorian-era reference material, including sections from Cassell's Household Guide, Victorian etiquette books, scientific and social articles, magazines and more."

Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies
"We have documents, maps, books, photos, census, newspapers etc. relating to the history of all areas now within the present Borough of Wolverhampton including Bilston, Bushbury, Penn, Tettenhall, and Wednesfield."

Women as Portrayed in British World War II Advertising
"A brief look at how women were represented in popular advertising in the wartime Britain of the 1940's."
By Steve Johnson

The Women's Library

  • Suffrage Banners Collection
    "The Library houses an important collection of early twentieth century suffrage banners many designed and created by the artist based suffrage organisations the Artist's Suffrage League and the Suffrage Atelier."

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