LibGuides: English Literature: Primary Sources: Digitized books, manuscripts, journals, & newspapers

Defining primary sources

Defining primary sources (Library of Congress):

"Primary sources are the raw materials of history — original documents and objects which were created at the time under study. They are different from secondary sources, accounts or interpretations of events created by someone without firsthand experience."

Primary source collections

C19: The Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
C19 draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index and Periodicals Index Online.
Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse This link opens in a new window
An extensive and reliable collection of Middle English electronic texts primarily from the Oxford Text Archive .
Early Canadiana Online (ECO) This link opens in a new window
Provides Web access to a digital full-text library of 2600+ primary sources in Canadian history from the first European contact to the late 19th century. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of literature and history.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
Contains the page-image full text of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Full-text database that makes available more than 155,000 volumes and over 30 million pages of historical works; in essence, every accessible English-language and foreign-language title published in the United Kingdom between 1701 and 1800.

HathiTrust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.

Literary Manuscripts This link opens in a new window
An essential research tool for all scholars and students researching Victorian literature. Most of these unique manuscripts are unavailable in any medium elsewhere. They are supplemented by some rare printed materials, including early editions annotated by the authors. Researchers and students can trace the close interconnection of these Victorian authors – and subsequently their texts – through the mass of personal correspondence between them, revealing the close circles in which the Victorian literary world moved.
Literary print culture : the Stationers' Company archive, 1554-2007. This link opens in a new window
Literary Print Culture: The Stationers' Company Archive, 1554-2007 showcases a diverse range of material from the archive of the Stationers' Company archive including constitutional records, court records, membership records, financial records, trade records, general administrative records, and charities and property records. The Stationers' Company Archive is one of the most important resources for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the establishment of legal requirements for publishing, especially copyright provisions, the printing and publishing community and the history of bookbinding.
Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new window
This resource contains full colour images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise these family letter collections along with full text searchable transcripts from the printed editions, where they are available. The original images and the transcriptions can be viewed side by side. Along with the letter collections themselves there are many additional features useful for teaching and research. These include: A chronology, a visual sources gallery, an interactive map, a glossary, family trees and links to other scholarly free to access digital resources useful for researching the medieval period.
Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new window
This project provides an extensive collection of manuscript materials for the study of medieval travel writing in fact and in fantasy. The core of the material is a magnificent collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries around the world and dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries.

Modernist Journals Project
The Modernist Journals Project is a multi-faceted project that aims to be a major resource for the study of modernism and its rise in the English-speaking world, with periodical literature as its central concern.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
A group of digital primary source collections from the nineteenth century, NCCO content includes monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics and more. The NCCO platform allows for searches across different content types and offers annotation and tagging tools. Materials for this program are sourced through partnerships with major world libraries as well as specialist libraries, and will be added over several years.
Orlando This link opens in a new window
Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present includes biographical and writing career entries on British women writers, selected non-British or international women writers, and selected British and international men. Also includes dated items representing events and processes in the accounts of these writers, but also in the areas of history, science, medicine, economics, the law, and other contexts.
Past Masters This link opens in a new window
Past Masters provides access to searchable full text databases of primary works, letters, journals, and notebooks from important philosophers and writers.
Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700 This link opens in a new window
Complete facsimile images of over 230 manuscripts written or compiled by women living in the British Isle during the 16th and 17th centuries. Contents include account books, advice, culinary writing, meditation, travel writing, and verse. Perdita manuscripts can be indexed by name, place, genre, and first lines of both poetry and prose.

Victorian Women Writers Project
Concerned with the exposure of lesser-known British women writers of the 19th century, this collection represents an array of genres - poetry, novels, children's books, political pamphlets, religious tracts, histories, and more.

Burney Newspapers Collection (17th and 18th centuries) This link opens in a new window
This database consists of the British Library's collection of the newspapers and news pamphlets gathered by Reverend Charles Burney. Although the majority is published in London, there are some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, as well as a handful of examples from the American colonies. It includes over 1,000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the 17th and 18th centuries.
British Library Newspapers (19th century) This link opens in a new window
This database features 48 British newspapers from the 19th century selected by the British Library's editorial board. Many of the newspapers are available in complete runs, and all are searchable full-text.
Nineteenth Century UK periodicals This link opens in a new window
This database contains 1.2 million pages of periodicals published in Great Britain from 1800-1900. It includes publications on women, children, leisure and sport, and humor.
Eighteenth Century journals I & II This link opens in a new window
This Portal brings together rare journals printed between c1685 and 1815, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics covered are extremely wide-ranging and include: the writings of Sir Isaac Newton; the French Revolution; reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe; political debates; and coffee house gossip and discussion.
Times Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
1785-1985

The History Subject Guide has a page on Primary Sources that is more detailed and spans different topics and regions. Check it out!

Find primary sources in Novanet

Use the Novanet Advanced Search to find primary sources. Adding primary source-related keywords to your Novanet search will help you to more easily locate primary source materials. Some keywords that can be used to locate primary sources are:

diaries	pamphlets
sources	archives
correspondence	interviews
notebooks	personal narratives
speeches	facsimiles
biography	reports
pictorial works	songs and music
manuscripts	notes, sketchbooks, etc.

The video below will walk you through searching for primary sources in Novanet.

Find primary sources in Google

Google and other search engines are also good for finding primary sources. Many libraries and other institutions have digitized primary source collections and made them available to the public. Use Google or other search engines to find primary source materials by adding primary source-specific terms (see "Find primary sources in Novanet" for a list). For example, 19th century Britain pamphlets.