Renaissance or Early Modern Culture: Online Primary Sources

Delve into the earliest voyages of Vasco da Gama, the opening of trade with the Spice Islands, the colonisation of the Americas and Australasia, the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passages, and finally the race for the Poles with this robust primary source collection. Featuring rare manuscript and early printed material, highly illustrated maps and documents, diaries and ships' logs from some of the most well-known voyages in history, this collection provides access to key events in the history of European maritime exploration from c.1420-1920.

Bringing together unique primary sources drawn from world-class maritime archives and heritage collections Life at Sea takes a sociocultural approach, focusing on the individual experiences and personal narratives of seafarers. Through a broad range of sources, from journals and memoirs to ships’ logs and court records, the lives of ordinary seamen, merchants, whalers and pirates can be explored. This resource offers exciting new insights into three centuries of the Anglo-American maritime world. Covers c1650-1850.

Corpus consists of nearly 2000 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts. Recently added is a Provençal database that includes 38 texts in their original spellings. Genres include novels, verse, theater, journalism, essays, correspondence, and treatises. Subjects include literary criticism, biology, history, economics, and philosophy.

ARTstor is a digital image database containing over 1 million images. Images are grouped into collections and represent the canon of art history (as defined by major art history survey texts) as well as specialized collections. Look here to find Renaissance visual art works. This resource is designed for use in art history teaching and research. Searching, downloading, and printing are possible.

37 of Shakespeare's plays on streaming video. Scroll down alphabetically to BBC...

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. The collection now includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years. Each source has been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.

The first module of Colonial Caribbean documents the history of British colonies throughout the Caribbean from early settlement to the eve of the Slavery Abolition Act passed in 1833. This module features volumes from The National Archives, UK sourced from 26 different Colonial Office (CO) series (sometimes referred to as file classes) which include material related to 27 Caribbean colonies. All volumes dated between 1624 and 1832 within these series are included in Module 1. Also featured are selected volumes from the War Office (WO) at The National Archives, UK; volumes that are dated within this time period and covering the same 27 Caribbean colonies have been included.

**Now on the ProQuest interface**
EEBO, Early English Books Online, provides digital access to citations and facsimile full texts made from several microfilm sets. The works included were printed in England or other English-speaking places from the 1470s to 1700. The database may be searched by author, title, keywords, L.C. subject headings, imprint, date, type of illustration, film reel ID number, STC number, source library, language, or combination of these. There are browse indexes for authors' names, titles, and subject headings. Use these for best retrieval.

Some of the full text items in EEBO have been marked up so as to be searchable by individual words in their texts by the TCP, Text Creation Partnership Project, at the University of Michigan, which is supported by M.S.U. and other libraries. Use the EEBO TCP entry in MSU Libraries' Electronic Resources to access this version of the database. Here it is possible to enter modern spellings of words and retrieve words from ye olden days.

Not every item for which bibliographical details are present in EEBO has full text available here. In these cases, one must use the microfilm reel referred to in the entry by reel and position number. M.S.U. Libraries has the three microfilm sets mentioned: STC I, STC II, and the Thomason Tracts.
STC I (this is the call number) contains items printed up through 1640.
STC II (this is the call number) contains items printed from 1641-1700.
14458 (this is the call number) contains items in the Thomason Tracts, a set of broadsides from the English Civil War, 1640-1660.
The microforms are now located in the library's Remote Storage.

ESTC is a publicly available online bibliographical database containing library locations for the actual early printed works from the 1470s to 1800.

These are the printed bibliographies from which the film sets were made:

• Pollard and Redgrave, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640, Consulting Reference Z 2002 .A27 c. 2 and oversize Z 2002 .A27 1976.


• Wing, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700, Consulting Reference Z 2002 .W52 v. 1-3 and Main Z 2002 .W52 1994.


• Thomason Tracts, 1640-1661..., Main Z 2018 .T49 1981.

This collection of sources provides insight into two centuries of everyday political, religious, working, trading and administrative life in Early Modern England. Documentation such as legal records, family papers, annotated printed books, commonplace books, and wills, offer a window through which to study overlooked members of society during this period - shedding light on what life was like for the ‘ordinary’ person. Materials are sourced from a range of archives including The National Archives, UK, the British Library, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and the Newberry Library.

Includes:
Module 1: Trade, Governance and Empire, 1600-1947
Module 2: Factory Records for South Asia and South-East Asia
Module 3: Factory Records for China, Japan and the Middle East
Module 4: Correspondence: Early Voyages, Formation and Conflict
Module 5: Correspondence: Domestic Life, Governance and Territorial Expansion
Module 6: Board of Commissioners: Establishment of the Board
Module 7: The Board of Commissioners: Expansion, Control and Education

This digital resource allows students and researchers to access a vast and remarkable collection of primary source documents from the India Office Records held by the British Library, the single most important archive for the study of the East India Company.

Explore the history of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947, through the wonderfully rich and diverse manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland. The material comprises diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works. Read the Nature and Scope Section.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) contains digital versions of 150,000 works published or printed from 1701-1800 in England, and other English-speaking places around the world (including the rest of the British Isles, the American colonies, and the early United States).

Look here to find full texts of primary source materials in history, geography, literature, language, religion, philosophy, social science, fine arts, music, architecture, medicine, science, technology, and law, as well as general reference works from the 18th century.

The database also includes works in other western European languages which were published or printed in England or other English-speaking places during this time.

Eighteenth-Century Journals contains rare English journals printed between c1685 and 1815, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Many are ephemeral, lasting only for a handful of issues, others run for several years. Topics covered are extremely wide-ranging and include: colonial life; provincial and rural affairs; the French and American revolutions; reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe; political debates; and London coffee house gossip and discussion.

English Drama contains more than 3,900 plays in verse and prose from the late thirteenth century - the likely date of the Shrewsbury Fragments - to the early twentieth. It offers exhaustive coverage of the prodigious dramatic literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, as well as Restoration plays, medieval morality plays and mystery cycles, and nineteenth-century closet dramas. In addition to works by major dramatists such as Ben Jonson, Aphra Behn, William Wycherley, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Sheridan, Oscar Wilde and J. M. Synge, English Drama includes the dramatic writings of many more neglected writers long inaccessible in print form. A full list of works included in the collection is given in the bibliography.

English Historical Documents Online is the online version of a significant set of print books (Main DA 25 .E55 or .E56). The database contains copies of over 5,500 primary source documents from the British government. Documents about all aspects of life are represented: society, economics, labor, education, politics, military/war, diplomacy, administration, religion, culture, health, etc. Search for particular documents by their title or by names of persons associated with their creation. Browse by date, theme, or place.

These 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). Covers medieval and Renaissance, Europe as a supranational region, as well as documents of individual countries. From Brigham Young University.

This resource aims to represent a range of key food and drink history stories from the evolution of food within everyday life to haute cuisine, charting key issues around agriculture and food production, and looking into advertising histories of key food and drink brands. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics, power, gender, race, and socio-economic status. Material has been sourced from institutions across the United States (including Michigan State University), the United Kingdom and Australia with a focus on gaining as global a view on food history as possible. The bulk of the material ranges from the sixteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Module 2 includes six rare Apicius cookbooks, the earliest of which dates from the ninth century.

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. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.

IPA Source offers pronunciation transcriptions and literal translations of operatic arias and art song texts in Latin, Italian, German, French, and Spanish. Covers the work of over 550 composers, nearly 600 poets. New texts are added regularly.

Focus of collection is to provide access to facsimile images of verses as catalogued in the University of Leeds Brotherton Library’s BCMSV database, with full texts. Content is poems from 17th and 18th centuries. Many of the Mss are miscellanies and commonplace books, not indexed previously. The Brotherton Collection was a private library assembled by Lord Brotherton of Wakefield, 1856-1930, founder of the largest chemical manufacturing company in Britain, MP, Mayor of Wakefield, and Lord Mayor of Leeds with his nephew’s wife Dorothy Una Ratcliffe.

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. It is designed for both teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond.

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.

The Making of the Modern World: Part I, The Goldsmiths’-Kress Collection, 1450-1850 offers new ways of understanding the expansion of world trade, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of modern capitalism, supporting research in variety of disciplines.

The Making of the Modern World: Part II, 1851-1914 traces the progress of the 19th century nations' rapidly changing economies.

The Making of the Modern World: Part III, 1890-1945 is comprised exclusively of monographs and periodicals in the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature, which is held at the Senate House Library of the University of London, offering transnational coverage in an area of vital interest to historians—political economy. The works included are of interest to scholars in European and world history and meet the desire for more twentieth century content taking the collection past the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War.

MEMSO is a collection of full text searchable digitized texts of English primary source material produced by the Crown (executive branch of government) from 1100-1800 including English, Irish, Scottish and Colonial governmental, legal, financial, historical, ecclesiastical, and foreign diplomatic material. Rolls Series. Calendars of State Papers Foreign and Domestic. Also includes searchable full texts of the Historical Manuscripts Commission’s materials and records of historical associations devoted to study of significant individuals, events, and places. Use federated search to search for topics across all sources or browse and read individual documents. Download books in html or PDF format.

“Perdita” means “lost woman” and the purpose of the Perdita Project has been to find early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form. The manuscripts in this electronic resource were written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and they have been sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA. Perdita Manuscripts brings together full texts of little-known material from widely scattered locations, a search engine, biographical and bibliographical resources and essays by academics. Browse alphabetically by author, document type, holding library/archive, date, language. Search by name, genre, places, first/last lines. Types of material, for example, include account books, advice, autobiography, biography, culinary writings, receipt books, diaries, medical info, prayer and religious writings, prose, speeches, travel writings, more.

This is a portal to content about literature in ProQuest's databases of criticism, reference material (including biographical information), primary source poetry, drama, and prose, dissertations, book reviews. Includes audio of Arkangel's Shakespeare plays, a video archive of Poets on Screen reading their work, and an audio Poetry Archive of contemporary poets reading their work.

Shakespeare in Performance showcases rare and unique prompt books from the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeare’s plays as they were performed in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.

Shakespeare’s Globe Archive offers insights into performance practice in the particular space and playing conditions of the reconstructed Globe Theatre. In addition, it details the way in which the theatre was reconstructed as a place of radical theatrical experiment through which to examine the plays of William Shakespeare and others. The archive documents over 200 productions from 1997-2016 through prompt books, wardrobe notes, music, performance photographs, programmes, publicity and marketing material, research, show reports and architectural plans. This collection will be of great interest to anyone studying Shakespeare, theatre studies, early modern literature and cultural history.

Includes State Papers Domestic, and State Papers Foreign, Scotland, Borders, Ireland and Registers of the Privy Council. Has a wide range of documents and subjects of importance, concerning internal English/British affairs and administration of the country, also foreign affairs, marriage alliances, treaties and wars. Here are original letters written by Henry VIII and subsequent monarchs, ministers, officials and clerks, together with those sent from European rulers and their officials, and the people of Britain of all social levels. These papers form a major source for Early Modern Studies of Britain and Europe.

This electronic resource documents the founding and economic development of Virginia as seen through the papers of the Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624. Has searchable text of the 4 volume set Records of the Virginia Company of London, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, 1906-1933, the complete Ferrar Papers from Magdalene College Cambridge, and previously unpublished transcriptions from the Virginia Company Archives by Dr. David Ransome. Useful for studying the Atlantic world and early colonial period, London’s economic history, tensions between Native Americans and colonists, and the demography of early Virginia.

With parts I & II spanning 1482-1899 and 1900-2010 respectively, the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) digital archive contains more than 150,000 maps, charts and atlases complemented by manuscripts, field notes, expedition reports, scrapbooks, correspondence, diaries, illustrations, and sketches.

The archive is representative of the world’s largest private collection of maps and charts, along with atlases, globes, world gazetteers, and original manuscript mapping dating back to the 1400s that is held in the Society building in London. Some of the most influential geographers of the last two centuries have contributed to the collection.