LGBTQ+ Lives through the Census
This is a blog post/article/site from the U.K. National Archives that " is part of the 20sPeople season – a season of exhibitions, activities and events from The National Archives that explores and shares stories that connect the people of the 2020s with the people of the 1920s."
Legacies of British Slave-ownership Project
Legacies of British Slave-ownership is the umbrella for two projects based at University College London tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain: the ESRC-funded Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, now complete, and the ESRC and AHRC-funded Structure and significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership 1763-1833, running from 2013-2015. You can search or browse. In browse you can examine at the commercial, cultural, historical, imperial, physical, and political legacies. "In 1833 Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape. The slave trade had been abolished in 1807, but it had taken another 26 years to effect the emancipation of the enslaved. However, in place of slavery the negotiated settlement established a system of apprenticeship, tying the newly freed men and women into another form of unfree labour for fixed terms. It also granted £20 million in compensation, to be paid by British taxpayers to the former slave-owners. That compensation money provided the starting point for our first project. We are now tracking back to 1763 the ownership histories of the 4000 or so estates identified in that project.
"Few people in Britain were unaffected by the [First World] War." This realization inspired the resource, on a mission to preserve and memorialize this history. From photographs to letters to memorabilia, the site features mementos of the War. Offers hundreds of items already cataloged. Under Archive, visitors can explore them, use a map to navigate, or Browse by Collection (such as Chesney School Oxford and Faringdon Town Council). The archive also has an advanced search feature, accessible after selecting any of the three previous options, that allows users to filter by class, value, and item set. Additionally, visitors may want to explore other archives mentioned on the site.
From Local History Magazine, an alphabetical list of local history and allied societies with links to contact information. See also British Association for Local History, above in this list.
Names, addresses, map of independent and second-hand bookshops in London. The list of shops looks more useful than the map itself. There are also some links to other similar sites.
London Gardens Online provides public access to a wealth of information on over 2,500 parks, gardens, squares, churchyards, cemeteries and other sites of historic interest across the whole of London. The sites are all on the London Parks & Gardens Trust’s Inventory of Historic Spaces, a resource that has been growing since the Trust’s formation in 1994, and which continues to be updated. Criteria for inclusion on the Inventory are those sites whose history dates back at least 30 years and are of significance for their design, landscaping or social history. See also the website for London Gardens Trust, the main website of the organization behind London Gardens Online.
London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages from eight London archives and is supplemented by fifteen datasets created by other projects. It provides access to historical records containing over 3.35 million name instances. Facilities are provided to allow users to link together records relating to the same individual, and to compile biographies of the best documented individuals.
Covers City of London and the Greater London area. They have finding aid of their business archives arranged by names of trades, such as printers, publishers, booksellers, letter founders, engravers, paper makers, stationers, etc. There is also a list by name of the business. Also has information on pursuing family history/genealogy in London and on things to do in London for travellers.
On Sunday the 2nd of September 1666, the Great Fire of London began reducing most of the capital to ashes. Among the devastation and the losses were many maps of the city itself. The Morgan Map of 1682 was the first to show the whole of the City of London after the fire. Produced by William Morgan and his dedicated team of Surveyors and Cartographers it took 6 years to produce. See it here.
The Society was founded in 1880 for the publication of material illustrating the history and topography of the City and County of London from the earliest times to the present day. Under "Other Resources" there are many links to other organizations about London. They have a Library, offer some historical film clips, and have publications for sale. Doing an author search for London Topographical Society in our online catalog will take you to some of their publications that we have.
The Manorial Documents Register (MDR) is the official index to English and Welsh manorial records, providing brief descriptions of documents and details of their locations in public and private hands. Manorial documents noted in the MDR are defined by the Manorial Documents Rules as court rolls, surveys, maps, terriers, documents and books of every description relating to the boundaries, franchises, wastes, customs or courts of a manor. Title deeds are not included in the MDR.
Mapping the Scottish Reformation
Contains info on nearly a thousand Scottish clerical appointments from 1560-1689 utilizaing mss at the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh. Filter searches by year, position, individual, or residence. Project is co-directed by Michelle D. Brock, Washington and Lee University, and Chris R. Langley, Newman University, with support from an advisory board based in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.
The Medical Heritage Library is a "digital curation collaborative" between numerous leading medical libraries, including the August C. Long Health Science Library at Columbia University, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and the Wellcome Library, to name just a few. These libraries are working together on this remarkable collection that provides insight into the history of medicine in the United States and Great Britain. Through the website's Content tab, visitors can browse hundreds of medical journals, pamphlets, and books dating back to the sixteenth century. Researchers can also conduct a keyword Search in order to find relevant material within this extensive (and still growing) collection.
MEMSlib Online Medieval Resources
From University of Kent, Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Offers links to web sites in manuscript studies (to help with paleography and codicology), medieval history art and architecture (image sourcing sites), and early modern history (best digitized text sites and general reference bibliographies). Also offers a Forum where people can ask each other questions.
MoEML: The Map of Early Modern London
Uses modern technology to recombine and present centuries-old data in new ways. Based on the Agas map, a woodblock printed 16th-17th century bird's-eye view of London, MoEML encompasses four separate, related projects: a digital edition of the Agas map; an encyclopedia and digital gazetteer of London people, places, topics, and terms; a library of digital texts, marked up in TEI; and a digital edition of the 1598 text of John Stow's A Survey of London. Search by street name or category of location. By clicking on a particular building or street the user is linked to a series of documents detailing the history of the place chosen and its role in society. Project done by University of Victoria, Canada, with support from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Mysterious Britain and Ireland: Mysteries, Legends and the Paranormal
Authors are dedicated to furthering knowledge in local landscape mysteries, folklore, myths and legends. The main aims of the web site are: to provide a growing resource for Britain’s myths, legends, mysterious phenomena, ‘sacred’ sites and strange events; to create a network of people interested in similar topics; to stimulate interest in folklore and legend and its connection to the landscape. Authors are
Danny J Parkinson and Ian Topham.
The National Archives of England, Wales, and the United Kingdom is one of the largest archival collections in the world, spanning 1000 years of British history, from the 11th century to the present. This government agency was formed in 2003 by bringing together the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts Commission. This web site offers online catalogs of primary source materials and some online texts. Also see their web site offering their online research guides. They also offer various research guides to help those looking for individuals, in the armed services, for instance, here. There is also a sub-site for media, videos, etc. about their collections and U.K. history, here.
National Archives: Beginner's Latin
Many English/British official documents written 1086-1733 are in Latin. This is a practical online tutorial for beginners, 11 sessions worth, of the Latin used in British documents during these years, covering verbs, ends, adverbs, numbers and dates, months, useful phrases, dating clauses, etc. There is also an Advanced Latin tutorial on the National Archives site.
Over 1500 organizations with OAI-compliant repositories contribute over 30 million records to this database which uses the OCLC WorldCat interface. Has finding aids for archival collections.
This is a link to the digital resources provided by Oxford Libraries, some of which are freely available and others are only available to University of Oxford students and faculty. After entering the site, click on Collections at top to be taken to a page where you can click on a list of the offerings.
Mostly a site used by classicists. But, in the Renaissance Materials section there is primary and secondary material on early modern English literature, including the works of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.
PLRE.Folger (Private Libraries in Renaissance England)
PLRE.Folger, a project of the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, D.C.), complements the printed volumes of Private Libraries in Renaissance England (PLRE--Remote Storage Z 997.2 .G7 P75 1992 v. 1-8), an ongoing editorial project that has published eight volumes since 1992. Three searchable databases are available on this site: Books, which contains all the information entered in PLRE. Names, which is designed to assist in searching Books. Owners, which is designed to assist in searching Books.
Prince Albert: His Life and Legacy
From Royal Collection Trust. Contains over 17,500 digitized documents and photographs, most not published before. Highlights Albert's influence on British culture and society and his patronage of the arts, including photography and his love of the painter Raphael. Explore section offers "specific themes, biographies, and media that contextualize his life and times" with visual essays and interactive timeline. Will contain 23,000 items, when finished, by end of 2020.
Print Exchanges is a network designed to facilitate research into incunable and early modern print culture and to support early and mid-career academics, especially those who may be marginalised. It also warmly welcomes those more advanced in their careers who feel they would benefit from the network or who want to support it. Print Exchanges aims to help scholars make their current research more visible to others in the field through its website and to create world-wide opportunities for collaboration.
From University of Missouri-Columbia Libraries. Links to government documents and primary sources listing retail prices for products and services, as well as wages for common occupations. Notice that the categories have drop down menus for different decades in the centuries. Most of the info is re the U.S. On the different pages, scroll down and look along the left side for links to British info.
A resource with examples of research on the maritime sectors of early modern and modern Europe and North America. This resource is dedicated to showing the richness of the Prize Papers, considered to be one of the world’s most important maritime archives. In the course of its many naval engagements the British Royal Navy seized numerous enemy ships. Documents pertaining to tens of thousands of these seized ships (“prizes”) have been preserved. Every ship's file contains at least one document in English: transcriptions of the interrogations by the Prize Courts of the captain and other crew members aboard ships taken as lawful prizes. The Prize Papers Online: Atlas makes available a sample of the Prize Papers’ interrogations. Providing a wealth of information about ships and their crews, the interrogations make up a crucial portion of the Prize Paper Archive, providing unprecedented insights into the workings of the maritime sector during the Age of Sail.
Proceedings of the Old Bailey London 1674-1913
"This is a fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court." Also includes historical background information and a bibliography (contains citations on: publishing history; associated records; crime, criminal justice and punishment; Old Bailey Courthouse; London and hinterlands; community histories; gender and the proceedings; and general and useful web sites.)
Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee
Official website of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
The Royal Archives at Windsor Castle contains documents relating to the Royal Family and British Monarchy over a period of almost 250 years. The Archives preserves the personal and official correspondence of former monarchs and of other members of the Royal Family past and present, as well as administrative records of the departments of the Royal Household.
Royal Family see British Monarchy, above in this list
Royal College of Physicians Museum and Archive Collections
Search RCP collections to uncover a wealth of information on the history of medicine and the RCP. Near complete records of the RCP's activities for 500 years. Manuscripts and personal papers of eminent physicians. 300 oil and sculptural portraits of physicians and over 5,000 prints and drawing. Silver and decorative art collection. Rare medical instruments and artefacts.
Runaway Slaves in Britain: Bondage, Freedom, and Race in the Eighteenth Century
Little is known about slavery in 18th-Century Britain. This project at University of Glasgow will create a database of searchable information about those who sought to escape bondage. Not all of the the people who ran away from their masters in Georgian Britain were of African descent, and a small number were Native Americans or were from the Indian sub-continent. While some were not slaves, many were described by their masters in terms of slavery.
Scottish Bibliographies Online
Website containing a number of bibliographic databases containing details of material relating to Scotland or held in Scottish Libraries. Three major components: Bibliography of Scotland, Bibliography of Scottish Gaelic, and Bibliography of the Scottish Booktrade. Also others.
Scottish Court of Sessions Digital Archive Project
Project of the University of Virginia Law Library, from their, and the Library of Congress' collections. These printed materials were submitted to Scotland's supreme civil court as part of the litigation process. As a court of appeal and of first instance, the Court of Session in this period held jurisdiction over contract and commercial cases, matters of succession and land ownership, divorce proceedings, intellectual property and copyright disputes, and contested political elections. Scottish women, Virginia merchants, aristocratic Highland proprietors, famous authors, enslaved laborers, soldiers, American Loyalists, and many more individuals sought justice before the Court of Session in this era.The documents offered in this archive date from the late 1750s to the late 1830s, a period encompassing the Seven Years' War in North America and the Great Reform Act in Scotland. The combined digital collection will eventually include approximately 10,000 printed petitions, answers, replies, and case summaries, many of which have contemporary annotations. Supplemental case materials appended to these documents include maps, building plans, and printed copies of correspondence, wills, financial accounts, and census reports.
SHARP: Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing
This website is a portal to useful resources for book historians and those interested in the history of print culture. History of books, all aspects of bookmaking, readers and reading history, and textual criticism. Scope is increasingly international but most resources point to American or Western Europe. English, French, or Spanish language. Look at Research Tools and Archives and Collections links within this.
Slave Voyages, see Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database, below.
Society for the History of Children and Youth
SHCY promotes the study of the history of children and youth. The organization (1) supports research about childhood, youth cultures, and the experience of young people across diverse times and places; (2) fosters study across disciplinary and methodological boundaries; (3) provides venues for scholars to communicate with one another; and (4) promotes excellence in scholarship. Membership is open to all individuals as well as to cultural and educational institutions. SHCY resources for scholars and students include regular conferences, an email discussion list (H-Childhood), a website, newsletter, and scholarly journal (The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, available here at M.S.U. Libraries online). SHCY also hosts a biennial conference held at various locations throughout the world.
Continuously published since 1828,this is a conservative, British weekly magazine specializing in politics and culture. Coverage from July, 1828 through Dec., 2008. Simple search box with option to search by time periods. Sort results by relevance or date published. Limit by type of document: article, letter, fiction, recipe, other. Filter results by date, keyword, or subject. Issue browser is arranged by decade. Content viewable as digitized copies or facsimile pages. For more functionality, use Periodicals Archive Online version, a resource open to M.S.U. community.
Searchable catalogue of the writing printed in response to moments of royal and protectoral succession over the long 17th c. Contains records for over 3000 examples of succession literature across several genres, including panegyric and elegy, sermon and pamphlet, address and proclamation, the materials are for use to uncover new ways of understanding the relationship between literature, print, and politics during the tumultuous 17th c. A collaborative project of the universities of Exeter and Oxford.
Suffrage 100: the Fight for the Female Vote
U.K. National Archives has a world-renowned collection of documents relating to the 20th century women’s suffrage movement. The wealth of records come from a range of government departments and illustrate the huge impact suffrage campaigns had across government. 100 years ago some women in the U.K. got the right to vote.
Texts and Calendars: British Society Publications Indexing Online
M.S.U. Libraries contains the publications of a great many British historical, record, archaeological, and archival societies. Many are focused on history, archaeology, and records at the county level. The access/indexing to their contents is often not very good. Some societies publish indexes to their own material from time to time; some do not. M.S.U. Libraries may, or may not, have item level records in the online catalog. Not many researchers know about or use these publications. Some contain only primary sources, some only secondary sources, and some contain a mixture of both kinds of materials. A great many of these societies' materials are indexed in the Bibliography of British and Irish History. Some societies publish more than one series of publications. The link provided here takes the researcher to a page owhere there is is a link to the list of societies that exist. Clicking there takes one to a page giving access by society name, with contact info and websites hosted by the individual societies as well. Some of these societies are beginning to offer online indexing of their own and full texts of their materials. Additional indexing is available in some older book bibliographies by Mullins (Main Z 2016 .M8, .M8 1983, .M83) and Stevenson (Main DA 750 .S25 ser. 4 v. 23)
Timeline: Sources from History
Several hundred images culled from the British Library's extensive collections are arranged by decade in this interactive resource. Each decade has one to ten images. Coverage is from Magna Carta 1215 to 2008. Clicking on a thumbnail image retrieves a larger entry with an introduction that briefly describes the subject and places it in historical context. Entries may be printed or downloaded as PDFs. Also has thematic timelines: Politics, Power and Rebellion; Literature, Music and Entertainment; Everyday Life; Sacred Texts; Medicine/Science/Engineering. More for undergraduates to help with topic selection than for advanced researchers.
Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database
From Emory University, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, this offers both quantitative and qualitative information about the slave trade in Spain, Uruguay, Portugal, Brazil, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the United States, Denmark, and the Baltic, from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Three sections: searchable database of voyages, statistics/estimates of the slave trade by nation and ports of em and disembarkation, and African names database. Bibliography of documentary sources and archival materials. Overview essays on the Atlantic slave trade, racial/ethnic fallout, abolition movement. Lesson plans and educational resources. Images from 19th c. archival materials. Maps. Timeline/chronology. Searchable in both English and Portuguese.
The Tudor government maintained a communication network that criss-crossed the globe. This visualisation brings together 123,850 letters connecting 20,424 people from the United Kingdom’s State Papers archive, dating from the accession of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I (1509-1603).
Founded in 1899 and originally dedicated to Queen Victoria, the Victoria County History is an encyclopaedic record of England's places and people from earliest times to the present day. Based at the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London since 1933, the VCH is written by historians working in counties across England. The famous VCH big red books, which cover all historical periods, are written county by county from original documents and fieldwork. Introductory chapters include subjects ranging from archaeology to social and economic history, while topographical sections give a comprehensive account of each city, town and village. With 14 county sets completed, most counties have at least one volume. More than 240 volumes have been published in total, providing an invaluable resource for everyone interested in local history. M.S.U. Libraries has the set of printed volumes in the oversize stacks in the Main Library, basement center section, at DA 670, and a standing order for new volumes as they are published. To see what full text information is available on this website, click on "counties and publications" in the menu bar near the top of the screen. You will see a map and a list of clickable counties. England's Past for Everyone is another website in our electronic resources, texts and links, providing access to new publications and teaching resources being developed "by the people, for the people."
Vision of Britain Through Time
The Vision of Britain through Time [1800-2001]web site provides a window into the Great Britain Historical GIS -- which stands for ''Geographical Information System''. The GB Historical GIS is a description of Britain and its localities, showing how they have changed through the centuries. The Vision of Britain site is designed primarily as a public resource for people interested mainly in local history, but the GB Historical GIS is also used for research projects into national topics like the origins of the north-south divide; the geography of infant mortality in the inter-war period, and its relationship with unemployment; and long-run trends in land use. The system holds information computerised from a range of historical sources, but each of them can be seen as a kind of ''geographical survey'' of Britain, or at least a large part of the country. Sources used include statistical works, census reports, historical boundary documents, historical maps, gazetteers, travel writings, etc.
William Corbett was a bookseller in Newcastle Upon Tyne, who died in 1626. When he died, someone made an inventory of all the books in his shop. The inventory and his will are in Durham University's Special Collections. This website allows for exploration of 17th century English book trading, the network of individuals that brought books to Newcastle, Corbett's will, inventory records, and digital versions of some of the books.
Women in Book History Bibliography
Compilation of secondary sources on women in the book trades, including writers, printers, typesetters, and binders. Focus is on women in Britain, the U.S., and parts of Continental Europe. Based initially on work done by Laura Fuderer, a librarian at University of Notre Dame Libraries on women in the book trades.
The Women's Library of the London School of Economics (LSE) presents this collection of over 300 digitized artifacts that span five centuries. From Photographs, Postcards, and Objects to Books, the material here offers insight into historical views of women and the history of the women's rights movement in England.
This is a comprehensive bibliographical database of women’s contributions to print for the long eighteenth century, one of the most convulsive periods in both women’s and print history. We collect detailed information about books that women were involved in producing, not just as authors, but also as printers, publishers, booksellers, editors, compilers, translators, engravers, illustrators, and composers. To start exploring the WPHP, click on Database in the header, where you can Search Titles, Search Persons, or Search Firms; see Research to explore the project’s outputs, such as Publications and our Podcast; and to learn more about the stories behind our Titles, Persons, and Firms, read our Spotlights.
Women's Work in Rural England 1500-1700
The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world. It makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures. Its goals are to promote international and intercultural understanding; expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet; provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences; build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.
World War Ireland: Exploring the Irish Experience
Online version of what was a physical exhibit at the National Library of Ireland, World War Ireland focuses on the unique aspects of the Irish WWI experience. The physical exhibition drew on the NLI's collections of letters, diaries, recruiting posters, newspaper reports, cartoons, handbills and leaflets dating from 1914-1918. With original artefacts, first hand personal accounts and eyewitness testimony, World War Ireland brings visitors dramatically inside the lives of those who experienced WWI.
From the British Library. Brings together material from various institutions across Europe about Europe in WWI. Includes over 500 items, including photos, videos, diaries, books, and cartoons about how Europeans experienced the war on both sides of the conflict. Explore by theme, search using keywords, or filter collections by year, language, creator, or format. Includes also secondary articles by historians, interviews, and teaching resources with lesson plans for middle and high school levels.