Book History: Primary source digital collections

Explore the golden age of children’s literature and chart the evolution from chapbooks to the ‘book beautifuls’ of the early twentieth century. This digital resource showcases a broad range of richly illustrated primary source material which reveals the history and literature of childhood between the 1820s and 1920s.

Discover manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University, the project seeks to rediscover early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form.

The first resource of its kind to make digitally available unique and extremely rare eighteenth century periodicals, each chosen to convey the eclecticism and evolution of the publishing world between 1685 and 1835. The Portal consists of five standalone sections, each of which will support research and study on multiple subjects and themes from the period.

Discover the work of one of the world’s most important publishing dynasties through this collection from the historic John Murray Archive. From book history to travel writing, politics to poetry, this newly digitised resource introduces an unparalleled repository for nineteenth century culture and the literary luminaries who shaped it.

The Berg Collection is recognised as one of the finest literary research collections in the world, and the Victorian holdings are the undisputed jewel in its crown. This outstanding collection will prove an invaluable source for textual analysis of Victorian literature. Unpublished poems, working notebooks, holograph manuscripts and drawings trace the inspiration and genesis behind the period’s greatest works.

This project opens up new opportunities for the reading, study and appreciation of early modern verse and provides valuable source materials for both literary scholars and historians. Materials include 17th and 18th century poetry from the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

This powerful resource offers unparalleled access to the single largest collection of working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers anywhere in the world, all digitized in full colour. With access to the annotated full manuscripts of such notable works as The Prelude and Michael, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode this project is unrivalled in its content and scope.

The Stationers’ Company Archive is one of the most important resources for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions and the history of bookbinding. Explore extremely rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century in this invaluable resource of research material for historians and literary scholars.

Shakespeare in Performance is an essential resource for all scholars of Shakespearean drama, featuring rare and unique prompt books from the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. The prompt books tell the stories of key performances as they were put on in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States and further afield, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.

Discover how the expansion of radio and television technology, and the rise of mass media empires, accelerated America's transformation into a consumer-based society, through the lens of pioneer David Sarnoff, President of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and other industry papers.

Explore manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.

Comprised of original manuscripts, rare printed books, maps and ephemeral material from the Everett D.Graff Collection of Western Americana at the Newberry Library, Chicago, American West is a unique online source for the study of westward expansion from the 18th to the 20th century. This dynamic teaching and research resource includes documents from 1718-1968. Tales of frontier life, Native Americans and vigilantes and outlaws can be found, as well as evidence of the growth of urban centres, the environmental impact of westward expansion and life in the borderlands.