LibGuides: Modern British History Primary Sources: Home

Primary Source Databases

AM Explorer

Full text primary sources especially pertinent to American and world history, literature and culture. Spanning the 15th - 21st century. Digitized documents include: manuscripts and typescript letters, diaries, notebooks, journals, newspapers, art, illustrations, photographs, video and 360-degree objects.

Collections: 1980s Culture and Society; Africa and the New Imperialism; African American Communities; Age of Exploration; American in World War Two; American Committee on Africa; American History, 1493-1945; American West; Amnesty International Archives; Apartheid South Africa, 1948-1994; British Newsreels, 1911-1930; Broadcasting America; Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1922; Children's Literature and Culture; China, America and the Pacific; China: Culture and Society; China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980; Church Missionary Society Periodicals; Colonial America; Colonial Caribbean; Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966; Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969; Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969; Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961; Conflict in Indochina: Foreign Office Files for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; Defining Gender; Early Modern England; East India Company; Eighteenth Century Drama; Eighteenth Century Journals; Empire Online; Ethnomusicology; Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920; First World War Portal; Food and Drink in History; Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980; Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanstan, 1947-1980; Foreign Office Files for Japan, 1919-1952; Foreign Office Files for Southeast Asia, 1963-1980; Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981; Frontier Life; Gender: Identity and Social Change; Global Commodities; Hindi Cinema; India, Raj and Empire; Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America; Indigenous Newspapers in North America; Interwar Culture; J Walter Thompson: Advertising America; Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954; Leisure Travel and Mass Culture; Life at Sea: Seafaring in the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1600-1900; Literary Manuscripts Berg; Literary Manuscripts Leeds; Literary Print Culture, London Low Life; Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963; Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965; Mass Observation Online; Mass Observation Project; Medical Services and Warfare; Medieval Family Life; Medieval Travel Writing; Meije Japan; Mexico in History; Migration to New Worlds; Nineteenth Century Literary Society; Perdita Manuscripts, 1500-1700, Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975; Popular Medicine in America, 1800-1900; Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain; Race Relations in America; Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape; Royal Shakespeare Company Archives; Service Newspapers of World War Two; Sex & Sexuality; Shakespeare in Performance; Shakespeare's Globe Archive; Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice; Socialism on Film; The Gilded Age and Progressive Era; The Grand Tour; The Nixon Years, 1969-1974; The Olympic Movement; The Transformation of Shopping; Trade Catalogues and the American Home; Trade in Early Modern London; Travel Writing, Spectable and World History; Victorian Popular Culture; Victorians on Film; Virginia Company Archives; Women in The National Archives; Women's Voices and Life Writing; World's Fairs
British Literary Manuscripts Online I, c.1660-1900
Contains works written within the period from the Restoration of the monarchy after the Civil War to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, a period that saw new forms of literary expression develop including journalism, drama, the novel, and literary criticism, and notably many now-world-renowned British authors writing works that would be reprinted endlessly, and translated into many of the world’s languages.
*To access materials only within the c. 1660-1900 collection, choose that option under “by archive”
Defining Gender, 1450-1910
Primary source material from British and European archives relating to gender studies with an emphasis on history, literature, sociology, education and cultural studies from a gendered perspective. Material dates back to the fifteenth century.
Gale Primary Sources

A collection of archival collections, with a variety of digitized primary source materials covering such subject areas as: American and British history, literature, and culture; women, gender, and sexuality; law and legal issues; modern China; indigenous peoples of North America.
Nineteenth (19th) Century British Pamphlets
British pamphlets from the 19th century held in UK research libraries. Pamphlets were an important means of public debate, covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of their day.
Punch Historical Archive 1841-1992
British wit and satire magazine, began as a campaigner for social justice and played a central role in the formation of the British identity throughout the world. 1841-1992
The Listener Historical Archive 1929-1991
Weekly magazine, intellectual counterpart to the BBC listings magazine, Radio Times. Developed as the medium for reproducing broadcast talks initially on radio but in later years television as well. 1929-1991

Searching the Library Catalog

Using OneSearch from the library homepage you can use search terms for your topic and combine them with terms that would promote primary sources as results. Some such terms are: diary/diaries, correspondence, letters, sources, memoirs, documents, oral history, narratives.

Some results you might find in the stacks, the place where the books are kept in the library, using this strategy:

Three early nineteenth century diaries.

Le Marchant, Denis, 1795-1874.; Hatherton, Edward John Walhouse Littleton, Baron, 1791-1863.; Aspinall, A. (Arthur), 1901- editor.

London, Williams and Norgate; 1952

Three early nineteenth century diaries.Available at WU - Olin Library Stacks (DA540 .A8)

A various universe : a study of the journals and memoirs of British men and women in the Indian subcontinent, 1765-1856

Dyson, Ketaki Kushari, 1940-

Delhi ; New York : Oxford University Press; 1978

A various universe : a study of the journals and memoirs of British men and women in the Indian subcontinent, 1765-1856Available at WU - Olin Library Stacks (DS428 .D97)

The Macmillan diaries

Macmillan, Harold, 1894-1986.

London : Macmillan; 2003-2011

The Bousfield diaries : a middle-class family in late Victorian Bedford

Bousfield, Charlotte, 1828-1933, author.; Smart, Richard, editor.

Bedford : Bedfordshire Historical Record Society; 2007

The Bousfield diaries : a middle-class family in late Victorian BedfordSee online access

Modern British History Primary Sources: Home

Primary Source Databases

Searching the Library Catalog

Primary Source Websites