British History

Primary Sources for Student Research

Collections of Materials at CSULB and Local Universities

British History

Victorian Women’s Writers Project: Texts of writings by British women of the nineteenth century on a variety of topics.  You would compare how several women’s writings relate to culture or Romantic ideas, in reference to secondary works’ discussion of the writers and the ideas:
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/index.html

British Women Romantic Poets: Poems written by British women in the nineteenth century on a variety of themes. http://www.hti.umich.edu/b/bwrp/

http://www.ena.lu/mce.cfm
Good sources on creation of the EEC and its transformation to the EU.  Lots of documents, video/audio clips, cartoons.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=topics.home
The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP). I had my upper-division undergrads write a primary source analysis from the primary sources available from this site.  Also contain research papers from fellows at the Wilson Center.

http://opal.ukc.ac.uk/catalogue/ccc.pl#top
This is an online cartoon database.  It is wonderful! I used it for a lecture on the Cold War and Racial Politics.  Students could do a whole thesis (or chapter) on visual politics.  If I were a twentieth-century historian, this would be a great resource for my own interests.  You should try it out with names or major events.

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland: extensive on-line records of legal records
http://www.proni.gov.uk/

Old Bailey On-Line Project: The Old Bailey was London’s main courthouse in many periods. Its Session Papers are available from 1660 to 1832 at: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/.

The Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition athttp://www.*ncse*.kcl.ac.uk/ <http://www.ncse.kcl.ac.uk/>.The Leader (1850-1859), a reformist weekly with an interest in scienceMonthly Repository (1806-1838), a non-conformist religious journalNorthern Star (1838-1852), a Chartist newspaperTomahawk (1867-1870), an illustrated satiric weekly, a radical Punch

Victorian Women’s Writers Project: Texts of writings by British women of the nineteenth century on a variety of topics.  You would compare how several women’s writings relate to culture or Romantic ideas, in reference to secondary works’ discussion of the writers and the ideas:

http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/index.html

British Women Romantic Poets: Poems written by British women in the nineteenth century on a variety of themes.  You would compare how several women’s writings relate to culture or Romantic ideas, in reference to secondary works’ discussion of the writers and the ideas:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/b/bwrp/

For either topic, look at Romanticism & Gender by Anne K. Mellor and Romanticism and Feminism edited by her.

On-Line Charles Booth Survey of London 1886-1893: the survey done by Charles Booth of how people lived in London, a house-to-house inspection across the metropolis, at http://booth.lse.ac.uk/

English Ballad Archive:
http://emc.english.ucsb.edu/ballad_project/index.asp

Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical:
http://www.sciper.org/

Victorian London Web Site:
http://www.victorianlondon.org/: ads, articles, and letters from periodicals, sorted by category.

Victorian Research Web: excellent list of websites:
http://victorianresearch.org/libraries.html#photos

British Library Collections: a growing body of digitalized images at
http://www.bl.uk/collections/

For example, see the magazine The Female’s Friend (1846) at
http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/victorian/magazin/magaz2.html

Evanion Collection of Victorian Printed Ephemera: http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/evanion.html

  • Tickets for theatrical performances, race meetings, lectures and exhibitions.
  • Advertisements and price lists for clothes, food, medicines, household items and domestic goods, which, along with the collection of
  • Trade catalogues and trade cards, describe the variety of products, trades and services that made up the business life of Victorian England from the late 1860s to 1895.


British Dress: Victorian and Early 20th Century:

http://100megspop3.com/adira/