Primary Sources
Resources primarily dedicated to publishing primary source material, though they are likely to include extensive contextual and background information as well.
Editions
Full-text transcriptions of single texts or collections, usually searchable, and sometimes with page images.
digital edition of 4000 depositions, examinations and associated materials in which Protestant men and women told of their experiences of the rebellion by the Catholic Irish in October 1641
- ireland
- rebellion
- voxpop
journal of a British seaman in the West Indies during the French Revolutionary wars; includes naval operations, sailors' health and punishments, and views on slavery, religion, and morality
- americas
- c18th
- maritime
- war
This electronic archive presents images of manuscripts and digital transcriptions from the Adams Family Papers.
- americas
an edition of the four autobiographical books written by Alice Thornton, a Yorkshire gentlewoman, in the second half of the seventeenth century
- biographical
- britain
- women
primary sources and research tools for the study of the arts in early modern Britain
- arts
- britain
- material culture
electronic edition of Diderot and d'Almebert's Enyclopédie
- france
- philosophy
- science
A digital edition of the correspondence of Bess of Hardwick.
- correspondence
- women
project to make available online materials to enhance knowledge and understanding of Jean Bodin
- france
- ideas
- philosophy
an eclectic gathering of 16th century documents of the Campbells of Glenorchy which provides unique insight into early modern Scottish life
- scotland
- society
Digital edition of casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier, two of the most popular astrologers in early modern England.
- medicine
an edition of Newton's alchemical manuscripts and new research on Newton's chymistry
- science
Petitions to the state from veterans and their families for welfare payments as a result of injuries and bereavement sustained during the English Civil Wars.
- medicine
- voxpop
- war
The Consultation Letters of Dr William Cullen (1710-1790) at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
- c18th
- correspondence
- medicine
a selection of letters from the Correspondence of Thomas Pennant and of Tours of Wales and Scotland 1760-1830 by a range of travellers
- britain
- c18th
- correspondence
- travel
Digitized travel accounts of late medieval and early modern Europe
- europe
- travel
Scholarly editions of the works of Margaret Cavendish, and other resources for research.
- literature
- women
DQC is a digital library containing full text and page images of over 500 individual Quaker works from the 17th and 18th centuries.
- religion
digital edition of letters from Thomas Bodley's 12 years of diplomatic business in Europe, 1585-97
- britain
- correspondence
- politics
images, transcriptions and translations of the court rolls, covering issues like tenancies, disputes and minor criminal acts
- britain
- courts
- society
a collection of electronic texts and links to texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820
- americas
highly accurate, fully-searchable, XML-encoded texts corresponding to books from Early English Books Online
- books
Transcriptions, metadata and images of manuscripts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
- manuscript
developing a digital library of English books published before 1700 and a range of tools for computational exploration and analysis.
- books
A web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources.
- poetry
- politics
More than 2000 freely accessible, accurately rekeyed texts of English titles printed between 1701 and 1800 (ECCO and Text Creation Partnership).
- books
images, transcriptions (in progress) and metadata for the letters of the 18th-century bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu
- c18th
- correspondence
- women
site for early modern English ballads providing full transcriptions and images, search facilities, sung versions of ballads, and background essays
- music
French Emblem Books of the 16th century, along with their Latin versions when appropriate.
- books
- france
edition of George Washington's financial and business records
- commerce
edition of all the resolutions (decisions) taken by the States General between 1576 and 1796
- government
- netherlands
A digital edition of the Great Parchment Book, a survey of the City of London's estates in 17th-century Ireland.
- ireland
- society
full-text electronic edition of Samuel Hartlib's correspondence
- correspondence
- learning
- science
A digital edition of seventeenth-century English hearth tax records
- britain
- government
- society
Parallel digital editions of the 1577 and 1587 Holinshed Chronicles with historical background and project information.
- britain
- literature
the Hooke Folio contains extracts from the Royal Society's Journal Books and rough minutes for the period of Hooke's secretaryship
- science
Digital edition of the 16th-century editions of John Foxe’s protestant martyrology.
- britain
- religion
edition of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
- c18th
- language
The Jonathan Swift Archive makes available digitized texts of Jonathan Swift’s prose works, transcribed from a great variety of early printed editions.
- literature
an edition of Fox's Journals relating to his travels in 1652-53
- britain
- religion
- travel
Latin Texts of Early Modern Europe projects are dedicated to building a digital library of the humanistic Respublica Litterarum
- europe
- language
- learning
174 letters of Philip II, King of Spain, from the time of naval war against England and France, 1592 - 1597.
- spain
- war
online edition of the letters of William Herle, Elizabethan spy and diplomat
- britain
- correspondence
- politics
A fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets for eighteenth-century London. Includes criminal justice, parish poor relief, hospital and guild records.
- courts
- local government
- london
- manuscript
- voxpop
searchable scholarly edition of this diary of a turbulent period in British history as seen by a London merchant
- britain
- politics
Reconstructing the 16th-century workshop of BNF MS FR 640 at Columbia University
- material culture
- work
a scholarly critical edition of Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies, with annotation of variant readings of the three published editions
- poetry
- women
collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of primary manuscripts from the High Court of Admiralty, London, 1650-1669
- courts
- maritime
primary documents connected with the hunt for the press that produced the Martin Marprelate tracts (1588-89)
- religion
Electronic edition of Mary Wroth's poetry.
- poetry
- women
Online editions of women’s writing that circulated in a variety of forms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
- literature
- women
a project using eighteenth-century letters to explore the relationships between the physical body, self and social identity, and experiences of ‘embodiment’.
- britain
- c18th
- correspondence
a digital library of original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to the 20th century.
- americas
- medicine
searchable edition of the Essais with corresponding digital page images from the Bordeaux copy.
- literature
- philosophy
multilingual access to an annotated version of the voluminous correspondence of Mozart and his family (1400 letters)
- correspondence
- music
project to make all Newton's printed and manuscript writings freely available online, covering his scientific work, theological texts and alchemical tracts
- philosophy
- religion
- science
fully searchable collection of almost 200,000 trials held at the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913 and biographies of 2,500 men and women executed at Tyburn
- courts
- crime
- london
- voxpop
A multimedia resource presenting the pre-Reformation mass liturgy sung by choir boys in Nuremberg
- music
- religion
a searchable collection of texts including court records, wills, maps, town and fort plans, architectural and material culture studies
- americas
- manuscript
- society
Poly-Olbion is an expansive poetic journey through the landscape, history, traditions and customs of early modern England and Wales.
- britain
- place
- poetry
A research project and corpus of petitions from seventeenth-century England.
- local government
- politics
- voxpop
a digital collection of the first books printed in Mexico before 1601
- americas
- books
A searchable version of information contained in the transcriptions of 325 probate inventories from the Chesapeake region for 1740-1810.
- americas
- manuscript
- material culture
digital edition of the poetry of Hester Pulter, featuring multiple versions and extensive contextualisation
- manuscript
- poetry
- women
a fully searchable edition of the proceedings of the Scottish parliament from 1235 to the union of 1707
- government
- scotland
an online edition of the Collected Works of the Caroline dramatist, Richard Brome
- britain
- drama
A searchable archive of texts of the Romantic era.
- c18th
- literature
A digital archive of manuscript miscellanies and commonplace books from c. 1450-1720, including research and teaching resources for late medieval and early modern manuscript studies.
- books
- manuscript
a digital collection of pre-1642 editions of William Shakespeare's plays, with an interactive interface for detailed study
- drama
an edition of a 16th-century verse miscellany compiled by women at the court of Anne Boleyn, primarily featuring the poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt
- poetry
South Seas is an online information resource for the history of European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific between 1760 and 1800.
- australasia
- c18th
- colonial
- exploration
electronic edition of John Strype's 1720 Survey of London, including maps and plates, introductory essay and bibliography
- britain
- urban
The Thomas Gray Archive is a long-term research project dedicated to studying the life and work of eighteenth-century poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771).
- c18th
- poetry
Lister's journal of his three years studying medicine in France, enhanced by information about people and places he visited
- learning
- medicine
- travel
images and transcriptions of the correspondence of Mary Hamilton (1756-1816), courtier and diarist
- c18th
- correspondence
- women
a searchable critical edition of seven printed early modern verse miscellanies
- poetry
The Virtual Jamestown Archive is a digital research, teaching and learning project that explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement and the Virginia experiment
- americas
plain text corpora of Early Modern English texts and visualization tools to explore them
- books
electronic version of The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence
- britain
- correspondence
- politics
Robert Boyle's workdiaries are a vivid record of observation and experimentation by one of the founding fathers of modern science.
- science
No matching items
Databases and Indexes
Searchable catalogues, calendars, text summaries or extracts of primary sources, but not full text transcription.
project using material and documentary evidence to investigate the introduction of printing in the West
- books
- commerce
- material culture
a digital archive of early modern annotated books and virtual research environment for scholars of historical reading practices.
- books
a database of European travel advice literature (Ars apodemica) from the 16th to the 19th centuries
- c18th
- europe
- literature
- travel
primary sources and research tools for the study of the arts in early modern Britain
- arts
- britain
- material culture
a database of books borrowed from 18 Scottish libraries in the 18th century, uncovering use, knowledge dissemination and participation in literate culture.
- books
- scotland
BBTI is an index of the names and brief biographical and trade details of people who worked in the English and Welsh book trades up to 1851
- americas
- biographical
- books
- britain
CESAR is a dynamic resource at the service of all those with an interest in the French theatre of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
- drama
- france
- theatre
a searchable catalogue and scanned images of more than 14,000 cause papers relating to cases heard in the Church Courts of the diocese of York
- britain
- courts
- local government
- voxpop
A database of surviving churchwardens’ accounts from the earliest known (c.1300) to c.1850.
- local government
- religion
- society
A database of clerical careers with the aim of providing coverage of as many clerical lives as possible from the 16th- to mid-19h century
- biographical
- religion
federated search of a range of digital resources related to early modern and nineteenth century Britain
- britain
- general
records of the Court of Chivalry during its heyday between 1634 and 1640, covering a wide variety of topics relating to the social, political and cultural history of the period
- britain
- courts
- government
Database of of every playbook produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the beginning of printing through 1660.
- drama
a dataset of almost 8,000 different weekly bills published between 1603 and 1752, in a format suitable for computational analysis
- britain
- disease
A searchable record of more than 1,600 poetic miscellanies published between 1680 and 1800
- poetry
Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO) is a combined finding aid and editorial interface for basic descriptions of early modern correspondence.
- correspondence
- manuscript
A research database and educational resource about London theatres which developed before, during and shortly after the life of Shakespeare.
- london
- theatre
an index of female-authored complaint poetry in English and Scots, from a project exploring how early modern women used the poetry of complaint for expressions of love, loss and protest
- britain
- poetry
- women
High-quality metadata about novels published between 1660 and 1850.
- books
- literature
biographical database of painters, engravers, printers, book sellers, gold- and silversmiths and others in the ‘cultural industries’ of the Low Countries in the 16th and 17th centuries
- arts
- biographical
dedicated to indexing freely-available digital facsimiles of eighteenth-century texts and cross-referencing them to accurate bibliographical reference sources
- books
- c18th
A database enabling users to investigate the social, regional and lexical distribution of phonological variants in eighteenth-century English
- language
information on English parliamentary elections 1695-1832, including a list of surviving poll books, data on how people voted, and examples of elections' visual, material and musical culture
- britain
- c18th
- politics
indexes and some transcriptions of Elizabethan Star Chamber cases (work in progress)
- courts
- crime
fully searchable version of the most comprehensive resource available for the output of the printing press in the English-speaking world before 1801
- books
Europa Inventa is the first systematic description of medieval/early modern European manuscripts, art works and objects held in Australasian libraries, galleries and museums.
- arts
- manuscript
- material culture
a database of individuals, businesses and documents from a regional study of ‘lower-middling’ families and their businesses between 1760 and 1820
- biographical
- commerce
A database and other resources about the first convicts transported to Australia in 1787.
- australasia
- crime
database of online finding aids for manuscript, graphic, archival and other collections at the Folger Shakespeare Library
- general
project using database, web interface and GIS technology to map the 18th-century French book trade
- books
- commerce
- france
The Inner Temple Calendars provide a social and administrative history of the Inner Temple
- biographical
- law
Intoxicants and Early Modernity explores the period between the introduction of tobacco in the 1570s and the ‘Gin Craze’ of the early eighteenth century.
- consumption
- material culture
an annotated index of the content of the Lady's Magazine from 1770 to 1818.
- women
A GIS interface enabling researchers to map and visualize textual and artefactual data relating to 17th and 18th-century London.
- london
A database of plays, performances, performers and theatres in London from the 1600s to the end of the 18th century.
- drama
- london
- theatre
a forum for scholars to share information about lost plays in England, 1570-1642
- drama
A database of early Stuart manuscript pamphlet literature.
- literature
- manuscript
- politics
database of the material evidence of 15th-century printed books: ownership, decoration, binding, manuscript annotations, stamps, prices, etc.
- books
- material culture
databases of medieval and early modern European prices and currency
- commerce
- consumption
a database with details of English, Welsh, and Channel Islands merchant ships, mapping the voyages they undertook between 1400 and 1580
- britain
- maritime
The Mind is a Metaphor, is an evolving work of reference, an ever more interactive, more solidly constructed collection of mental metaphorics.
- cultures
- ideas
- literature
a database companion to the print volumes in the series Private Libraries in Renaissance England
- books
- learning
the reading experiences of British residents and travellers between the invention of the printing press in 1450 and the end of the Second World War
- books
- literature
A database about which female authors were read, by whom, and how texts by women circulated in the 16th and 17th centuries.
- literature
- women
database of a wide range of surviving records relating to the village of Earl's Colne, Essex
- britain
- local government
- society
website providing records of Apprentices and Freemen in the City of London Livery Companies between 1400 and 1900
- urban
- work
an inter-institutional research resource for information and documentation on paintings by Rembrandt or attributed to him
- arts
- netherlands
A list of all translations out of and into all languages printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland before 1641
- books
- language
An online source on the library of the 17th-century virtuoso Robert Hooke (1635-1703).
- books
- learning
- science
A database of newspaper advertisements placed by masters and owners seeking the capture and return of escaped slaves.
- rebellion
- slavery
database of 8000 individuals from Britain who migrated to or worked in Scandinavian and Baltic countries, representing the military, naval, diplomatic, intellectual, mercantile and social elite.
- biographical
- britain
- europe
Descriptions and metadata for the correspondence of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753)
- correspondence
- medicine
- science
a biographical database of the 17th-century Ulster settler population, comibining sources including military musters, plantation grants and judicial records
- biographical
- ireland
a collective database of printed books published in Europe to the end of the sixteenth century.
- books
- europe
a wiki for material relating to early modern legal documents from AALT and elsewhere, including summaries and transcriptions
- britain
- government
- manuscript
a prosopographical study of the English Convents in exile 1600-1800
- biographical
- europe
- religion
- women
database that aims to collate all documented instances of travel to Europe by English women during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
- europe
- travel
- women
abstracts of around 400 witchcraft trials from the Duchy of Lorraine, and other material including a bibliography
- courts
- france
- manuscript
a bibliographical database of women’s contributions to English print during the long eighteenth century
- c18th
- women
No matching items
Image Collections
Collections of digitised texts, which usually have searchable metadata but are not transcribed.
Documents from Medieval and Early Modern England from the National Archives in London
- britain
- government
- law
digitized versions of cheap popular French books
- books
- france
papers of the Board of Longitude and the 18th-century scheme for the determination of longitude
- maritime
- science
Western manuscripts and archives from 1500 to 1800, from the Bodleian's collection, including major antiquarian and topographical collections
- manuscript
CESAR is a dynamic resource at the service of all those with an interest in the French theatre of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
- drama
- france
- theatre
a searchable catalogue and scanned images of more than 14,000 cause papers relating to cases heard in the Church Courts of the diocese of York
- britain
- courts
- local government
- voxpop
all the surviving correspondence associated with William of Orange, including letters, commissions, petitions, instructions and speeches
- netherlands
- politics
digitised images of some of the world's oldest surviving volumes of printed music
- music
digital archive (images and catalogue) of manuscripts of the actor Edward Alleyn (1566-1626)
- drama
- manuscript
Digital repository for Linnaeus' collections, comprising specimens of plants, fish, shells and insects, as well as books, letters and manuscripts.
- science
digital collection of Newton's manuscripts held by the Cambridge University Library
- science
the wide-ranging papers of the eighteenth-century naturalist, traveller, correspondent and royal adviser
- australasia
- exploration
- science
a collection of documents and artefacts taken from ships captured by British privateers and the Royal Navy between 1652 and 1815 as well as the court papers generated by legal proceedings
- britain
- maritime
- war
20,000 images of the Archbishops of York Registers, 1225-1650, with a searchable index.
- religion
No matching items
Artworks
Collections of art, decorative objects, woodcuts and engravings, etc, usually with searchable metadata.
A database of images of the colonial Americas from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, 1492 to ca. 1825
- americas
- place
database of representations of books and other textual documents in the figurative arts c. 1300 to 1600 CE
- arts
- books
- britain
A digital library of prints and book illustrations from early modern Britain
- arts
- britain
a database of eighteenth-century printers’ ornaments, which ranged from small floral embellishments to large and intricate head- and tailpieces, depicting all manner of people, places, and things
- c18th
- material culture
an interdisciplinary collaborative research resource, providing access to art historical, technical and conservation information on paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder
- arts
- europe
Europa Inventa is the first systematic description of medieval/early modern European manuscripts, art works and objects held in Australasian libraries, galleries and museums.
- arts
- manuscript
- material culture
More than 70 original engravings digitised by NLS from the first ever pictorial survey of Scotland, published by military engineer John Slezer in 1693.
- arts
- scotland
database of illustrations printed in Lyon during the Renaissance period, which can be searched using an image or by text keywords
- arts
- france
Digitised collection of works by 'one of the most skilled etchers of his or any other time', keyword search or browse themes.
- arts
- europe
No matching items
Maps
Digitised collections that are primarily focused on mapping, geography or spatial data.
the Down Survey of Ireland (1656-58) is the first ever detailed land survey on a national scale anywhere in the world
- ireland
- society
High quality scans of Cambridge University Library's set of 66 proof maps prepared for John Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, which was published in 1611/12.
- britain
digitised collection containing a wide range of individual maps and atlases of Europe and America
- americas
- europe
A GIS interface enabling researchers to map and visualize textual and artefactual data relating to 17th and 18th-century London.
- london
MoEML maps the streets, sites, and significant boundaries of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century London.
- britain
- urban
a searchable gazetteer of late Renaissance Florence, ca. 1530-1630, with a digitised version of the 1594 edition of the Buonsignori map
- italy
- urban
Official website of the Selden Map of China at the Bodleian Library, including digitised image of the map and information about it and its restoration
- east asia
- travel
an animated map of the spatial history of the Jamaican slave insurrection
- americas
- rebellion
- slavery
electronic edition of John Strype's 1720 Survey of London, including maps and plates, introductory essay and bibliography
- britain
- urban
No matching items
Anthologies
Small selections of transcribed or extracted primary sources, likely to be suited to teaching or student projects.
collection of over 100 resoundingly successful examples of broadside ballads with recordings, images and a wealth of other materials
- music
translated and curated primary sources concerning the Saint-Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789
- americas
- consumption
A digital edition of 80 fully transcribed depositions relating to 20 cases heard in church courts and Quarter Sessions 1556-1694.
- women
- work
some classics of early modern philosophy prepared with a view to making them easier to read
- philosophy
excerpts from letters written by Simon Taylor, an 18th-century Jamaican slaveholder and plantation owner
- americas
- slavery
anthology of English literature, medieval to 18th century
- literature
No matching items