Guides: English Literatures: Find Primary Sources

Digital Primary Source Collections

17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new window
A collection of newspapers and news pamphlets primarily published in London, with some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and examples from the American colonies.
19th Century British Pamphlets (within JSTOR) This link opens in a new window
A collection of significant 19th-century British pamphlets, which cover key political, social, technological, and environmental issues.
19th Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new window
This database contains 1.2 million pages of periodicals published in Great Britain from 1800-1900. It includes publications on women, children, leisure and sport, humor, and material regarding the expansion of the British empire.
African American Newspapers, Series 1, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
Provides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. Features papers from 39 states.
American Periodicals Series Online (1740 to 1940) This link opens in a new window
Digital images of historically significant American periodicals from 1740 to 1900, including literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and popular magazines.
American Slavery Collection, 1820-1922 This link opens in a new window
This digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s extraordinary holdings of slavery and abolition materials delivers more than 3,500 works published over the course of more than 100 years. Long awaited in fully searchable form, The American Slavery Collection addresses every facet of American slavery—one of the most important and controversial topics in U.S. history. These diverse materials, all filmed in full-resolution color, include books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera; among them are a large number of invaluable Southern imprints.
America's Historical Newspapers: Evening Star This link opens in a new window
Selected digitized issues of the Washington Evening Star, 1852-1981.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender.

We have access to the following Archives:

International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture

LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940, Part I

LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part II

Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Searches across Gale primary source collections, including Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO); Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO); Sabin Americana, 1500-1926; The Making of Modern Law; and The Making of the Modern World.
You can select the Primary Source collections from the Gale Product menu by selecting, "Primary Sources".
BBC Shakespeare Plays This link opens in a new window
Premier collection of BBC productions of Shakespeare's plays, available via streaming server and on mobile devices. The plays are chaptered by acts, which allows you to zoom directly to a desired segment.
Black Authors, 1556-1922: Imprints from the Library Company of Philadelphia This link opens in a new window
Created from the renowned holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Black Authors, 1556-1922, this compelling collection offers more than 550 fully cataloged and searchable works by black authors from the Americas, Europe and Africa.
Bloomsbury Medieval Studies This link opens in a new window
Bloomsbury Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary digital resource with a global perspective which opens up the medieval world for students and scholars. It brings together high-quality secondary content with visual primary sources, a brand new reference work and material culture images into one cross-searchable platform, to support this rich field of study.
British Literary Manuscripts This link opens in a new window
A digitized collection of manuscripts of British authors dating from roughly 1120 to 1900. Contains poems, plays, novels, diaries, journals, correspondence, and other papers from major library collections, reproduced in facsimile and searchable via detailed descriptive information.
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts, archaeology, architecture, and the social sciences.
Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online This link opens in a new window
The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online presents a fully searchable version of Jonson's complete works, including all the original introductions, collations, and commentary. Includes a comprehensive body of essays and archives necessary for full study of Jonson’s life, performance history, and afterlife. Comprises around 90 old-spelling texts, 550 contextual documents, 80 essays, several hundred high-quality images, and 100 music scores; lists details of more than 1300 stage performances; and has a cross-linked bibliography of over 7000 items.
Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876 This link opens in a new window
More than 140 newspapers from 22 islands, including Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Guadaloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis, Puerto Rico, St. Bartholomew, St. Christopher, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad, and the Virgin Islands.
Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy on Screen This link opens in a new window
Part of Bloomsbury's Drama Online collection, Harriet Walter leads an all-female cast in these three productions of Julius Caesar, Henry IV and The Tempest, all set in a women's prison. Inspiration for these productions sprung from the real-life women who have experienced the criminal justice system.
Drama Online: National Theatre Collection This link opens in a new window
Drawing on 10 years of National Theatre Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality recordings never previously seen outside of the NT’s Archive, the National Theatre Collection makes this rich body of work available to students in schools, universities and libraries around the world. The collection contains 30 full length recordings of National Theatre performances.
Drama Online: Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Live Collection This link opens in a new window
Bloomsbury's Drama Online: Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Live Collection provides access to filmed Live performances of Shakespearean plays staged and acted by the Royal Shakespeare Company. This growing collection currently consists of 24 performances with more scheduled to be included throughout the year.
In 2013 the company began live screenings of its Shakespeare productions, captured here in The RSC Live Collection. In 2016-17 the company collaborated with Intel and The Imaginarium Studios to stage The Tempest, bringing performance capture to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre for the very first time.
Early American Imprints (Series I): Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
Contains the full text of all known existing books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in the United States or in the British American colonies from 1639 through 1800.
When completed, the digital collection will include every item previously published in microform by Readex, plus more than 1,200 additional works located, catalogued and digitized since the microform effort was completed -- more than 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images.
Early American Imprints (Series II): Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the 19th century.
Early American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Offers more than 700 American newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1876, emphasizing the 18th century.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
Features page images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700. From the first book printed in English through to the ages of Spenser, Shakespeare and of the English Civil War, EEBO's content draws on authoritative and respected short-title catalogues of the period and features a substantial number of text transcriptions.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) Text Creation Partnership (TCP) This link opens in a new window
A partner database to Early English Books Online. Provides a subset of fully searchable texts from the titles available in EEBO.
Any EEBO researcher can view the 250,000 page-image editions of EEBO titles, but only TCP partners can view these plus the corresponding full ASCII text.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Digital reproductions of every significant English- and foreign-language titles printed in Great Britain during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas and elsewhere.
Covers the fields of history, literature, language, religion, social sciences, philosophy, law, geography, fine arts, science, and medicine. Cross-searchable with Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Europeana This link opens in a new window
Online access to paintings, music, films and books from Europe's galleries, libraries, archives and museums.
Gale Primary Source Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Provides cross-searching capabilities for several Gale digital collections, including 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, 19th Century British Library Newspapers, 19th Century UK Periodicals, Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003, Times Digital Archive 1785-1985, Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive 1902-2006, Picture Post Historical Archive 1938-1957.
HarpWeek: The Civil War Era, Reconstruction I & II and Gilded Age I (1857-1912) This link opens in a new window
Provides electronic access to all issues of Harper's Weekly (including all illustrations and advertisements) published between 1857 (first issue) and 1912.
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
To login to Georgetown's instance of HathiTrust click on the large yellow "Log In" button. Select "Georgetown University" as your partner institution and click "Continue". Once prompted, login in using your NetID and password.
Illustrated London News Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
A digital archive of world's first fully illustrated weekly newspaper, covering 1842 to 2003. Areas covered include politics, social history, fashion, theatre, media, literature, advertising, graphic design, and genealogy.
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
Over 400 underground and alternative newspapers spanning the 1960s to 1980s. Includes campus zines, armed forces newsletters, feminist periodicals, and small press literary magazines.
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
Fully searchable library of more than 350,000 full-text works of English and American poetry, drama, and fiction with complementary criticism, reference resources, and websites. Includes over 800 clips of poets reading their own and other poets' work.
Allows you to:
--search both the MLA International Bibliography and the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, with links to full-text articles from over 200 literature journals.
--find a list of works by or about a particular author
--search simultaneously across primary works and secondary sources
--access 1,550 author biographies

Includes full-text databases such as African-American Poetry, Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Early English Prose Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, English Drama, English Poetry.

Includes reference sources such as The Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, Encyclopedia of the Novel, New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, the King James Bible, and Webster's Third New International Dictionary.
Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new window
Collection of digital facsimile images of 61,000 works of literature on economics and business published from 1450 through 1945. Covers commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport.
Includes:
Part I: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, 1450-1850
Part II, 1851-1914
Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online This link opens in a new window
Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO) is an essential resource for the study of Britain and its place in the world during the medieval and early modern period (c. 1100-1800).
Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new window
Medieval Family Life contains full-color images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise the Paston, Cely, Plumpton, Stonor, and Armburgh family letter collections, along with full-text searchable transcripts from printed editions. Also includes family trees, chronology, a map, and a glossary.
Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new window
Provides an extensive collection of manuscript materials for the study of medieval travel writing in fact and in fantasy. The main focus is accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. The core of the material is a magnificent collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries across Europe and dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries.
New York Times (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Complete, full-text archive of the New York Times, from its first issue on September 18, 1851, through 2009. NOTE: The newspaper was titled the New York Daily Times from 1851 to 1857. In 1857, its name was changed to the New York Times.
NINES: Nineteenth-Century Studies Online This link opens in a new window
A "scholarly organization devoted to forging links between the material archive of the nineteenth century and the digital research environment of the twenty-first."
Created as "a way for excellent work in digital scholarship to be produced, vetted, published, and recognized by the discipline," NINES serves as a peer-reviewing body for digital work in the long 19th century (1770-1920), both British and American; to support scholars’ priorities and best practices in the creation of digital research materials; and to develop software tools for new and traditional forms of research and critical analysis.
Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains full runs of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain. Includes national and regional newspapers, representing a variety of political and social movements and classes.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) This link opens in a new window
Focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century, NCCO comprises a variety of material types--monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. Collections include Asia and the West; British Politics and Society; British Theatre, Music and Literature; European Literature, 1790-1840; Europe and Africa; Photography; Science, Technology, and Medicine; Women.

Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals. Series 1, 1800-1840
A microfilm collection of nineteenth-century periodicals, including titles such as The Monthly Literary Advertiser, The National Register, The Satirist; or, Censor of the Times, and The Christian Lady’s Magazine. Located in LAU Microforms.

Past Masters This link opens in a new window
Provides scholarly complete editions of classics (or selections from classics) in philosophy, literature, political science and economics. Examples of authors include Aristotle, Machiavelli, Shelley, Mill, Hume, Nietzsche, Bronte and Adam Smith. In English translation and/or the original language.
ProQuest Historical African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Full text of the following historical African American newspapers: Chicago Defender, The Baltimore Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Los Angeles Sentinel, Atlanta Daily World, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, The Philadelphia Tribune, and Cleveland Call and Post. Click the "more" link below for direct links.
Historical coverage of The Chicago Defender, The Baltimore Afro-American, Pittsburgh Courier, The Los Angeles Sentinel, The Atlanta Daily World, The Norfolk Journal & Guide, New York Amsterdam News,The Philadelphia Tribune, and The Cleveland Call & Post.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Complete historical coverage of The Atlanta Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, South China Morning Post, The Times of India, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Click the "more" link below for direct links.
Historical coverage of The Atlanta Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, and The Times of India.
ProQuest Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War This link opens in a new window
An archival research resource containing a vast collection of rare magazines by and for servicemen and women of all nations during the First World War. Over 1,500 periodicals written and illustrated by serving members of the armed forces and associated welfare organisations published between 1914 and the end of 1919 are included. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover, in full colour or greyscale, and with granular indexing of all articles and specialist indexing of publications.
Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window
Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more.
Times Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Searchable, electronic version of The Times, Britain's newspaper of record, essential for primary source research in British history, politics, and culture. Provides a complete full-text and full-image archive of The Times from 1785 to 1985.
Times Literary Supplement, 1902-2014 This link opens in a new window
First appearing in 1902 as a supplement to The Times, the venerable Times Literary Supplement (TLS) is a weekly literary review published in London. See TLS for literary culture and book reviews. TLS Historical Archive contains every page of every issue of the Times Literary Supplement published 1902-2014.
For more current issues see:
HoyaSearch TLS Entry

Special Collections at Georgetown

Located on the 5th floor of Lauinger Library, the Booth Family Center for Special Collections (BFCSC) offers treasures that include a Shakespeare First Folio, an original manuscript of Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and a robust run of Punch (British magazine of humor and satire, 1841-2002).

The BFCSC Catalog describes Georgetown's rich collections. Pay particular attention to the Literature & Linguistics section.

See Search Strategies for Special Collections for finding aids and guides to searching the collections efficiently.

Finding Literature-Related Primary Sources in Catalogs

HoyaSearch and other catalogs list authors' published letters, diaries and facsimile manuscripts, as well as non-literary materials published during the period when your author was writing. To find these primary sources, search for subject keywords such as the following:

Sources
Description and travel
Personal narratives
Correspondence
Early works
Correspondence, reminiscences, etc.
Caricatures and cartoons
Archives
Interviews
Diaries

A few examples: Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Correspondence

Harlem Renaissance -- Sources

For additional information on identifying primary sources, see the Primary Sources subject guide.

Primary Source Indexes

American Bibliography (Evans)
A checklist of nearly 40,000 books printed in the United States from 1639 to 1800. Serves as the basis for Early American Imprints, I.
American Bibliography (Shaw-Shoemaker)
A checklist of more than 50,000 books printed in the United States between 1801 and 1819. Serves as the basis for Early American Imprints, II.
American Literary Manuscripts
A checklist of literary manuscript holdings in academic, historical, and public libraries, museums, and authors' homes in the United States.
ArchiveGrid
A searchable collection of finding aids to primary source material held in archives, special collections, and manuscript collections around the world. Includes historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more.
Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts, 1450-1700
A freely-accessible record of surviving manuscript sources for over 200 major British authors.
A Checklist of American imprints for 1820-1829 (Shoemaker)
A continuation of Shaw and Shoemaker's American Bibliography listed above.
English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC)
Indexes more than 460,000 that were published between 1473 and 1800 primarily in Britain and North America. Works are predominantly in English and are from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries.
Location Register of 20th Century English Literary Manuscripts
A standard reference source for identifying manuscript holdings for literary authors of all genres.
A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640 (Pollard & Redgrave)
Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700 (Wing)