Sourced from the extensive holdings of the British Library, British Library Newspapers delivers a wide range of irreplaceable local and regional voices to reflect the social, political, and cultural events of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. These newspapers, emerging during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a crucial channel of information in towns and major cities, provide researchers with a unique, first-hand perspective on history. With more than 240 newspaper titles, the series is comprised of approximately 6.4 million pages of historic content, from articles to advertisements. This collection illuminates diverse and distinct regional attitudes, cultures, and vernaculars, providing an alternative viewpoint to the London-centric national press over a period of more than 200 years.
Note: NCKU can access Part I to Part IV
Part I: 1800-1900
Ranging from early tabloids like the Illustrated Police News to radical papers like the Chartist Northern Star, publications in Part I span a vast range of national, regional, and local interests. Other notable papers of Part I include the Morning Chronicle, with famous contributors such as Henry Mayhew and John Stewart Mill; the Graphic, publishing both illustrations and news as well as illustrated fiction; and the Examiner, the radical reformist and leading intellectual journal.
Part II: 1800-1900
Part II further expands the range of English regional newspapers and the political views represented in the programme. Researchers can find the newspapers of a number of significant towns and regions included in this collection: Nottingham, Bradford, Leicester, Sheffield, and York, as well as North Wales. The addition of two major London newspapers, The Standard and the Morning Post, helps capture conservative opinion in the nineteenth century, balancing the progressive, more liberal views of the newspapers that appear in Part I.
Part III: 1741-1950
Part III adds even more regional and local depth to the series, encompassing powerful provincial news journals like the Leeds Intelligencer and Hull Daily Mail, local interest publications such as the Northampton Mercury, and specialist titles such as the Poor Law Unions' Gazette. Other noteworthy titles in Part III include the Westmoreland Gazette, whose early editor, Thomas DeQuincy (of Confessions of an English Opium Eater) was forced to resign due to his unreliability.
Part IV: 1732-1950
From key early newspaper titles like the Stamford Mercury to what is possibly the oldest magazine in the world still in publication, the Scots Magazine, Part IV offers key local and regional perspectives from cities as geographically diverse as Aberdeen, Bath, Chester, Derby, Belfast, Liverpool, and York. In addition, Part IV includes the 1901-1950 runs of papers such as the Aberdeen Journal and Dundee Courier whose earlier newspapers are available in Part I and Part II.
Part V: 1746-1950
With a concentration of titles from the northern part of the United Kingdom, Part V deepens the database's northern regional content, doubling coverage in Scotland, tripling coverage in the Midlands, and adding a significant number of northern titles to the British Library Newspapers series. Part V includes newspapers from the Scottish localities of Fife, Elgin, Inverness, Paisley, and John O'Groats, as well as towns just below the border, such as Morpeth, Alnwick, and more. Researchers will also benefit from access to important titles such as the Coventry Herald, which features some of the earliest published writing of Mary Ann Evans.
Part VI: Ireland, 1783-1950
Part VI adds additional titles published in Ireland in the late eighteenth, across the nineteenth and during the early twentieth centuries. A significant number of these are national publications but many are more regional from cities such as Dublin, Cork and Galway as well as more rural towns like Waterford, Tuam, Ballinasloe, and Birr. It will facilitate a range of scholarship across Irish Studies and British history, allowing researchers from the variety of disciplines to access several the most formative and informed newspapers and periodicals that illuminate various aspects of Irish history, society, economy, politics and religion. Key topics include nationalism and Irish independence; Fenianism; The Roman Catholic Church; Irish diaspora; establishment of the Land League; the Irish literary revival; and sport and leisure.