Guides: British History: Find Primary Sources

Primary Sources

What are primary sources?

Primary sources are original documents and objects created at the time being studied, such as diaries, newspaper accounts, letters, governmental records, or drawings. Any record that documents a past event can be considered a primary source.

To learn more about what primary sources are and how to approach them, watch the short video "What is a Primary Source?" from the AM Research Skills database: https://doi.org/10.47594/RMPS_0001

Where can I find primary sources?

You can find primary sources in libraries, museums, and archives, including McGill's Rare Books and Special Collections Library (located on the 4th floor of the McLennan Library building). You can also find digitized primary sources online in library databases, such as those linked below, as well as in digitized collections, such as McGill's Digital Exhibitions & Collections.

You can also find primary sources in print and eBooks through the library. Historians and other scholars often bring together (and, when necessary, translate) primary sources in collections called sourcebooks (sometimes spelled source books), readers, or anthologies. You can systematically search for these in the Library Catalogue by using subject headings. Try combining keywords on your topic with the word sources (which demarcate primary sources) in a subject heading search. For example:

su: Reformation England sources
su: women Ireland history sources
su: Great Britain history 20th century sources

Government Documents

Find more U.K. government information on the Government Information subject guide.

State Papers Online (Gale Primary Sources)
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Contains the module The Government of Britain, 1509-1782
Resource bringing together Domestic, Foreign, Borders, Scotland, and Ireland State Papers of Britain with the Registers of the Privy Council and other State Papers now housed in the Cotton, Harley and Lansdowne collections in the British Library. Searchable calendar entries of predominately papers of the Secretaries of State from the reign of Henry VIII to the end of the reign of Queen Anne.
U.K. Parliamentary papers (ProQuest)
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Sessional papers of the British House of Commons and the 19th Century House of Lords. It includes detailed primary source for the history of Britain, its colonies, and the wider world.
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (ProQuest)
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As the working documents of government, ProQuest U.K. Parliamentary Papers encompass all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy, showing how issues were explored and legislation was formed.
Documents on British Policy Overseas‎ (ProQuest)
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A fully searchable collection of primary source documents from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), shedding light on diplomatic history throughout the 20th C.
Coverage: 1898 - 1990

Dublin Castle Records, 1798-1926
The Dublin Castle administration in Ireland was the government of Ireland under English and later British rule, from the twelfth century until 1922, based at Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle Records, 1798-1926 contains records of the British administration in Ireland prior to 1922, a crucial period which saw the rise of Parnell and the Land War in 1880 through to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921.

Newspapers

British Library Newspapers (Gale Primary Sources)
Full-text database containing digitized regional and local newspapers published in Britain between the mid-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Access to parts I-V, not part VI- Ireland, 1797-1950.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection (Gale Primary Sources)
Contains 17th and 18th-century English news pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from Charles Burney Collection in the British Library.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Nichols Newspapers Collection (Gale Primary Sources)
Contains newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and broadsheets from the Nichols newspaper collection held at the Bodleian library in Oxford. Covers the period 1672-1737 and charts the history of the development of the press in England.
Gale Newsvault (Gale)
Combined database of Gale's historical newspaper collections in full-text now on Gale Primary Sources cross-search platform.
Includes 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers; 19th Century British Library Newspapers, Parts I and II; 19th Century U.S. Newspapers; 19th Century UK Periodicals: New Readerships; 19th Century UK Periodicals: Empire; British Newspapers, Part 3; Daily Mail Historical Archive; Economist Historical Archive; Financial Times Historical Archive; Illustrated London News Historical Archive; Liberty Magazine Historical Archive; Listener Historical Archive; Picture Post Historical Archive; Sunday Times Digital Archive; Times Digital Archive; and Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive.

The Scotsman
Full text of the Scotsman/Daily Scotsman (Edinburgh), 1817-1950.

The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003 (Gale Primary Sources)
Search the complete digital edition (over 260,000 full color pages) of the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab

For more historical newspapers, see the Newspapers LibGuide.

Periodicals

British Periodicals (ProQuest)
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Full-text database containing British periodicals from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century.
Eighteenth Century Journals (Adam Matthew)
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Contains rare journals printed between c.1685 and 1835, illuminating aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics covered include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion.
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals (Gale Primary Sources)
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Searchable facsimile resource for the study of British life in the 19th century. Currently contains nearly 200 periodical titles and offers textual analysis through Gale’s topic finder and term frequency tools.
Economist Historical Archive (Gale Primary Sources)
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Historical archives of The Economist, 1843-2003.
The Listener Historical Archive, 1929-1991 (Gale Primary Sources)
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Enhance your study of twentieth-century British culture as reflected in BBC broadcasts. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Youth and Popular Culture Magazine Archive (Alexander Street)
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Resource howcases unique periodicals from 1940-present, highlighting topics and trends of youth culture such as fashion, rock and roll, sports, sexuality, dating, as well as youth portrayal in the media. Periodicals provide insight to what has and continues to influence youth culture, especially during times of rapid social and cultural change in the U.S. and the UK.

Published Books

Early English Books Online (ProQuest)
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Contains page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere between 1473 and 1700.
Eighteenth Century Collections (Gale Primary Sources)
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Full-text searchable database including books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides published in the UK and elsewhere during the 18th century. Based on the English Short Title Catalogue and primarily in English but also includes other languages.
Literary manuscripts : Victorian manuscripts from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection (Adam Matthew)
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Victorian manuscripts from the Berg Collection containing a broad range of authors from across the nineteenth century. Each author collection is included in its entirety, such as Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Henry James, and more.

Thematic Digital Collections

Making of the Modern World (Gale Primary Sources)
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Covers the history of Western trade, encompassing the coal, iron, steel, railway, and cotton industries as well as banking and finance, and the emergence of the modern corporation. Documents the rise of the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century.
The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Empire Online (Adam Matthew)
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Brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials from the past 500 years for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Empire Studies (Adam Matthew)
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This collection offers a rich array of sources for the study of the British Empire. It features material on British colonial policy and government; perspectives on life in British colonies; the relationship between gender and empire; race; and class.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 (Adam Matthew)
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Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice.
Literary Studies (Adam Matthew)
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Literary manuscripts, rare printed works, and personal papers of a range of leading literary figures, as well as unique access to a goldmine of rare and obscure literary texts and genres.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Life at Sea: Seafaring in the Anglo-American Maritime (Adam Matthew)
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Explores the lives of seafarers in the Anglo-American maritime world during the period 1600-1900. Resources are largely narrative and journal content giving accounts of life onboard a variety of ocean-going vessels, including merchant and naval vessels, whalers, and pirate ships.
London Low Life (Adam Matthew)
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London Low Life is a full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Food and Drink in History (Adam Matthew)
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Primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition and food production.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism (Adam Matthew)
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Presents a multi-national journey through well-known, little-known and far-flung destinations unlocked for the average British traveller between 1850 and the 1980s. Guidebooks and brochures, periodicals, travel agency correspondence, photographs and personal travel journals provide unique insight into the expansion, accessibility and affordability of tourism for the masses and the evolution of some of the most successful travel agencies in the world. Key travel locations include British seaside destinations and British rail, as well as locations on the Continent and in America.
Medical Services and Warfare (Adam Matthew)
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Explore multiple perspectives on the history of injury, treatment and disease on the front line. Chart scientific advances through hospital records, medical reports and first-hand accounts, and discover the evidence of how war shaped medical practice across the centuries. The four conflicts robustly represented are the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the First World War and the Second World War. Includes the Florence Nightingale Papers.
Global commodities (Adam Matthew)
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Contains manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of the global commodities in world history that helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality

History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality
by Kristen Howard Last Updated Jan 6, 2025 416 views this year

Defining Gender, 1450-1910 (Adam Matthew)
Contains access to original British source material for teaching and research on the history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Gender: Identity and Social Change (Adam Matthew)
Essential primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. This expansive collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Sex and Sexuality (Adam Matthew)
This collection explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Investigating the breadth and complexity of human sexual understanding through the work of leading sexologists, sex researchers, organizations and personal accounts.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

Homosexuality in 18th-century England
An online sourcebook compiled by Rictor Norton.
Homosexuality in 19th-century England
An online sourcebook compiled by Rictor Norton.
Studies in Scarlet: Marriage and Sexuality in the U.S. & U.K., 1815-1914
Drawn from the Harvard Law School Library’s extensive trial collections, Studies in Scarlet features over 420 trial narratives involving the crimes and passions of both renowned and ordinary people.

Women in the National Archives (Adam Matthew)
Reproduces original documents covering the campaign for women's suffrage in Britain, 1903-1928 and the granting of women's suffrage in colonial territories, 1930-1962.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Orlando : Women's Writings in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present (Cambridge)
A textbase comprising more than 8 million words of original scholarship about women writers’ lives, bodies of work, and cultures in a collection of author profiles, event entries, and bibliographic entries brought together for searching and remixing by the project’s bespoke tagging system.
Perdita manuscripts : women writers, 1500-1700 (Adam Matthew)
Complete facsimile images of manuscripts written or compiled by women living in the British Isle during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries (Alexander Street)
A collection of British and Irish women's diaries and correspondence spanning more than 300 years.
Travel Writing: Spectacle and World History (Adam Matthew)
This resource brings together hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Students and researchers will find sources covering a variety of topics, including architecture, art, the British Empire, climate, customs, exploration, family life, housing, industry, language, monuments, mountains, natural history, politics and diplomacy, race, religion, science, shopping and war.

Early Modern Period (c. 1500-1750)

Early Modern England (Adam Matthew)
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This project offers rare and invaluable sources for examining the lived experience of people who witnessed this pivotal era of English history. From 'ordinary' people through to more prominent individuals and families, these documents show how everyday working, family, religious and administrative life was experienced across England.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

Sources of Early Modern Emotion in English, 1500-1700
Sources of Early Modern Emotion in English, 1500-1700 (SEMEE) is a living, collaborative project designed to aid researchers working on emotion and affect in the English Renaissance. It contains editable bibliographies of primary sources related to the study of emotion, as well as a bibliography of secondary scholarship on early modern emotion.

Literary Print Culture (Adam Matthew)
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The Stationers’ Company Archive is one of the most important resources for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions and the history of bookbinding. Explore extremely rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century in this invaluable resource of research material for historians and literary scholars.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
Explore the history of the non-elite in London between the 17th and 20th centuries using the fully searchable court proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court.

Virginia Company Archives (Adam Matthew)
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Virginia Company Archives provides a comprehensive record of the history of the Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624. Centred upon the archives of the Ferrar family who played a significant role in the Company's administration, this resource documents the founding and economic development of the Virginia colony, relations between colonists and Indigenous peoples, and early trade between Britain and America. It is also a crucial source for London's economic history and the religious and social history of early modern England, with further content documenting the Ferrars' continued interest in the European colonisation of North America in the years after 1624.
East India Company (Adam Matthew)
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Offers access to a unique collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London. Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types, this resource charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Perdita manuscripts : women writers, 1500-1700 (Adam Matthew)
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Complete facsimile images of manuscripts written or compiled by women living in the British Isle during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

Eighteenth Century

Eighteenth Century Collections (Gale Primary Sources)
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Full-text searchable database including books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides published in the UK and elsewhere during the 18th century. Based on the English Short Title Catalogue and primarily in English but also includes other languages. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Eighteenth Century Journals (Adam Matthew)
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Contains rare journals printed between c.1685 and 1835, illuminating aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics covered include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Literary manuscripts : 17th and 18th century poetry from the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (Adam Matthew)
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Complete facsimile images of manuscripts of 17th and 18th century verse held in the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Eighteenth Century Drama : Censorship, Society and the Stage (Adam Matthew)
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Archive containing almost every play submitted for licence between 1737 and 1824, with documents that provide social context for the plays. Features primary source documents from the Larpent collection of plays and Anna Larpent's Diaries, the London Stage Database, and the Biographical Dictionary Database.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Grand Tour (Adam Matthew)
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The Grand Tour was a rite of passage for many aristocratic and wealthy young Britons of the eighteenth century, and a phenomenon which shaped the creative and intellectual sensibilities of some of the era’s greatest artists, writers and thinkers. Study the history of travel with this unique collection of written primary and secondary sources, artworks, photographs and maps, c. 1550-1850, which highlights the influence of continental travel on British art, architecture, urban planning, literature and philosophy.

Victorian Period

Victorian Popular Culture (Adam Matthew)
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Victorian Popular Culture is a portal comprised of four modules, inviting users into the darkened halls, small backrooms, big tops and travelling venues that hosted everything from spectacular shows and bawdy burlesque, to the world of magic, spiritualist sances, optical entertainments and the first moving pictures. Primary source material includes objects, printed books, ephemera, posters, photographs and playbills.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources)
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The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain (Adam Matthew)
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Discover what life was like for the poorest communities in Victorian Britain, and explore the government policy, social reform movements and philanthropic efforts of charitable institutions that sought to alleviate poverty.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Victorians on Film: Entertainment, Innovation and Everyday Life (Adam Matthew)
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Showcasing the British Film Institute’s Victorian Film Collection and the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection, Victorians on Film provides a glimpse into the lives of the late Victorians and Edwardians captured by some of Britain’s earliest film pioneers and innovators.
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals (Gale Primary Sources)
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Searchable facsimile resource for the study of British life in the 19th century. Currently contains nearly 200 periodical titles and offers textual analysis through Gale’s topic finder and term frequency tools. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index (ProQuest)
C19 Index draws on the strength of established indexes such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (NSTC), The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index, Periodicals Index Online and the Cumulative Index to Niles' Register 1811–1849 to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.7 million books and official publications, 70,000 archival collections and 23.5 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers. C19 Index now provides integrated access to 18 bibliographic indexes, including more than three million records from British Periodicals Collections I and II, together with the expanded online edition of the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism (DNCJ).

Charles Booth's London
Explore poverty and labour in London between 1886 and 1903 using poverty maps and the original notebooks of Charles Booth, a British social science researcher, comprising over 450 volumes of interviews, questionnaires, observations and statistical information

Literary manuscripts : Victorian manuscripts from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection (Adam Matthew)
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Victorian manuscripts from the Berg Collection containing a broad range of authors from across the nineteenth century. Each author collection is included in its entirety, such as Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Henry James, and more.
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape (Adam Matthew)
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Contains the manuscript collections of the Wordsworth Trust with notebooks, manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers, including Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey and Robert Southey. Also includes fine art works by J.M.W. Turner, John Constable and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Colour contents include verse, printed, and prose manuscripts, printed verse, correspondence, diaries, travel journals, autograph albums, guide books, fine art and maps.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive (Adam Matthew)
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Discover the work of one of the world’s most important publishing dynasties through this collection from the historic John Murray Archive. From book history to travel writing, politics to poetry, this newly digitised resource introduces an unparalleled repository for nineteenth century culture and the literary luminaries who shaped it.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

Post-Victorian Period (after 1901)

British Newsreels, 1911-1930: Culture and Society on Film (Adam Matthew)
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A large collection of newsreels produced by the Topical Film Company providing a glimpse into the early twentieth century - from everyday interests, such as sport and fashion, to coverage of key events, such as the First World War, the Suffragette Movement, and the establishment of the Irish Free State.

British Pathé
News and entertainment video film archive (1896-1976).

Business, Economic & Labour History (Adam Matthew)
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A range of sources from Britain and America, covering key subjects within this historical field, including Keynesian economic policy in post-war Britain; international labour movements; the London Stock Exchange; and the papers of important economists.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
First World War Portal (Adam Matthew)
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Four modules of primary sources for the study of the Great War. Containing personal collections and rare printed material to military files, artwork and audio-visual files, content highlights the experiences of soldiers, civilians and governments on both sides of the conflict.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War (ProQuest)
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Archival research resource containing rare magazines by and for servicemen and women of all nations during the First World War.
Coverage: 1914 - 1919
Subject coverage: English , French, German & American Literature / Writing / Periodicals, Women’s Literature / Women’s Writing, The First World War / World War 1, Trench Journalism, Popular Culture, Military, Armed Forces, Military History,
The Periodical Press, Illustrated Periodicals, Political Satire, Politics/Political Science, English Poetry, Military Veterans, History of Medicine / Caregiving / Welfare.
Library can facilitate negotiating text-mining rights for this database for McGill faculty and students wishing to acquire the rights with their own research funds. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Interwar Culture (Adam Matthew)
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Interwar Culture showcases popular and lesser-known periodicals published during the interwar period, 1919-1939. Articles cover culture, entertainment, fashion, home and family life, world current affairs, class, social and welfare issues.
World War Two Studies (Adam Matthew)
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Primary sources, offering insight into many aspects of the conflict, including government policy, the war in the Pacific, and the war in Europe. Sources include the records of the Special Operations Executive; and private papers of American General Robert L Eichelberger, from the Pacific war.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Service Newspapers of World War Two (Adam Matthew)
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This digital resource reveals the story of war as told by the newspapers that brought information, entertainment and camaraderie to the forces at home and overseas. Explore over 300 titles from key nations across the globe that took part in the world-changing conflict.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Allied Propaganda in World War II and the British Political Warfare Executive (Archives Unbound)
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Presents the complete files of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) kept at the U.K. National Archives as FO 898 from its instigation to closure in 1946, along with the secret minutes of the special 1944 War Cabinet Committee "Breaking the German Will to Resist."
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 (Adam Matthew)
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Contains collections of original manuscript, typescript and ephemera archival material about civil rights, protest movements and popular culture from key libraries in Britain and America. Includes pamphlets, letters, government files, eye witness accounts, fanzines and video content.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
MacMillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963 (Adam Matthew)
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Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963, sourced exclusively from The National Archives, the UK government's official archive, enables students and researchers better to understand the workings of British Government. The resource casts new light on Britain's relationship with the EEC, Anglo-American ties, the Cold War, decolonisation, and issues of public and political morality.
The Nixon years, 1969-1974 (Adam Matthew)
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This collection provides complete FCO 7 and FCO 82 files for the entire period of Richard Nixon’s presidency. Top-level Anglo-American discussions and briefing papers dominate these papers. There is also a wealth of material on social conditions, domestic reforms, trade, culture and the environment. In addition, there is strong coverage of US policy decisions by the FCO and the British embassy in Washington; White House staff appointments and UN discussions; views on Europe; the deployment of F-111 aircraft on US airbases in the UK and Nixon’s battles over funding from Congress; visits to the US by Harold Wilson and Edward Heath; and the internal situation in the US and domestic reform.
Mass Observation Online (Adam Matthew)
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Access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. Contains scans of original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation social research organisation from its inception in 1937 to the last submitted diary in 1967 allowing a unique insight into life in Britain spanning four decades.
Mass Observation Project (Adam Matthew)
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Launched in 1981 by the University of Sussex as a rebirth of the original 1937 Mass Observation, its founders' aim was to document the social history of Britain by recruiting volunteers to write about their lives and opinions. Still growing, it is one of the most important sources available for qualitative social data in the UK. This collection consists of the directives (questionnaires) sent out by Mass Observation in the 1980s and 1990s and the thousands of responses to them from the hundreds of Mass Observers. The directives and responses from the 2000s will follow in 2022.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
1980s Culture and Society (Adam Matthew)
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An eclectic and multi-faceted resource compiled from archived zines, newspapers and ephemera, to oral histories, films and photographs, to showcase the key social, cultural, and political concerns of the decade.

McGill Rare Books & Special Collections

Chapbook Collection
The Chapbook Collection contains over 900 searchable English-language chapbooks published in England, Scotland, Ireland and the northeastern United States. They contain stories based upon medieval romance, English legends and folklore, or are abridged from popular literature for adults.

Liaison Librarian

Emily Jaeger-McEnroe

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Email me

Contact:

Humanities & Social Sciences Library

514-398-4701

British History