Archive of medieval art, describing and presenting iconographic subjects and images, without geographical limitation, from early apostolic times to the early modern era.
To search by date, select "Search" (not Advanced Search), enter a search expression (e.g., Mary), and enter dates into the date range filter.
The Shakespeare Collection contextualizes the legacy of this William Shakespeare (1564-1616), the English poet and playwright, containing a selection of over 200 print books (annotated working texts of stage managers and company prompters) from the 17th to 20th centuries, the First Folio and Quartos, editions and adaptations of Shakespeare's works from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, more than 80 works Shakespeare is thought to have been familiar with, as well as works composed by Shakespeare's contemporaries. Ensure that the primary source you have chosen is from the time period covered by the course.
Coverage of the dramatic literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, as well as Restoration plays, medieval morality plays and mystery cycles, and nineteenth-century closet dramas.
Coverage from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth century.
Includes works by major dramatists such as Ben Jonson, Aphra Behn, William Wycherley, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Sheridan, Oscar Wilde and J. M. Synge.
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.
Interested in music?
The Marvin Duchow Music Library has medieval printed and manuscript music on microfilm as well as original documents. See the following guides:
Cantus is a database of the Latin chants found in manuscripts and early printed books, primarily from medieval Europe, although some are also early modern.
RISM's database offers documentation available for music manuscripts and printed music. The online catalog contains all of series A/I (individual prints before 1800), A/II (music manuscripts after 1600), and years 1500-1550 and 1601-1610 of B/I (printed collections of the 16th-17th centuries).
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.
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
Former title: LION fulltext This database offers the full text of more than 350,000 original literary works of poetry, drama and prose from the eighth century to the present day. Articles from over 430 scholarly journals are also included. Coverage is extended by the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL), one of the most important bibliographic sources for English studies. This database also includes reference works, including encyclopedias, companions, dictionaries, biographies, study guides, and topic overviews. 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
Full-text searchable database including books, pamphlets, essays, and broadsides published in the UK and elsewhere during the 18th century. Primarily includes English-language works, but there are also some other language items included.
Works printed in Europe before 1701, regardless of language, fall within the scope of the project, as do all pre-1701 works in European languages printed elsewhere.
Includes content from the following libraries: - The Royal Danish Library - Kongelige Bibliotek (Copenhagen, Denmark) - The National Central Library of Florence - Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (Florence, Italy) - The National Library of the Netherlands - Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Hague, The Netherlands) - The Wellcome Library - The Wellcome Library (London, United Kingdom) - The National Library of France - Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris, France)
Contains access to original British source material for teaching and research on the history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective.
A collection of British and Irish women's diaries and correspondence spanning from 1500 to the mid-20th century. Try selecting "Browse historical events". Some events that fall during the time period covered by this course include: Protestant Reformation, English Civil War, French Revolution, American Revolution, Irish Rebellion, and the War of the Austrian Succession.
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.
Interested in travel, exploration, and "discovery"?
Explore five centuries of journeys across the globe, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts in this multi-archive collection dedicated to the history of exploration. Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Contains manuscript, visual and printed works on the history of travel. Includes rare letters, diaries and journals, account books, printed guidebooks, published travel writing, paintings and sketches, and architectural drawings and maps. Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
A uniquely exhaustive resource for historians, theologians, political scientists, and sociologists studying the religious and social upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts gives researchers immediate, Web-based access to an extensive range of seminal works from the Reformation and post-Reformation eras with a focus on Protestant thinkers.
A uniquely valuable resource for historians, theologians, political scientists, and sociologists studying the religious and social upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation gives researchers immediate, Web-based access to an extensive range of seminal works from the Reformation and post-Reformation eras with a focus on Catholic thinkers.
Witchcraft in Europe and America is a comprehensive collection that offers a broad range of documents on an intriguing subject. Included are many rare and fragile manuscripts containing eyewitness accounts and court records of the trials of witches, including harrowing original manuscript depositions taken from the victims in the torture chamber. The earliest documents from the 15th century with the majority of the material from the 16th to 18th centuries. Ensure that the primary source you have chosen is from Europe and in the time period covered by the course (1350-1750).
Published from 1672, this influential periodical promised in its first issue to chronicle the activities of luminaries in metropolitan Paris, in the French provinces, and abroad, and to offer good literature to lovers of novels and stories.
Wide-ranging online collection of edited correspondence of the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century.
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.
The Cecil Papers is a major collection of early-modern historical documents from the reigns of Elizabethan I and James I/VI. The papers span the period 1520-1668.
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.
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.
The breadth of sources provided within this collection is extraordinary, from sources concerning the Black Death to the Restoration of the English monarchy and the Glorious Revolution. Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Gallica is the digital library of Bibliothèque nationale de France and its partners. Contains millions of digitized documents in a wide range of formats: books, newspapers, periodicals, scores, sound recordings, photographs, images, and maps. Excellent resource for accessing historical, mainly francophone materials that are no longer subject to copyright.
Interested in something you can see in person and online?
Explore some of what's held in the Special Collections library here at McGill! Digital Collections provide access to digitized versions of library materials as well as tools to browse, search, and analyze these materials online. You can also see these items in Rare Books and Special Collections (4th floor of the McLennan Library).
Early modern offerings include:
- Horae: Books of Hours (13th-16th centuries)
- The Feather Book of Dionisio Minaggio (created 1618)
- Chapbook Collection (18th and 19th centuries)
Find references to journal articles, book reviews and some dissertations about the history of all parts of the world from 1450 on, EXCLUDING Canada and the United States. In the search options, select "Peer Reviewed" and enter "Historical Period" (e.g., Start Year: 1450 To End Year: 1600).
Find articles, book reviews, and essays about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Citations
History as a discipline uses the Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition) for citations, and usually the Notes-Bibliography form. This requires creating properly formatted footnotes footnotes and a Bibliography for your assignments. Resources to understand the Chicago style of citations are included below.
Note: Chicago Manual of Style updated to the 18th edition in September 2024.
A guide to Chicago Manual of Style with more information on hard-to-cite or unusual sources than the original manual. Note that this manual has not yet been updated to reflect the changes in the 18th edition of Chicago.
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The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition by 
