English Literatures

It includes both "manuscript and printed material and a broad range of document types; written by men and women from both the European and the non-European perspective:" exploration journals and logs, letter books and correspondence, periodicals, diaries, official government papers, missionary papers, travel writing, slave papers, memoirs, fiction, children's adventure stories, traditional and folk tales, exhibition catalogues and guides, maps, marketing posters, photographs, and illustrations, including many in colour. It has five thematic sections:
Section I: Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969
Section II: Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire
Section III: The Visible Empire
Section IV: Religion and Empire
Section V: Race, Class and Colonialism, 1607-2007

This collection makes available online hard-to-find material in every academic discipline, including:

*History and Geography: Ancient and contemporary history, accounts of voyages and discoveries, historical biographies and memoirs, genealogical collections, gazetteers, works on church antiquities and tourist guides of Britain. Topics include chronologies, recreation (travel, sports, parlor games), military history, maps, local history and topography. It should also be noted that this collection presents a comprehensive picture of the American Revolution from the British perspective.
*Social Science: Materials on manufacturers and merchants, artisans and skilled workers, and international business, banking, taxation and lotteries. Topics include current events, social reform, business/economics/finance (general advertising, lotteries, trade bills and more), political science (parliamentary papers, political satire, political essays, speech/addresses, handbills, parish registers, poll books and more).
*Fine Arts, Music, Art and Architecture: Treatises on music, painting, theater and architecture as well as books on building and carpentry, catalogs pertaining to vocal and instrumental music, paintings, prints, drawings, coins and metals and other collectibles, and material about private art collections.
*Medicine, Science and Technology: Many branches of science, works on applied science and technology, and works and treatises on the treatment of diseases and conditions. Topics include agriculture, cookbooks, military technology, natural philosophy, scientific education and more.
*Literature and Language: Celebrated eighteenth-century essayists, novelists, poets and playwrights, as well as Shakespeare's plays, poems and collected works. Topics include drama, poetry, ballads, religious poems, grammar, dictionaries, songs from plays, satire, book catalogues and more.
*Religion and Philosophy: From sermons, Bibles and prayer books to moral and ethical debates and prescriptions for proper conduct.
*Law: Development of law in the British Empire between 1701 and 1800. Topics include acts, criminal and international law, appellants' cases and more.
*Reference: Ephemeral material on the whole of life in the eighteenth century. Topics include almanacs, catalogues and more.

Asia and the West: diplomacy and cultural exchange
Features primary source collections related to international relations between Asian countries and the West during the 19th century. These invaluable documents include government reports, diplomatic correspondence, periodicals, newspapers, treaties, trade agreements, NGO papers, and more. This unmatched resource allows scholars to explore in great detail the history of British and U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy; Asian political, economic, and social affairs; the Philippine Insurrection; the Opium Wars; the Boxer Rebellion; missionary activity in Asia; and other topics. This resource also includes personal letters and diaries, as well as nautical charts, maps, shipping ledgers, company records, and expedition and survey reports for more than a century of world history.
British politics and society
Includes tens of thousands of primary sources related to the political climate in Great Britain during the “long” nineteenth century. From Home Office records and papers of British statesmen to working class autobiographies and ordnance surveys, British Politics And Society is a remarkable resource for scholars looking to uncover new connections or explore new directions in understanding 19th century British political and social history. British Politics And Society enables researchers to explore such topics as British domestic and foreign policy, trade unions, Chartism, utopian socialism, public protest, radical movements, the cartographic record, political reform, education, family relationships, religion, leisure, and many others.
British theatre, music, and literature : high and popular culture
Features primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores. These rare documents, many of them never before available, were sourced from the British Library and other renowned institutions, and curated by experts in British arts history. Interest in the arts became big business in the Victorian era, as a burgeoning middle class became patrons. This resource explores Victorian popular culture, penny dreadfuls, music, the history of the English stage, the Royal Literary Fund, and more, and provides a detailed look at the state of the British art world with not only manuscripts and compositions, but also documents like personal letters, annotated programs, meeting minutes, and financial records.
Children’s literature and childhood – this archive charts the study of the history of the child in Europe, Asia, North America, Australia and Latin America during the Long Nineteenth Century. A wealth of children’s literature texts document the changing construction of childhood, the growing popularity of children’s literature, and the legal and sociological contexts for both. It has fully searchable text and includes intricate illustrations and children’s book texts.
Europe and Africa : commerce, Christianity, civilization, and conquest
Many research topics emerged from the colonial conquest and the legacy of slavery in modern South African society—the Anglo-Boer War, imperial policy, and race classification among them—that this volatile corner of 19th-century history draws enduring interest from scholars and students. To support their research, Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Europe And Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, And Conquest delivers monographs, manuscripts, and newspaper accounts covering key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy.
European literature, 1790-1840 : the Corvey collection
Includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French, and German titles. The collection is sourced from the remarkable library of Victor Amadeus, whose Castle Corvey collection was one of the most spectacular discoveries of the late 1970s. The Corvey Collection—one of the most important collections of Romantic era writing in existence—includes fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry, and more, with a focus on especially difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers. As a resource for Romantic literature and historical studies, the Corvey Collection is unmatched. It provides a wealth of fully searchable content with digital research tools that enable scholars to uncover new relationships among authors and works, on range of topics including Romantic literary genres; mutual influences of British, French and German Romanticism; literary culture; women writers of the period; the canon; Romantic aesthetics; and many others.
Mapping the world: maps and travel literature – this archive offers Nineteenth Century maps; travel diaries; gazetteers, travel guidebooks; travel narrative manuscripts; sketch maps; European, Asian and African rail and canal routes; atlases, maritime and nautical charts; ordnance surveys and Admiralty charts. All of the material, including place names on maps, is fully searchable and is accompanied with a state-of-the-art image viewer.
Photography: the world through the lens
Assembles collections of photographs, photograph albums, and photographically illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives worldwide, delivering approximately 2 million photographs from Britain, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. While some images are well known, many have rarely been viewed. Key areas of research covered include: exploration and travel; empire, colonization, and life in colonized regions; topography and archaeology; daily life in 19th century in countries across the globe; people and portraiture; science, medicine, and criminology; photography as reproduction of art works; and key events and wars.
Religion, society, spirituality and reform – faith and skepticism shaped many aspects of Nineteenth Century life, including politics, law, economics, and social and reform movements. Collections within this archive include: Literature of Theology and Church History in the United States and Canada; Literature of Theology and Church History: British Theology; the Charles Bradlaugh Pamphlets; Christliches Kunstblatt, 1859 – 1905; the Papers of George Ripley, 1802 – 18880; the Caroline Wells Healey Dall Papers, 1811 – 1917; the Theodore Parker Papers, 1826 – 1865; and the Corban Society Records, 1811 – 1850.
Science, technology, and medicine : 1780-1925
The collection consists primarily of two components: Journals track the connection between major episodes in the history of science, specifically in general science, medicine, biology, entomology, botany, chemistry, physics, mathematics, geology, paleontology, and technology. Monographs in the hard and social sciences touch upon the history of anthropology, archeology, ecology, public health, sanitation, geography, oceanography, astronomy, industrial and battlefield technology, and the philosophy of science.
Science, technology and medicine 1780-1925, pt. II - this archive includes monographs and journals drawn from several specialised thematic Collections. These include the Collection on Natural History in the Huntington Library, California, which incorporates texts on zoology, botany, the history of soils and agriculture, geology and the formation of the Earth. There is the Collection on Entomology from the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, University of Alberta, with its legacy of books with sophisticated illustrations and aesthetic beauty. There is the Collection on The Rise of Public Health in England and Wales which incorporates materials concerned with the New Poor Law of 1834, the Poor Law Union Correspondence, and The Journal of the Society of Medical Officers of Health, 1888 – 1920. And there are 2 million pages of Academies of Sciences Publications, where ideas, findings, and inventions discovered by scholars of the great Enlightenment were first published.
Women: transnational networks
Issues of gender and class ignited 19th century debate in the context of suffrage movements, culture, immigration, health, and many other concerns. Using a wide array of primary source documents, Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Women: Transnational Networks focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late 18th century to the era of suffrage in the early 20th century, all through a transnational perspective. The collection contains deep information on European and North American movements, but also expands its scope to include collections from other regions. Researchers and scholars will find rare content related to social reform movements and groups, high and “low” culture, literature and the arts, immigration, daily life, religion, and more.

Authors represented in the collection include:
Matthew Arnold
The Brontës
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Robert Browning
Wilkie Collins
Joseph Conrad
Charles Dickens
George Eliot
George Gissing
Thomas Hardy

Henry James
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
John Ruskin
Alfred Tennyson
William Makepeace Thackeray
Correspondence, unpublished poems, working notebooks, holograph manuscripts and drawings trace the inspiration and genesis behind the period's greatest works.

This digital collection brings to life the teeming streets of Victorian London, inviting students and scholars to explore the gin palaces, brothels and East End slums of the nineteenth century's greatest city.
From salacious swells, guides to scandalous broadsides and subversive posters, the material sold and exchanged on London's bustling thoroughfares offers an unparalleled insight into the dark underworld of the nineteenth century city. Children's chapbooks, street cries, slang dictionaries and ballads were all part of a vibrant culture of street literature.
London Low Life is also an incredible visual resource for students and scholars of London, depicting in full colour maps, cartoons, song sheets, street cries and a full set of the essential John Tallis' Street Views of London - a unique resource for the study of London architecture and commerce.

Provides searchable and browsable access to a variety of theatre arts related materials including all aspects of theatre and performance. Includes access to full-text plays, audio plays, filmed stage performances, documentaries, and other video content, contextualizing materials (designs, reference, and ephemera) including recent Broadway productions and previously unpublished plays. Covers key writers, creators, and performers. Includes full content of the following collections: Drama Texts Collection Contemporary World Drama Black Drama: Third Edition Twentieth Century Drama: Second Edition Theatre in Performance Collection The BroadwayHD Collection The Royal Shakespeare Company Collection Theatre in Context Collection Performance Design Archive Online.

The University Library has purchased and provides access to collections:
19th century (1801-1900)
20th century (1901-2003/04 session)
21st century module 1 (2004/05 – 2009/10 sessions)
21st century module 2 (2010/12 – 2013/14 sessions)
Hansard (1803-2005)