Ranging from early tabloids like the Illustrated Police News to radical papers like the Chartist Northern Star, this collection comprises British newspapers that span a vast range of national, regional, and local interests from 1800 to 1900.
Sourced from the extensive holdings of the British Library, British Library Newspapers delivers a wide range of irreplaceable local and regional voices reflecting the social, political, and cultural events of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries.
“The most significant impact has been upon my students. I used to shy away from encouraging essay and dissertation topics that involved extensive use of the press, knowing from experience that results were too hard-won and unpredictable for all but the most determined. But the situation has now changed. I can see real opportunities for a revival in reception studies and work on public reputations. One undergraduate last term, for example, tracked the early weeks of the newspaper reception of Darwin's Origin of Species, the first time this had been attempted for half a century. I used to spend much of my time showing students how to find things; now there is more time for them to think.”
― Prof. James A. Secord, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
“[It] gives us an invaluable new perspective on the way Victorian Britain came to understand itself as a community of citizens, consumers and commentators. It is hard to imagine any researcher with nineteenth-century interests to whom it does not offer important insights on their subject: and it is dangerously addictive!”
