Library Research Guides: ENG 335: London in the 18th Century: Digital Primary Sources

Suggested Databases and Websites

Texts

British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Searchable full text of journals and magazines published between 1680 and 1930. Includes advertisements, illustrations.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Digital images of every page of books published during the 18th century.

London Lives 1690-1800
Free collection on "Crime, Poverty, and Social Policy in the Metropolis". Searchable records of the Old Bailey, parishes, hospitals, and other institutions.
Images

Artstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor is a database of extremely high-quality images from the world's museums and archives available for educational use. Includes prints and paintings by Hogarth, Rowlandson, and other 18th century artists, but also includes architecture, decorative arts, and clothing.

Try Advanced Search to restrict to Geographic area (United Kingdom) and Date (1700-1799).

NOTE: In order to download images, you must create a (free) ARTstor account.

British Cartoon Prints
Published primarily between 1780 to 1830. The cartoons highlight aspects of British political life, including tensions with its colonies and other nations, as well as society, fashion, manners, and theater.
Harvard Map Collection: Digital Maps
Includes 10 very high-quality digital images of maps of London spanning from 1713 to 1791. Try searching for "London" as a subject and sorting by date.
Museum of London - Digital Collections
A selection of the online collections of the museum of London, including artifacts, documents, and other images.
The British Museum Online Collections
Search almost two million objects from the entire Museum collection. New images are being added to the database and made available here at the rate of about 2,000 each week.

Search Tip

Searching full-text primary documents from the 18th century can be a problem, either because of mistakes transforming the text to something machine-readable, or because 18th century spelling was not yet standarized.

To combat this, try combining several spellings of search words, such as:

smallpox OR smalpox OR small-pox

Also try truncation to get variations in spelling that have the same root:

adverti* to get advertize or advertise

Topic-Specific Resources

Fashion

Artstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor includes museum-quality images of historical clothing from The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Go to Advanced Search. Select Collections > Fashion, and restrict by date 1700 - 1799.

Casey Fashion Plates Index
The Joseph E. Casey Fashion Plate Collection at the Los Angeles Public Library contains over 6,200 handcolored fashion plates from British and American magazines dating from the 1790s to the 1880s. All of the plates are indexed and digitized for online viewing. Note the 'browsing' option.
Crime and Prisons
Proceedings of the Old Bailey
Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides Collected by the Harvard Law School Library
500 broadsides span the years 1707 to 1891 and include accounts of executions for such crimes as arson, assault, counterfeiting, horse stealing, murder, rape, robbery, and treason.
Disease & Mortality
London Lives 1690-1800
Records of St. Thomas' Hospital and other institutions that provided medical services in 18th c. London.
Wellcome Library - Digital Collections
Images and documents from Wellcome Library's major collections, covering the history of medicine.
Pleasure Gardens
Vauxhall Gardens 1661–1859
[commercial site] A website from David Coke, author of Vauxhall Gardens: A History, with lots of primary source information about performers and history of the gardens. Many of the primary sources he has transcribed; I can help you locate the originals.
Empire and Opium
British Empire (British National Archives' Learning Curve)
A selection of images of primary sources relating to the British Empire (from the British National Archives).

Subject Librarian

Laura O'Brien

Contact:

781-283-3497
lobrien@wellesley.edu
Schedule an Appointment

Subjects: Classical Studies, French & Francophone Studies, Medieval/Renaissance Studies, Theatre Studies, Writing