Research Guides: HST 223: History of Britain to 1750: Primary Sources

What is a primary source?

In historical research, a primary source can be any source of information created at the time of a historical event or by a direct participant in or observer of an event.

Primary sources can include memoirs,diaries, correspondence, interviews, photographs, newspaper or magazine articles, film footage, news broadcasts, official documents, speeches, maps, artifacts, and works of fiction or drama.

What constitutes a primary source depends entirely on the subject of research. For example, John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage would be a secondary source in a study of John Quincy Adams or Sam Houston, but it could serve as a primary source if the topic of study were Kennedy himself.

Digital Collections Available through ZSR

BOOKS AND OTHER PUBLISHED MATERIALS

Early English Books Online - EEBO This link opens in a new window
Full text of books, pamphlets and broadsides published in England or in English between 1475 and 1700. Includes many of the items indexed in the English Short Title Catalogue. Corresponds to the Pollard and Redgrave, and Wing Short-Title Catalogues, as well as Thomason Tracts. Coverage: 1473-1700
Eighteenth Century Collections Online - ECCO This link opens in a new window
Contains books, pamphlets and broadsides published in England or in English between 1701 and 1800. Includes many of the items indexed in the English Short Title Catalogue. Coverage: 1701-1800
HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Full-text seachable library of high-quality digitized materials such as books, articles, government information, and more from libraries around the world. Includes public domain and in-copyright content. Log in as a WFU user to download PDFs and access additional features. Coverage: Varies

NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Provides searchable, full page image digital access to British journals published between the late 1600s and early 1900s. Topics covered include, literature, art, music, architecture, drama, history, science, and more. Includes access to collections I & II. Coverage: 1680s-1930s
Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window
Search across a wide range of eighteenth century periodicals that cover multiple aspects of contemporary life and culture, including literature, theatre and arts, politics, religion, morality, satire, business, and gender. Primarily UK, but also includes colonial publications from India, Ireland, Canada, and the Caribbean.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
Collection of 17th and 18th century English newspapers and news pamphlets. Published mostly in London, but there are also some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from the American colonies, Europe and India. Includes page images. Coverage: 1604-1804
Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876 This link opens in a new window
This resource covers colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery and U.S. relations with the region as far back as the early 18th century. Coverage: 1718-1876

LEGAL RESOURCES

British Parliamentary Papers This link opens in a new window
Provides complete online coverage of the sessional papers of the British House of Commons from 1695 to 2015 and the 19th Century House of Lords. It covers working documents of government for all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy. Coverage: 1688-2015
State Papers Online: The Government of Britain, 1509-1714 This link opens in a new window
Covers two hundred years of British and European history, from the reign of Henry VIII to the end of the reign of Queen Anne. Gathers together sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British State Papers and links these rare historical manuscripts to their fully text-searchable calendars. Coverage: 1509-1714
State Papers Online: 18th Century, 1714-1782, Part I: State Papers Domestic, Military and Naval and the Registers of the Privy Council This link opens in a new window
Covers the reigns of George I, George II and part of that of George III, providing material on British domestic politics and society. The documents include reports, petitions and correspondence relating to the general administration and constitution of England; law and order; trade and shipping; and the founding of the British empire. The Military and Naval series are detailed records on the structure, administration and activities of the army and navy.

THEMATIC PRIMARY SOURCE COLLECTIONS

Colonial America This link opens in a new window
Provides access to all volumes of the CO 5 series from the UK National Archives, which consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies.
Defining Gender This link opens in a new window
Explore contemporary perceptions of gender through British source material from the 1500s to 2000s, including correspondence, advice literature, periodicals, ephemera and government documents.
Empire Online This link opens in a new window
Brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology. Coverage: 1400s-present
Global Commodities This link opens in a new window
Provides manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials to explore the history of fifteen major commodities and to examine the ways that these have changed the world.
India, Raj and Empire This link opens in a new window
Explore the history of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947.

Openly Available Collections

British History Online
British History Online is the digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. Created by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust, we aim to support academic and personal users around the world in their learning, teaching and research.
British Library Digitised Manuscripts
Digital Bodleian
Digitized collections from throughout British History from the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.
English Broadside Ballad Archive
About 10,000 English broadside ballads of the entire seventeenth century survive. To capture the genre’s arch of development, EBBA seeks to archive all these printed ballads, as well as all surviving sixteenth-century broadside ballads (about 250) and a representative sampling of broadside ballads of the early eighteenth century.
Luminarium
Online anthology of English literature from the Medieval period through the Restoration, with biographical and critical materials.
Luminarium Encyclopedia
Luminarium Encyclopedia is a project begun in 2001 to provide historical contexts for the people, places, and events featured in Luminarium. The scope of the project is enormous, and the progress slow, but new entries, as well as new images, are being added almost daily. The intent is to have this encyclopedia become the Who's Who and What's What in Medieval and Renaissance England.
Old Bailey Online - The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
UK National Archives
Official archive for the UK. Not all of the material is available online. Some content may be available through WFU's subscription to Ancestry.com.

Books	Photographs and images
Magazine and newspaper articles	Cartoons and advertisements
Diaries and journals	Movies, videos, and DVDs
Memoirs and autobiographies	Audio recordings
Interviews	Public opinion polls
Letters	Fiction
Speeches	Research data and statistics
Documents produced by organizations	Documents produced by government agencies, including congressional hearings and census records

ZSR Library

HST 223: History of Britain to 1750

Tips for Locating Primary Sources

What is a primary source?

Digital Collections Available through ZSR

Openly Available Collections