This page is designed to provide researchers with information that will help them to choose between a wide range of resources for identifying, locating, or accessing periodical and newspaper articles from the 18th, 19th, or early 20th centuries.

I. ONLINE FULL-TEXT RESOURCES

British Periodicals (Collections I and II)
Provides full-text and full-image access to hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century.  Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts, the social sciences, music, archaeology and architecture.

Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945.
Focus: American, British, and European, 1543-1945 (most materials are 1880-1920)
Full-text collection of books and periodicals relating to the history of women, women's rights, and women's suffrage.

Internet Library of Early Journals: A Digital Library of 18^th and 19^th Century Journals
Focus: British, 18th and 19th centuries
Provides digitized page images covering at least twenty consecutive years for six journals: Gentleman's Magazine, The Annual Register, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Notes and Queries, The Builder, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Search options vary by title, ranging from browse only, to searching by subject headings, to searching full text.

JSTOR.
Focus: American and British, beginning 1665
Searchable full text, displayed as page images, for more than 600 key scholarly journals beginning with their earliest issue. A “moving wall” (generally ranging from 3 to 5 years) separates the latest issue available in JSTOR from the most recently published issue of the journal.

19th Century British Library Newspapers
Searchable full text of full runs of more than 45 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth-century Britain. This new collection includes national and regional newspapers, as well as newspapers from: established country or university towns; the new industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands; and Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Special attention was paid to include newspapers that helped lead particular political or social movements such as Reform, Chartism, and Home Rule. Penny papers aimed at the working and clerical classes are also included.

Periodicals Archive Online.
Focus: American, British, and European
Archive of hundreds of digitised journals published in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and areas of general popular interest. Each periodical is covered back to its first issue, regardless of when it began publication. International in scope, Periodicals Archive Online covers periodicals in a number of Western languages. Includes British Periodicals Collections I & II.

17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
Searchable full-text access to the British Library's collection of the newspapers, pamphlets, and books gathered by Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817)--the largest and most comprehensive collection of early English news media. More than twelve hundred titles and almost one million pages are included.

Times Digital Archive
Focus: British, 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries
Full-text and full-image articles from the Times of London for 1785-1985.

TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Centenary Archive
Focus: British, 20th century
A full-text and full-page-image online edition of The Times Literary Supplement from its inception in 1902 up until [1994, when complete].

II. INDEXES

An index will enable you to identify articles published in periodicals and/or newspapers. There might be some links to full text in some indexes; but the main purpose of an index is simply to help you identify articles. Indexes can provide you with references to articles that you might not be finding in online full-text resources. A careful researcher will make judicious use of both indexes and online full-text resources.

A. Online Indexes

The Wellesley index to Victorian periodicals, 1824-1900
The vast majority of articles written for Victorian periodicals were published anonymously, or under pseudonyms. The Wellesley Index identifies the authors of articles within major Victorian periodicals, and provides a bibliography for each contributor. 45 important monthly and quarterly titles are included, covering the period from the beginning of the Westminster Review in 1824 to the end of the century. The exception to this is the Edinburgh Review, which is indexed from first issue, in 1802. Wellesley does not index poetry.

Nineteenth-Century Masterfile.
Focus: American and British, 19th Century
Integrates a number of indexes to nineteenth-century printed material into one database. Includes: Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1906), and other general periodical indexes; New York Daily Tribune Index (1875-1906), New York Times Index (1863-1905), and other indexes devoted to specific newspaper or periodical titles; as well as specialized indexes for law, religion, and government documents. Now includes links to full-text articles for selected periodicals.

Historical Newspapers Online.
Focus: American and British, beginning 1790
Electronic form of the indexes to the London Times and the New York Times. Currently covers the London Times beginning 1790 and the New York Times beginning 1851.

Readers Guide Retrospective.
Focus: American with limited coverage of British, 1890-1982.
Provides listings of articles in popular and general-interest periodicals published in the United States. Coverage includes literary works published in those periodicals (short stories, poetry, etc.)

B. To Identify Additional Relevant Indexes

For a fuller listing and discussion of periodical guides and/or indexes, see:

Balay, Robert. Early periodical indexes : bibliographies and indexes of literature published in periodicals before 1900. (Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2000)
Butler Reference R016.05 B18

III. BIBLIOGRAPHIES, DIRECTORIES, AND HISTORIES

Bibliographies, directories, and histories can provide you with varying types and degrees of information about specific periodicals or newspapers and/or about the periodical press as a whole in a given time period. A major example of such a work would be:

The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800-1900
A subject-inclusive, language-inclusive annotated bibliography of 50,000 periodical publications. Searchable by title, by names of persons or of issuing bodies involved with these publications, by subject, and by place of publication.

IV. USING CLIO TO IDENTIFY ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Books and other information resources about periodicals and newspapers can be searched in CLIO under the appropriate subject headings.

• In the “Basic Search” screen of CLIO:
• Select "Subject Heading" from the “In:” box menu.
• Enter searches using subject headings as appropriate:

• For example:

english periodicals
or
english newspapers

british periodicals
or
british newspapers

Note: Use "british" for books about periodicals or newspapers of the British Isles or Great Britain, not limited to periodicals from one area.  Books limiting their focus to periodicals or newspapers from one area are entered under the specific heading for that area: for example, English periodicals; Scottish periodicals; Irish newspapers, etc.

Once you have done your subject search in CLIO:

• Look at the overall list of entries to see how the subject is broken down. If you are interested in finding more of the types of resources listed on this page, you should be attentive to subheadings such as those below:

english periodicals--bibliography
english periodicals--directories
english periodicals--history
english periodicals--indexes

• Click "More Info" next to the "English Periodicals" subject heading to see more specialized subject headings that you may wish to use, for example:


children’s periodicals, english
women’s periodicals, english