17th Century
- American History, 1493-1945 This link opens in a new window
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The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s archive of letters, diaries, maps pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, and ephemera sheds light on the political, economic, and social history of the United States up until the 20th century. The majority of the collection is unique manuscripts, with special emphasis on the revolutionary, early national, antebellum, and civil war eras. - British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
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Facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. - Colonial State Papers This link opens in a new window
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Thousands of papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the 16th and 18th centuries. - Defining Gender, 1450-1910 This link opens in a new window
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Contains primary source material from British and European archives, and includes four thematic areas: Conduct and Politeness, Domesticity and the Family, Consumption and Leisure, Education and Sensibility, and The Body.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
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Citations from early English texts from 1475 to 1700, presented as digital images. Includes works by Malory, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, Galileo; musical exercises by Henry Purcell and novels by Aphra Behn; prayer books, pamphlets, and proclamations; almanacs, calendars, and many other primary sources. - Early English Books Online — Text Creation Partnership This link opens in a new windowSearchable SGML/XML text editions of image files contained in Early English Books Online.
- Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment This link opens in a new window
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Contains full text letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters, centered on present-day Canada and the United States with some limited coverage of Mexico.
- Empire Online
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Primary source manuscripts and secondary essays relevant to Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion and Empire; and Race, Class and Colonialism, 1783-1969.
- Frontier life: Borderlands, Settlements, and Colonial Encounters This link opens in a new window
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Primary sources from multiple archives that capture the lives, experiences and colonial encounters of people living at the edges of the Anglophone world from 1650-1920. Includes the various colonial frontiers of North America, as well as the settlers of Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. - Grand Tour This link opens in a new window
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Letters, diaries, journals, account books, guidebooks, travel writing, sketches, drawings, and maps from English travelers, circa 1550 to 1850, a period during which the tradition of a Grand Tour of the continent was a rite of passage for wealthy, intellectual young men.
- Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 This link opens in a new window
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Contains digitized manuscript materials covering the history of Jewish communities in America through the mid-20th century. Includes letters, scrapbooks, autobiographies, notebooks and more. - Literary Manuscripts from the Brotherton Library This link opens in a new window
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Digital images of over 190 manuscripts of 17th and 18th century verse, from the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds. In addition to the manuscripts themselves, which allow users to see how the verses were produced, recorded and circulated in a way not possible in modern printed editions, this resource also includes interactive essays, biographies and a paleography section on 17th and 18th century English handwriting.
- Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700 This link opens in a new window
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Contains over 230 digitized manuscripts from the Perdita Project, which aims to rediscover lost manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the 16th and 17th centuries. Includes physical descriptions along with bibliographic information and also provides contextual essays from academics in the field.
- Royal Shakespeare Company Archives This link opens in a new window
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Royal Shakespeare Company Archives provides a comprehensive record of the performance history of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessor, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Browse and compare almost 1,400 prompt books to uncover how productions took shape, and explore the creative process behind the company's most important presentations in extensive additional documentation including production records, costume designs, music files and photographs.
- Salem Witch Trials Documentary ProjectContains court records, diaries, and other primary sources, in facsimile and transcribed versions.
- Shakespeare in Performance This link opens in a new window
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Annotated prompt books from the Folger Shakespeare Library, chronicling Shakespeare’s plays as performed in British, US, and international theaters between the 17th and 20th centuries. - Shakespeare's Globe Archive This link opens in a new window
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This collection of documents offers insights into the performance practice in the particular space of the reconstructed Globe Theatre. It details the way in which the theatre was constructed as a place of radical experiment. It documents over 200 performances through prompt books, wardrobe notes, programmes, publicity material, annual reports, show reports, photographs and architectural plans. - Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
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Collection of digitized documents, maps, and essays concerning the Atlantic slave trade, primarily from British and North American libraries. Includes 18th and 19th-century court records from Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, and North Carolina. - Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
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A collection of books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the multiplicity of women's reform activities. - Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window
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A full-text collection of early women's writing in English, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University. It includes full transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or inaccessible and women's literate culture in the early modern period. - Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century This link opens in a new window
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Over 1.3 million pages of archival material (manuscripts, monographs, newspapers and periodicals) concerning Latin America and the Caribbean, including major collections about Latin American independence, Brazilian popular groups, Diplomatic activities in Cuba and more. Under this database's former name, Gale World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean included some periodicals and reference books that have been moved to Gale’s Dictionary of Literary Biography and Gale eBooks.
Manuscripts and Ephemera: Finding Aids and Indexes
Many historical materials are not available online, and housed only in archives or in harder to find publications. These discovery tools can help identify their holdings and locations.
- Online Archive of California (OAC) This link opens in a new windowFinding aids for primary source collections in all UC campuses and other contributing institutions, including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California.
- UCLA Library Special CollectionsCollections and access information for the UCLA Library Dept. of Special Collections, including papers and manuscripts on a range of topics.
- ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new windowSearches finding aids for historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in libraries, museums, and archives around the world. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies.