British Periodicals traces the development and growth of the periodical press in Britain from its origins in the seventeenth century through to the Victorian "age of periodicals" and beyond. This unique digital archive consists of almost 500 periodical runs published from the 1680s to the 1930s, comprising six million keyword-searchable pages and forming an unrivalled record of more than two centuries of British history and culture.
British Periodicals consists of two separate collections, British Periodicals Collection I and British Periodicals Collection II:
British Periodicals Collection I consists of more than 160 journals that comprise the UMI microfilm collection Early British Periodicals, the equivalent of 5,238 printed volumes containing approximately 3.1 million pages. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences.
British Periodicals Collection II consists of more than 300 journals from the UMI microfilm collections English Literary Periodicals and British Periodicals in the Creative Arts together with additional titles, amounting to almost 3 million pages. Topics covered include literature, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
Among the periodicals included in British Periodicals are titles founded, edited or regularly contributed to by a host of important figures - Walter Bagehot, Aubrey Beardsley, Annie Besant, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Frances Power Cobbe, William Cobbett, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, Ford Madox Ford, Oliver Goldsmith, Leigh Hunt, Jerome K Jerome, Samuel Johnson, Sir Roger L'Estrange, G. H. Lewes, Harriet Martineau, Edward Moore, John Morley, John Henry Newman, Margaret Oliphant, W. M. Rossetti, Sir Richard Steele and Tobias Smollett to name but a few.
In addition to providing access to the original periodical version of landmark texts like De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Cobbett's Rural Rides, Bagehot's The English Constitution, Gaskell's North and South and Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, the collection offers new ways of exploring the inaccessible, neglected or forgotten writings that formed their original contexts.
A wide array of different types of periodical are represented, from magisterial quarterlies and scholarly and professional organs through to coterie art periodicals, penny weeklies and illustrated family magazines.
The title lists for British Periodicals are available in various formats within the resources themselves (by visiting Information Resources and clicking Title Lists) and can be viewed here.
In addition, institutions with access to ProQuest's Periodicals Archive Online (PAO, formerly PCI Full Text) are able to search British Periodicals' titles with those in PAO, providing users with simultaneous access to hundreds of historical periodicals from one search, as well as the more current literature about those authors and topics an PAO's scholarly journals.
The content in British Periodicals provides access to more than 460 journals, the majority of which have not been previously digitised in any format.
The searchable full text in British Periodicals enables researchers to carry out in-depth analysis of the changing attitudes and assumptions of British Writers over a period of 250 years and across a range of key themes including:
- The slave trade
- Irish nationalism and Partition
- Class and social issues
- Empire and trade
- European wars and World War I
- The Industrial Revolution
Subscription information:
Further Education Colleges, Universities, Research Councils and Specialist Colleges in the UK can subscribe to this content via the publisher's platform. Access to the content is free until 31 December 2013. An access fee may be required after this date.
Alternatively, institutions can host the content for a one-off payment of £500.
