Abolition
- Governing Africa This link opens in a new windowThis electronic archive includes 13 collections, 131 volumes, 2,680 documents and 1,105,477 pages in the form of reports to the British government by their governors in the African colonies. The statistical reports cover 13 colonies, with some data that pre-dates the abolition of the slave trade. These reports reveal how colonial laws were used to control citizens during wars, uprisings, and everyday life, and notices of land sales reveal how land changed hands between 1808 and 1966. The colonial reports for each colony explain how the statistics in the Blue Books were intended to be interpreted by colonial readers.
- Visualizing Abolition : a Digital History of the Suppression of the African Slave Trade This link opens in a new windowVisualizing Abolition maps the suppression of the African slave trade by tracing nearly 31,000 records of correspondence exchanged between the British Foreign Office and British commissioners, ministers, naval officers, and representatives of foreign governments around the world over the course of the nineteenth century.
- Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new windowScholarly study and understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective. Learn more about this database.
- Caribbean Newspapers 1718-1876 This link opens in a new windowThe largest online collection of 18th- and 19th-century newspapers published in this region—will provide a comprehensive primary resource for studying the development of Western society and international relations within this important group of islands. This unique resource will prove essential for researching 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.
British Periodical Collections
- British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new window
- British Periodicals Collections I - IV This link opens in a new window
- Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new window
- C19: Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
- Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window
- Guardian (1821-2003) and the Observer (1791-2003) This link opens in a new window
- Illustrated London News, 1842-2003 This link opens in a new window
- Daily Mail Historical Archive (1896-2016) This link opens in a new window
- Independent Digital Archive (1986-2016) This link opens in a new window
- International Women's Periodicals, 1786-1933 (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new window
- Irish Times (1859-2011) and the Weekly Irish Times (1876-1958) This link opens in a new window
- Listener Historical Archive (1929-1991) This link opens in a new window
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
- Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals, Parts 1 & 2 This link opens in a new window
- Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
- Picture Post Historical Archive (1938-1957) This link opens in a new window
- Punch Historical Archive (1841-1992) This link opens in a new window
- Sunday Times Digital Archive (1822-2021) This link opens in a new window
- Telegraph Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
- Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive (1902 - 2019) This link opens in a new window
- Times Digital Archive (1785-2019) This link opens in a new window
American Periodical Collections
- African American Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
- African American Newspapers: The 19th Century This link opens in a new window
- American Periodicals (1740 - 1940) This link opens in a new window
- C19: Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
- Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922 This link opens in a new window
- Harper's Magazine Archives (1850-2016) This link opens in a new window
- HarpWeek: The Civil War Era, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age (1857 - 1912) This link opens in a new window
- Historical American Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
- International Women's Periodicals, 1786-1933 (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new window
- Liberty Magazine (1924-1950) This link opens in a new window
- Nineteenth Century U. S. Newspapers (1800 - 1900) This link opens in a new window
- Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
- Periodicals Index Online This link opens in a new window
- Vogue Archive This link opens in a new window
Newspapers and periodicals in print
- CRL catalog -- newspaper searchMany other newspapers are available on interlibrary loan from the Center for Research Libraries (CRL).
Digital collections with a focus or theme
- Black Drama This link opens in a new window
- Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture (1790-1920) This link opens in a new window
- Defining Gender, 1450-1910 This link opens in a new window
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
- Electronic Enlightenment This link opens in a new window
- Empire Online This link opens in a new window
- Gilded Age This link opens in a new window
- Making of the Modern World: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature (1450 - 1945) This link opens in a new window
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
- North American Theatre Online (now Theatre in Context) This link opens in a new window
- North American Women's Drama This link opens in a new window
- Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 (Parts I and II) This link opens in a new window
- Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape This link opens in a new window
- Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window
- Sabin Americana This link opens in a new window
- Twentieth Century North American Drama This link opens in a new window
- Victorian Popular Culture This link opens in a new window
Digital collections of books
- C19: The Nineteenth Century IndexC19 is a comprehensive source for discovering nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. It indexes sources such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (NSTC), The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index, Periodicals Index Online, Cumulative Index to Niles' Register 1811–1849, British Periodicals Collections, Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, and House of Commons Parliamentary Papers.
- Nineteenth Century Collections OnlineIncludes 9,500 English, French and German literature monographs of the Romantic era. Also has newspapers, periodicals, diaries, personal letters, manuscripts, maps, pamphlets of 19th century.
- HathiTrust Digital Library CatalogMany pre-1923 imprints are available in full text here.
Search the WU Classic Catalog for Primary Source materials
Search for books using Washington University Libraries' catalog.
Source material: use ADVANCED SEARCH, insert "sources" in a subject field and add other terms in separate fields. E.g. "sources" "women" "britain or england"
Autobiographies/memoirs: use ADVANCED SEARCH, insert the historical figure's name as an AUTHOR and then in a separate field as SUBJECT. Eg. You want to look at Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs: "beauvoir" as AUTHOR and "beauvoir" as SUBJECT
Correspondence: use ADVANCED SEARCH, insert the historical figure's name as an AUTHOR and then in a separate field as SUBJECT. Insert "correspondence" as SUBJECT in another field.
Films: Can search either by title of the film in TITLE field, director/actor in AUTHOR, or by film genre (documentary film or feature film) in WORD field. Using ADVANCED SEARCH gives you option of limiting to fim/video.
Historical newspapers and periodicals. Most but not all are listed in the WU Catalog. Use the JOURNAL TITLE field. Also, search in the newspaper and periodical database noted above.
Writings/Reports by Historical Figures: Search figure as AUTHOR.