Adam Matthew Publications
This publisher offers digital access to manuscripts and rare printed sources, including a searchable, full-text version of the Mass Observation archives.
At the Circulating Library - A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901
A large database cataloguing information about Victorian authors, titles and publishers.
British Cinema History Research Project
Includes a detailed online index to Kinematograph Weekly for the years from May 1955 to February 1971 when the magazine folded, together wtih sample material from 1915 and from 1943-1945. The index allows researchers to trace the history of individual cinemas, towns, personnel, production companies, studios and subjects as they are mentioned in the magazine. Transcriptions of interviews with people working in the film industry are also available online.
Culture of Celebrity
A comprehensive annotated bibliography of writings that reflect on the culture of celebrity.
HEARTH Homes Economics Archive
HEARTH is a electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines published between 1850 and 1950. The full text of these materials, as well as bibliographies and essays on the wide array of subjects relating to Home Economics, are accessible on this site.
Mass Observation
The Mass Observation Archive specialises in material about everyday life in Britain. It contains papers generated by the original Mass Observation social research organisation (1937 to early 1950s), and newer material collected continuously since 1981. The Archive is in the care of the University of Sussex and is housed in the Library in Special Collections.
Old Magazines Archive
This is a private site run by a magazine enthusiast. It offers an esoteric collection of magazine articles, essays, poetry, cartoons and photographs in PDF form.
Orlando Project
Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Presentis a dynamic textbase of about five and a half million words (subscription is necessary). It includes documents on the lives and writing careers of about a thousand writers, together with a great deal of contextual historical material on relevant subjects, such as the law, economics, science, writing by men, education, medicine, politics.
Penguin Archive Project
The Penguin Archive contains the archives of Penguin Books Ltd. from its foundation in 1935 to the 1980s. It includes a wide variety of materials on the establishment and business life of Penguin Books Ltd., as well as social events, legal cases (particularly the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial of 1960), exhibitions on the company's history, and the private lives of prominent figures in the early history of the company, including Sir Allen Lane, Eunice Frost and Betty Radice. It also includes a large collection of Penguin books from 1935 to date.
Reading Experience Database (RED) 1450-1945
UK RED is an open-access database housed at The Open University containing over 30,000 easily searchable records documenting the history of reading in Britain from 1450 to 1945. Evidence of reading presented in RED is drawn from published and unpublished sources as diverse as diaries, commonplace books, memoirs, sociological surveys, and criminal court and prison records. There are also RED databases in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands, which can be accessed via the link above.
Richmal Crompton Collection
The Richmal Crompton (1890 – 1969) Collection comprises books, archives, artefacts and ephemera accumulated during and after the author’s lifetime. It holds various editions of the William stories, a full set of Crompton’s adult fiction, and her personal library. Archives comprise over 70 boxes and range from biographical accounts of the author’s life, including correspondence and photographs, to a very comprehensive account of Crompton’s career as a writer, including jottings and draft scripts, publishers’ correspondence and fan letters.
Sybil Campbell Library
The Sybil Campbell Library, held at the University of Winchester, is an esoteric collection of around 8,000 items. The earliest part of the collection was intended to provide young graduates of the 1920s and 1930s with an overview of their world in order to foster international peace and understanding, following the aims of the British Federation of University Women (BFUW), the International Federation of University Women (IFUW). Benefactors include Leonard and Virginia Woolf and members of the Bloomsbury group, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Harold Laski, Alys and Bertrand Russell, and academics and writers of the their day.
Victorian Women Writers Project
The Victorian Women Writers Project makes available transcriptions of works by British women writers of the 19th century. The works include anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, religious tracts, children's books, and volumes of poetry and verse drama.