British Library Newspapers

British Library Newspapers, parts I to VI, contains irreplaceable local and regional voices reflecting the social, political, and cultural events of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. It is the higher education equivalent of the British Newspaper Archive, although there are some differences in coverage. These newspapers, emerging during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a crucial channel of information in towns and major cities, provide researchers with a unique, first-hand perspective on history. With more than 240 newspaper titles, the series is comprised of approximately 6.4 million pages of historic content, from articles to advertisements. This collection illuminates diverse and distinct regional attitudes, cultures, and vernaculars, providing an alternative viewpoint to the London-centric national press over a period of more than 200 years. It includes Hull Packet, and Hull Daily Mail.

British Library Newspapers is the single largest archive of British newspapers available to higher education. However, it is not directly equivalent to the British Newspaper Archive which can be accessed at the Hull History Centre and Hull Libraries.

Part I: 1800-1900 includes early tabloids, e.g. Illustrated Police News, and radical papers such as Chartist Northern Star. Other notable papers include Morning Chronicle, with contributors such as Henry Mayhew and John Stewart Mill; the Graphic, publishing both illustrations and news as well as illustrated fiction; and Examiner, the radical reformist and leading intellectual journal.

Part II: 1800-1900 includes the newspapers of significant towns and regions, e.g. Bradford, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, York, and North Wales. The addition of two major London newspapers, The Standard and the Morning Post, helps capture conservative opinion in the nineteenth century, balancing the progressive, more liberal views of the newspapers that appear in Part I.

Part III: 1741-1950 adds regional and local depth. It encompasses provincial news journals like Leeds Intelligencer and Hull Daily Mail, and specialist titles such as the Poor Law Unions’ Gazette.

Part IV: 1732-1950 offers key local and regional perspectives from cities as geographically diverse as Aberdeen, Bath, Chester, Derby, Belfast, Liverpool, and York. In addition, Part IV includes the 1901-1950 runs of papers such as the Aberdeen Journal and Dundee Courier whose earlier newspapers are available in Part I and Part II.

Part V: 1746-1950 deepens the database's northern regional content, doubling coverage in Scotland, tripling coverage in the Midlands, and adding a significant number of northern titles to the British Library Newspapers series. Researchers will also benefit from access to important titles such as the Coventry Herald, which features some of the earliest published writing of Mary Ann Evans.

Part VI: Ireland, 1783-1950 adds additional titles published in Ireland in the late eighteenth, across the nineteenth and during the early twentieth centuries. A significant number of these are national publications but many are more regional from cities such as Dublin, Cork and Galway as well as more rural towns like Waterford, Tuam, Ballinasloe, and Birr. Key topics include nationalism and Irish independence; Fenianism; The Roman Catholic Church; Irish diaspora; establishment of the Land League; the Irish literary revival; and sport and leisure.

Use the database’s Learning Center to gain context and background information as well as help about how to search the collection. Click on the light bulb icon on the homepage menu to find help to conceptualize your research question; find primary source documents; read, understand and evaluate what you find; and use and incorporate documents into your research.