JISC

Latest News (April 2010): This project was completed in Autumn 2007, and 2m pages of digitised newsprint are now freely available to the FE and HE communities. A further 1m pages was added in March 2010. Access is via institutional gateways

Watch a video about the entire resource

Overview

10 billion words and 2 million pages are being digitised from complete runs of 19th century local, regional and national British newspapers.

Iconic historical events will be amply represented from the Battle of Waterloo, the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the opening of the Suez Canal. Read the factual reporting of the Battle of Trafalgar in the Examiner and the gory details of the Whitechapel murders in the melodramatic Illustrated Police News to name but a few. Many famous authors of the 19th century period wrote for newspapers, and their work is represented, Dickens and Thackeray included.

The project

Titles have been selected to reflect both the full chronological span of the era and the geographical spread of the UK and include the Examiner, the Pall Mall Gazette, the Chartist and many others. These will be made available to further and higher education in a form that allows an unprecedented degree of cross-referencing across almost every imaginable discipline.

Until now, researchers wishing to consult this material have had to journey to the British Library’s newspaper collection at Colindale, London, and search by manually turning pages or poring over microfilm frame by frame. This project will revolutionise scholarly research bringing richer results with precision and speed at the click of a mouse.

Users can choose to limit their searches to specific newspapers or search across the entire range, allowing immediate like-for-like comparisons of the same subject’s treatment by different titles. The retrieved articles can be viewed in a text version or in the context of its original page layout. Captions and advertisements will also be searchable.

Users will be able to examine the minutiae of daily life in Victorian Britain through columns packed full of source material for the histories of popular culture, including sport, fashion, politics, war and advertising. Typographical trends and developments in design and publishing can be tracked in the primary material itself as layouts change due to technical developments during the century.

The content

The list of titles below is only a small part of a much wider selection.

Title	Dates of publication	Place of publication
The Aberdeen Journal	1800-23 Aug 1876	Aberdeen
Aberdeen Weekly Journal	30 Aug 1876-1900
Baner Cymru	4 Mar 1857-28 Sep 1859
Baner ac Amserau Cymru	5Oct 1859-1900
The Belfast News-Letter	1800-1900	Belfast
Birmingham Daily Post	4 Dec 1857-1900	Birmingham
Brighton Patriot and Lewes Free Press etc	24 Feb 1835-28 Jun 1836	Brighton
Brighton Patriot and South of England Free Press	5 Jul 1836-13 Aug 1839
The Bristol Mercury	1800-29 Dec 1877	Bristol
The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post	26 Jan 1878-1900
Caledonian Mercury	1800-27 Aug 1859	Edinburgh
The Caledonian Mercury and Daily Express	29 Aug 1859-21 Feb 1860
The Caledonian Mercury	22 Feb 1860-20 Apr 1867
The Champion	18 Sep-14 Mnov 1836	London
The Champion and Weekly Herald	20 Nov 1836-26 Apr 1840
The Charter	27 Jan 1839-15 Mar 1840	London
The Chartist	2 Feb-7 Jul 1839	London
The Chartist Circular	28 Sep 1839-18 Sep 1841	Glasgow
Cobbett's Annual Register	1 Jan 1802-3 Mar 1804	London
Cobbett's Weekly Political Register	17 Mar 1804-17 Sep 1836
Daily News	21 Jan 1846-1900	London
The Derby Mercury	1800-1900	Derby
The Examiner	3 Jan 1808-26 Feb 1881	London
The Public Register or Freeman's Journal	1800-27 Apr 1802	Dublin
Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser	11 Jul 1807-1900
Y Genedl Cymreig	8 Feb 1877-1900	Caernarvon
Glasgow Advertiser	26 Aug 1805-1900	Glasgow
Y Goleuad	30 Oct 1869-1900	Caernarvon
The Graphic	1 Jan 1870-1900	London
Portsmouth Telegraph or Mottley's Naval and Military Journal	1800-8 Feb 1802	Portsmouth
Mottley's Telegraph and Portsmouth Gazette	15-22 Feb 1802
Hampshire telegraph & Portsmouth Gazette	1 Mar 1802-4 Jul 1803
Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc	11 Jul 1803-7 Oct 1899
Hampshire Telegraph and Naval Chronicle	14 Oct 1899-1900
The Hull Packet	1800-30 Jun 1807	Hull
The Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser	7 Jul 1807-6 Nov 1827
The Hull Packet and Humber Mercury	13 Nov 1827-5 Apr 1833
The Hull Packet	12 Apr 1833-18 Nov 1842
The Hull Packet and East Riding Times	25 Nov 1842-26 Feb 1886
The Illustrated Police News etc	20 Feb 1864-1900	London
The Ipswich Journal	1800-1900	Ipswich
Jackson's Oxford Journal	1800-28 May 1898	Oxford
Oxford Journal and County News	4 Jun-3 Sep 1898
Jackson's Oxford Journal	10 Sep 1898-1900
The Leeds Mercury	3 Jan 1807-1900	Leeds
Liverpool Mercury etc	5 Jul 1811-1900	Liverpool
Lloyd's Illustrated London Newspaper	27 Nov 1842-8 Jan 1843	London
Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper	15 Jan 1843-27 Aug 1848
Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper	14 Jan 1849-1900
The London Dispatch and People's Political and Social Reformer	17 Sep 1836-6 Oct 1839	London
Manchester Daily Times	12 Dec 1854-15 Jun 1855	Manchester
Manchester Daily Examiner & Times	18 Jun 1855-3 Jan 1874
Manchester Examiner & Times	5 Jan 1874-20 Jan 1894
Manchester Examiner	22 Jan-10 Mar 1894
The Morning Chronicle	Jan 1801-19 Mar 1862	London
The Newcastle Courant etc	1800-27 Jun 1884	Newcastle-upon-Tyne
The Newcastle Weekly Courant	24 Jul 1884-1900
North Wales Chronicle	4 Oct 1827-1900	Bangor
Northern Echo	1 Jan 1870-1900	Darlington
The Northern Liberator	21 Oct 1837-23 May 1840	Newcastle-upon-Tyne
The Northern Liberator and Champion	30 May-19 Dec 1840
The Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser	6 Jan 1838-23 Nov 1844	Leeds
The Northern Star and National Trades' Journal	30 Nov 1844-13 Mar 1852
The Star and National Trades' Journal	20 Mar-1 May 1852
The Star of Freedom	8 May-27 Nov 1852
The Odd Fellow	5 Jan 1839-10 Dec 1842	London
The Operative	4 Nov 1838-30 Jun 1839	London
The Pall Mall Gazette	7 Feb 1865-1900	London
The Poor Man's Guardian	9 Jul 1831-26 Dec 1835	London
The Preston Guardian etc	10 Feb 1844-1900	Preston
Reynolds's Weekly News	5 May 1850-9 Feb 1851	London
Reynolds's Newspaper	16 Feb 1851-1900
The Southern Star and London and Brighton Patriot	19 Jan-12 Jul 1840	London
The Era	30 Sep 1838-1900	London
Trewman's Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser	1 Jan 1807-1900	Exeter
Western Mail	1 May 1869-1900	Cardiff

This is only a small selection from the many titles to be included.

 

Browse the full list of titles

The process 

The content and design of the eventual interface is being guided by a user panel with significant research experience in the field of 19th- century newspapers.

The team is striving to create microfilm of the highest quality possible for digitisation, and is using state-of-the-art German-made cameras to ensure consistency of lighting and resolution. The British Library aims for compliance with internationally recognised standards and the British Newspapers project will follow these conventions.