Unparalleled in depth and scope, British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing.  

The collection is an invaluable source of information for family historians and individuals interested in primary source material. The bulk of advertising has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to historic events.

British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800–1900
Part of the British Library Newspapers series, this archive provides researchers with the most comprehensive collection of national and regional newspapers of Victorian Britain available. This full-text, fully-searchable digital archive includes 47 papers originating in England, Scotland, and Ireland, carefully selected by an editorial board from the British Library and providing a broad yet detailed view of nineteenth-century Britain and the world. The collection is made up of daily and weekly publications and reflects Britain's growing role as a dominant power in the nineteenth-century world.

British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800–1900

British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800–1900 is part of the British Library Newspapers series, providing researchers with the most comprehensive collection of regional and local newspapers of nineteenth-century Britain available. Part II adds 22 titles that expand the coverage into new cities and regions and offers a wider political perspective. Along with the other parts of this series, this full-text, fully searchable digital archive includes papers originating in England, Scotland, and Ireland that illuminate a first-hand account of British life in the nineteenth century.

British Library Newspapers, Part III: 1741–1950

British Library Newspapers, Part III: 1741–1950 is part of the British Library Newspapers series, providing researchers with the most comprehensive collection of national and regional newspapers of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentieth-century Britain available. Taken directly from the extensive holdings of the British Library, the selected publications provide coverage of well-known historic events, cultural icons, sporting events, the arts, culture, and other national pastimes. At a time when newspapers were emerging as a prerequisite medium of commercial-minded societies and major cities, their pages — from articles to advertisements — provide researchers with unique, first-hand perspective.

Part III encompasses powerful provincial news journals like the Leeds Intelligencer and Hull Daily Mail, local-interest publications such as the Northampton Mercury, and specialist titles such as the Poor Law Unions’ Gazette. Other noteworthy titles in Part III include the Westmoreland Gazette, whose early editor, Thomas De Quincy (of Confessions of an English Opium Eater), was forced to resign due to his unreliability.

British Library Newspapers, Part IV: 1732–1950

British Library Newspapers, Part IV: 1732–1950 provides 23 publications (nearly 1.4 million pages) from across the United Kingdom and Ireland to reflect the social, political, and cultural events of the times.

Sourced from the extensive holdings of the British Library, this collection covers well-known historic events, cultural icons, sporting events, the arts, culture, and other national pastimes. At a time when newspapers were emerging as a prerequisite medium of commercially minded societies and major cities, their pages — from articles to advertisements — provide researchers with unique, first-hand perspective.

British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746–1950

British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746–1950 provides researchers with access to unique local and regional viewpoints on the social, political, and cultural events of the times.  With a concentration of titles from the northern part of the United Kingdom, the 36 newspapers in Part V deepen Gale'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. Part V includes newspapers from the Scottish localities of Fife, Elgin, Inverness, Paisley, and John O'Groats, as well as towns just below the border, such as Morpeth, Alnwick, and more. 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 (better known as George Eliot).

British Library Newspapers, Part VI: Ireland, 1783-1950

Although there were fewer restrictions, and they were not subject to the Stamp Acts, the growth of Irish newspapers was slow compared to England throughout the eighteenth century. Many of the earliest publications originated in Dublin, and a provincial press was slower to emerge. From the early 1730s, the Irish press began to develop its own tone as it moved away from adapting and reproducing news from outside of Ireland, and by 1760 there were more than 160 newspapers, dominated by Dublin. This archive begins at the point where the Irish press had started to become ‘Irish’, rather than an extension of the English press; and when provincial and politically motivated publications began to increase in quality and prominence.

The social and legal structures of eighteenth-century Ireland meant that the press was dominated by Protestant businesses until the early nineteenth century when a ‘Catholic press’ emerged. As a result, there was “a limitation on the circulation possibilities of the newspapers, and [Protestant dominance] tended to dictate an editorial content that stressed exclusivity and conservatism”. As the press expanded, a greater variety of newspapers reached the market, bringing with them a greater variety of voices and perspectives. Emergent social, economic, political, and religious ideologies that combined to form the underlying allegiances and divisions in Ireland through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generated their own publications, which are represented among the selected titles in this archive.

British Library Newspapers Part VII: Southeast Asian Newspapers

Comprising more than 36 English-language newspapers from the British Library’s prestigious Asia, Pacific, and Africa collections, Part VII of the British Library Newspapers series is an invaluable resource for scholars teaching and studying the British Empire, the colonial and postcolonial history of Southeast Asia, and the history of journalism and publishing in general.

On its own, Part VII offers an essential window into the lives of both the settlers and indigenes, showcasing how the colonial administrations of the British Empire interacted with the native population and promoted the ideas of Western knowledge, culture, and institutions. When combined with Parts I to VI of its parent series, it provides countless possibilities to explore how the opinions of British government representatives, merchants, and locals of Southeast Asia interacted with and, sometimes, clashed against each other in the larger context of the British Empire.