Digital archives

This section highlights the fantastic collection of digitised archives that we hold at Kent and includes newspapers, periodicals, rare books, images, letters, pamphlets, diaries, accounts, maps, drawings and much more!

Using digital archives

Use archival material to enrich your research and gain a deeper understanding of a topic or the literary works you are researching.

The digital archives illuminate aspects of social, political and literary life of the time. Have a look at the selection of subject matter to find out the important issues of a period and gain access to the public opinion of the day through the various primary sources, so you are not just getting the academic and journalists viewpoints.

Newspaper and periodical archives

Gale Primary Sources

Allows you to search 18 primary source databases from Gale Cengage with a single search. The following databases are covered:

Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
British Library Newspapers
The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003
The Listener Historical Archive, 1929-1991
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals
Punch Historical Archive, 1841-1992
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection
The Times Digital Archive
The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
Plus various other newspaper archives

Eighteenth Century Journals Portal

Portal to Newspapers and Periodicals c1685-1815, covering all aspects of 18th-century social, political and literary life. The collection includes the first digitized full run of The Lady’s Magazine.

Periodical Archives Online

Periodicals Archive Online is a major archive that makes the backfiles of scholarly periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the searchable full text of hundreds of titles. The collection includes: British periodicals (1681 – 1939, 1869 – 2005), American periodicals (1740 – 1940) and historical newspapers:

Guardian and Observer
New York Times
Chicago Tribune
Los Angeles Times.

Digital primary sources

Archive Explorer

Search 9 databases of topical primary source material within a single search box – covering subjects like the American West, Gender, Africa, the Raj, the Grand Tour, Victorian Popular Culture, and Women’s Writing.

New Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford Scholarly Editions)

Presents an entirely new consideration of all of Shakespeare’s works, edited from first principles from the base-texts themselves, and drawing on the latest textual and theatrical scholarship. Click Sign in via your Institution, chose University of Kent and log in with your Kent IT Account username and password.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)

nearly 150,000 titles and editions published in English, 1701-1800.

Electronic Enlightenment

Searchable correspondence of 18th century thinkers and writers.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO)

You have access to these primary source collections:

British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture
European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection.