Primary Sources: Databases

Thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.

The Grand Tour is a wonderful source of information about daily life in the eighteenth century, highlighting such everyday issues as transportation, money, communications, food and drink, health and sex.

The material also covers European political and religious life, British diplomacy; life at court, and social customs on the Continent, and is an invaluable resource for the study of Europe’s urban spaces.

There is a wealth of detail about cities such as Paris, Rome, Florence and Geneva, including written accounts and visual representations of street life, architecture and urban planning.

Material found in the resource includes:

Fast literature
Street ephemera – posters, advertising, playbills, ballads and broadsides
Penny fiction
Cartoons
A complete collection of Tallis’ Street Views
Chapbooks
Street Cries
Swell’s guides to London prostitution, gambling and drinking dens
Tourist guides and topography
Manuscripts of George Gissing

There is a strong emphasis on rare or unique material, particularly in the range of ephemera and street literature available. There is also an emphasis on visual material.

The documents are drawn from the holdings of the Lilly Library, the rare books, manuscripts, and special collections library of the Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington.

Four sections: 
* Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema
* Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment
* Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks
* Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic
See Nature and Scope for more information.

The core of China: Culture and Society is the pamphlets held in the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia housed in the Carl A. Kroch Library of Cornell University. Mostly in English and published between c. 1750 and 1929, and amounting to around 1,200 items in 220 bound volumes, these rare pamphlets form part of one of the deepest and most extensive collections of literature on China and the Chinese in the Western world and constitute a rich resource for scholars and teachers in numerous disciplines.

The pamphlets have all been digitized in color and are full-text searchable. Many are illustrated and feature lavish cover art.

More information available here

All items marked “Confidential Print” were printed and circulated immediately to leading officials in the Foreign Office, to the Cabinet, and to heads of British missions abroad. These materials range from letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports, and texts of treaties. Files cover all countries of mainland South and Central America, plus Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

All items marked “Confidential Print” were printed and circulated immediately to leading officials in the Foreign Office, to the Cabinet, and to heads of British missions abroad. These materials range from letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports, and texts of treaties. The collection covers c. 1839 to 1969, taking in the countries of the Arabian peninsula, the Levant, Iraq, Turkey and many of the former Ottoman lands in Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt and Sudan.

The quality and depth of the Foreign Office’s reporting on politics, industry, trade and cultural affairs is formidable. This collection includes
*Eye-witness accounts and detailed reports on life in China, 1919-1976.
*In depth analysis of the Communist Revolution and all the major figures.
*Material on the Korean War, the Cold War, US relations and the Cultural Revolution.