Primary Text Collections
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American Fiction (1774-1920)More than 17,500 works of prose fiction written by Americans from the political beginnings of the United States through World War I, including thousands never before available online.
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American Periodicals SeriesContains special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically significant periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900.
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Children's Literature and CultureA digitized collection of rare books, games, ephemera, and artwork focused on the history and literature of childhood between the 1820s and 1920s.
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Defining Gender (1450-1910)This collection of original source material from British and European archives will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology, education and cultural studies from a gendered perspective.
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Early English Books OnlineContains digital facsimile page images of works printed in English from 1470-1700. Includes the ages of Spenser, Shakespeare and of the English Civil War.
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Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Access to over 180,000 digitized books, pamphlets, and broadsides from 1701–1800, with over 32 million searchable pages. It is based on the English Short-title Catalogue (ESTC) of works from Britain, Ireland, the U.S., and British colonies.
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Empire Online
Primary source material focusing on colonial history, politics, culture and society, spanning 5 centuries of the rise and fall of empires around the world. Includes maps, manuscripts, pamphlets, paintings, drawings, and rare books.
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Nineteenth Century Collections OnlineAccess to a curated list of primary sources from the 19th century, including monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages.
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Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new windowA digital archive of 19th century periodicals covering topics such as politics, rural life, children's literature, leisure and humour.
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Playwrights Canada PressCanadian theatre's new plays, theatre history, criticism, and theatre biographies.
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Shakespeare Collection (Gale)Covers literary, textual, historical, and performance studies of Shakespeare, and the Arden editions of the complete works, adaptations, and other works published during Shakespeare's time.
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Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational ArchiveSlavery and Anti-Slavery contains books, pamphlets, newspaper and periodical titles, and major manuscript collections that explore the inner workings of slavery from 1492-1888.
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Times Digital Archive: 1785-2014
An online, full-text facsimile of every complete page of every issue of The Times over a span of 200 years, from 1785 to 2014.
Meta-Search Tools for Primary Texts
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Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowAccess to all the Gale Primary Source Collections.
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Gale Primary Sources - Newspapers & Periodicals
Cross-search Gale Primary Source US and UK historical newspaper and periodical collections covering over 400 years of archival content.
What is a Primary Text?
In literary studies, primary texts take two forms:
1) creative literary works, or
2) documents and other artefacts that were created at the time an historical event occurred, or at/near the time a literary work was published.
Some examples of primary texts include:
- novels, poems, plays
- archival manuscripts
- sermons and theological works
- contemporaneous reviews of literary works, e.g. reviews of Byron's works published right after he wrote them.
- photographs
- diaries
- letters
- newspaper articles
Secondary sources are sources that reflect back on and analyze these primary texts. Scholarly journal articles are secondary sources.
Tips for Finding Primary Sources
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Be specific in your search terminology, e.g. if you want to find a medieval manuscript, say so with your search terms
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Use terminology common to the historic period you are researching , rather than the modern terms. E.g “Great War” versus "World War I," “Dominion Day” versus “Canada Day,” Indians versus "aboriginal people," or "Upper Canada" versus Ontario
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When searching GOOGLE, include a term that might be used to describe an online primary source collection, such as: "primary sources," “virtual library,” sources, documents, digital, catalogue, collection, museum, etc.
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Think of who might have collected the type of primary source you are looking for, then search that specific website
- Assess carefully the sources you find. You should be able to easily determine who made the source available, and when and where the source was originally published or created. Look for sources being offered by credible organizations like libraries, museums and scholarly societies.
- To find more credible sources, limit Google searches to educational websites by adding site:edu to your search terms