ENGL4539.01: Writing the Past

Select Subject in the drop-down menu next to the search bar, and Journals/Serials in the drop-down on the right, and enter "newspapers" in a search box.

Includes hundreds of historic newspapers digitized and/or indexed by Google through their News Archive Partner Program.

Find local & historic online newspapers in the US and the Caribbean, such as a 19th Century French language newspaper for Quebecois speakers published in Worcester in the 19th Century.

The Society holds unique copies of many early Boston newspapers, such as the Boston News-Letter (1704-1776), the first continuously published American paper, and James Franklin's New-England Courant (1721-1727), which includes the first appearance of teenage Benjamin Franklin in print. The collection also has many 19th-century Massachusetts titles, including a complete run of the Liberator (1831-1865), William Lloyd Garrison's antislavery newspaper, and the 1870 Trans-Continental, a paper "published daily on the Pullman Hotel Express between Boston and San Francisco," the first transcontinental railroad trip originating in Boston.

If you plan to visit the MHS (1154 Boylston Street, Boston), first consult its catalog.

An important list of Boston historic newspapers on microfilm held by the Boston Public Library. Many date from the time period 1790 to 1860.

Visit the main branch of the Boston Public Library at Copley Square. Not only is it interesting both aesthetically and historically, you can find much there of interest for this course. Access BPL's catalogs.

Some might wish to make a trip to Worcester. The Massachusetts Antiquarian Society has a good collection of historic Massachusetts and Boston newspapers.

Search a selection of periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals. Using Advanced Search you can limit to a specific date range, e.g. 1790-1860, different document types etc, "Boston" in the title, etc.

Includes monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more from the "long nineteenth century".

A resource for 19th century studies, with over 4 million citations. Includes Poole's, Stead's, and other periodical indexes.

Over 10 million digitized images and texts, and tens of thousands of videos from all over the US, all created by local libraries and historical societies. It is quickly becoming the largest collection of digitized images on the web. Search the DPLA using an interactive map or a timeline.

Over 4,000 photos (growing weekly) of Boston College memorabilia, book covers, sports teams, campus history, etc.

Something like a mini-DPLA for Massachusetts, this site draws together records from archives and historical societies all over Massachusetts. Searchable by place name, subject, title, or creator.

Though it can be tricky to search, the Internet Archive has a broad collection of video spanning back through the 20th Century.

Produced from 1929–1967 and released twice weekly, they were shown before feature films and in dedicated newsreel theaters. Each contains 6–7 short stories covering world events, politics, sports, and more.