Seeking Early Newspapers

[gothwalk]

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’m looking for an archive - PDF, transcribed text, whatever, I don’t mind - of early newspapers, preferably British, but anything in English will do. I’m thinking pre-1800, but anything up to 1850 will be useful. I found archives of the Penny Illustrated Paper, but it started publication in 1861, which is a little later than I’d like. Anyone able to point me at anything older?

Comments

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

The national newspaper archive at Colindale has a digitisation project - I haven't had a proper look as I'm at work, but it says it goes back to 1800, and there are a couple of other links on the front page. If you google 'archive colindale', it's the first link.

[sshi.livejournal.com]

It does all that, but isn't going to be ready until an unspecified time later this year!

[sshi.livejournal.com]

You have to go in person to go through the microfiche for the NLI and Pearse Street (although they are mostly Irish papers). I've also had a look at Irish Newspaper Archives (http://irishnewspaperarchives.com/), which is a pay site, although you get a couple of free goes. Other than that, I've been using The Times Digital Archive through Trinity's subscription, which goes from 1785 onwards.

[childeric.livejournal.com]

The Times Digital Archive is widely held - at least in the UK - by libraries of all sorts, and should be easy enough to access. Apart from that, as has been said above, try Colindale: http://www.bl.uk/collections/newspapers.html