Guides: English: Newspapers

UK Newspaper Archives

Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Research tool which allows you to search across multiple collections of primary source documents (newspapers and archive collections). The collections include the 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection; 19th Century UK Periodicals; Daily Mail Historical Archive 1896-2004; and The Times Digital Archive 1785-2012. These archives can also be searched individually via the links below:
Gale Primary Sources brings the thoughts, words, and actions of past centuries into the present for a comprehensive research experience. With authoritative content and powerful search technologies, this platform has been thoughtfully designed to help students and researchers examine literary, political, and social culture of the last 500 years and develop a more meaningful understanding of how history continues to impact the world today. All of the collections on the Gale Primary Sources platform are meticulously indexed to improve discovery, analysis, and workflow for every user who is looking to push past the traditional boundaries of research.
Admin: reviewed 16/07/2024
17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
The most comprehensive collection of early English newspapers with 1 million newspaper pages and titles from London, British Isles, and colonies.
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection represents the largest single collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century English news media available from the British Library and includes more than 1,000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period. This collection helps researchers chart the development of the newspaper as we now know it, beginning with irregularly published transcriptions of Parliamentary debates and proclamations to coffee house newsbooks, finally arriving at newspaper in its current form.
Gathered by Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817), a notable scholar and son of a well-known music historian of the same name, this collection covers more than two hundred years of accounts, explanations, and points of views. More than 700 bound volumes of newspapers relate political, educational and economic situations situations chosen from more than three dozen cities—including English provincial, Irish, Scottish and a handful of papers from British colonies, in the Americas and Asia.
These rare and restricted documents are now available online and students and academics can conduct full-text searches of nearly 1 million pages from approximately 1,270 titles spanning from Parliamentary papers and the London daily news to the latest English humor of the 1600s.s.
Content Advisory
This archive provides access to primary sources created by groups and individuals that were products of their time. Therefore, users may come across content that is upsetting such as outmoded language, cartoons and caricatures, and other imagery that may be offensive because of its representation of race, gender, sexuality, beliefs, or other characteristics.
The nature and value of the Gale Primary Sources archives is that they present artifacts as they existed, without manipulation by Gale. We develop content with the guidance of scholars, subject matter specialists, and the academic community. Studying the historical context of a topic, including the potential prejudices or biases imposed by society or authors, allows students and researchers to engage in critical conversations, make important comparisons and connections, and enable greater understanding to inspire change and cross-cultural awareness.
Admin: reviewed 09/07/2024
19th Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Collection of digitised periodicals from the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of South Africa and the National Library of Australia, focusing on the rarely documented aspects of women, children, humour, and leisure activity in the Victorian age.
The nineteenth century was a time of revolutionary change and expansion. Britain was one of the world's first industrial, urban superpowers and developed a press to feed the demands of its increasingly literate population. The Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals series covers the events, lives, values, and themes that shaped the nineteenth century world. It provides an invaluable, fully-searchable facsimile resource for the study of British life in the nineteenth century—from art to business, and from children to politics. Few of the materials in this extensive collection have ever been reissued, in any format since original publication. Titles included have been identified and selected by leading scholars in nineteenth century studies; their choices reflect the broad scope and thrust of research and teaching in the twenty-first century.
Admin: reviewed 16/07/2024
Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1896-2004 This link opens in a new window
Access to the Daily Mail archive for all articles published between 1896 and 2004. The archive also includes access to the Atlantic editions, published between 1923 and 1931.
Described by the New Yorker as "the newspaper that rules Britain", the Daily Mail has been at the heart of British journalism since 1896, regularly changing the course of government policy and setting the national debate. Its website is among the most visited news sites in the world. The Daily Mail Historical Archive includes more than one hundred years of this major UK national newspaper, viewable in full digital facsimile form, with copious advertisements, news stories, and images that capture twentieth-century culture and society.
As well as the regular edition of the newspaper, the Daily Mail Historical Archive also includes the Daily Mail Atlantic Edition, which was published on board the cruise ships that sailed between New York and Southampton from 1923 to 1931. Copies were printed and sold to passengers on every day of the five- day voyages, with news transmitted from London and New York to the middle of the Atlantic by wireless radio transmission. These editions published different content to the regular London version of the paper and contained articles specifically commissioned for the journey, with a heavy emphasis on American content.
Admin: reviewed 16/07/2024
The Times Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Access The Times of London from 1785 - 2019. The entire newspaper is captured, including all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos.
The Times Digital Archive is an online, full-text facsimile of more than 200 years of The Times, one of the most highly regarded resources for eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century news coverage. This historical newspaper archive allows researchers an unparalleled opportunity to search and view the best-known and most cited newspaper in the world online in its original published context. Read by both world leaders and the general public, The Times has offered readers in-depth, award-winning, objective coverage of world events since its creation in 1785 and is the oldest daily newspaper in continuous publication. With over 12 million articles available, the archive supports research across multiple disciplines and areas of interest, including business, humanities, political science, and philosophy, along with coverage of all major international historical events.
All articles included in The Times Digital Archive are displayed as digital page images and all allow full-text searching. These digitized pages, also known as facsimile images, let you view the pages as they originally appeared in print. Years of coverage depend on your library's subscription and are displayed in the product banner on the homepage.
Admin: reviewed 16/07/2024

UKPressOnline (Daily Express) This link opens in a new window
Access to over two million pages of the 19th-21st Centuries’ newspapers, from 1835 to today, all as published on the day they were published and all searchable by name, word, phrase and date. The ukpressonline database is a resource for historians and anyone who wants to explore history as seen by the reporters and commentators who were there.
- Database help guide

Other newspaper datatabases

Some of our databases such as Lexis+ UK Newspapers and Nexis Uni also include newspaper archives with coverage extending back to the 1980s or 1990s up to the present day. Lexis+ UK Newspapers is particularly useful for finding reviews of contemporary novels, poems and plays in the broadsheets. The articles found through Lexis+ UK Newspapers and Nexis Uni are both presented in HTML format.

Lexis+ UK Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Lexis+ UK Newspapers provides full text access to UK national and regional newspapers. Date coverage varies by individual title from 1980s to today.
For international newspaper content visit Nexis.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Full text access to business information and major international newspapers including foreign language sources. Date coverage varies by individual title from 1980s to today.