Transform the study of nineteenth century history, literature, and culture at your institution

Nineteenth Century Collections Online is the result of partnerships between Gale and almost one hundred libraries to preserve and make digitally available content for academic research. With guidance and feedback of professionals and end-users to ensure that we were selecting and preserving unique, invaluable documents, Gale is excited to bring you a wide range of content covering the long nineteenth century and beyond. Nineteenth Century Collections Online unites multiple, distinct archives into a single resource of over one hundred types of primary source documents.

The content is sourced from the world's preeminent libraries and archives. It consists of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages. Because some documents are rare and in delicate or extremely fragile condition, Gale works in close coordination with curators and preservationists to maintain the originals for posterity. With authoritative content, trustworthy and extensive bibliographic information, and technology that fits the needs of today's researchers, Nineteenth Century Collections Online is poised to revolutionize research on the nineteenth century.

Download the Nineteenth Century Collections Online brochure to explore invaluable documents from global collections. 

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Collections

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Asia and the West

Researchers can explore rare government reports, diplomatic correspondence, periodicals, newspapers, treaties, trade agreements, NGO papers, and more within this resource, which covers such topics as British and US foreign policy and diplomacy; Asian political, economic, and social affairs; the Boxer Rebellion; missionary activity in Asia; and much more.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: British Politics and Society

With this collection, scholars can research and explore primary sources covering such topics as British domestic and foreign policy, the working class, trade unions, Chartism, utopian socialism, public protest, radical movements, the cartographic record, political reform, education, family relationships, religion, leisure, and many others.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: British Theatre, Music, and Literature

This collection includes receipts and archives from the Drury Lane Theatre, Royal Philharmonic Society music manuscripts, and the largely forgotten Wandering Minstrels archive, which opens a rare glimpse into the decades of Gilbert and Sullivan. The archive enables scholars to explore primary sources covering such topics as Victorian popular culture, street literature, social history, music, bloods and penny dreadfuls, professional acting on the London stage, the Royal Literary Fund, British dramatic works, and many others.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Children's Literature and Childhood

Researchers can find a wealth of children's literature texts from around the world with Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Children's Literature and Childhood. This collection documents the changing construction of childhood, the growing popularity of children's literature, and the legal and sociological context for both. This collection opens an array of compelling subjects for research and teaching, making it a rich resource for many academic disciplines and areas of study.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: European Literature, the Corvey Collection, 1790–1840

This unique collection of monographs includes a wide range of Romantic literature published in English, French, and German. Sourced from Castle Corvey in North Rhine - Westphalia, Germany, the Corvey Collection is one of the most-important surviving collections of works from the period. With a special focus on these rare works, especially difficult-to-find works by lesser-known women writers, more than 9,500 titles are included.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture presents a dramatic, gripping chronicle of exploration and missions from the early nineteenth century through the Conference of Berlin in 1884 and the subsequent scramble for Africa. Unique sources provide a wealth of research topics on explorers, politicians, evangelists, journalists, and tycoons blinded by romantic nationalism or caught up in the competition for markets and converts. These monographs, manuscripts, and newspapers cover key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Maps and Travel Literature

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Maps and Travel Literature provides geographical images from all areas of the globe. The nineteenth century encompassed tremendous growth in maps and map making as the field of cartography gained visibility and professional standards. Mapping of the world during this time period was driven by massive industrialization and exploration. As people ventured further from traditional population centers, a new market for reliable maps was created. This collection supports studies on the evolution of travel and transportation and spans multiple disciplines, providing insight into societal values, interests, colonialism, and exploration.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Photography

As a complement to studies of history, culture, media, and many other disciplines, this collection provides the visual evidence to support and supplement written sources through photographs of people both at work and at leisure, images of scientific research and medical practices, photographs documenting travel and exploration, portraits of people, and coverage of major events such as coronations, funerals, and wars.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Religion, Reform, and Society

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Religion, Reform, and Society examines the influence of both faith and skepticism on the shaping of many aspects of society -- politics, law, economics, and social and radical reform movements.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Science, Technology, and Medicine, Part I

The "long" nineteenth century is an era characterized by industrial, technical, and social revolution. With a changing society came new approaches to the study of natural history, physics, mathematics, medicine, and public health. Boasting a wealth of curated primary sources, this collection helps researcher place essential subjects in the larger picture of historical study.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Science, Technology, and Medicine, Part II

Science, Technology and Medicine, Part II expands subject coverage in Part I, gathering together periodicals and monographs from renowned sources, and providing a global view of science and technology from a critical era of scientific development.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Women and Transnational Networks

The Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Women and Transnational Networks collection covers issues of gender and class, igniting nineteenth-century debate in the context of suffrage movements, culture, immigration, health, and many other concerns. Using a wide array of primary source documents, including serials, books, manuscripts, diaries, reports, and visuals, this collection focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late eighteenth century to the era of suffrage in the early twentieth century, all through a transnational perspective.

Product Features & Tools

Term Frequency

Researchers can see the frequency of search terms within sets of content to begin identifying central themes and assessing how individuals, places, events, and ideas interact and develop over time.

Topic Finder

By grouping commonly occurring themes, this tool reveals hidden connections within search terms—helping to shape research by integrating diverse content with relevant information.

Cross-Search Capability

Search across the content of complementary primary source products, including books, in one united, intuitive environment, enabling innovative new research connections.

Learn more about the Gale Primary Sources Platform »

Related Products

Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals, Part I: Women's, Children's, Humor, and Leisure

This collection provides insight into the evolving life of British culture, where reading for leisure, women's rights, children's entertainment, and sports grew as publishing expanded. This resource provides students, researchers, and enthusiasts with unprecedented online access to what people were reading, how they were living, and what was influencing their lives during the Victorian era.

Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals, Part II: Empire

This collection provides insight into the evolving life of British culture, where reading for leisure, women's rights, children's entertainment, and sports grew as publishing expanded. This resource provides students, researchers, and enthusiasts with unprecedented online access to what people were reading, how they were living, and what was influencing their lives during the Victorian era.

Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture: Oliveira Lima Library, Pamphlets

Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture: Oliveira Lima Library, Pamphlets brings together over 80,000 pages of pamphlets covering Brazilian and Portuguese history, politics, technology, social happenings, and culture from 1800 to the late twentieth century.

Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920

With 2.1 million pages of trial transcripts, police and forensic reports, detective novels, newspaper accounts, true crime literature, and related ephemera, this collection presents the broadest and deepest collection of materials supporting the study of nineteenth-century criminal history, law, literature, and justice. This quintessential resource enhances understanding of the intersection of law and society during a pivotal era of social change.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Part I

Eighteenth Century Collections Online contains 135,000 printed works comprising more than 26 million scanned facsimile pages of English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom between the years 1701 and 1800. While the majority of works in ECCO are in the English language, researchers will also discover a rich vein of works printed in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Welsh.

Smithsonian Collections Online: World's Fairs and Expositions, Visions of Tomorrow

With coverage beginning in 1834 and including the pivotal Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 in London, this collection allows users to explore key cultural and technological progress that shaped contemporary outlooks on life and reflected national identities.

The Times Digital Archive, 1785-2019*

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, with every page of every issue from 1785 to 2019.