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Explore the Content

Five series make up the content found in 19th Century UK Periodicals Online. Our content has a broader appeal than other like products and all content was selected by a large advisory board of international scholars and chosen for it’s importance and impact upon the subject area.

Other key features of 19th Century UK Periodicals Online content includes:

• Color images are provided, where the original content was printed in color
• Nearly all – 95% – of the content was scanned from original materials

The five series include:

New Readerships: Women's Children's, Humor and Leisure/Sport
Series 1 charts the rapid rise of publishing in a reading culture expanding with the rise in literary and leisure. The political spectrum of women's writing from Hearth and Home to the Women's Penny Paper offers insight into women’s changing status in the 1800s. Satirical and comic titles such as Punch and Figaro in London illustrate the humor of the period. This release also charts the growth of children's entertainment and education, with Boy's Own and Good Words for the Young, periodicals that helped shape the values of those future empire builders. Titles like Baily's Monthly Magazine of Sporting, Theatrical, Literary and Fashionable World track the explosion in sports and hobbies, from gardening to horse racing, cricket, cycling and golf.

There are a wide variety of periodicals in New Readerships that reflect the changes and influences in political and rural life, children’s literature and leisure such as:

• The Northern Star
• The Satirist
• British Women’s Temperance Journal
• The Shield
• Country Gentlemen
• Routledge’s Every Girls Annual
• Little Wide Awake
• Union Jack: Tales for British boys
• Ladies Fashionable Repository
• Bailey’s Monthly Magazine of Sport
• The Fishing Gazette

Empire: Travel and Anthropology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial
The second in the series, this collection covers the expansion of the Empire, addressing the economic as well as the non-mercantile aspects of British expansionism. Drawing from the remarkable collections of the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Australia and National Library of South Africa, titles include Capital and Labour, Liberty Review, The Canadian Journal, The Friend of India, The Asiatic Review and Colonial Chronicle.

Culture: Literature, Visual and Performing Arts
From the serialized novels of Charles Dickens, to political satire, theatre and concert reviews and essays by leading writers of the day, this collection offers titles such as: Atalanta, The Cornhill Magazine, Punch, The Athenaeum, The Germ, The Quarterly Review, The Builder, The Englishwoman’s Journal and The Edinburgh Review, The Architect, The Bohemian, Fine Arts Quarterly Review, The Strand Magazine, the Spectator, Dramatic world, Drury Lane, The British Bandsman, The Strad and The Quarterly Musical Magazine.

Working Life: Agriculture, The Professions, Trade and Industry and Medicine
One key aspect of any 19th century study is the transformation of society through innovation and industrialization, urbanization and the education and democratization of British society. This section tracks these changes through journals such as: Law Times, The Teacher, The Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, The Engineer, The Grocer, The Penny Mechanic, The Medical Examiner and the Nurses’ Journal.

Knowledge: Academic, Field Sciences, Philanthropic, Political, Religious and Scientific Journals
This series represents revolutions in world views, social change, evolution, concern poverty and inequality and the growth of the labour movement and the development of the modern university system. Titles include: British Astronomical Association Memoirs, Transactions of the Linnean Society, The Contemporary Review, The Poor Man’s Advocate, The Nineteenth Century, The Penny Magazine, The Catholic Magazine, The Church Journal and The Jewish Quarterly Review.