ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 60 | December 2002
‘A Numerous and Rare Series of Newspapers’
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The Newcastle
Courant, 4 July 1724 |
The National Library is delighted to be able to provide access to the full microform collection of Early English Newspapers. This collection, including more than 1300 17th- and 18th-century newspaper titles, comprises more than 6000 reels of microfilm and has been produced by Primary Source Microfilm.
The actual newspapers have an interesting history beginning with Narcissus Luttrell (1657–1732) who held and annotated many of the papers. His collection was dispersed in 1786, and many of the papers ended up in the collections of the Revd Dr Charles Burney (1757–1817) and John Nichols (1745–1826), printer, publisher and author. Dr Burney was the son of the famous music historian of the same name and the brother of Fanny Burney, novelist and diarist.
In 1818 the British Museum (now the British Library) acquired Dr Burney’s library for £13 500, although it was more excited about the Greek and Latin classics in the collection than it was about the newspapers. The latter were described as ‘a numerous and rare series of newspapers, from 1603 to the present time, amounting in the whole to 700 volumes, which is more ample than any other that is supposed to be extant.’
The British Museum was also offered John Nichols’ collection but declined to purchase it, and many years later, in 1865, the collection was bought from Nichols’ son for the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Nichols collection comprised more than 1000 items, in more or less complete sets, of London newspapers from 1672 to 1737.
Scope
and Highlights of the Collection
This
extensive microform collection combines material from both the Burney and the
Nichols collections, and supplements that with additional pre-1800 works from
a number of sources. All titles were published in London or the surrounding
area.
Titles include the Daily Courant, the first daily newspaper published in London (1702–1735); The London Gazette; The Stamford Mercury (1712–1732); The Daily Gazetteer (1735–1748); The British Journal (1722–1728); The English Post (1700–1708); and Lloyd’s Evening Post and British Chronicle (1758–1800).
Individual MARC records for all titles in the collection are being loaded by Kinetica to the National Bibliographic Database (NBD). In addition, an alphabetical listing of all titles included can be accessed online on Primary Source Microfilm’s web site at http://microformguides.gale.com/GuideLst.html. Just click on ‘View Guide’ alongside the entry for Early English Newspapers. Alternatively, the guide can be downloaded, arranged by title or by reel in PDF format from the same page and then searched by keyword. The collection can be used onsite in the Newspaper/Microform Reading Room and reels may also be borrowed through inter-library loan for use in another library.
This outstanding
collection will prove of immense significance to scholars and researchers, not
just in the areas of political, social and intellectual history but also as
a record of the development of newspaper printing. Increasingly, advertising
was included too, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, and
this is also useful for historians. This major purchase by the National Library
enhances the Library’s research collections and provides a rich resource for
scholars throughout Australia.
—Angela Brown
| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au