"Nestled in the breathtaking valley of Grasmere lies Dove Cottage, home of William Wordsworth between 1799 and 1808. Visitors by the coach-load make their pilgrimage to this tranquil setting to pay homage to one of Romantic literature’s best-loved poets. Though, perhaps, the modern hustle and bustle of human traffic through the tiny hamlet of Town End is a far cry from the peaceful tranquility that William and his sister Dorothy treasured here, a stolen moment of quiet reflection allows one to appreciate the “loveliest spot that man hath ever found”. This “loveliest” of “spot(s)” is the setting for the latest in our Literary Manuscripts collections: The Romantics: Literature, Art and Culture. It is for the purpose of researching the material for this project that I find myself in the reading room of the Jerwood Centre with one of the many volume manuscripts of ‘The Prelude’ in hand"...read more
Previous Editorial News Features are available on iAMDigital.
'iAMDigital' is a dedicated web page for librarians that features editorial news; the latest journal reviews of Adam Matthew collections; flyers and posters ready for download; RSS feeds, plus access to our secure counter compliant usage statistics tool.
Adam Matthew Digital's Medieval Family Life scores an incredible 10 out of 10 for both content, design and technology in the September 1st edition of eReviews from Library Journal.
"Medieval Family Life contains a treasure trove of significant primary source material that will inform the scholarship of all medieval researchers. Content: ten. The online system lets users approach the material in an appropriate variety of ways, allowing them to see broad brushstrokes of the period as well as very granular detail. Design: ten. For a fairly esoteric area of research, Medieval Family Life is remarkably easy to use and accessible. Technology: ten. That makes it pretty conclusive: it's a ten, through and through. Highly recommended to any library-academic, public, or special-serving medieval period scholarship". Read the full review here.
Please contact us for pricing details of with any questions.
Free, four week trials of all Adam Matthew Digital resources are available. Simply complete the trial registration page to request access.
In this week's Editorial News Feature, Jade Finn announces the release of the third section of Foreign Office Files for China covering the period 1967-1980, and also reveals some exciting news about a forthcoming project for East Asian studies...
This month sees the publication of the third and final section of Foreign Office Files for China, covering the period 1967-1980. This new addition to our Archives Direct portal will make this resource even more fundamental for all those interested in the history of modern China.
The Archives Direct portal provides users with the ability to explore unrivalled information from the UK government's official archive. All of the collections in the portal are exclusively sourced from The National Archives (TNA) in Kew. Our digital facility at the TNA enables us to produce and incorporate an ever growing list of collections under one cross searchable portal. The Foreign Office Files for China collection is also available as part of our Asian Discovery Package.
Read more
Free to download MARC 21 catalogue records for Victorian Popular Culture: Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks (97 records) are now available.
Please see the MARC page for download instructions.
In this week's Editorial News Feature, Editorial Assistant Dr Philippa Hubbard looks at the development of advertising through the Victorian period, looking at a range of styles and subject matters taken from Victorian Popular Culture: Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment.
Later this year, the third section of Victorian Popular Culture will be released under the title ‘Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment’. It comprises a wonderful variety of graphic ephemera, printed books, photographs, prints and engravings. The posters and playbills included in the collection are a particularly exciting resource for researchers and reflect a growing interest in the history of advertising.
Advertising posters are not simply colourful remnants of a bygone age. They provide a fascinating insight into early popular culture, print technology and advertising. Poster advertising has long played an important role in promoting popular entertainments in Britain. In the eighteenth century, printed notices displayed on buildings and in public spaces sought to catch the eyes of as many people as possible. Hogarth’s engraving The Enraged Musician (1741) is packed with visual references to the dense urban environment and includes a large printed notice, hanging just above eye level from a brick wall, advertising the Beggar’s Opera at the Theatre Royal.
Choice magazine reviews for Foreign Office Files for China, 1949-1980 and Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961 are now available on our iAMDigital Reviews page.
Editorial Assistant Beth Hall attends the 2010 IHR Anglo-American conference on 'Environments'.
For the last 79 years, the Anglo-American Conference of Historians, held annually at the Institute of Historical Research, has fostered exciting discussion and lively debate around a chosen theme – this year was no exception.
This year’s conference on the theme of Environments was truly an international and interdisciplinary event – which any conference on the subject of environmental history demands to be.
The conference opened with an inspirational lecture from Donald Worster entitled ‘The green light of a new world: natural abundance, scarcity and the historians’, which whetted the appetite for what turned out to be one of the most interesting and varied conferences I have attended.
Following the publication of our latest 'Confidential Print' series: Middle East, 1839-1969, Nick Jackson considers the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Western power in the region it once dominated.
Last month Adam Matthew Digital published Confidential Print: Middle East 1839-1969, the latest of our Archives Direct suite of resources that uses material from the National Archives, Kew. This 95,000-image project is the first I have edited from the start, and has been an education both in terms of how our digital resources come to fruition and as regards Middle Eastern history.
The materials we have collected cover a period of seismic change, dominated by two geopolitical developments – the contraction of the Ottoman Empire and the concurrent rise of European power in the region it had dominated.
Jennifer Bullock's recent attendance at the 45th International Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI was a great opportunity to discuss our plans for future medieval projects and to get first-hand feedback from graduate students on how Adam Matthew Digital's resources are used in the classroom.
In this latest Editorial News Feature, Jennifer discusses launching our Medieval Family Life collection; the variety of subjects covered in over 600 sessions and the perils of having a "poor sense of direction" at a congress spread over several buildings.
Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969 is the second of our complete online series of 'Confidential Print' documents issued by the United Kingdom Foreign and Colonial Offices since c1820.
This new 'Archives Direct' collection, with contents sourced exclusively from The National Archives, UK, is now available for 30-day trial and purchase.
"Anyone working on the Modern Middle East will find the Confidential Print: Middle East collection extraordinarily useful. This collection is an absolutely invaluable resource for both researchers and teachers because of the range of documents available and the east with which one can access them."
Professor Michael Gasper
Yale University
Highlights include:
Confidential Print: Middle East is a fundamental resource for anyone studying the modern Middle East.
Please contact us for pricing details or with any questions.
Free to download MARC 21 catalogue records for Eighteenth Century Journals, Section IV are now available.
In this month's 'Editorial News Feature', Martha Fogg discusses a new JISC-lead 'community engagement' project in joint association with the Mass Observation Archive; Boulton Museum and Archives and the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sussex:
Mass Observation Online is one of our most popular projects, and valued by both undergraduates and researchers across the world as an unparallelled digital source for everyday life and social history in Britain, 1937-1955.
For over 60 years, the Mass Observation Archive (MOA) has been developing questionnaires and diary writing techniques and enlisting the help of volunteer participants, in order to build up an anthropological picture of every day life in Britain.
Our fruitful partnership with MOA will continue next year, with the publication of additional digital content in Mass Observation Online, including the diaries and directives up to 1945, completing these wonderful accounts of British daily life in wartime. read more
Adam Matthew Digital will be exhibiting at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, June 24-29 2010 (Exhibitions Hall open 25th -28th) and we look forward to seeing you at our booth #4005.
Please feel free to contact us to make an appointment with our Sales and Development team. Ben Cartwright; Oliver Stacy and Jonathan Mansfield will be availble during exhibition hours.
Further details on the conference can be found here.
In this month's 'Editorial News Feature', David Tyler recounts an evening at the Swindon Festival of Literature (3-15 May 2010) which featured Carol Ann Duffy (the Poet Laureate), the literature-inspired contortions of the Swerve Dance Company and a film on the short life of John Keats.
Click here to view the latest Editorial News Feature on 'iAMDigital'
Free to download MARC 21 catalogue records for Foreign Office Files for China, 1949-1980: Section II: 1957-1966 are now available.
Four significant HO 45 files on the suffrage question were discovered at Kew in the second half of 2009 by Charles Tattersall, who was engaged in a further cataloguing project. These files had never been listed before and a 2010 update to this digital project now makes them available in full colour. Below are some outline details on these recently added files:
HO 45/10345/141956: This dates from 1906 and contains details of the arrest and imprisonment of four suffragettes, including Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, as a result of two separate protests which occurred outside the house of the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, in Cavendish Square. The file contains two resolutions from the Women’s Social and Political Union, one of which is signed by Christabel Pankhurst, while the other includes a handwritten note by Sylvia Pankhurst.
HO 45/10349/147337: This records the imprisonment of 6 suffragettes in 1906 following a protest at the Houses of Parliament. This file also includes details of a later incident when 5 suffragettes began a protest in the Central Lobby of the House of Commons. This led to a further 11 arrests.
According to Charles Tattersall, the last two files,
HO 45/10417/183577 and HO 45/10418/183577 probably comprise the most important discovery. Undoubtedly, they were originally a single file, but because of their size, these documents are now divided into two clusters.
As Charles Tattersall writes:
“The subject matter covers the arrest and imprisonment of nine prominent suffragettes, including Mary Leigh and Charlotte Marsh, following well-organised protests outside Bingley and Curzon Halls in Birmingham, where the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, was addressing two meetings on 17 September 1909. During the protests missiles were thrown from a roof and there were violent confrontations between the suffragettes and the police and members of the public. When Asquith boarded his train to return to London after the meetings, two of the train’s windows were also broken by suffragette supporters.
The nine suffragettes were imprisoned in Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, with sentences ranging from one to three months, on various charges of wilful and malicious damage, disorderly conduct and assault on members of the police. They immediately refused all food and drink, and were consequently subjected to force-feeding.
As well as detailed newspaper coverage of their trial and imprisonment, the files contain a large number of medical reports on the health of the prisoners, medical opinions from a number of doctors on force-feeding (including a large typescript book on medical evidence) and a number of parliamentary questions from the Labour MP Keir Hardie on the prisoners’ welfare. There are also signed letters from Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, and various petitions, including two from Charlotte Marsh. The petitions are of particular interest as they show that the reason for the hunger strikes was the refusal of the authorities to grant the imprisoned suffragettes the status of political prisoners.
The files cover the whole period from the initial reports of the incidents in Birmingham up to the release of Charlotte Marsh some three months later on 9 December 1909. They provide a detailed overview of one of the major incidents in the history of the suffragette movement.”
Only five major letter collections from the fifteenth century exist and they are all available digitally and in full colour for the first time in this exciting new collection from Adam Matthew Digital.
The Paston, Cely, Stonor, Plumpton and Armburgh letters and associated manuscripts take the user into the world of medieval family, business, relationships, trade, politics and community. A love letter; a concern over health matters; meticulous household accounts; a child’s future standing; a long-running dispute over inheritance, or simple requests for financial assistance – these are just a few of the fascinating examples of accounts from the collection:
“Modyr, I beseche yow that Brome may be spoken to, to gadyr up my syllvyr at Gwton in all hast possybyll, for I have no mony”. John Paston to Margaret Paston, Oct 12 1490
Many manuscripts are accompanied by full text searchable transcriptions. In most cases, this is the first time the original manuscript and its transcription have been made available together. Where more than one transcript has been published, each edition is also provided. Both manuscript and transcription can be viewed in split-screen mode for comparison.
For researchers there is much to explore. The ‘further resources’ section of Medieval Family Life includes a stunning visual sources gallery, with images depicting life in the medieval period, all sourced from the British Library’s extensive collection. A family tree for each of the five dynasties includes biographical details of family members, and these are accompanied by an interactive map, extensive chronology and glossary, and links to external resources.
Adam Matthew Digital is delighted to launch Medieval Family Life at the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies, hosted by Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo - May 13-16 2010.
Jennifer Bullock, Managing Editor and Project Editor for this collection will be delighted to see you at our booth (#50). Please drop by and see her.
Medieval Family Life is now available. Please contact us for pricing details or with any questions.
Adam Matthew Digital's 'Asian Discovery Package' is reviewed in the April 15th edition of Library Journal and is available here (the review is second on the page).
"Asian Discovery is an outstanding package, offering institutional access to a broad range of rare and extremely diverse material...With such an immeasurably diverse resource, this review barely skims the surface, so we highly suggest a trial to one of the individual collections or the Asian Discovery package."
The 'Asian Discovery Package' includes five collections - America, Asia and the Pacific; China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980; Empire Online; Foreign Office Files for China, 1949-1980 and India Raj and Empire - grouped together, and sold at a highly discounted rate, thus enabling institutions to obtain a wide range of collections in one purchase.
Other Themed Collection Packages include the 'North American Discovery Package' and 'Literature and Culture Discovery Package'.
In this month's 'Editorial News Feature', David Tyler describes the history of Bronzeville - the once thriving hub of Chicago's Blues scene following his visit to "The Soul of Bronzeville" exhibit at the DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Place, Chicago.
After visiting the exhibit twice (it was that good!) David juxtaposes the world-famous list of musicians, singers, songwriters and record labels that made Bronzeville the hub of the Blues and R&B scene with the poverty and neglect of the African American migrants to the city and the glittering, air-conditioned clubs that buzzed to the sounds of Louis Armstrong and Howlin' Wolf.
"It appears like a history that is doomed to disappear. Gregg Parker [CEO of the Chicago Blues Museum] is changing all that and the exhibition at the DuSable Museum shows the importance of this lost heritage and the current work of the Chicago Blues Museum paves the way of putting all this firmly back on the map". - David Tyler
The fourth section to our Eighteenth Century Journals Portal is now available.
Sourced from Chetham's Library, Manchester - the UK's oldest reference library - with supplementary periodicals from the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, this new collection of rare magazines, literary periodicals and political journals published in Manchester, London and Paris between 1709-1820 offers an invaluable source of information for eighteenth century studies, covering such topics as:
Editorial News Feature on 'iAMDigital'
In this month's Editorial News Feature, Jade Finn discusses Eighteenth Century Journals IV and describes how an increase in the publication of 'provincial' newspapers (i.e. places other than London) resulted in, among other things, a public clamouring for the right to vote and support for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade.
The Eighteenth Century Journals Portal offers seamless integration between all sections and enables streamlined browsing and searching via a single user interface.
Free trials are available. Please complete our registration page, or contact us for more information.
Mass Observation Online has received a 'highly recommended' in the April edition of CHOICE magazine.
"This is a wonderful site; everything seems to work the way it is supposed to work, and it does so easily and efficiently. Summing Up: Highly recommended".
Read the review in full
Mass Observation Online offers revolutionary access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. The material covers:
The archive has always been immensely popular with students because it offers immediate and engaging evidence of major trends such as the increasing role of women in work, the birth of the welfare state, anti-Semitism and anti-communism, the growth of secularism and the increasing importance of radio, television and cinema in people’s lives. Through interviews, overheard conversations, directive responses and diary entries it offers brilliant cameos describing life in the jazz halls, what people thought of the movies they saw, how people survived the random terror of the Blitz, and where they lived and worked.
See our detailed description for further details on Mass Observation Online .
In this month's Editorial News Feature, Jade Finn publishes Eighteenth Century Journals IV and discusses how an increase in the dissemination of 'provincial' newspapers (i.e. places other than London) resulted in, among other things, a public clamouring for the right to vote and support for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade.
Sourced from Chetham's Library, Manchester and the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Eighteenth Century Journals IV offers an invaluable source of information for eighteenth century scholars and students.
All Section IV journals are available in full colour.
Sample essays from Professor Sylvia Frey [Tulane University] and Professor Susan O'Donovan [University of Memphis] covering 'Slave Resitance' (Frey) and 'Using Court Records to Study Slavery' (O'Donovan) are now available to download from our Editorial Essay Samples page.