Our collections

Explore five centuries of journeys across the globe, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes and decades-long search and rescue attempts in this multi-archive collection dedicated to the history of exploration.

The digital archive of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which holds one of the outstanding collections on American History. It is full of spectacular individual items, but it also has rich veins of manuscript research material. This makes it ideal for teaching survey courses on American History, but equally valuable as a platform for undergraduate essay work and postgraduate research.

A wide range of sources - from writers, diplomats, tourists, businessmen, missionaries and others - documenting the political, cultural and social history of Japan.

Discover five centuries of advice literature from the mid-15th to early 20th century. Research the ideals of social conduct, power distribution within the family, consumption and leisure, education of men and women and gendered perceptions of the body to analyse and challenge the changing views and ideas surrounding traditional gender roles.

This collection of primary sources looks at two centuries of everyday, political, religious, working, trading and administrative life in England during this pivotal epoch. Documents cover an array of topics relating to England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a significant focus on the lives of ‘everyday’ people.

Explore the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations.

From early contacts between European settlers and Indigenous Peoples and the subsequent political, social and cultural effects of those encounters on Indigenous American life, these materials tell both the historical and the personal stories of the colonisation of the Americas. 

The digital version of the Stationers' Company Archives, London. Explore the history of printing, publishing and bookselling dating from 1554 to the 20th century. Includes a complete run of the Stationers' Register, an essential resource for book history and a record publications prior to 1927.

A huge range of primary sources covering social, cultural, political, scientific and religious perspectives, from the 12th to early 19th centuries.

Discover the history of Mexico through the unique print and manuscript Spanish-language collections of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

This resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. Their goal was to identify and describe all manner of writing by early modern women from diaries to works of drama. The resource links digital scans of the original documents with the researchers' catalogue and notes.

This resource brings together documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world covering an extensive time period from 1490. Close attention has been given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.

A digital collection of manuscript, visual and printed works that allows students and researchers to explore and compare a range of sources on the history of travel. Many come from private or neglected collections.

Explore life in early modern London through the lens of livery companies.

Material covers the founding and economic development of Virginia as seen through the papers of the Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624. It is also a crucial source for London's economic history in the Early Modern era and will be of interest to social and religious historians.

Explore the lives and experiences of women in Britain and Ireland across three centuries told in their own words.