The world of 19th century periodicals from Britain and its empire is vast and dispersed. This page is designed to get you started — or reengaged — with links to online collections of periodicals, databases of contributors, and histories of select periodicals. (This resource page has been compiled by Patrick Leary, former president of RSVP, in 2024).
RSVP also supports several bibliographic projects. Every four years, Victorian Periodicals Review publishes a Bibliography. In addition, Rosemary VanArsdel, one of RSVP’s founding members and a past president, compiled a bibliography in 1999; the VanArsdel Bibliography has been updated (with the help of RSVP members Solveig C. Robinson, Patrick Leary, Laurel Brake, Marysa Demoor, and Julie F. Codell) most recently in 2010. Finally, though not a bibliography, we direct readers to the organization’s Colby Book Prize winners for additional direction.
On the resource lists below, each item is tagged to indicate whether it is:
- OA – open access
- IS – available by individual subscription
- PW – paywalled for all but institutional subscribers
If any links are broken or if you have additions, please use our Share Your News/Tidbits form to let us know!
Contents
Finding out about the contents of 19th-century periodicals
Full-Text Access
Open Access Nineteenth-Century Periodicals [OA]
British Newspaper Archive [IS]
Gale 19th-century UK Periodicals [PW]
Gale Times Digital Archive [PW]
ProQuest C19 [PW]
ProQuest British Periodicals [PW]
British Medical Journal Archive [OA]
Gale Economist Historical Archive [PW]
Gale Illustrated London News Archive [PW]
LSE Women’s Rights Collection: Journals [OA]
Masonic Periodicals Online [OA]
Nineteenth Century Serials Edition [OA]
Papers Past – New Zealand newspapers [OA]
Spiritualist, Occult, Reformist Periodicals [OA]
Subject Guides & Indices
Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature [OA]
Palmer’s Index to the Times of London [OA]
Cotgreave, A Contents-Subject Index, 1892 [OA]
Index to the Periodicals of 1890-1902 [OA]
ATCL: Index to short stories and serialized novels in Victorian periodicals [OA]
BLT19: 19th-Century British Labour, Trade, Temperance Periodicals [OA]
HBooks – History in the19thC Press [OA]
Price One Penny: Periodicals with Penny Fiction [OA]
Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical [OA]
Victorian Fiction Research Guides [OA]
Contributors
Finding out about contributors to 19th-century periodicals
Attribution
(Who wrote/drew this?)
Wellesley Index [PW] Volume I [OA] [Printed edition]
Curran Index [OA]
ATCL: Illustrators of Fiction [OA]
Athenaeum index [OA]
Authorship in Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731-1868 [OA]
Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms (1888) [OA]
Dickens Journals Online: Authors [OA]
Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry: authors, illustrators, translators [OA]
Periodical Poetry Index: Authors [OA]
Biographical Information About Contributors
Dictionary of National Biography [OA]
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [IS /PW]
Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism [PW] [Printed edition w/o updates]
Boase, Modern English Biography (6 vols.) [OA]
Alumni Oxonienses [OA]
Archives of the Royal Literary Fund [PW] [Microfilm edition]
Cambridge Alumni Database [OA]
Clergy of the Church of England (to 1835) [OA]
Crockford’s Clerical Directories, via Ancestry [PW]
Cross, Catalog of applicants to the Royal Literary Fund [OA]
Houfe, Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists [OA]
Men and Women of the Time, 1892 [OA]
Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles [IS]
Histories
Finding out about the histories of 19th-century periodicals
Wellesley Index (introductions) [PW] [Printed edition]
Waterloo Directory [PW]
Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism [PW] [Printed edition w/o updates]
Van Arsdel Bibliography section, “Histories” [OA]
Altick, 19th-century periodicals at the Newberry (1952) [OA]
Baillet, Gall and Wormwood, The Compositors Chronicle (1840-43) [OA]
Escott, Masters of English Journalism (1911) [OA]
Everett, The Party of Humanity (Fortnightly Review) (1939) [OA]
Fox Bourne, English Newspapers (1887) [OA]
Hobbs, A Fleet Street in Every Town (2018) [OA]
Hughes, On New Monthly Magazines, 1859-60 [OA]
Jackson, The Pictorial Press (1885) [OA]
John Francis, Publisher of the Athenaeum (1888) [OA]
Jones, On the Publication of Dark Blue [OA]
Kitchin, The London Times under…Moberley Bell (1925) [OA]
Leary, A Brief History of the Illustrated London News [OA]
Leary, A Victorian Virtual Community (Notes & Queries) [OA]
Mahoney, On the Ceylon National Review [OA]
Massingham, The London Daily Press (1892) [OA]
May, List of London Newspapers (1869) [OA]
Mitchell, Newspaper Press Directory (1846) [OA] [other years, print only]