Oxford LibGuides: Early modern history (British & W European c. 1500-c. 1800): Primary Sources

Voltaire at Frederick the Great's Sanssouci. Engraving by Pierre Charles Baquoy.

England - Scotland & Ireland - Germany - France - Italy - Spain

Manuscripts, archives and Special Collections - Newspapers - Rare Books

Newly bookmarked websites

European resources: key texts

Annual Register: a record of world events
The Annual Register is a year-by-year record of British and world events, published annually since 1758. It is a valuable source of contemporary opinion, historical context and biographical information. The online version of The Annual Register includes every volume published and will be updated with the latest volume each year. It was first written in 1758 under the editorship of Edmund Burke.
Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts
Uniquely exhaustive resource for studying the religious and social upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries. Gives researchers access to an extensive range of seminal works from the Reformation and post-Reformation eras. The database offers a constantly growing treasury of theological writings, biblical commentaries, confessional documents, and polemical treatises written by more than 300 Protestant authors.
Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation
Like their Protestant counterparts, Catholic authors of the 16th and 17th centuries took advantage of print technology to create a vast treasury of published documents. The database offers a constantly growing collection of documents, including papal and synodal decrees, catechisms and inquisitorial manuals, biblical commentaries, theological treatises and systems, liturgical writings, saints' lives, and devotional works.
Early European Books 1-4
Providing access to almost 25,000 rare and often unique books, Early European Books (EEB) is a key resource for those with a strong research interest in the period from 1450 – 1700, delivering a wide variety of primary sources from one of the most fascinating and influential periods in Western history. It provides access to European collections of historic and bibliographic importance.
Early Modern Letters Online
A union catalogue of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century correspondence, covering Europe.
Electronic Enlightenment
Electronic Enlightenment has as its foundation major printed editions of correspondence centred on the "long 18th century". From the correspondence itself, the supporting critical apparatus and additional research, the project has developed a set of information categories that creates an intricate network of connections between the documents and enriches Electronic Enlightenment as a digital academic resource.
Making of the Modern World, 1450-1850
Provides digital facsimile images on every page of 61,000 works of literature on social and economic history published from 1450 through 1850. A vast collection of material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport.

European newspapers

Check out Newspapers and other online news sources from the 17th – 21st centuries (LibGuide)