Access is available on and off campus to current McMaster University students, faculty and staff.
Coverage: 1600s to 1800s
The largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media available from the British Library, this primary sources database includes more than 1,000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period. The collection charts the development of the newspaper as we now know it, beginning with irregularly published transcriptions of Parliamentary debates and proclamations to coffee house newsbooks, finally arriving at newspaper in its current form.
- Part I: Gathered by Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817), the collection covers more than 200 years of accounts, explanations, and points of views. More than 700 bound volumes of newspapers relate political, educational and economic situations – including English provincial, Irish, Scottish and a handful of papers from British colonies, in the Americas and Asia – relate political, educational and economic situations chosen from more than three dozen cities.
Part II: With additional material from around 200 titles launched in December 2024, including newspapers, newsbooks and broadsheets from this period, newly digitized from high quality images, the additional newspapers contain new titles or further issues of already digitized titles, similar in content but with a different provenance to those in the Burney Newspaper Collection. The collection is distinct and separate to the Burney Collection and provides valuable additional material.
