Access is available on and off campus to current McMaster University students, faculty and staff.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online provides full-text, fully searchable content from a wide range of primary sources. Archives published in the program include works in Western as well as non-Western languages and are sourced from rare collections at libraries and other venerable institutions from around the globe.
McMaster currently has access to five collections:
Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange features a range of primary source collections related to international relations between Asian countries and the West during the 19th century. Documents include government reports, diplomatic correspondence, periodicals, newspapers, treaties, trade agreements, NGO papers, and more, offering a detailed look at the inner workings of international relations.
British Politics and Society includes tens of thousands of primary sources related to the political climate in Great Britain during the “long” nineteenth century.
British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores. These rare documents, many of them never before available, were sourced from the British Library and other renowned institutions, and curated by experts in British arts history.
European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French and German titles. The collection is sourced from the remarkable library of Victor Amadeus, whose Castle Corvey collection was one of the most spectacular discoveries of the late 1970s. The Corvey Collection comprises one of the most important collections of Romantic era writing in existence anywhere – including fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry and more – with a focus on especially difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers.
Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture delivers monographs, manuscripts, and newspaper accounts covering key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy in support of research topics emerged from the colonial conquest and the legacy of slavery in modern South African society including the Anglo-Boer War, imperial policy, and race classification among them.
