LibGuides: Literatures in English: Historical Periodicals

Indexes to Multiple Periodicals

For more information on newspaper access see the Newspaper Research Guide.

Access World News This link opens in a new window
Recent and archived full-text articles from hundreds of domestic and international newspapers, including archival access to the Houston Chronicle and Houston Post. Updated daily.
African-American Newspapers: the 19th Century This link opens in a new window
Scans of African-American newspapers from the 19th century, including statistics, biographies, essays, poetry, advertisements, and other cultural artifacts.

This database will ultimately contain the complete text of the major African-American newspapers published in the United States during the 19th century. Coverage includes: The Colored American (Weekly Advocate), The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, Frederick Douglass Paper, and The Christian Recorder.
Amateur Newspapers from the American Antiquarian Society This link opens in a new window
Amateur newspapers written, edited, and published primarily by people aged 12 to 20 in the late 19th century.
American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society This link opens in a new window
Searchable collection of periodicals from the United States' colonial period through the early twentieth century. Fondren has access to collections 1-7.
American Periodical Series Online This link opens in a new window
Digitized images of the pages of over 1,100 American magazines and journals from 1740 and 1940. Titles range from America's first scientific journal, Medical Repository, to Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
Searchable primary sources in sex, sexuality, and gender, such as newspapers, newsletters, and other periodicals.
Rice University owns access to the following modules:

Part I: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940
Part II: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940
Part III: Sex and Sexuality in the 16th through 20th Centuries
Part IV: Global Diversity
Part V: L’Enfer de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Black Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Full text to the Baltimore Afro-American (1893-2010), Chicago Defender (1909-1975), Cleveland Call & Post (1934-2010), Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2010), New York Amsterdam News (1922-2010), Norfolk Journal (1916-2010), Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2010) and Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002).
British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Searchable text and images from 18th-20th century regional and local British newspapers, collected by the British Library.
Rice University owns access to the following modules:
- Part I: 1800-1900 (national and regional papers)
- Part II:1800-1900 (local newspapers)
- Part III: 1741-1950 (national and regional papers)
- Part IV: 1732-1950 (local newspapers)
- Part V: 1746-1950 (northern regional newspapers)
- Part VI: 1783-1950 (Ireland).
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Searchable images of microfilm of more than 160 periodicals from the early modern period in Great Britain. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences.
Eighteenth Century Journals (1685-1835) This link opens in a new window
"Bringing together rare journals printed between c. 1685 and 1835, this resource illuminates all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics covered are wide-ranging and include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion (Adam Matthew)." We own access to parts 1-5.

The FictionMags Index Family
This website brings together indices of over 750,000 items of popular and genre fiction in over 75,000 magazine issues.

Gale NewsVault This link opens in a new window
Gale News Vault is an interface for cross-searching all the Gale newspaper archives that are available at Rice:
+17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
+19th Century U.S. Newspapers
+19th Century UK Periodicals: Empire
+19th Century UK Periodicals: New Readerships
+19th Century British Library Newspapers
+Daily Mail Historical Archive
+Economist Historical Archive
+Financial Times Historical Archive
+Independent Digital Archive
+Illustrated London News Historical Archive
+Liberty Magazine Historical Archive
+Listener Historical Archive
+Picture Post Historical Archive
+Punch Historical Archive
+Sunday Times Digital Archive
+Times Digital Archive
+Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 represents the single largest compilation of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries.
LGBTQ+ Source™ This link opens in a new window
"LGBTQ+ Source™ contains all of the content available in LGBT Life as well as full text for more than 130 of the most important and historically significant LGBT journals, magazines and regional newspapers, as well as more than 170 full-text monographs/books including Classics in Lesbian Studies, Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research, Handbook of Research with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Populations, Queer Theory & Social Change, etc."
LGBT Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Magazines serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and related communities are often the principal source of documentation on LGBT+ cultures, lives, and events. Dating back to the 1950s, this collection features major periodicals devoted to LGBT+ interests, covering prominent topics like health, lifestyle, politics, social attitudes, law, activism, LGBT rights, arts and literature (ProQuest).
Currently ten titles are available on this newly launched database: The Advocate; Albatross; Erie Gay News; Gay News; Gay Times; Homosexual Counseling Journal; Just for Us; The Pink Paper; RainbowWeddingNetwork Magazine; Transgender Tapestry.
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
Finding aids and bibliographic information for books, periodicals, newspapers, and other publications from the nineteenth century, in literature, law, history, then-contemporary issues, and other subjects.
Included sources:
- Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue
- The Nineteenth Century
- American Periodicals
- British Periodicals
- Cotgreave's Index
- An Index to Legal Periodical Literature
- Cumulative Index to Niles' Register 1811-1849
- Periodicals Index Online
- Poole's Index to Periodical Literature
- Stead's Index to Periodical Literature
- The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900
- House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
- Proceedings of the Old Bailey
- The U.S. Serial Set
- Archive Finder
- Palmer's Index to The Times
- The "Bookman" Directory of Booksellers, Publishers and Authors
- Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism
19th Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Periodicals from the UK and other locales in the British Empire, such as Australia, Canada, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, New Zealand, and South Africa.
Rice University has access to:
Series 1 - New Readerships: Women's, Children's, Humor and Leisure/Sports
Series 2 - Empire: Travel and Anthropology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial.
Eight Centuries: 1106-1960 This link opens in a new window
"Eight Centuries is a vast database of historical citations and links to full text documents. It aggregates scholarly indexes to journals, newspapers, books, documents, art work and images. Eight Centuries currently comprises 27,408,426 discrete links to primary source historical documents in 24 languages (Paratext)." This collection is the first stop for researching pre-1960 materials. it aggregates all kinds of indexes to books, periodicals, newspapers, government documents and patents into a single resource.
Within Series I are the main multi-title, periodical indices, spanning nearly all Anglo-American periodicals of the late eighteenth through early twentieth century. PP reproduces the indexing from: Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1907), Index to Periodicals (1890-1902) (Ed. William T. Stead), Cumulative Index to a Selected List of Periodicals, Nineteenth Century Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature (1890-1899), and many more.

Series V provides online access to the Descriptive Catalogue of the Government Publications of the U.S., 1774-1882, Compilation of the Message and Papers of the Presidents (1789-1897), Hansard's Index to Debates, House of Commons (1803-1830) and Hansard's Index to Debates, House of Lords (1803-1830).
Periodicals Archive Online (PAO) This link opens in a new window
PAO is the new name for PCI Full Text - an archive of hundreds of digitized journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences. It offers more than 200 years of scholarship.
Periodicals Index Online This link opens in a new window
Periodicals Index Online began as Periodicals Contents Index at Harvard University. Articles from over 900 humanities and social sciences periodicals with nineteenth century content have been indexed. (1790-1919)
Civil War Era Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Historical newspapers, pamphlets and ephemeral works from the Civil War period in the United States.
Readers' Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new window
An index to popular American periodicals from 1890-1982. Contains comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of late 19th through 20th century America. (1890-1982)
Service Newspapers of World War Two This link opens in a new window
Explore over 300 newspaper titles from across the globe that brought information, entertainment and camaraderie to the forces at home and overseas (Adam Matthew). Fondren Library owns access to Modules I and II.
Module I: Highlights include Stars and Stripes London Edition, Fauji Akhbar, a highly visual publication for Indian troops, Springbok, printed in both English and Afrikaans for those serving in South Africa, Die Wehrmacht, which served both Germany’s public and its troops, and 13 editions of the Union Jack.

Module II: Continuing the themes seen in Module I and covering an equally diverse set of geographical locations, highlights within this module include, The Land Girl, published in Britain for the women’s land army on the home front, the highly visual weekly magazine Parade, published for British forces in the Middle East, the all-services newspaper of South East Asia Command, Yank, a popular magazine for the US armed forces, American and Australian editions of Guinea Gold, Blighty, a weekly paper for British forces, and Ceylon Review, a weekly publication for British forces in Ceylon.
(Adam Matthew)
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new window
More than 1,000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks, and newspapers from the 17th and 18th centuries, curated by the British Library.
17th and 18th Century Nichols Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
Scans of British newspapers from the 17th and 18th centuries from the John Nichols Collection at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.
Texas Digital Newspaper Program This link opens in a new window
As part of the Portal to Texas History, this collection makes available Texas community newspapers (1829-present) digitized in coordination with partner organizations (libraries, universities, historical and genealogical societies, etc.).
Trade Catalogues and the American Home, 1850-1950 This link opens in a new window
Explore domestic consumerism, life and leisure in America between 1850-1950 with documents that highlight commercial tastes and consumer trends (Adam Matthew).
Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals: 1800-1900 This link opens in a new window
A subject-inclusive, language-inclusive bibliography of 73,000 publications, 68,000 personal names, 6,300 issuing bodies, 2,400 publishing towns, 23,000 title pages, 2,000 subjects from 1800-1900.
Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900 This link opens in a new window
An index to the tables of contents in Victorian periodicals. It is especially useful for finding authors' names for articles written anonymously or under pseudonyms.

Individual Periodicals

These publications are presented as individual databases with their own specialized search tools. Many of them can be searched together with other serials using the tools in the left box (e.g. Gale NewsVault). However, searching the individual publication can allow you to narrow your search to specific newspaper sections, to captions of illustrations, ads, etc.

Associated Press Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Searchable images, articles, correspondence, memos, and other documents from the Associated Press.
Rice University has access to the following collections:

- Series 1: News Features & Internal Communications, 1848-2000
- Series 2: U.S. City Bureaus Collection, 1931-2004
- Series 3: Washington, D.C. Bureau Collection, 1938-2009
- Series 4: The Middle East Bureaus Collection, 1967-2008
- Series 5: European Bureaus Collection, 1937-2003
- Series 6: Washington D.C. Bureau Collection, 1915-1930.
Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1896-2016 This link opens in a new window
"The Daily Mail has been at the heart of British journalism since 1896... It currently boasts a circulation of over 2 million, and its website is the most visited news site in the world (Gale)."
"More than 100 years of this major UK national newspaper can be viewed in full digital facsimile form, with copious advertisements, news stories, and images that capture twentieth-century culture and society (Gale)."
Economist (The) Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
"The Economist has consistently delivered a highly intelligent and comprehensive report of the week's events and has long been a leading magazine ... Its back issues ... serve as key witnesses to the economic and political history of the last 170 years (Gale)." The Economist Historical Archive back issues are available from 1843 through 2020.
Financial Times Historical Archive, 1888-2021 This link opens in a new window
Archive of the newspaper Financial Times. Fondren Library owns access to Part 1 (1888-2010), Part 2 (2011-2016) and Part 3 (2017-2021).
Godey's Lady's Book This link opens in a new window
Published from 1830-1880 in Philadelphia, Louis Antoine Godey's publication initially included extensive fashion descriptions and plates, biographical sketches and articles about a variety of subjects. Gradually the periodical matured into an important literary magazine and contained works by significant 19th century authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allen Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Guardian (the) and The Observer - Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
The Guardian (1821-2003) and its sister paper, The Observer (1791-2003) provide facts, firsthand accounts, and opinions of the day about political, business, sports, literary, and entertainment events from the past 200 years. The Guardian and The Observer have been digitized from cover to cover, with full-page and article images in PDF format.
Illustrated London News Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
The historical archive of the Illustrated London News is the full facsimile run of the illustrated newspaper from 1842 to 2003 with over 260,000 pages in full-color imaging, including specials and presentation pieces.
Independent Newspaper Historical Archive, London 1986-2016 (The) This link opens in a new window
This archive "is a major British daily national newspaper, launched in 1986 as an antidote to its often overtly political rivals... Featuring journalists and columnists from across the political spectrum, the paper is generally regarded as centrist, presenting fresh, alternative views on the free market, social issues, and culture (Gale)."
International Herald Tribune Historical Archive, 1887-2013 This link opens in a new window
This archive "charts the history of the 20th century from luxury travel and opulent entertainment, to international conflicts, the spread of American culture abroad and globalization (Gale)."
Liberty Magazine Historical Archive, 1924-1950 This link opens in a new window
This magazine archive "charted the course of middle America from 1924–1950 with art, stories, and feature articles from some of the twentieth century’s greatest authors, celebrities, artists, and politicians (Gale)."
Listener Historical Archive (The) This link opens in a new window
"The Listener was a weekly magazine established by the BBC in 1929 under its Director-General Lord Reith. It was the intellectual counterpart to the BBC listings magazine, Radio Times. Developed as the medium for reproducing broadcast talks – initially on radio, but in later years television as well - The Listener is one of the few records and means of accessing the content of many early broadcasts. As well as commenting on and expanding on the intellectual broadcasts of the week, The Listener also previewed major literary and musical programmes and regularly reviewed new books."
The Mirror Historical Archive: 1903-2000 This link opens in a new window
"Founded in 1903, the Mirror plays a pivotal role in the history of journalism... It features more than 800,000 pages of brand-new, full text searchable, scans of the complete run of the Mirror from 1903-2000, including the Sunday Mirror (Gale)."
New York Times (Historical:1851-2014) This link opens in a new window
Full text image of the newspaper (1851-2014). For current online access see the New York Times entry.
Norfolk Journal and Guide (Historic) This link opens in a new window
The Norfolk Journal and Guide was the only black newspaper to provide on-the-scene, day-to-day coverage of the Scottsboro trial, and was one of the best researched and well written black newspapers of its time.
Philadelphia Tribune (Historic: 192-2001) This link opens in a new window
The Philadelphia Tribune is the oldest continuously published black newspaper dedicated to the needs and concerns of the fourth largest black community in the U.S. During the 1930s the paper supported the growth of the United Way, rallied against the riots in Chester, PA, and continuously fought against segregation (1912-2001).
Picture Post Historical Archive, 1938-1957 This link opens in a new window
This magazine archive "provides the key to understanding the pre-television era with a focus on popular entertainment and the rise of youth culture... Picture Post’s innovative use of photo-journalism captured the imagination of the British people, with readership at its peak estimated at 80% of the population (Gale)."
Punch Historical Archive (1841-1992) This link opens in a new window
"From 1841 to 1992 Punch was the world’s most celebrated magazine of humour and satire. From its early years as a campaigner for social justice to its transformation into national icon, Punch played a central role in the formation of British identity – and how the rest of the world saw the British (Gale)."
The Sunday Times Digital Archive (London), 1822-2016 This link opens in a new window
"Despite the similarity of names, The Sunday Times was an entirely separate paper from The Times until 1st January 1967, when both papers came under the common ownership of Times Newspapers Ltd. To this day, The Sunday Times remains editorially independent from The Times, with its own remit and perspective on the news. In more than 600,000 pages, The Sunday Times Digital Archive is a gateway to the greatest crimes, careers and culture of the last 180 years (Gale)."
Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2016 This link opens in a new window
"The Daily Telegraph ... had 'the largest circulation in the world', boasting world-famous writers... For more than 150 years it has shaped and recorded the history and democratic values of the United Kingdom (Gale)."
"The Sunday Telegraph was launched as a sister paper in 1961, and The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2016 provides users with access to both the daily and Sunday editions (Gale)."
Times Digital Archive (London), 1785-2019 This link opens in a new window
"This historical newspaper archive allows researchers an unparalleled opportunity to search and view the best-known and most cited newspaper in the world online in its original published context (Gale)." Fondren owns access to the Times Digital Archive 1785-1986, 1987-2013 and 2015-2019. Current issues of The Times Digital Archive are available from Nexis Uni and Newspaper Source under JN "Times, The (United Kingdom)" and are also searchable in Gale NewsVault.
Times of India (the) (1838-2010) This link opens in a new window
First-hand accounts and coverage of the politics, society and events in India from 1838-2010 (ProQuest).
Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive (TLS) This link opens in a new window
The TLS Historical Archive, which supersedes the TLS Centenary Archive, contains all reviews, letters, poems and articles published in the TLS from 1902 to 2019; added to this collection are the disclosed identities of anonymous contributors.
Wall Street Journal (Historical: 1889-2000) This link opens in a new window
Offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue (1889-2000).

Literatures in English: Historical Periodicals

Indexes to Multiple Periodicals

Indexes to Multiple Periodicals

Individual Periodicals

Individual Periodicals

Historical Newspapers