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Prof. Murdoch's courses: a research guide

A guide to resources for research assignments in Prof. Murdoch's courses on Victorian Britain, History of Childhood, The First World War & British Imperialism.

Archival Collections at Vassar - Databases

19th Century British Pamphlets
This collection, created by RLUK (Research Libraries UK), contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in UK research libraries.
Click on the "Pamphlets" tab to display pamphlet titles
Church Missionary Society Periodicals
Publications from the Church Missionary Society, the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, and the South American Missionary Society documenting missionary work from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.
Defining Gender
Original British source material on the study and analysis of gender, leisure and consumer culture
Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1542-1945
Primary sources in women's history
Grand Tour
Collection of manuscripts and visual and printed works providing accounts of the English abroad, c1550-1850, that highlight the influence of continental travel on British art, architecture, urban planning, literature and philosophy.
India, Raj & Empire
Explores the history of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947.
This collection is largely comprised of documents originally offered on microfilm. An index created for those reels is available from the vendor. The microfilm version is also held by the Vassar College Libraries. The call number is Microfilm 1044.
Original physical materials are held by the National Library of Scotland.
Women's Periodicals: Social and Political Issues (Archives Unbound)
Full text of some of the most significant and least-widely held women’s periodicals produced from the late eighteenth century through the early 1930s. Date range: 1786-1933
John Johnson Collection
Access to items selected from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering insights into the everyday life in Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
London Low Life
Full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London.
Medical Services and Warfare
Includes the Florence Nightingale Papers
Queen Victoria's Journals
Digital images of every page in the entire sequence of Queen Victoria's diaries and full transcriptions and keyword searching of all journal entries.
Women, War and Society, 1914-1918 (Archives Unbound)
Collection of primary source materials brought together in the Imperial War Museum, London, for the study of twentieth-century social, political, military and gender history includes charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, press cuttings, magazines, posters, correspondence, minutes, records, diaries, memoranda, statistics, circulars, regulations, invitations, and interpretative essays.
British Newsreels, 1911-1930
Newsreels produced by the Topical Film Company in the early twentieth century. Covers news, sports and fashion, as well as key events, such as the First World War, the Suffragette Movement, and the establishment of the Irish Free State. Original reels are held by the British Film Institute and Imperial War Museums.
Colonial Caribbean
British government documents relating to the European colonization of the Americas, slavery, trade, war, agriculture and religion. Records document interactions between British military and government officers and indigenous peoples, enslaved people, the indentured, free people of color, pirates, merchants, and sugar plantation owners. Date range: 1624-1870
Available modules:
I: Settlement, Slavery, and Empire, 1624-1832
II: Colonial Government and Abolition, 1833-1849
III: Economic Change and Indentured Labour, 1850-1870
Includes Colonial Office and War Office record series on individual islands and territories including Anguilla, Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Berbice, Bermuda, British Guiana, British Honduras, British Virgin Islands, Curaçao, Demerara, Dominica, Essequibo, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Leeward Islands, Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis, Santo Domingo, St Bartholomew, St Christopher (St Kitts), St Croix, St Eustatius, St Lucia, St Thomas, St Vincent, Suriname, Tobago, Tortola, Trinidad, and Turks and Caicos
Original physical collections are held by the British National Archives
Victorian Popular Culture
Resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Victorians on Film: Entertainment, Innovation and Everyday Life
Primarily professional films, clips and motion picture footage created by early British film companies during the Victorian Era. Half of the collection was created by Mitchell and Kenyon's Norden production company. There are dramatic as well as documentary movies. Most of the scenes are from England, Scotland, and Ireland, but there is also footage from France, Italy and a few other countries. Date range 1898-1913
Original films are held by the British Film Institute