Introducing 19th Century British Pamphlets!

This collection, created by Research Libraries UK (RLUK), contains more than 26,000 pamphlets from collections in seven universities in the UK and contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in research libraries in the UK. It is a part of the JISC Digitisation Programme which aims to make available a wide range of heritage and scholarly resources of national importance!

Throughout the 19th century, pamphlets were an important means of public debate, covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of their day. 19th Century British pamphlets spans more than one million pages, bringing together a corpus of primary sources for the study of sociopolitical and economic factors that impacted 19th century Britain!

Notable items within this collection include the Earl Grey Pamphlets Collection, a selection of papers accumulated by the 2nd to 4th Earls Grey who were a prominent family interested in parliamentary reform, colonial affairs and Catholic emancipation, and the Cowen Tracts, a selection of papers from the personal collection of Joseph Cowen who was a social reformer and MP for Newcastle which reflects his interests in social, educational and economic issues.

The Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection, a selection of 19th century anti-slavery pamphlets from the executors of Henry Joseph Wilson, a MP for Sheffield, is also included in 19th Century British Pamphlets and covers the activities of provincial philanthropic societies, such as the Birmingham and Midland Freedman’s Aid Association and the Sheffield Ladies Female Anti-Slavery Society. Whilst the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collection comprises of the earlier collections of the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office, including rare publications from overseas!

For access, please select 'login', then 'Find my institution' and search for 'Keele University'. Log in with your Keele username and password.

19th Century British Pamphlets can also be accessed via the library’s A-Z online resources and there’s a help page too.