History
There are many useful primary sources freely available on the internet but do be mindful of who is responsible for producing these resources.
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Archives Portal EuropeThe Archives Portal Europe provides access to information on archival material from different European countries as well as information on archival institutions throughout the continent
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Bess of Hardwick’s LettersBess of Hardwick's Letters brings together, for the first time, the remarkable letters written to and from Bess of Hardwick
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Court Depositions of South West England, 1500-1700Court Depositions of South West England, 1500-1700, a digital edition of 80 fully transcribed depositions relating to 20 cases heard in the church courts and Quarter Sessions between 1556 and 1694 across Devon, Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire.
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Digital BodleianA million images of rare books, manuscripts, and other treasures from the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford college libraries.
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DiscoveryDiscovery holds more than 32 million descriptions of records held by The National Archives and more than 2,500 archives across the country. Of these some 9 million records are available for download but be aware that not everything is available online.
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Early Modern Annotated Books from UCLA's Clark LibraryComprising over 250 early modern printed books bearing handwritten annotations, this collection offers rich evidence for studying the material history of reading. The books collected here range in subject matter (from science and natural history to literature and philosophy), time period (1472–1818), and type of annotation (from scholarly commentary and cross-referencing to printers' notations and polemical criticism).
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Early Modern Manuscripts OnlineEarly Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) provides transcriptions, metadata and images of manuscripts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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Horace Walpole CorrespondenceThe electronic version of The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937-1983) provides free online access to all 48 volumes of W.S. Lewis’s scholarly edition of the correspondence of Horace Walpole (1717-1797), youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, England’s first Prime Minister.
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Internet archiveA good source of primary materials
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JStor and ArtStorJStor now offers individuals access to read 100 articles every 30 days. We do subscribe to JStor – but not to everything on there – it’s worth joining to access the free 100 articles a month
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London Lives 1690-1800: crime, poverty and social policy in the metropolisLondon Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages from eight London archives and is supplemented by fifteen datasets created by other projects. It provides access to historical records containing over 3.35 million name instances. Facilities are provided to allow users to link together records relating to the same individual, and to compile biographies of the best documented individuals.
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Parker Library on the WebCorpus Christi College and the Stanford University Libraries have created Parker Library on the Web, a digital exhibit designed to support use and study of the manuscripts in the historic Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It contains rare medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, as well as early printed books.
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Plymouth Public LibraryJoining the library is free and is available to those who live, work or study in Plymouth
Also consider your own local home library if this is not Plymouth as their resources may differ -
Royal Archives OnlineRoyal Archives Online is the main catalogue of records held in the Royal Archives. This catalogue incorporates Georgian Papers Online and the digitised images of the Georgian Papers previously available.
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The Serving SoldierProvides online access to unique original documents and photographs held by the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King's College London.