NEWS

ProQuest Digitises the Early 20th Century’s
Most Influential British Magazines

850,000-page archive advances research of landmark movements and literature

ProQuest is improving outcomes for researchers of British politics, news, culture and society by boosting the availability of digital primary sources from the first half of the 20th century. Its new British Periodicals Collection III digitises the archives of the most important magazines of the period – all highly influential in their mix of news, politics, art, photography, literature and satire – and extends the scope of the popular British Periodicals program. The collection enriches context-based exploration of important attitudes, events and movements, such as empire and decolonisation, first-wave feminism, and consumer society. British Periodicals Collection III is part of ProQuest’s massive global digitisation program that is rescuing rare, important and fragile print works and making their contents available to researchers.

To learn more about all ProQuest’s digital collections of British Periodicals click here: http://bit.ly/BritPer3

“ProQuest’s goal is to continually enable new research insights by making important primary sources more widely accessible and easier to search,” said Susan Bokern, ProQuest vice president, Information Solutions. “With this collection, we’re advancing the work of scholars studying early twentieth century culture – a time of great change that’s richly documented in these pages.” 

When complete in April, British Periodicals Collection III will encompass more than 850,000 pages, with many featuring the first appearances of landmark works of literature, art, and political opinion. The collection enables researchers to consult the original context of serialised literature and journalism by Agatha Christie, Daphne du Maurier, George Eliot, George Gissing, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, H. Rider Haggard, H. G. Wells, Saki and Bram Stoker, among others. British Periodicals Collection III also includes…

• The full runs of titles from the prestigious stable of periodicals known as the “Great Eight” in British publishing history

• Cover-to-cover digitisation that extends to ephemeral content that has become key research material, such as ads and obituaries.

• Rich visual content such as large-scale illustration and photography that opens new opportunities for research in art history and the history of the book

• High-quality digitisation that reproduces both color and monochrome content in ProQuest’s hallmark crisp images. 

British Periodicals Collection III supports research and teaching across a wide variety of disciplines, including literature, social history, politics/international affairs, the arts, media/communications, journalism history, sociology, women’s studies and more. It resides on the ProQuest platform allowing cross-searching with the library’s other ProQuest collections and streamlining research.

www.proquest.com