The British Newspaper Archive, in partnership with the British Library, has made a further one million historical newspaper pages available completely free to the public, reaching a new total of two million free pages.
Together, the British Newspaper Archive and the British Library are committed to releasing a total of five million free pages over five years, which can be accessed online on the British Newspaper Archive website and on Findmypast.
Much of this content has been made available as part of several major digitization projects based at the British Library:
- 19th Century Newspapers; Heritage Made Digital, which seeks to transform digital access to the British Library’s rare and early collections; and
- Living with Machines research project, a collaboration between the British Library, The Alan Turing Institute and five partner universities, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via UK Research and Innovation’s Strategic Priorities Fund.
Xerxes Mazda, Head of Collections and Curation at the British Library, said: “We are delighted to be making a further one million pages from the British Library’s newspaper collections available free to view online in conjunction with our digitization partners Findmypast.”
The free pages cover the years 1699-1900 across 244 titles in the UK.
Researchers can browse the beautiful images of the Illustrated London Life, discover their Scottish roots in the Glasgow Herald, or explore the history of Ireland with the United Irishman. One particularly intriguing title is Berthold’s Political Handkerchief, famously printed on calico, a type of fabric, in order to get around paying the newspaper stamp tax of the time.
Also included are Welsh language titles Y Tyst and Y Llan, 22,113 pages from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and 167,534 pages from Scotland, including the Edinburgh Gazette of 1699, the oldest newspaper digitized by the project so far.
The British Newspaper Archive was created in 2011 when Findmypast set out to digitize the British Library’s entire newspaper collection and open it up to the public as the British Newspaper Archive. Today, it contains over 56 million pages.
For anyone who wants to explore more of the British Newspaper Archive, until September 11, you can receive 20 percent off subscriptions, using the code SAVE20.
