XooxleAnswers

European
Newspaper Archives

The U.S. seems to have the lion's share of old archived newspapers, but more and more, digitized archives for historical international papers are coming online as well.  They cover a broad swath of world. history, from the 17th to the 21st century.  Archives from Europe are highlighted here, while a separate page is devoted to archives from the rest of the world.    Headlines, articles, display ads, broadsides, classifieds, sports scores, financials...they're all there for the taking. 

UK and Ireland Newspaper Archives

19th Century British Newspapers from the British Library.   This is a subscription service with 49 titles, but two of them, Penny Illustrated, and The Graphic, are available free.  These are surprisingly rich resources. 

 

Six 18th and 19th century British (England and Scotland) publications are online, covering roughly 1750-1850.  This is a cool collection, and includes the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

 

UK Gazettes offer 350 years of official government notices from London, Belfast and Edinburgh.  Full-text searching and PDF results..a very arcane, but very worhtwhile resource.

 

 

 

 

 

British Library Newspaper Archive

You get a smattering of UK papers from late 19th/early 20th century. Very sporadic coverage, and a painful search interface, but worth bookmarking, at least.

 
Irish Newspaper Archive

Varied newspapers and date ranges, some as early as 1763 Free to search, but it will cost you to retrieve full text.

 

New! Saoirse, Irish Freedom Newspaper, 1987-2003

A publication of the Sinn Féin.  Formerly, The Republic Bulletin, in both English and Irish Gaelic, hosted at Indiana University.

 
The Guardian (UK)

Awkward searching, but free content for the past century.

 
The Scotsman Digital Archive

1817 to 1950

Scottish history, free to search, results show headline only. You have to pay for full copies.

 

NCSE: Nineteenth Century Serials Edition

A recent and important edition to online archives, the NCSE collection covers most of the 19th century.  Its newspaper and magazine sources include Monthly Repository (1806-1837) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Northern Star (1838-1852), Leader (1850-1860), English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Tomahawk (1867-1870). and Publishers’ Circular (1880-1890).

 

New! Villanova University Digital Library.  A number of Irish and Irish-American publications here, including Irish Press (1918-22), Irish Tribune (1848), and (believe it or not) the Irish Felon (1848).  Some non-Irish materials as well.

 

UK Newspaper Archives.  An alternative write-up at Quezi.com of many of the sources presented here.

 

 

 

 

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One of the best archives available is the aptly-named NewspaperArchive.com.  This is a subscription service, but well worth it.  I use them constantly in my research, and recommend them highly.  Though mostly US-focused, they also archive collections from Canada, the UK, Jamaica, Ireland, South Africa, Japan, Germany and elsewhere. 

German Historical Newspapers 

A growing collection of newspaper archives from Germany is a mixed bag, with only a few resources providing full-text search, and the rest, browseable by date.

Assorted Bavarian German newspaper archives, with intermittent coverage from early 1700's to 1945. Includes Corburger Zeitung, Der gerade Weg, Grafinger Zeitung, and others. 


Deutsche Exilzeitschriften, 1933-1945. Newspaper archives from assorted Germann exile communities.


Freiburger Zeitung (1784-1943), Staufener Wochenblatt (1875-1968) and other German newspaper archive materials.


Historische Zeitungen und Zeitschriften--German Newspaper archives from Saxony, mostly early 1800's

 

Latvian newspapers, 1886-1957.  There are a lot of newspapers here, browseable by date.

Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg German newspaper archives.  Includes field newspapers from World War I, Heidelberger Zeitung (1861-1919), and Der Heidelberger Student (1929-1938)

 

Die Zeit Online has archives dating back at least to 1946, although I've found earlier ones as well.  This is one of Germany's most well-respected newspapers.  Interface is in German, and full page images are available.  

 

Villanova University Digital Library has two WWI-era German-American publications in English:  The Fatherland, and World War, a translation of the German publication, Weltkrieg.

Der Speigel, the German weekly magazine, has free, full-image, full text archives dating back to 1947. 

 

Arbeiter Zeitung, 1945-1989, full page images, browseable by date. 

 Hamburger Abendblatt, 1948 - present.  A simple search in the search box will access the full text archives, but no images. 

 

 New! Compact Memory -- Jewish Newspapers and Periodicals, 1806-1938.  In German, appears to be a rich collection with full text search. 

French Historical Newspapers

The French, their wonderful history notwithstanding, have done a mediocre job archiving their newspapers, but a few archives are available.

French Newspaper Archives.  These are not searchable, but full page images can be retrieved by date.  Date coverage is poorly described (quelle surprise!), but coverage includes Le Figaro, Le Temps, Le Croix, and others, chiefly from the 1800s to early 1900s. update: The website has been redesigned, and all newspapers are now included in the Periodicals collection. 

 

Mercure Francois, 1605-1643, France's oldest newspaper, is another French resource, more wonderful than most. 

 

Another oldie from France, sort of French and German, is this University of Heidelberg archive of a Strausbourg newspaper from 1609-1610. 

New! La Gazette de France, 1786.  Looks to be a fairly complete edition for the year.

Even with all the free resources available, I still find newspaperarchive.com to be the most valuable resource available for researching history.  I've been a subscriber for years.  Take a look:   NewspaperArchive.com 

Other European Newspaper Archives

Denmark Illustreret Tidende, 1759-1865, a Danish magazine style newspaper. Browseable by date.