seventeenth century

A Big Data History of Music

History of Music, Music | Early Modern, eighteenth century, library, manuscripts, music sheets, nineteenth century, seventeenth century, sixteenth century, twentieth century

British Library dataset of printed music, freely available for download and analysis, as a result of the data cleaning undertaken in this project.

Data type: text

Go to dataset

Famine and Dearth Database

History, Social History | Bengali, eighteenth century, fiction, Hindi, India, non-fiction, pamphlets, periodicals, Persian, plays, poetry, seventeenth century, sixteenth century, surveys, translation, United Kingdom

The Famine and Dearth database contains searchable transcriptions of over 700 multilingual primary sources relating to situations of famine and dearth in early modern India and Britain. The archive contains texts in ten different languages including Persian, Bengali and Hindi as well as English, and offers English translations for the majority of texts. These texts cover a wide range of genres, including chronicle histories, gazetteers, official correspondence, legislation, pamphlets, periodicals, plays, poetry, surveys, and fiction and non-fiction prose.

Data type: text

Go to dataset

Classics and Class in Britain, 1789-1917

Classics, Social History | class, education, eighteenth century, England, Greek, Latin, nineteenth century, seventeenth century, twentieth century, twenty-first century, working class

Collection of encounters between consciousness of social class and Greek & Latin Classics

Data type: audio, text, video

Go to dataset

Irish Song Project

History of Music, Music | Early Modern, eighteenth century, fifteenth century, Ireland, Middle Ages, nineteenth century, seventeenth century, sixteenth century, songs

This is e a digital catalogue of 230 songs from the medieval period to the early nineteenth century, categorised according to generic type, musical incipit and other features and thus permitting for the first time comparison of songs distant in time but linked across history by melody, form or audience. Facsimile images of manuscript and early printed editions are provided, as also modern musical annotation and commentaries on each song.

Data type: audio, images, text

Go to dataset

The Historical Music of Scotland Databases: Prints

History of Music, Music | eighteenth century, music sheets, nineteenth century, Scotland, seventeenth century, tunes, violin

Details of over 200 Scottish printed sources of vernacular violin music from before 1850, along with images and indexes of 22 books from the University of Glasgow and Perth’s A K Bell Library. You can browse the collection, search for tunes and composers, and play the tunes.

Data type: images

Go to dataset

Data underpinning ‘A map of the pibroch landscape, 1760–1841’

History of Music, Music | eighteenth century, nineteenth century, Scotland, seventeenth century, tunes

This database includes bibliographical and summary details of over 200 printed sources of Scottish fiddle music from before 1850. Most of the sources are substantial printed collections, but the database also includes some of the hundreds of surviving single-sheet publications. 22 sources have been digitised and indexed complete.

Data type: text

Go to dataset

The Historical Music of Scotland Databases: Manuscripts

History of Music, Music | eighteenth century, nineteenth century, Scotland, seventeenth century, tunes, violin

a comprehensive catalogue of 27 Scottish manuscript sources of violin music from before 1750, with around 3500 tunes all searchable by name, Theme Code and other features.

Data type: text

Go to dataset

UK RED

English Literature, Literature | autobiography, diaries, eighteenth century, fifteenth century, interviews, letters, nineteenth century, seventeenth century, sixteenth century, twentieth century, United Kingdom

The Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (RED), housed and developed at the OU is the world’s largest database about reading habits. An online, open-access project with over 30,000 entries, it is revolutionising public understanding of the history of reading. RED is democratising scholarship about the history of reading by encouraging ordinary members of the public from any location to contribute and use information about readers through history. 120+ volunteers from outside academia have already contributed some 6,000 entries. RED attracts over 1500 users per month from over 135 countries and has inspired partner projects in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

Data type: text

Go to dataset

Manuscript Pamphleteering in Early Stuart England

History, Social History | Early Modern, England, manuscripts, pamphlets, seventeenth century

This project aims to survey the vast hidden archive of early Stuart England’s manuscript pamphlets. In collaboration with the British Library, this project will construct a database of manuscript pamphlet texts, bibliographic information, and digital images. This will allow users to search transcriptions of the pamphlets; analyze the distribution of copies through time and space; and see how such materials were presented: large and small, elaborate and plain, professional and amateur. The project will conduct additional research in the private papers of Francis Russell, fourth earl of Bedford, who was a major political figure of the early Stuart era as well as a reader and collector of manuscript pamphlets.

Data type: images, text

Go to dataset

Glossary