Research Guides: HIST 350: Courtly Science in Premodern Europe (HC): Primary Sources

Finding Primary Sources

There are some online collections available for early modern printed texts. Haverford has access to both Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). Other primary source collections like Gallica from France's Bibliothèque national are open access on the Web.

Still other sources are available in printed form.

Those that have been edited, reprinted in facsimiles, or transferred to microfilm can be borrowed through E Z Borrow or interlibrary loan if they are not in Tripod.

Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine Special Collections Search Hub
Books printed in the 16th or 17th century are kept in libraries' rare book collections. You can go to Bryn Mawr, the University of Pennsylvania, and other local libraries to see books published during that era. Use this search page to find history of science related books by author, title and subject in the Philadelphia area. You will be surprised to see the wealth of materials available locally.

Early English Books Online (EEBO)
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Contains digital images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. This collection contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Includes books, pamphlets, manuscripts and newspapers.

Early Modern Festival Books Database
Indexes over 3,000 books concerning royal, noble, and civic celebrations along with descriptions of the art, pageantry and texts associated with the events.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online
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Offers full-text access to English-language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800 including books, pamphlets, almanacs, Bibles and treatises. Subjects covered include history, geography, fine arts, medicine, science, literature, language, religion, philosophy and law. Significant collections of women writers, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare are also included.
Europeana This link opens in a new window
Use Europeana to search through millions of digitized books, art, newspapers, and other sources from European museums, galleries and national libraries.
Medieval & Early Modern Sources Online
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A collection of digitized editions of primary source texts concerning economic, political, legal, and ecclesiastical history concerning Britain. Includes Treasury accounts, chronicles and other kinds of documents relating to the royal court. Most are from England, Ireland and Scotland, though some come from English ambassadors in other countries.