What is Early English Books Online?
From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser
and Shakespeare, this incomparable collection now 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. Libraries
possessing this collection find they are able to fulfill the most exhaustive
research requirements of graduate scholars - from their desktop! - in
many subject areas, including: English literature, history, philosophy,
linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and
science.
Frequently Asked Questions
About EEBO
and the Text Creation Partnership
Creation of searchable full text
To accompany the citations and page images, a separate initiative, the
Text Creation Partnership (TCP), is in the process of creating SGML
coding for the full text of 25,000 EEBO
works, so users can search the full ASCII text of the documents and
view both the text and the corresponding original page images. Through
their funding, research libraries can help to support - and eventually
own - a richly encoded archive that's equally valuable to undergraduates
writing papers on witchcraft and faculty members tracing the course
of a word or concept across three centuries of English literature.
Joint sponsorship, joint ownership
Launched in 1999 as a joint effort between the University of Michigan,
Oxford University and ProQuest LLC, the partnership
allows participating libraries to help shape this full-text archive.
Partnership is open to libraries that purchase Early
English Books Online (EEBO). For members, over 11,500 encoded
texts are now fully searchable within EEBO
as well as from custom interfaces designed by participating institutions.
Find out if your institution is a member of the Text Creation Partnership.
Terms of partnership
Libraries join the Text Creation Partnership by investing an annual
contribution over the course of five years, and ProQuest LLC matches a portion
of each partner's contribution. Partners will help to set guidelines
for selecting which texts are encoded, as well as standards for conversion.
The text archive will be available to all members for local loading,
customization, and development. The partnership will also support remote
access for institutions that are still in the process of developing
local systems.
Other benefits for the research community
The Text Creation Partnership also:
- Encourages an international dialogue on the appropriate extent and
standards for retrospective conversion
- Helps major research libraries develop the technology for large-scale
conversions and manage the resulting files
- Provides a model for partnerships between publishers and libraries
to serve a common goal: meeting the research needs of end users.
The Text Creation Partnership will seek extensive input from the library
community on these and other issues throughout the course of the project.
To Learn More
Please visit the Text Creation Partnership web site at http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/.
A different full text search experience
If you cannot find a full text title in EEBO,
try looking for it at the University of Michigan site where the data
is prepared, checked, and loaded before it is delivered to ProQuest LLC.
To search the texts from the University of Michigan interface, please
visit the TCP website at http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/e/eebo/.
About Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue
Early English Books I (Pollard and Redgrave,
STC I), 1475-1640
From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser
and Shakespeare, this incomparable microfilm collection contains nearly
all of the 26,500 titles listed in A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave's
Short-Title Catalogue and its revised edition. Libraries possessing
this collection find they are able to fulfill the most exhaustive research
requirements of graduate scholars in the areas of English literature,
history, philosophy, linguistics, and the fine arts.
The collection comprehensively documents the magnificent English Renaissance
- an era that witnessed the rebirth of classical humanism, the broadening
of the known world, and the rapid spread of printing and education.
The writings of such revered authors as Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus,
and Shakespeare provide unique windows onto the landscape of English
history during this period. The examples from the collection listed
below provide only a cursory glance at the scope of materials in the
thousands of titles included.
Great Literary Works
With this collection, scholars and students of literature can examine
the earliest editions of such classics as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
and Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Textual scholars are able to compare
variations in the early quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays with
the renowned First Folio edition of 1623, and the great Renaissance
authors can be studied in light of lesser-known literature from the
era.
Material for the Historian
The original, printed version of royal statutes and proclamations, military,
religious, legal, Parliamentary, and other public documents are reproduced
in the collection. And social historians gain insight into the lives
of the common people through almanacs and calendars, broadsides and
romances, plus popular pamphlets such as The Trail of Witchcraft,
showing the true and righte method of discovery (1616).
Research in Religion
Scholars will find a host of sermons, homilies, saints' lives, liturgies,
and the Book of Common Prayer (1549). The King James translation
of the Bible (1611) can be studied in relation to earlier English
translations, and Latin, Greek, and Welsh translations invite comparison
with the English version.
Other areas of study for:
- science historians - beginnings of modern science
- political scientists - debates on the divine right of kings
- classicists - Greek and Latin authors in influential Renaissance
translations such as Chapman's Homer
- linguists - definitive data for the study of Early Modern English
- musicologists - numerous early English ballads and carols
- art historians and bibliophiles - a unique opportunity to analyze
early typefaces and book illustrations
About Wing's Short-Title Catalogue
Early English Books II (Wing, STC II), 1641-1700
Spanning the tumultuous years of the English Civil War, the Interregnum,
and the Restoration, this collection continues the mission of STC
I to preserve valuable research materials on microfilm. With both
STC I and STC II, libraries will have available for their
scholars an unparalleled center, essential for research libraries supporting
strong graduate studies programs.
While the notable features and purposes of this collection are the same
as those of STC I, STC II contains larger bodies of titles
in certain subject areas such as the arts, the sciences, popular culture,
and women's studies. And, the historical perspective of an era that
saw the rise of a mercantile class, the first English settlements in
North America, and the development of secular philosophy and empirical
science provides research possibilities into trends in British ethos
and philosophy.
Students of the arts can access critical discourses on art and literature,
such as:
- Edward Filmer's Defense of Dramatick Poetry (1698)
- Pierre Monier's History of Painting (1699)
- Henry Purcell's A Choice Collection of Lessons for the Harpsichord
(1696)
For physical scientists, the collection includes books by Boyle, Newton,
and Galileo, as well as popular scientific tracts such as Nicholas Culpeper's
The English Physician (1652). And students of women's studies
find useful the editions of works by Aphra Behn, Anne Killigrew, and
Margaret Cavendish.
The scope and caliber of these two collections are without rival, providing
as they do the materials for scholars in English literature, history,
religion, arts, music, physical science, and women's studies the creative
latitude required for important research opportunities.
About the Thomason Tracts
Thomason Tracts
'…a collection of Pamphletts and other writeings and papers bounde up with them of severall volumes gathered by me in the tyme of the late warres and beginning the third day of November A.D. 1640 and continued until the happie returne and coronacion of his most gracious Maiestie King Charles the second, upon which I put a very high esteeme in regard that it is soe intire a work and not to be pararelled and also in respect of the long and greete paynes, industry and charge that hath bin taken and expended in and about the collection of them.'
— from the will of George Thomason (d.1666)
The year 1640 in England marked the beginning of a period of tumult
and change. Both the practical and the philosophical bases of the British
monarchy were being challenged by determined and powerful enemies while
those who defended the king shared an absolute conviction in his Divine
Right to rule. The differences between these factions led to a bitter
civil war and a series of experimental governments that kept England
in turmoil until 1660.
This exceptional collection brings together for scholars of
English history, politics, and religion nearly everything that was published
in England and on the Continent during this critical period. Students
and researchers today owe a debt to London publisher and bookseller
George Thomason for this material. Thomason knew he was living through
important historical times and set about methodically collecting copies of virtually
everything that was being published - from single broadsides to substantial
dissertations.
The Thomason Tracts include more than 22,000 individual items
representing about 80 percent of what was published during these two
decades. The collection includes almost 400 periodicals, most of them unavailable from other sources. View a list of periodicals.
These items complement the titles held in the Wing collection of Early English Books (STCII), and when used in conjunction with that collection
provide the research scholar with the most comprehensive resources
available. Inevitably, the collection contains a great deal of political
material and features:
- speeches made in Parliament;
- tracts on the religious issues that reinforced political divisions;
- gossip from or about the court;
- sermons and political diatribes;
- and news reports that provide detailed accounts of battles, negotiations,
and political machinations.
Thomason took precise care to record the date of each paper on the same
day it came out, and his neat notations still appear clearly on the
title pages of many documents. In addition, he often made marginal notes
disputing or ridiculing the opinions of writers he thought in error.
Especially valuable are 97 previously unpublished manuscripts, most
written in Thomason's own hand, which were considered too dangerous
to be circulated in their own time. In fact, Thomason was required to
move the growing collection several times during these years to keep
it safe, hiding these important records in the homes of friends or concealing
them under false tops in library tables.
The collection Thomason left remained intact for a century, largely
through luck. In 1761, King George III bought it from Thomason's descendants
and presented it to the new British Museum. Thomason tracts have been
used by scholars of mid-17th-century England for generations and represent
an almost inexhaustible supply of material for studying military, constitutional,
political, literary, and social life in England during this volatile
period in world history.
Early English Books Tract Supplement
The Early English Books Tract Supplement provides an exceptional
perspective on many aspects of 16th- and 17th-century British life.
Over the course of many years, small items such as broadsides and pamphlets
were often collected into "scrapbooks," or tract volumes,
classified by various criteria such as dates or topics. These tract
volumes, primarily from the British Library, allow readers to see the
material in the same order as they would when leafing through the original
volume.
These materials are scheduled for release in EEBO
in 2007/8.
Scholars and researchers in history, religion, literature, music, poetry,
gender studies, and other fields will benefit from the unique perspective
provided by this collection. Documents in the collection include:
- proclamations, acts of the English, Scottish and Irish Parliaments,
and other royal declarations;
- letters, including the correspondence of Sir John Harrington;
- the printed epistles of several Roundhead generals to Parliament;
- petitions, cases, and other public documents relating to a single
issue, such as the volume on the Trading Companies, which chronicles
the emerging slave trade from the point of view of the Africa Company;
- a large collection of ballads;
- Church of England pamphlets and sermons;
- pamphlets concerning the birth and growth of the Quaker sect;
- almanacs;
- auction catalogs, including prints and drawings;
- mathematical, medical, and other scientific and practical treatises;
- and much more.
Image Availability
What's online now?
As of November 2007, works from the following collections and units are available online:
- Early English Books I (Pollard & Redgrave, STC I), 1475-1640,
Units 1-78.
- Early English Books II (Wing, STC II), 1641-1700, Units 1-127. Scanning remaining
STCI and STCII titles will continue as new microfilm units are catalogued and scanned.
- Thomason Tracts.
- The first 4,900 titles from Tract Supplement. Scanning the remainder of this
collection will continue in 2008.
- Records for works that do not have scanned images available yet are released as they
become available. Users can find the UMI Microfilm collection and reel number on the
Full Record, or discover which library holds the original item on the "Copy from" field.
Over 118,500 records are currently available on EEBO, corresponding to STCI Units 1-78,
Wing Units 1-129, all of the Thomason Tracts, and some of the Tract Supplement.
What's coming next?
- In 2008 we will continue cataloguing and scanning the Tract Supplement collection and
work on additional STCI and Wing units.
Status of the Microfilm Project
UMI issued its first unit of Early English Books I (Pollard & Redgrave,
STC I) microfilm in 1938. As of 1997, the collection consisted of 64
units of microfilm. After a long hiatus, the Early English Books I microfilm
program reopened again with the issuance of Unit 65. The release of
Unit 65 reflected an eight-year effort to find and film the rare materials
at libraries around the world. We currently produce one unit of Early
English Books I material each year. As of November 2007, 83 units of
Early English Books I microfilm have been issued.
UMI began microfilming the items in the Early English Books II (Wing,
STC II) collection in 1957. As of November 2007, we have released 132
units of Early English Books II microfilm. We currently produce about
two new units of Early English Books II microfilm each year.
We estimate that it will take 5-10 years to complete microfilming of
the works in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue and
Wing's Short-Title Catalogue. This is due to the rare nature
of the remaining material. We literally scour the globe to uncover new
works to include in our program. Currently, we are filming material
on four continents and managing relationships with over 125 contributing
libraries that hold works from the period 1473-1700.
We will digitize the material in new units of Early English Books I
and Early English Books II microfilm and add the material to Early
English Books Online.
About the dates of coverage in EEBO
The official dates of coverage for EEBO are 1473-1700, corresponding to the dates covered in the Pollard & Redgrave and Wing short title catalogues, and the Thomason Tract and Tract Supplement collections. However, there are a few hundred items in EEBO that were printed after 1700. Most of these are later reproductions or reprints of originals. Some are items that were erroneously dated and may have had their Wing numbers cancelled subsequent to being microfilmed. And some items overlap the centuries, such as A collection of several tracts and discourses written in the years 1677, to 1704 by Gilbert Burnet ... ; in three volumes, 1704. In addition, many of these items are one- or two-page broadsides and ballads that require more time to identify and scan for inclusion in EEBO, so because they fall outside of the project's parameters we will focus on finishing the materials up to 1700 first.
