Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Question from Jordan - Henry VIII State Papers online

Hi I'm in my 3rd year of uni at Sunderland in UK and I'm doing my dissertation on Anne Boleyn and need to access primary documents, Mainly the calendar of state papers during the reign of Henry VIII. My lecturer said I could access them on line via national archives however I'm having trouble finding it, any one got any ideas? Thank you

[This is sort of a repeat type of question, but it doesn't hurt to get more input on sources! - Lara]

3 comments:

Lara said...

My first suggestion would be to speak with a librarian at your university, since you might have access to the State Papers Online database through your institution. There is also the great site http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ and you can find some of them at Google Books (I haven't checked if the specific volumes you need are there).

kb said...

If you are at Sunderland then you can also be a member of the IHR in London through which you should have free access to the whole of www.british-history.ac.uk. Lara is right. It's a great site and the complete calendar of state papers is online and searchable. The pagination is a bit funky but workable.

Several volumes of the state papers are also available through the 'internet archive'. See for example:
http://www.archive.org/details/calendarstatepa20offigoog

On the 'internet archive' site you can read the papers online or download them to your computer in various forms. The pagination is more recognizable on the archive site.

Tanner Ritchie also offers most of the state paper series as searchable downloadable PDFs but these are for purchase.

I'm surprised Sunderland doesn't have a set of the calendar of state papers in their library.

kb said...

Actually, you may have to be a postgraduate (masters and above) student to get membership with the IHR in London. Sorry about that. From your message, it sounds like you are still an undergraduate.