Selection Criteria
The content in Early Modern England: Culture, Society and Everyday Life, 1500-1700 has been selected in close collaboration with collection staff at participating libraries, archives and museums and specialist academic editorial board members. Feedback from focused conferences also played a large part in ensuring material is relevant and appropriate for students and scholars.
The resource provides an insight into society and everyday life of both 'ordinary' and prominent people living in England during the period 1500-1700. We have endeavoured to cover a variety of themes that reflect the culture of the period such as literature, politics, religion and crime.
These histories are presented through Quarter Sessions and other official and financial papers, correspondence, diaries and journals, rare manuscript, commonplace and printed books, charters, maps and artefacts.
For more information on the collection, please see our Nature and Scope, Collection Guides, Participating Libraries and Editorial Board pages.
A note on exclusions
Early Modern England: Culture, Society and Everyday Life, 1500-1700 is a major resource covering a wide range of individuals and official documents. Although key topics are well-represented, the scale of the period and complexity of the discipline prevents the inclusion of every collection or piece of material that might be relevant.
A lengthy process of discussion between many different archives, libraries and museums across the globe has resulted in the seven partner institutions that contribute to the resource. Where exclusions have been made, this has largely been due to:
- Collections falling outside the defined remit of this resource
- Fragile condition of material due to age
- Existing open-access content
- Copyright and permission considerations
- Reasons of privacy and data protection