Shakespeare, Hamlet
Shakespeare, Othello
Letter about Guy Fawkes
Newsbook
Shakespeare, King Lear
English arrives in North America
Shakespeare's Sonnets
King James Bible
Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
First English dictionary
The Globe Theatre
Shakespeare's First Folio
John Donne, Poetry
Jonson, The English Grammar
Areopagitica by John Milton
Confessions of Charles I's executioner
Advert for a quack doctor
Marvell, 'An Horatian Ode'
Early A - Z of London
Samuel Pepys' Diary
Theatrical figures
Coffee houses
A cure for the Plague
The Fire of London
John Milton's Paradise Lost
Criminal slang
Aphra Behn, The Rover
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Habeas Corpus Act
Advert for a Rhinoceros
Account of a shipwreck
Newsbooks were the ancestors of newspapers, printed at this time in editions of up to 250 copies, though being read probably by a much larger number. While newsbooks became widespread during the 1640s, their origin can be traced back to official statements about public events, such as The Trewe encountre, a pamphlet published following the Battle of Flodden in 1513, and corantos, newsletters carrying collected information, which often contained reported speech.
This page from a newsbook, entitled A true report of certaine wonderful overflowings of waters, shows concerns that are all too real today, with an image of major flooding around the Bristol Channel in 1607. Contemporary reports of the tragedy record about 2,000 casualties, and close reading of the account supports the idea that the flooding may have been the result of a tsunami.
During the Civil War (1642-51) a newspaper war broke out; the royalist Mercurius Aulicus was printed in Oxford and Bristol, even circulating in London, where it was regarded as a major problem by the parliamentarians, who eventually produced the Mercurius Britannicus to counter it.
Shelfmark: 1103.e.58.