Eighteenth Century Collections Online Archives - Page 3 of 4

The Acquisition of Gale Primary Sources at the University of Johannesburg Supports Efforts to Decolonise the Curriculum

October 3, 2023December 4, 2019 by Gale Review Team

Students studying in the library at the University of Johannesburg

| By the Gale Review team |

The global movement to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ focuses on creating a more accurate and holistic read of history – and our understanding of people and the world – by questioning the canonical primacy given to some perspectives over others. Access to primary sources can play a key role in this understanding. Librarians at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, have turned to Gale for support. “In 2018 the University of Johannesburg adopted collections focused on slavery and gender,” explains Gale Field Sales Executive Dan Solomon. “Now they have deepened their commitment by purchasing a wide array of Gale archives.”

Why Use Primary Sources?

October 6, 2023November 7, 2019 by Gale Ambassadors

│by Pauli Kettunen, Gale Ambassador at the University of Helsinki│

Is the picture above what comes to mind when you think of an archive? Do you believe that, to find any useful information, you must spend weeks between the shelves without seeing daylight?! If so, I have good news for you – Gale Primary Sources has updated archival research to the twenty first century! You no longer have to plough through library catalogues or rummage in endless boxes to find material relevant to your research – you can do so in seconds by running a text search, just like when googling.

‘I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!’ Ice Cream Recipes in Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online

October 4, 2023July 31, 2019 by Gale Review Team

│By Dr Lucy Dow, Gale Content Researcher│

With the weather we’ve seen recently, it is unsurprising that July is national ice cream month! Just search for #nationalicecreammonth on Instagram and you will be inundated with all kinds of delicious (and not-so-delicious) looking icy confections. Whilst you may now be able to get tomato soup, grilled cheese or sushi flavour ice cream, the authors of eighteenth-century English language cookery books tended to stick to more familiar flavours such as strawberry or apricot, although they were not always averse to trying something more unusual. In 1789 Frederick Nutt wrote a recipe (pp. 125-126) for parmesan ice cream! Interestingly, whilst the more exotic chocolate, coffee and even pineapple had made it into ice cream by the late eighteenth century, the now ubiquitous vanilla was still far too exotic and expensive. By exploring eighteenth-century ice cream recipes using Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online we can not only see how ice cream was made, but discover other things these recipes reveal about eighteenth-century life.

How Gale Scholar helped with my Graduation Thesis

October 4, 2023July 24, 2019 by Gale Review Team

│ By Wang Ke and Professor Wang Jinghui from Tsinghua University, Beijing │

In this blog post we hear from Wang Ke, a student at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and Wang Ke’s mentor, Professor Wang Jinghui, about how the primary source archives that were made available to the university through the Gale Scholar programme helped Wang Ke achieve high marks in his thesis.

From Jeu de Paume to Strawberries and Cream: A Brief History of Tennis and the Wimbledon Championships

October 4, 2023July 5, 2019 by Gale Review Team

"Hygienic Excess." Punch, 18 Oct. 1879, p. 174. Punch Historical Archive, 1841-1992

│By Carolyn Beckford, Gale Product Trainer in the UK and Europe│

As we come to the end of the first week of Wimbledon, with the annual buzz and excitement very much in full-flow, we decided to use Gale Primary Sources to look back at the evolving history of tennis and the Wimbledon Championships.

A Triumph for Humanity: William Wilberforce and the Team that ‘Bowled Out Slavery’

October 4, 2023May 18, 2019 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Lyndsey England, Gale Ambassador at Durham University │

‘What should we suppose must naturally be the consequence of our carrying on a Slave Trade with Africa?’ asked William Wilberforce in a speech in 1789. ‘Does anyone suppose a Slave Trade would help their civilization? That Africa would profit from such an intercourse? Is it not plain, that she must suffer from it?’ With these questions in mind, the famed abolitionist made a decisive judgement: ‘We are all guilty,’ he said, ‘we ought all to plead guilty’.

British Royal Babies Through the Ages

October 4, 2023May 7, 2019 by Gale Ambassadors

| By Rebekka Väisänen, Gale Ambassador at the University of Helsinki |

All media outlets are now brimming with news about the newest addition to the British Royal Family, HRH Prince Harry and Meghan’s baby boy. In light of this, I decided to search Gale Primary Sources to see how royal births have been documented and celebrated throughout the ages. Below I explore the media hype around five royal ancestors, ranging from poetry to the decoding of names.

Francis Barber: Samuel Johnson’s Jamaican friend

October 4, 2023March 27, 2019 by Gale Ambassadors

By Calvin Liu, Gale Ambassador at the University of Oxford

The figure of Dr Samuel Johnson has come to be seen as the canonised cliché of a certain type of stuffy Englishness. His very name evokes scenes from a Blackadder episode where an august but temperamental enlightenment gentleman, draped with a flamboyant powdered wig, raves to his friends in a coffee house about the sorry state of ‘demotic Anglo-Saxon’ as it stands in the modern age. Not to mention the lexicographical feat that is Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, often touted as the grandsire of modern English dictionaries from the OED to Merriam-Webster – and bane to the lives of English Literature students ever since its publication! What is, however, less well-known is his remarkable friendship with Francis Barber, a Jamaican freedman who first arrived in rural Yorkshire as a child. Barber became a close companion to Johnson during a period of deep depression after the death of his wife and was named the executor and ‘residuary legatee’ (as James Boswell puts it in his 1791 Life of Samuel Johnson) of Johnson’s estate after his death (Gale platform p.226).

The Myth of the Rhinoceros

October 4, 2023February 25, 2019 by Gale Ambassadors

By Lyndsey England, Gale Ambassador at Durham University

In 1769, writing his ‘Description of Three Hundred Animals’, a document included in Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Thomas Boreman presented the rhinoceros as follows:

“He has two girdles upon his body, like the wings of a dragon, from his back down to his belly … his skin is so hard, that no dart is able to pierce it, and covered over with scales, like the shell of a tortoise.”

Valentine’s Day for the Broken Hearted

October 4, 2023February 14, 2019 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Maya Thomas, Gale Ambassador at the University of Oxford│

The weather is cold and grey, but the shops are ablaze with red hearts, sparkly roses and giant teddy bears holding signs reading “I love you”: Valentine’s Day is upon us yet again. Whether you love or hate this centuries-old festival, it cannot be denied that the love it celebrates certainly deserves a day of its own. After all, from Helen of Troy to Tinder, the literary-minded (read: soppy) historian might argue that love, with all its greatness and tragedy, has inspired the culture, art and even politics that have propelled our human story onward.

Yet anyone who’s ever wandered forlornly through the maze of hearts and roses that adorns our Western shopping centres at this time of year, and longingly gazed at some elaborate box of heart-shaped chocolates wishing they had someone to buy it for, can tell you that even a festival celebrating something as joyful as love inevitably has a darker side.