About Illustrated London News
Introduction
Launched on Saturday 14 May 1842, The Illustrated London News is described as the world's first illustrated newspaper. Despite its title seeming to suggest that it contains only stories local to London it actually also covers events from around the world, providing pictures in the form of both illustrations and photographs.
"One picture is worth ten thousand words."
Frederick R. Barnard
The creation of this facsimile database of its contents from 1842 to 2003 has heralded much excitement. You can now gain a fascinating insight into the world over the last 150 years or so, not only in mainly text form as you could with the Times Digital Archive, the Observer/Guardian archive and the Economist archive, but also with thousands of wonderful images covering a variety of historic events and more day-to-day happenings.
Tips on searching
The first search box you will see is set to search for "Key word" as default. These key words are ones which have been chosen by those creating the archive to make it easier to search for particular stories. However, if you wish to expand your search, or be more specific, you may wish to change this to "entire document" and perhaps specify which dates you wish to search as well. Indeed, you can actually specify which type of story or section/s you wish to search by going to "advanced search" which is linked under "search" on the far left of the menu bar, just under the Illustrated London News logo.
Be aware that, as with all facsimile searches, results can be affected by the quality of the scan and you may need to perform several searches or even browse a particular issue. Browse is also linked to via the same menu bar as advanced search.
Access
You can access this database in all Westminster Libraries and from home using your Westminster Library card. Not a member? Join now.
- Go straight to Illustrated London News historical archive
- Go to the 24/7 Exclusive Resources page
- Go to the Gateway to websites
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