Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain published by Adam Matthew Digital is comprised of primary digital materials culled from three major archives in Britain and the UK focused on the experience of poverty in Victorian Britain and efforts involving economic,
government, and social reform such as the Poor Law, workhouses, settlement houses, and philanthropic initiatives. Content is derived from the National Archives at Kew, British Library, and Senate House Library and includes pamphlets, correspondence, newspaper clippings, books, and other resources.
A small portion of the collection utilizes Adam Matthew Digital’s Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) to enable keyword searching of handwritten documents. The digitized images and documents are clear, searchable, and user-friendly to access, save, and share. Contract provisions are standard
to the product with authenticated access across institutional locations and guidelines for Interlibrary Loan sharing. Pricing is determined by institutional size and enrollment. While the product is a one-time purchase, annual hosting fees apply for ongoing access. Content is currently heavily
derived from one archive, the Senate House Library, with pamphlets from this source making up nearly half of the total holdings. Users seeking access to a more extensive collection of similar material may prefer subscribing to JSTOR which includes JSTOR 19th Century British Pamphlets with
over 26,000 pamphlets along with secondary scholarly journals and eBooks on the Victorian era. While not providing the primary sources of Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain or JSTOR, Historical Abstracts may be an alternative resource in providing access to notable
scholarly resources on the period.
