Catalogue Statistics

12471	People
3644	Locations
564	Organisations
112	Repositories

11	Catalogues
60747	Letters
65886	Letter Versions
59736	Images
26621	Comments
20399	Related resources

Welcome to a new union catalogue of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century correspondence, now in public beta!

Created by the Cultures of Knowledge Project with generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Early Modern Letters Online — EMLO — is a combined finding aid and editorial interface for basic descriptions of early modern correspondence. This public prototype combines calendars of eight contributing collections. However, with the continuing addition of metadata on letters — manuscript, printed, and digital — by other individuals, projects, and repositories, EMLO aims to become the first freely available union catalogue of these often elusive documents. Search or Browse our existing collections, and find out how you can Contribute...

Search

People
Search letters for authors, senders, recipients, and people mentioned, e.g. 'Samuel Hartlib', 'John Aubrey', or 'The Royal Society'. Search is not case sensitive. You can also browse by People and by Organisation, where you can select and search across multiple people and organisations.
Years
Search by individual year and across year ranges. To select a single year, use the first drop-down only. You can also type the year value with your keyboard. You can also browse by Year.
Places
Search the places that letters were sent from or to, e.g. 'Queen's College', 'Paris', or 'Spain'. Search is not case sensitive. You can also browse by Place, where you can select and search across multiple locations.
Content
Search across abstracts, keywords, incipits, excipits, transcriptions, and enclosures, e.g. 'Spider' or 'Mathematics'. Search is not case sensitive. ! Please note that EMLO is a catalogue first and foremost and that full-text transcriptions are currently only available for the Lhwyd and Selden collections.
Catalogue
Confine your search to a single catalogue. For details of our eight current contributing collections, see the Collections page.

People
1. Author
  Search for authors and senders, e.g. 'Samuel Hartlib', 'John Aubrey', or 'The Royal Society'. Search is not case sensitive. You can also browse by People and by Organisation.
2. Recipient
  Search for recipients, e.g. 'Samuel Hartlib', 'John Aubrey', or 'The Royal Society'. Search is not case sensitive. You can also browse by People and by Organisation.
Dates
1. From
  Search from this year, month, day or a combination of all three. You can also browse by Year.
2. To
  Search to this year, month, day or a combination of all three. You can also browse by Year.
Places
1. Sent from
  Search the places that letters were sent from, e.g. 'Queen's College', 'Paris', or 'Spain'. Search is not case sensitive. You can also browse by Place.
2. Sent to
  Search the places that letters were sent to, e.g. 'Queen's College', 'Paris', or 'Spain'. Search is not case sensitive. You can also browse by Place.
Content
Search across abstracts, keywords, incipits, excipits, transcriptions, and enclosures, e.g. 'Spider' or 'Mathematics'. Search is not case sensitive. ! Please note that EMLO is a catalogue first and foremost and that full-text transcriptions are currently only available for the Lhwyd and Selden collections.
Repository
Confine your search to a particular library or archive. You can also browse by Repository.
Catalogue
Confine your search to a single catalogue. For details of our eight current contributing collections, see the Collections page.

Prefer things at a glance? You can also Browse. Want a full set of fields? Try Advanced Search

Letters in Focus

Letters in Focus: Things That Go Bump in the Night So, the evenings draw in, All Hallows’ Eve is upon us, and I find myself creeping through autumnal mists to the Bodleian’s Special Collections in search of ghosts.
( 29 October 2012 )

Catalogue News

Cultures of Knowledge Receives Further Grant We are delighted to report that Cultures of Knowledge has been awarded a further grant of $758,000 from the Scholarly Communications and Information Technology program of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for the period from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2014.
( 14 September 2012 )