Subject librarian
Benjamin Stone
About the British History collection
Strong holdings in British and Commonwealth history have been a hallmark of the Stanford University Libraries since their founding. Shortly after the founding of the University in 1891, the library began acquiring primary materials dealing with British history, including a substantial collection of documents and books relating to British railroads in the Timothy Hopkins Collection and an extremely valuable set of British Parliamentary Papers acquired by Jane Stanford with the assistance of History Professor George E. Howard.
Particular strengths lie in an extensive collection of digital and microfilm materials relating to the history of Great Britain, including a large number of digital archives that provide access to manuscript materials from early modern England through the twentieth century. Stanford's holdings of UK government documents are also very strong, including excellent collections of state papers and Cabinet Office and Foreign Office materials in digital form and as microform sets.
Coupled with the Hoover Institution's extensive collection of archival materials relating to British political parties (particularly the Labour Party), foreign relations between the two world wars, and decolonization, resources for the study of British and Commonwealth History at Stanford are rich and varied.
