Guides
Wayfinders for our collections, tools, and servicesFrench Studies: Find primary sources
Learn about the main discipline-specific primary and secondary source resources, select the most appropriate one for their research question, do simple searches, and access the desired content
Focus on the 15th-17th centuries
- Textes de la RenaissanceExactly what the title says: a full-text searchable database of French renaissance texts.
- Grand corpus des grammaires françaises, des remarques et des traités sur la langue (XIVe-XVIIe s.)Database grouping together all the French grammars of the 15th - 17th centuries. Each grammar is presented both in a digital format identical to the original version and also as a facsimile.
- Dictionnaires des 16e et 17e sièclesHistorical French dictionaries:
Thrésor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne, 1606 / Jean Nicot
A Dictionarie of the french and english tongues, 1611 / Randle Cotgrave
Les Origines de la langue françoise, 1650 / Gilles Ménage
Dictionnaire françois, 1680 / Pierre Richelet
Essai d'un Dictionaire universel, 1687 / Antoine Furetière
Dictionaire Universel, 1690 / Antoine Furetière
Dictionnaire étymologique ou Origines de la langue françoise, 1694 / Gilles Ménage
Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy, 1694
Le Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences, 1694 / Thomas Corneille
Focus on the 18th century
- The making of the modern world the Goldsmiths'-Kress library of economic literatureWorks on economics and business published from the last half of the 15th century to the mid-19th century primarily from the collections of the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature at the University of London, and the Kress Collection of Business and Economics at the Harvard Business School. The focus is on economics interpreted in the widest sense, including political science, history, sociology; special collections on banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing. Includes strong coverage of French thought. Includes facsimiles of rare books and primary source materials such as political pamphlets and broadsides, government publications, proclamations, and a wide range of ephemera.
- Eighteenth century collections onlineAims to contain all significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Many works printed in France under false imprints are included. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. The full collection includes nearly 180,000 titles and more than 33,000,000 pages of searchable material.
- Electronic EnlightenmentDatabase of correspondence between the greatest thinkers and writers of the long 18th century and their personal and professional networks. Includes letters, documents, manuscripts, early printed editions, and links to other relevant resources.
- ARTFL project, University of ChicagoFull text database of mostly French literary, political, philosophical, and technical works that offers functionality for text analysis. For the 18th century, highlights include the Encyclopédie, Voltaire, Rousseau, and lots of materials on the Revolution!
- Édition Numérique Collaborative et CRitique de l’Encyclopédie (ENCCRE)Explore the Encyclopédie through a digitized version of the original in the Bibliothèque Mazarine.
- French Revolution digital archiveStanford Libraries and BnF collaboration offering a digital version of the Archives parlementaires and a searchable corpus of high-res images from the BnF's collections. We're aware that we need to work out some issues for the Archives parlementaires, so let me know if you need help with it.
- 18th-century French judicial and administrative sourcesFinding aid for a collection of 450+ primary sources held by Stanford's Special Collections, organized into three large segments: Parlements (226 numbered items dated 1750-1787), Assemblées provinciales (69 numbered items, 86 titles, dated 1787-1788), and Miscellaneous source publications and studies (1363-1789).
Text corpora and other collections of cool stuff
- RetroNewsRetroNews, the official news site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, offers 400 titles of the French press published from 1631 to 1950 plus editorial contents highlighting press archives and advanced research tools
- Gallica la bibliothèque numériqueThe Bibliothèque nationale de France's massive multidisciplinary digital library of texts, images, sound files from all periods of history.
- ARTFL project, University of ChicagoThe FRANTEXT corpus in ARTFL contains the French literary canon, and search within public and subscription databases to find a wealth of other corpora (French novels, women writers, Balzac, works of the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1848, etc....)
- Base internationale de lettres électroniques du Moyen Age au XXe siècle (B.A.S.I.L.E.) la littérature narrative, romans, contes, nouvellesContains electronic versions of 1000 French prose fiction texts dating from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Texts have been authenticated by the authors wherever possible.
- Le corpus des oeuvres de philosophie en langue françaiseCorpus of works by philosophers writing in the French language from the Renaissance to 1966, based on series edited by Michel Serres.
- EuropeanaImages, texts, audio and video from European museums, galleries, libraries, and archives.
- Nomenclature officielle des voies de ParisInteractive map showing Paris street names and histories
- Féminismes En RevueFull text of 9 French feminist journals from the 1970s-1990s. Searchable, includes text and PDFs, and index of authors.
- Archives de données issues de la statistique puubliqueDatasets of historical French statistics
