This week we are delighted to have passed the fantastic milestone of 33 million pages on The Archive, with 90,812 new pages added over the last seven days. That means we now have over 33 million pages available to search – and keep your eyes peeled as this number continues to grow and grow!

We have updated six of our existing titles this week. There are extensive twentieth century additions to both the Aberdeen Press & Journal and the Aberdeen Evening Express. We also continue to augment our wonderful collection of specialist titles. We have added over 30,000 new pages to The Queen, a society magazine which covers the goings-on of high society, but also is a unique record of femininity in the Victorian era.

We have also updated three of our early Labour titles – Clarion, Labour Leader and Forward (Glasgow). To the Clarion this week we have added early years from the First World War, and as such the paper represents a fascinating window into attitudes towards the conflict amongst Labour party supporters and members.

The year 1897 has been added to two of our specialist publications this week – The Queen and the Labour Leader. Both publications, rather unsurprisingly, offer very contrasting commentaries on one of the main events that year – the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

Penny Illustrated Paper | 3 July 1897

Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, marking the fifty years since her accession in 1837, was celebrated on 22 June 1897. It is to be expected that The Queen is fulsome in its praise of its namesake, and four days after the Procession of Thanksgiving, it published a long commentary extolling the virtues of the Monarch on her anniversary, and also those of her Empire:

Tuesday’s Procession of Thanksgiving was not only to commemorate a reign unparalleled in our island story for fulness of years, and the happiness of the greatest number, and for the stainlessness of the Sovereign’s life, but to be a sort of paean of Empire.

As well as praising Queen Victoria, the magazine also reflects the material side of the Jubilee. Many different manufacturers and shopkeepers, advertising within its pages, clamber for attention, selling wares which include everything from a Diamond Jubilee hand-embroided bedspread, to opera glasses with which to view the Diamond Jubilee procession.

The Queen | 12 June 1897

The Queen | 19 June 1897

The Queen | 5 June 1897

The Labour Leader, however, adopts quite a different tone in its own Diamond Jubilee Number. This special publication, published on 19 June 1897, combines satire and longer commentaries that reflect rather varying opinions to those exhibited in The Queen. To paraphrase, the paper’s overwhelming attitude to the celebrations is that it is a ‘toadying event.’

Labour Leader | 19 June 1897

On the front page of the Diamond Jubilee Number, there is a re-working of the national anthem:

God Save the Queen, yet the grass is green,
And London’s full of gentry,
So while you fake the Jubilee,
In a badge of red, and fancy free
I’ll just slip off with the ILP
Into the open country.

The ILP here refers to the Independent Labour Party, which later became affiliated with the Labour party.

And so, the Labour Leader adopted an overwhelmingly anti-monarchical attitude towards the Diamond Jubilee, commenting ‘No man can serve two masters, and if we are for the Queen we are not for her subjects.’ It is fascinating within the pages of The Archive to discover the spectrum of historical opinions, some of which remain divisive to this day.

UPDATED TITLES

This week we have updated six of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a FREE sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation.

Register now and explore the Archive

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.