Blog Post
Bringing Literature to Life: Historical newspapers online transform literature from static texts into part of a living conversation
Providing students with essential context to set texts and developing analytical skills, historical newspapers offer a wealth of support for students of literature and drama.
Tora Barry, Communications Manager, JCS Online Resources
Often overlooked by time-pressed students, historical newspaper archives can support coursework and class discussions, especially where deeper research and extended essays are called for. Where a class is working on a GCSE, A Level, or other set text, these often very detailed reports provide authentic historical context, which will encourage critical thinking, support independent research, and provide depth to students’ work.
Many schools are already subscribing to digital archives through libraries or educational services.
Accessed and understood in context, newspapers of the day can provide an invaluable guide to social attitudes of their time, from politics to crime and justice, industrialisation, racial, gender and sexual mores and prejudice.
Reports from headline broadsheet editorials to small snippets from the local papers highlight events and narratives which underpin creative playwriting and literature of the time and position them against present day understandings.
With 16.7 million pages of content and over 97 million articles, from titles including The Telegraph, The Times, The Financial Times, Punch, The Times Literary Supplement, The Listener and Picture Post, Gale Historical Newspapers is an invaluable tool for researching a wide range of subjects and events across 400 years of history, covered by British and American newspapers at the time they occurred.
Current English and Drama set texts being studied by secondary students include modern and classical works, such as Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky, Chekhov’s classic, The Seagull, and Arthur Miller’s (1900) drama All My Sons, recent productions of which are available through Bloomsbury Drama Online’s NT collections.
First performed in 2021, Blues for an Alabama Sky is a modern work, set in 1930’s Harlem, the eve of the Great Depression. Studying the play alongside newspapers of the day offers the chance to cite real life context for the issues raised by the drama, such as prejudice, poverty, and changing social values, women’s independence and fight for control of their own lives, and the daily struggle of individuals between tradition and progress.
Accessing historical newspapers can contribute a wealth of support for themes such as those which feature in The Seagull’s 19th Century Russia, including art and ambition, attitudes towards women, and the ageing process, as well as providing a fascinating opportunity to compare old and new approaches to theatre and literature.
For students studying Arthur Miller, there’s a wealth of newspaper archives documenting the post-World War 2 society depicted in All My Sons, which explores issues of familial responsibility, and the real human cost of war.
When students become more familiar with ‘real world’ reporting as a basis for understanding why authors explored particular themes, they will also start to develop analytical skills.
These will enhance their work in terms of their ability to identify viewpoints and bias, analyse language and rhetoric, and compare fiction with non-fiction.
As historical newspapers transform literature from a static text into part of a living historical conversation, students can come to understand why works resonate with contemporary readers, strengthening both contextual knowledge and critical analysis, and bringing classical literary concepts to life.