English Short Title Catalogue

ESTC title count 1600–1799. The ups and downs in phases of political turmoil are clearly visible, particularly the sharp rise of the title output following the abolition of the Star chamber in 1641.

The series 1477–1799 with numbers per decade

History

The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) is a short-title catalogue of works published between 1473 and 1800, mainly in Britain and North America, and primarily in English, from the collections of the British Library and other libraries.

It began life as the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue, with the same abbreviation, covering only 1701 to 1800. Earlier printing had been covered to 1640 by A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave's Short Title Catalogue (2nd edn, 1976–91), and from 1641 to 1700 by Donald Goddard Wing's similarly titled bibliography (1945–51, with later supplements and addenda). These works were eventually incorporated into the database.

Bibliography

• Snyder, Henry L. and Michael S. Smith (eds.) The English Short-Title Catalogue: past, present, future. New York: AMS, 2003.

External links

• English Short Title Catalogue (free access via the British Library)
• The ESTC as a 21st Century Research Tool
• Alston, Robin. The Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue: a personal history to 1989.

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons