We are inviting researchers interested in French historical newspapers to trial Retronews.

Retronews is a new archive offered by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and provides access to 600 French news titles published between 1631 and 1950.  Some of these newspapers used to be freely available on Gallica but can now only be accessed through Retronews.

Just over half of the titles are published in Paris with the rest being regional French titles and 5 from Algeria. Titles include: Le Matin (1884-1944), Le Petit Parisien (1876-1944), Le Temps (1861-1942), Gazette nationale ou le Monitor universel (1789-1901).

Different kinds of keyword search are offered. Extra features include filtering by theme, historical period and place of publication. The database comes with three introductory tutorials.

We don’t yet know when the trial expires, but please send feedback to Isabel Holowaty (isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and Nick Hearn (nick.hearn@bodleian.ox.ac.uk).