Wordorigins.org

Proquest Historical Newspapers is a database service found primarily in libraries. Use on this site is largely restricted to searches of the New York Times, which is available through the San Francisco Public Library.

Google Books search engine.

Google’s project for digitization of printed books. An excellent and growing database of works. The search engine, however, is not particularly well suited for searching exact text matches—the algorithms are designed to find topics, not specific phrases. And the dates given by the search engine are not to be relied upon—they are highly inaccurate, sometimes off by centuries. Check the title page of any work found by the search engine to verify the date is correct.

Newspaperarchive database.

Subscription site with thousands of newspapers dating back to 1759. The search engine is problematic (among other things it does not let you sort the results by date), but the sheer volume of its contents and the reasonable price makes it an attractive resource.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875, from Indiana University

Utah Digital Newspapers from the University of Utah