WELCOME TO THE HANDWRITTEN NEWSPAPERS PROJECT
Handwritten newspapers and news sheets have been published all over the world from antiquity to today. They embody the universal journalistic impulse to share news and information with others through the best medium at hand, often under adverse conditions and with limited resources. This online collection documents the long legacy of manuscript news and story telling around the world. Welcome and enjoy exploring the collection.
The Handwritten Newspapers Project is an online collection of manuscript newspapers, news sheets, and other publications from around the world. The entries for these rare publications contain bibliographical data, images, resource links, and research notes.
A majority of the handwritten publications compiled here are from North America, particularly Canada and the United States. Most were published during the 19th century. However, the collection also includes works from Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and even ships at sea. They date from the ancient world (Imperial Rome’s Acta Diurna) to the present day. The Japanese handwritten newspaper published March 2011 after that nation’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, an Urdu language paper in India handwritten since 1927, and Liberia’s Daily Talk, a chalkboard “paper” posted on a blackboard on busy downtown street in Monrovia, the African nation’s capital city since 2000, are just a few examples of those published in our own day.
The manuscripts included in this online collection are identified by title, place of origin, and dates of publication, if known. Each bibliographic entry is divided into three sections containing a publication history, a general overview with the project editor’s notes based on a review of the available documentary evidence, information on the publication’s known bibliographic resources, and the archival location(s) of extant copies. When available, an image of an extant copy of the publication has been included. All entries containing images are indexed (or in process).
In the right column on every webpage is the site index that allows users to explore the collection by key categories: date, alphabetical order, country and/or state/province of origin (if known), and/or type of publication, as categorized by the project’s editorial criteria. These categories have been applied to each publication to allow users to sort through or group related or similar manuscripts as desired. Tabs for “Recent” and “Pending” pages list the “new” titles that have recently become available, or haven’t yet been fully vetted or cataloged.
Welcome, Explore, and Enjoy
Welcome to The Handwritten Newspapers Project. If you know of any other handwritten publications not included in this collection, or you can provide additional or corrected information to the bibliographical entries below, please contact the editor. We invite your comments and feedback about particular entries in this collection or the site as a whole. We even accept handwritten letters and cards!!
Thanks. Welcome. Explore. Enjoy.
Handwritten Newspapers Project, Published First Day of Summer, June 21, 2011, Moscow, Idaho, USA
[Updated Advent, December 1, 2022, Moscow, Idaho, USA]
[Updated January 5, 2022, Moscow, Idaho, USA]
[Updated January 16, 2021, Moscow, Idaho, USA]
[Updated July 20, 2019, Moscow, Idaho, USA]
[Updated February 26, 2019, Pogradec, Albania]
[Updated September 20, 2016, Moscow, Idaho, USA]
[Updated Ascension Day, May 14, 2015, Moscow, Idaho USA]
The Handwritten Newspapers Project 
Jul 02, 2011 @ 22:41:25
A first-class contribution.
Jan 08, 2015 @ 00:40:06
This provides historic information.
Jan 08, 2015 @ 00:40:29
I am also very much interested to contribute
Sep 07, 2015 @ 22:56:50
I was the editor of a handwriten newspaper -‘El Balsero”, in 1994-95 during the Cuban refugee crisis of 1994, in Gitmo Bay, Cuba.
Mar 21, 2016 @ 16:08:43
Some of the trench journals published in the Great War were handwritten, then polycopied. Many of these have recently been digitized, including some 150 titles from the Hendrik Conscience Library in Antwerp. See for example the newspaper ‘Ursel boven al’ for soldiers from the village of Ursel: https://hetarchief.be/nl/zoeken?sort=issued-asc&Serie%5B%5D=Ursel%20boven%20al
Mar 21, 2016 @ 20:03:00
Steven, thanks for the information about these digitized copies of Great War handwritten journals and the link to the Hendrik Library archives. Much appreciated. Are you affiliated with the library?
Mar 23, 2016 @ 08:18:30
Hi, yes I’m the curator of old and rare books at the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library. There’s lots of trench journals in our collection, but most are typeset. You can find all of them in the link above, but that will require a lot of browsing as the printing method is not recorded in the metadata.