OEC Bibliography of Edinburgh History

A rich written resource of Edinburgh’s past

Our online Bibliography of Edinburgh History brings together an extensive collection of nearly 3,000 items – books, chapters, journal articles, and dissertations – covering the rich heritage of the city, dating from Maitland’s 1753 History of Edinburgh and Leith.

It covers prehistory to modern times, taking in a range of themes – social, cultural, economic and architectural. It features the Old and New Towns and local communities across the city.

We make it freely available to encourage anyone, whether with a casual or dedicated interest, to look into the city’s history. 

2024 Update

We augment the collection regularly, and with the latest update adding 97 articles, 363 books, 167 chapters and four dissertations, 631 items in all. These include recent publications up to the end of 2023 and older material that had not previously been identified. We strive to identify local material published in small and scarce editions. We always welcome suggestions for inclusion.

How to use the Bibliography

The Bibliography is curated on Zotero, a widely used resource for collecting, organising, citing and sharing research.

It opens with a display of all records ordered alphabetically. (You do not need to login to Zotero to use the Bibliography.)

You can then:

  • browse by document type (ie “journal article”) or within subject categories (ie “biography”) by following the directory tree in the left-hand pane
  • search in either the full list or a subject or document type by using “title”, “creator” or “year” keywords in the top-right search box, or
  • order your list by double-clicking a heading in the heading bar above the list.

Clicking on any entry in a list displays a bibliographic record in the right-hand pane.

Select either a single entry by clicking on it to see full bibliographic records, or multiple entries using <ctrl/click> (or <command/click> on a Mac); or a sequence of entries with <shift/click>.

You can view your selection by clicking on the bookshelf icon above the heading bar.

Zotero Bookshelf icon

Download your entries using the “copy to clipboard” button.

You can choose another citation style for your list. For best results, ensure “English (UK)” is selected as the language.

Latest additions

The latest additions to the Bibliography can be viewed and searched by clicking on the ‘additions 2024’ menu item on the left-hand side of the page.

Obtaining documents in the Bibliography

If you want copies of any documents contained in the Bibliography, you can try libraries and bookshops or go online.

Much is available electronically – follow our tips here

Articles in the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club

If you are looking for articles from the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, you will find a new ‘BOEC’ menu item in the Bibliography. Click on this and you can view and search all 396 articles published in the Original and New Series of the Book from 1908 to 2023.

Maintaining the Bibliography

We can never expect this Bibliography to be totally comprehensive as new publications come out and older ones are discovered. 

The Bibliography and its updates have been compiled by Dr Malcolm Noble, and we thank him for his dedication and expertise. You can read more about his task in assembling the Bibliography in the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, New Series, Volume 16.

Please report any missing items either via the online form or by email.

We also welcome any suggestions for improvement or any issues you may experience in using the Bibliography – please get in touch.

Terms of use

The information in the Bibliography is made available for the purpose of research and private study only.

For any other uses, please contact us.