The Early English Books Tract Supplement provides an exceptional perspective on many aspects of 16th- and 17th-century British life. Over the course of many years, small items such as broadsides and pamphlets were often collected into "scrapbooks," or tract volumes, classified by various criteria such as dates or topics. These tract volumes, primarily from the British Library, allow readers to see the material in the same order as they would when leafing through the original volume.

UMI^® has gathered this material, which corresponds to the dates of the Early English Books I and II collections, and released it in this supplement.

Scholars and researchers in history, religion, literature, music, poetry, gender studies, and other fields will benefit from the unique perspective provided by this collection. Documents in the collection include:

• proclamations, acts of the English, Scottish and Irish Parliaments, and other royal declarations
• letters, including the correspondence of Sir John Harrington
• the printed epistles of several Roundhead generals to Parliament
• petitions, cases, and other public documents relating to a single issue, such as the volume on the Trading Companies, which chronicles the emerging slave trade from the point of view of the Africa Company
• a large collection of ballads
• Church of England pamphlets and sermons
• pamphlets concerning the birth and growth of the Quaker sect
• almanacs
• auction catalogs, including prints and drawings
• mathematical, medical, and other scientific and practical treatises
• and much more.

The Tract Supplement complements the Early English Books collections, as well as Quaker Women's Tracts and Thomason Tracts -- all available from UMI -- and provides fascinating details that will be of use to researchers studying life in 16th- and 17th-century England.