Historical Corpora | Language Models | Tools

Historical Corpora

On this page, we gather a wide range of historical corpora and other useful resources and tools for researchers working with historical text.

In the table below, you may download historical corpora for fourteen different languages. For more information about these language-specific corpora, and for download, click on the name of the language of interest to you. All resources hereunder are provided on a "AS-IS", “WHEREIS,” and “WITH ALL FAULTS” basis, without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied.

Language models derived from these corpora may be downloaded from the Language Models section of this page. There you may also create your own language models, by uploading files of your choice.

Furthermore, some useful tools for processing historical text are found in the Tools section of this page.

News:

November 20, 2020: The Universal Dependencies version of The German Literary History added
November 10, 2020: The Universal Dependencies version of The Middle Russian Corpus added
November 6, 2020: The Universal Dependencies version of The Syntactic Reference Corpus of Medieval French added
October 15, 2020: The EDGeS Diachronic Bible Corpus added for Dutch, English, German and Swedish
August 25, 2020: Late Latin Charter Treebank and Index Thomisticus Treebank added for Latin
August 24, 2020: Perseus Digital Library and Proiel Treebank added for Latin and Greek
March 18, 2020: The Medieval Charter Sections Corpus added for Latin and Czech
March 18, 2020: The Reference Corpus of Middle Low German/Low Rhenish added
March 13, 2020: The Nottingham Corpus of Early Modern German Midwifery and Women's Medicine added
February 20, 2020: The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts added
February 14, 2020: The Middle Polish Diachrone Lemmatised Corpus added
June 15, 2018: Basque datasets for spelling normalisation added
June 14, 2018: The Ridges Corpus added for German

Download Historical Corpora

Czech

The following corpora are currently available for historical Czech:

Medieval Charter Sections Corpus (charters)
The diachronic section of the Czech National Corpus (DIAKORP)
Selection of books from the Gutenberg Project (Gutenberg)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
charters	1310–1346	charters	[txt]	[tok]	—	[xml]	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
DIAKORP	1350–1939	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Gutenberg	1890–1897	fiction	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www

You may also download all Czech corpora files (including readme files) here: all-czech-corpora.zip

Dutch

The following corpora are currently available for historical Dutch:

The EDGeS Diachronic Bible Corpus (EDGeS)
Selection of books from the Gutenberg Project (Gutenberg)
The Compilation Corpus Historical Dutch (Compilation)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download						Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Anno	Info	All
EDGeS	1360–1939	bible	[txt]	[tok]	—	[txt]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Gutenberg	14nn–1875	fiction	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Compilation	1236–1938	chancellery, narrative	—	—	—	—	[readme]	—	www	Free for research

You may also download all Dutch corpora files (including readme files) here: all-dutch-corpora.zip

English

The following corpora are currently available for historical English:

The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, version 3.1 (CLMET)
The EDGeS Diachronic Bible Corpus (EDGeS)
The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts (lampeter)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download						Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Anno	Info	All
CLMET	1710–1920	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[txt]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
EDGeS	1395–1890	bible	[txt]	[tok]	—	[txt]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
lampeter	1640–1740	tracts	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www

You may also download all English corpora files (including readme files) here: all-english-corpora.zip

French

The following corpora are currently available for historical French:

Paris speech in the past (Paris)
Syntactic Reference Corpus of Medieval French (SRCMF)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download						Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Ling	Info	All
Paris	1296–1790	vernacular speech, tax-rolls	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
SRCMF	842–1325	—	[txt]	[tok]	—	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www

You may also download all French corpora files (including readme files) here: all-french-corpora.zip

German

The following corpora are currently available for historical German:

Deutsches TextArchiv (DTA)
The EDGeS Diachronic Bible Corpus (EDGeS)
The Nottingham Corpus of Early Modern German Midwifery and Women's Medicine (GeMi)
GerManC
German Literary History (LitHist)
Reference Corpus of Middle High German (ReM)
Reference Corpus of Middle Low German/Low Rhenish (ReN)
Register in Diachronic German Science (Ridges)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download						Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Anno	Info	All
DTA	1600–1899	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
EDGeS	1460–1871	bible	[txt]	[tok]	—	[txt]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
GeMi	1500–1690	medicine	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
GerManC	1654–1799	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
LitHist	1790–1829	literature	[txt]	[tok]	—	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
ReM	1050–1350	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[xml]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
ReN	1200–1650	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[xml]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Ridges	1482–1914	science	[txt]	[tok]	[txt]	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www

You may also download all German corpora files (including readme files) here: all-german-corpora.zip

Greek

The following corpora are currently available for Greek:

Ancient Greek and Latin Dependency Treebank (AGLDT)
Perseus Digital Library (Perseus)
Proiel Treebank (Proiel)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
AGLDT	—	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[xml]	[xml]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Perseus	–	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Proiel	–	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[conll]	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www

You may also download all Greek corpora files (including readme files) here: all-greek-corpora.zip

Hungarian

The following corpora are currently available for historical Hungarian:

Hungarian Generative Diachronic Syntax (HGDS)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
HGDS	1440–1539	codices	[txt]	[tok]	[txt]	[conll]	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	free

Icelandic

The following corpora are currently available for historical Icelandic:

Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus (IcePaHC)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
IcePaHC	1150–2008	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	[txt]	[txt]	[txt]	[readme]	[all]	www	www

Italian

The following corpora are currently available for historical Italian:

Selection of books from the Gutenberg Project

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
Gutenberg	1300–1897	books	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www

Latin

The following corpora are currently available for Latin:

Ancient Greek and Latin Dependency Treebank (AGLDT)
Medieval Charter Sections Corpus (charters)
Corpus Corporum (not available for download, but included in the language models)
Late Latin Charter Treebank 1 (LLCT1)
Late Latin Charter Treebank 2 (LLCT2)
Perseus Digital Library (Perseus)
Proiel Treebank (Proiel)
Index Thomisticus Treebank (Thomisticus)

—

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
AGLDT	—	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[xml]	[xml]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
charters	1310–1346	charters	[txt]	[tok]	—	[xml]	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Corpus Corporum	100–1200	mixed	—	—	—	—	—	[readme]	—	www	www
LLCT1	–	charters	[txt]	[tok]	—	[xml]	[xml]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
LLCT2	–	charters	[txt]	[tok]	—	[conll]	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Perseus	–	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Proiel	–	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[conll]	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Thomisticus	1225–1274	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[conll]	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www

You may also download all Latin corpora files (including readme files) here: all-latin-corpora.zip

Polish

The following corpora are currently available for historical Polish:

Middle Polish Diachrone Lemmatised Corpus (PolDiLemma)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
PolDiLemma	1567–1800	mixed	—	[tok]	—	[txt]	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www

You may also download all Polish corpora files (including readme files) here: all-polish-corpora.zip

Portuguese

The following corpora are currently available for historical Portuguese:

Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus of Historical Portuguese (Tycho)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
Tycho	1380–1881	mixed	—	—	—	—	—	[readme]	—	www	www

Russian

The following corpora are currently available for historical Russian:

Middle Russian Corpus (RNC)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download						Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Anno	Info	All
RNC	—	—	[txt]	[tok]	—	[conll]	[readme]	[all]	www	www

Slovene

The following corpora are currently available for historical Slovene:

Digital Library (DigLib)
Reference corpus of historical Slovene (RefCorpus)
Lexicon of historical Slovene (lex)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
DigLib	1584–1918	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	[txt]	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
RefCorpus	1584–1899	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	[txt]	[txt]	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
lex	1584–1918	lexicon	[txt]	—	—	—	—	[readme]	—	www	www

You may also download all Slovene corpora files (including readme files) here: all-slovene-corpora.zip

Spanish

The following corpora are currently available for historical Spanish:

IMPACT-es diachronic corpus, BVC-section (IMPACT BVC)
IMPACT-es diachronic corpus, GT-section (IMPACT GT)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download							Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Morph	Syntax	Info	All
IMPACT BVC	1481–1962	mixed	—	[tok]	[txt]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
IMPACT GT	1543–1748	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www

You may also download all Spanish corpora files (including readme files) here: all-spanish-corpora.zip

Swedish

The following corpora are currently available for historical Swedish:

The EDGeS Diachronic Bible Corpus (EDGeS)
Fornsvenska Textbanken (Fornsvenska)
Selection of books from the Gutenberg Project (Gutenberg)
Texts from the Gender and Work project (GaW)
Protocols from the Academic Consistory of Uppsala University (Konsistoriet)

Name	Time Period	Genre(s)	Download						Source	Licence
			Text	Token	Norm	Anno	Info	All
EDGeS	1703–1917	bible	[txt]	[tok]	—	[txt]	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Fornsvenska	1350–1758	mixed	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
GaW	1527–1812	court, church	[txt]	[tok]	[txt]	—	[readme]	[all]	www	Free for research
Gutenberg	1789–1902	books	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	www
Konsistoriet	1624–1699	protocols	[txt]	[tok]	—	—	[readme]	[all]	www	Open Access

You may also download all Swedish corpora files (including readme files) here: all-swedish-corpora.zip

For questions or comments, or if there are corpora that you would like to add to this page, don't hesitate to contact us:

Eva Pettersson,	Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, eva.pettersson@lingfil.uu.se
Beáta Megyesi,	Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, beata.megyesi@lingfil.uu.se