Good news:
The British Library have today announced:[1]
"Today's the day - one million 19thC newspaper pages free to view (and
download) on the British Newspaper Archive. And this is just the
start.
https://blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/2021/08/free-to-view-online-newspapers.html
"
The linked blog post includes a list of titles.
The bad news is that they clarified:[2]
"...Essentially, you need to register to access the free content, but
won't be charged anything"
and said in the blog post:
"The fact that we consider newspapers made before 1881 to be in the
public domain does not mean that we can [SIC] make all pre-1881
digitised titles available for free"
and that this release represents just 2% of the BNA's digitised newspaper.
Still, a start is a start...;
[1]
https://twitter.com/BL_newsroom/status/1424719234815434754
[2]
https://twitter.com/BL_newsroom/status/1424730642512809993
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk