Simple factual research is all well and good, but for story purposes, I think the little details are more important: what people wore, what they ate, what they did for fun.
Internet Archive on Great Britain, 1901-1910.
London Times Archive.
New York Times Archive, 1851-1980.
Victorian and Edwardian Photographs. This site has a huge range of photographic portraits that, to me, inspire a great many character ideas.
The Museum of Childhood has a section on Edwardian Lives from childhood on.
An enlightening article on womens' fashion 1900-1909. Check out fashions in clothing here, here, and here. A useful fashion links page.
This new site looks increadibly useful: East London Theatre Archive, which I found via Great War Fiction.
An overview of kitchens and cooking and some recipes. More recipes can be found here, divided by genre.
Neat information from World's Fairs, 1901-1910 at the National Fairground Archive, that I've always thought would make an original background for a novel.
Finally, though the design is cluttered, this site gives lyrics and/or sheet music and listenable links to a number of period music-hall tunes. For classical music of the period (and others), some available for download, visit the music library at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
And for fun as well as research, Suffrage on Stage. "Woman suffrage is the reform against nature. Look at these ladies sitting on the platform. Observe their physical inability, their mental disability, their spiritual instability and general debility! Could they walk up to the ballot box, mark a ballot, and drop it in? Obviously not. Let us grant for the sake of argument that they could mark a ballot. But could they drop it in? Ah, no. All nature is against it. The laws of man cry out against it. The voice of God cries out against it--and so do I."
--Marie Jenney Howe, "An Anti-Suffrage Monologue"
Related posts:
Basic Historical Research Online.
Historical Detail in Fiction.
Synergy in Writing and Research.
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