More than 160 years of pictorial coverage, including politics, culture, society and all the key historical events from 1842-2003, will be available.

Illustrated London News (ILN), the company which owns the archive, has collaborated with Cengage Learning to digitally reproduce each page in full colour as it originally appeared.

Users will be able to browse and search every issue, page, article and image across the paper’s entire history.

Descibed by ILN as the "TV of its day", the publication was launched on 14 May 1842. It featured a number of key moments for print, including the Christmas 1855 issue, which contained the first colour pictures ever printed in an English newspaper.

The publication boasts many distinguished contributors, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins, Rudyard Kipling and Agatha Christie.

Publisher Seth Cayley, from the Gale Cengage Learning EMEA, said: "This will help students, enthusiasts and those interested in genealogy to research social history, fashion, theatre, media, literature, advertising, graphic design and politics.

"As an eyewitness to the past, it offers pictorial insight into events across the world in topics as diverse as the Irish famine of the 1840s, the Maori Rugby Tour of 1888 and the building of the Panama Canal."

For more information visit www.gale.cengage.co.uk/iln.