Background Information
Consult these sources to learn more about literary authors, periods, genres, texts, and their historical contexts.
- Augustan Literature: A Guide to Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature, 1660-1789LAU Stacks PR441 .A84 1994
- Encyclopedia of Romanticism:Culture in Britain, 1780s-1830sLAU Ref Stacks DA529 .E53 1992
- Encyclopedia of the Victorian EraLAU Ref Stacks DA550 .E527 2004 v. 1-4
- The Oxford Encyclopedia of American LiteratureLAU Ref Stacks PS21 .E537 2004 v.1-4
18th & 19th c. Primary Sources
- 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new windowGathered by Reverend Charles Burney, 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers is a collection of the newspapers and news pamphlets primarily published in London, with some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and examples from the American colonies.
- 18thConnectA digital “aggregator” that gathers together information about and links to the best primary and secondary texts for the 18th century that are available in digital form, either freely available on the Web or available by subscription.
- 19th Century British Pamphlets (within JSTOR) This link opens in a new windowPamphlets were an important means of public debate in the 19th century, covering key political, social, technological, and environmental issues.
- 19th Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new windowThis database contains 1.2 million pages of periodicals published in Great Britain from 1800-1900. It includes publications on women, children, leisure and sport, humor, and material regarding the expansion of the British empire.
- African American Newspapers, Series 1, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new windowProvides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection features papers from more than 35 states—including many rare and historically significant 19th century titles.
- American Periodicals Series Online (1740 to 1940) This link opens in a new windowDigital images of historically significant American periodicals from 1740 to 1900, including literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and popular magazines.
- American Slavery Collection, 1820-1922 This link opens in a new windowThis digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s extraordinary holdings of slavery and abolition materials delivers more than 3,500 works published over the course of more than 100 years.
- America's Historical Newspapers: Evening Star This link opens in a new windowSelected digitized issues of the Washington Evening Star, 1852-1981.
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowSearches across Gale primary source collections, including Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO); Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO); Sabin Americana, 1500-1926; The Making of Modern Law; and The Making of the Modern World.
- British Literary Manuscripts This link opens in a new windowA digitized collection of manuscripts of British authors dating from roughly 1120 to 1900. Contains poems, plays, novels, diaries, journals, correspondence, and other papers from major library collections, reproduced in facsimile and searchable via detailed descriptive information.
- British Periodicals This link opens in a new windowFacsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the 17th through the early 20th centuries.
- British Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832Serves as a scholarly archive for "E-text editions of poetry by British and Irish women written (not necessarily published) between 1789 (the onset of the French Revolution) and 1832 (the passage of the Reform Act), a period traditionally known in English literary history as the Romantic period."
- Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876 This link opens in a new windowMore than 140 newspapers from 22 islands, including Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Guadaloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis, Puerto Rico, St. Bartholomew, St. Christopher, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad, and the Virgin Islands.
- Early American Fiction Collection, 1789-1875A digital collection of several hundred volumes of early American fiction. While not all of the site's contents are freely available, 158 volumes by 52 authors, 199 manuscript items, and 124 non-text images are.
- Early American Imprints (Series I): Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new windowBased on the Evans American Bibliography, this collection contains the full text of all known existing books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in the United States or in the British American colonies from 1639 through 1800.
- Early American Imprints (Series II): Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new windowProvides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the 19th century.
- Early American Newspapers This link opens in a new windowOffers more than 700 historical American newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1876.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new windowDigital reproductions of every page of significant English- and foreign-language titles printed in Great Britain during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas and elsewhere. Searches the full text of books, pamphlets, essays, and other non-periodical materials including the complete works of major 18th-century writers.
- Emory Women Writers Resource ProjectA collection of edited and unedited texts by women writing from the seventeenth century through the early twentieth century.
- Gale Primary Source Newspapers This link opens in a new windowProvides cross-searching capabilities for several Gale digital collections, including 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, 19th Century British Library Newspapers, 19th Century UK Periodicals, Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003, Times Digital Archive 1785-1985, Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive 1902-2006, Picture Post Historical Archive 1938-1957.
- HarpWeek: The Civil War Era, Reconstruction I & II and Gilded Age I (1857-1912) This link opens in a new windowProvides electronic access to all issues of Harper's Weekly (including all illustrations and advertisements) published between 1857 (first issue) and 1912, with the capacity to browse or search by date, by literary genre, and by a person's occupation. Provides four topical indexes: subject, illustrations, literature & publishing, and advertising.
- Illustrated London News Historical Archive This link opens in a new windowA digital archive of world's first fully illustrated weekly newspaper, covering 1842 to 2003. Areas covered include politics, social history, fashion, theatre, media, literature, advertising, graphic design, and genealogy.
- Internet Library of Early JournalsA digital collection of six eighteenth- and nineteenth- century British journals: Annual Register, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Gentleman's Magazine, Notes & Queries, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and The Builder.
- Leeds Verse Database (BCMSV)Provides detailed information about individual items of English poetry contained in the 17th and 18th-century manuscripts from the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds.
- Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new windowCollection of digital facsimile images of 61,000 works of literature on economics and business published from 1450 through 1945. Covers commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport.
Includes:
Part I: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, 1450-1850
Part II, 1851-1914 - New York Times (Historical) This link opens in a new windowComplete, full-text archive of the New York Times, from its first issue on September 18, 1851, through 2009. NOTE: The newspaper was titled the New York Daily Times from 1851 to 1857. In 1857, its name was changed to the New York Times.
- NINES: Nineteenth-Century Studies Online This link opens in a new windowA "scholarly organization devoted to forging links between the material archive of the nineteenth century and the digital research environment of the twenty-first."
- Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new windowContains full runs of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain. Includes national and regional newspapers, representing a variety of political and social movements and classes.
- Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals. Series 1, 1800-1840A microfilm collection of nineteenth-century periodicals, including titles such as The Monthly Literary Advertiser, The National Register, The Satirist; or, Censor of the Times, and The Christian Lady’s Magazine. Located in LAU Microforms.
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) This link opens in a new windowFocusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century, NCCO comprises a variety of material types--monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more--in one cross-searchable location. Collections include Asia and the West; British Politics and Society; British Theatre, Music and Literature: High & Popular Culture; and European Literature, 1790-1840.
- Past Masters This link opens in a new windowProvides scholarly complete editions of classics (or selections from classics) in philosophy, literature, political science and economics. Examples of authors include Aristotle, Machiavelli, Shelley, Mill, Hume, Nietzsche, Bronte and Adam Smith. In English translation and/or the original language.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowComplete historical coverage of The Atlanta Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, South China Morning Post, The Times of India, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Click the "more" link below for direct links.
- Renascence EditionsAn online repository for digital editions of works printed in English between 1477 and 1799.
- Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new windowBased on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more.
- Times Digital Archive This link opens in a new windowSearchable, electronic version of The Times, Britain's newspaper of record, essential for primary source research in British history, politics, and culture. Provides a complete full-text and full-image archive of The Times from 1785 to 1985.
- The William Blake ArchiveComprises the works of William Blake, including illuminated manuscripts, paintings, drawings, and engravings.
- Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875Provides electronic access to over 2,800 volumes of 19th century American fiction.
Research Guides
Use the below guides to go deeper into your research.
18th & 19th c. Primary Source Indexes
- American Bibliography (Shaw-Shoemaker)A checklist of more than 50,000 books printed in the United States between 1801 and 1819. Serves as the basis for Early American Imprints, II.
- American Literary ManuscriptsA checklist of literary manuscript holdings in academic, historical, and public libraries, museums, and authors' homes in the United States.
- ArchiveGridA searchable collection of finding aids to primary source material held in archives, special collections, and manuscript collections around the world. Includes historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more.
- English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC)Indexes more than 460,000 that were published between 1473 and 1800 primarily in Britain and North America. Works are predominantly in English and are from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries.
Browsing Areas
The following sections are good for browsing for books on 18th and 19th century English and American literature, which are shelved on the 5th floor of Lauinger Library.
English Language
PE1001-1693 – Modern English
English Literature
PR441-449 – 18th century
PR451-469 – 19th century
PR3291-3785 – 17th & 18th centuries (1640/1770)
PR3991-5990 – 19th century (1770/1800-1890/1900)
American Literature
PS185-195 – 17th and 18th centuries
PS201-217 – 19th century
PS700-893 – Individual authors - Colonial Period (17th and 18th centuries)
PS991-3390 – Individual authors - 19th century
