Digital Resources for Research
The aim of this page is to harness the growing potential of digital humanities by providing a list of links to online resources, archives, and databases relevant to the study of nineteenth-century American writing. If you are aware of any that are not listed here, or want to report a broken link, please let us know: [email protected]
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A19
A19 workshops are regularly held at the Université Paris Diderot, and feature British, European and North American speakers who work on American literature of the long nineenth century. Click here.
African-American Pamphlet Collection
The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909, presents 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. Click here.
American Memory - The Library of Congress
American Memory provides access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. Click here.
It includes:
Nineteenth-century Periodicals: Twenty-three popular periodicals digitized by Cornell University Library and the Library of Congress. Includes literary and political magazines. The longest run is for The North American Review, 1815-1900. Click here.
Broadsides and Printed Ephemera: 28,000 primary-source items dating from the seventeenth century to the present. Click here.
Travels in America: comprises 253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and
opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920. Click here.
History of the American West: Over 30,000 photographs, drawn from the holdings of the Western History and Genealogy Department at Denver Public Library. Click here.
American Transcendentalism
Texts, criticism and other sources relating to nineteenth-century Transcendentalism. Click here.
The Antislavery Literature Project
Public access to a body of literature crucial to understanding African American experience, US and hemispheric histories of slavery, and early human rights philosophies. Click here.
Blackface Minstrelsy, 1830-1852
Songs, playbills, texts, advertisements, contemporary reviews, and images. Click here.
British Virginia
These texts range from the 16th and 17th-century literature of English exploration to the 19th-century writing of loyalists and other Virginians who continued to identify with Great Britain. Click here.
Dickinson Electronic Archives
A repository for the study of resources related to Emily Dickinson. Click here.
Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls
Over 8,000 individual items including long runs of the major dime novel series (Frank Leslie's Boys of America, Happy Days, Beadle's New York Dime Library, etc.) and equally strong holdings of story papers like the New York Ledger and Saturday Night. Click here.
Documenting the American South
Currently includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs. Click here.
Early American Sources
Early American Sources' mission is to connect scholars of all levels to primary sources of the Americas from 1500 to 1900. They offer information on archives and research libraries that hold collections of early American materials and provide links to online resources that specialise in the early Americas. Click here.
Frederick Douglass in Britain
A website covering Douglass's visits to Britain, with detailed maps and written accounts of Douglass's and other African American abolitionists's talks. Click here
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition
Contains over 200 individual items, including speeches, letters, cartoons and graphics, interviews, and articles. Click here.
Historic American Sheet Music
Provides access to digital images for over 3,000 pieces from Duke University's collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920. Click here.
Interactive Historical Maps
Explore and compare America's major cities, street by street, then and now. Click here.
Making of America
Primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. Click here.
Mark Twain and His Times
Dozens of texts and manuscripts, scores of contemporary reviews and articles, hundreds of images, and many different kinds of interactive exhibits. Click here.
PAL: Perspectives in American Literature
Bibliographies of American writers and criticism, organised by period and by theme. Click here.
Prints and Photographs
Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress; includes photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. Click here.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes. Click here.
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
Material on the cultural phenomenon of the novel, includes texts, essays, images, songs, film clips, and lesson plans. Click here.
The Sojourner Truth Project
A website on the history of Truth's 'Ain't I a Woman?' speech and comparisons of its two best known versions from 1851 and 1863. Click here.
The Walt Whitman Archive
His many notebooks, manuscript fragments, prose essays, letters, and voluminous journalistic articles all offer key cultural and biographical contexts for his poetry. Click here.
'Will not these days be by thy poets sung': Poems of the Anglo-African and National Anti-Slavery Standard, 1863-1864'
A path-breaking digital edition of 138 poems that appeared in two New York-based weekly newspapers during a single year of the American Civil War. Click here.
Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America
Searching through America's past for the last 25 years, collector James Allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy: photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America. Click here.
Wright American Fiction Archive, 1851-1875
This is a collection of 19th-century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are currently 2,887 volumes included (1,763 unedited, 1,124 fully edited and encoded) by 1,456 authors. Click here.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A19
A19 workshops are regularly held at the Université Paris Diderot, and feature British, European and North American speakers who work on American literature of the long nineenth century. Click here.
African-American Pamphlet Collection
The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909, presents 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. Click here.
American Memory - The Library of Congress
American Memory provides access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. Click here.
It includes:
Nineteenth-century Periodicals: Twenty-three popular periodicals digitized by Cornell University Library and the Library of Congress. Includes literary and political magazines. The longest run is for The North American Review, 1815-1900. Click here.
Broadsides and Printed Ephemera: 28,000 primary-source items dating from the seventeenth century to the present. Click here.
Travels in America: comprises 253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and
opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920. Click here.
History of the American West: Over 30,000 photographs, drawn from the holdings of the Western History and Genealogy Department at Denver Public Library. Click here.
American Transcendentalism
Texts, criticism and other sources relating to nineteenth-century Transcendentalism. Click here.
The Antislavery Literature Project
Public access to a body of literature crucial to understanding African American experience, US and hemispheric histories of slavery, and early human rights philosophies. Click here.
Blackface Minstrelsy, 1830-1852
Songs, playbills, texts, advertisements, contemporary reviews, and images. Click here.
British Virginia
These texts range from the 16th and 17th-century literature of English exploration to the 19th-century writing of loyalists and other Virginians who continued to identify with Great Britain. Click here.
Dickinson Electronic Archives
A repository for the study of resources related to Emily Dickinson. Click here.
Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls
Over 8,000 individual items including long runs of the major dime novel series (Frank Leslie's Boys of America, Happy Days, Beadle's New York Dime Library, etc.) and equally strong holdings of story papers like the New York Ledger and Saturday Night. Click here.
Documenting the American South
Currently includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs. Click here.
Early American Sources
Early American Sources' mission is to connect scholars of all levels to primary sources of the Americas from 1500 to 1900. They offer information on archives and research libraries that hold collections of early American materials and provide links to online resources that specialise in the early Americas. Click here.
Frederick Douglass in Britain
A website covering Douglass's visits to Britain, with detailed maps and written accounts of Douglass's and other African American abolitionists's talks. Click here
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition
Contains over 200 individual items, including speeches, letters, cartoons and graphics, interviews, and articles. Click here.
Historic American Sheet Music
Provides access to digital images for over 3,000 pieces from Duke University's collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920. Click here.
Interactive Historical Maps
Explore and compare America's major cities, street by street, then and now. Click here.
Making of America
Primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. Click here.
Mark Twain and His Times
Dozens of texts and manuscripts, scores of contemporary reviews and articles, hundreds of images, and many different kinds of interactive exhibits. Click here.
PAL: Perspectives in American Literature
Bibliographies of American writers and criticism, organised by period and by theme. Click here.
Prints and Photographs
Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress; includes photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. Click here.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes. Click here.
Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
Material on the cultural phenomenon of the novel, includes texts, essays, images, songs, film clips, and lesson plans. Click here.
The Sojourner Truth Project
A website on the history of Truth's 'Ain't I a Woman?' speech and comparisons of its two best known versions from 1851 and 1863. Click here.
The Walt Whitman Archive
His many notebooks, manuscript fragments, prose essays, letters, and voluminous journalistic articles all offer key cultural and biographical contexts for his poetry. Click here.
'Will not these days be by thy poets sung': Poems of the Anglo-African and National Anti-Slavery Standard, 1863-1864'
A path-breaking digital edition of 138 poems that appeared in two New York-based weekly newspapers during a single year of the American Civil War. Click here.
Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America
Searching through America's past for the last 25 years, collector James Allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy: photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America. Click here.
Wright American Fiction Archive, 1851-1875
This is a collection of 19th-century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are currently 2,887 volumes included (1,763 unedited, 1,124 fully edited and encoded) by 1,456 authors. Click here.