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Literatures in English: American Literature Before 1900

This page lists sources that cover multiple periods, genres, and/or nationalities. See additional resources in the "Historical Literary Period" and "Geographical Region" pages.

Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Companions

American Literature on Stage and Screen: 525 Works and Their Adaptations. by Thomas S. Hischak. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2012.  

Encyclopedia of Transendentalism. There have been two works with this title:  Ed. Wesley T. Mott. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood, 1996. Geisel stacks PS 217 .T7 E53 1996, and Ed. Tiffany K. Wayne. NY: Facts on File, 2006. Geisel stacks PS 217 .T7 W39 2006

Full Text Collections

Archive of Americana. This huge text database from Readex includes printed books: Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 and Series II: Shaw & Shoemaker, 1801-1819 which, taken together, allow searching and browsing in over 75,000 books, pamphlets, broadsides, and other items printed in the present U.S. from the first item printed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639 through the year 1819. These are supplemented by Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922, from the Library Company of Philadelphia. In addition to these printed books, it also includes these newspaper collections: America's Historical Newspapers, African American Newspapers 1825-1995, California's Historical Newspapers 1850-1922, and Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980; two collections of government documents: American State Papers 1789-1838 and the U.S. Congressional Serial Set; and African American Periodicals 1825-1995..  

American Drama, 1790-1915. Texts of more than 1500 plays written or performed from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. A section of Literature Online (LiON). Click here for a separate LibGuide devoted to the Literature Online database.

American Periodicals Series Online. APS contains over 1,100 periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children’s and women’s magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals

 

Confederate Broadside Poetry Collection at Wake Forest University

Mark Twain Papers and Project. Contains the private papers of "Mark Twain" that he provided to his official biographer, plus Twain-related manuscripts and other material collected by the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. 
Paine.

North American Women's Drama. Still being built, this database currently contains 1,517 plays by 330 playwrights from all centuries, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more.

Periodical Archives Online. An archive of hundreds of journals and magaszines published in the arts, humanities and social sciences from the last two centuries. Includes many nineteenth century American periodicals, both literary and general interest as well as some technical, professional, and early scholarly journals. Links to the articles in this database are provided by UCeLinks from databases such as MLAIB.

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Useful Websites

19th Century American Literary, Cultural, and Historical Studies

Emily Dickinson Archive. Searchable digital editions of Dickinson's manuscripts located at Harvard's Houghton Library and in other libraries.

 Original manuscript of Whitman's The Bible as Poetry

MORE TO COME