LibGuides: American Literature I: Beginnings through 1865: Resources for Context

Resources for Context

Resources on this page will help you answer these questions:

► How was your text produced and received? What is its composition history? Who published it? What did readers say about it at the time it was published?

► What was going on historically, politically, socially, and aesthetically at the time your work was written and published that may play a role in our understanding of it?

Archives & Primary Sources

Ancestry Library Edition This link opens in a new window
Over 4,000 genealogical resources including key collections such as US Census images and indexes from 1790-1930; historical map center; slave narratives, full text of books & newspapers, and more.
More than 10 billion records in more than 8,000 databases. Content categories include: birth, marriage and death records; census records; immigration and travel; military; schools, directories and church histories; tax, criminal, land and wills; references, dictionaries and almanacs; stories and publications; and photos and maps. The databases also include World War I and World War II draft cards, obituaries from Newspapers.com dating back to the 1800s, Social Security Death Index, U.S. Federal Census, federal slave narratives and more. Ancestry Library Edition also allows researchers to search by geographic location.
- U.S. Federal Census images and indexes from 1790 to 1940
- Map Center containing more than 1,000 historical maps
- American Genealogical Biographical Index (over 200 volumes)
- Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage (over 150 volumes)
- The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1630
- Social Security Death Index (updated monthly)
- WWI Draft Registration Cards
- Federal Slave Narratives
- Civil War collection

Chronicling America
Information about historic newspapers from 1756-1963 and select digitized newspaper pages. The directory of newspaper titles contains nearly 140,000 records of newspapers and libraries that hold copies of these newspapers.
Making of America
Digital library of primary sources in American social history that were published between the antebellum period and reconstruction.
New York Times Historical
Covers the complete run of the NY Times from 1851 - 2014.

Databases

America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
Journal articles, reviews, and dissertations on the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Archive of core scholarly books and journals, covering a wide variety of disciplines. (Note that journal issues from the most recent 3-5 years are usually NOT in JSTOR.)
Memorial Library also has access to 48,000 backlist book titles from 88 publishers, in addition to JSTOR's thousands of open access ebooks. JSTOR ebooks will be included in Library search results, but you can also search the full JSTOR ebook collection here.