A-Z Databases

The collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through personal diaries and scrapbooks, pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History holds one of the outstanding collections on American history. It is full of spectacular individual items, but it also has rich veins of manuscript research material. This makes it ideal for teaching survey courses on American history, but equally valuable as a platform for undergraduate essay work and postgraduate research.

Contains the following modules:
• Module I: Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
• Module II: Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945

North American Indigenous journalism spanning two centuries with this major digital resource. Featuring publications from a range of communities, with an extensive list of periodicals produced in the United States and Canada, including Alaska and Hawaii, from 1828 to 2016.

Languages represented include English, Chinuk Wawa, Dakota, Diné Bizaad, Lakota, Sm'algyax, and Ōlelo Hawaiʻi.

Collections include the following, which can be searched individually:
• Apartheid South Africa
• Confidential Print: Africa
• Confidential Print: Latin America
• Confidential Print: Middle East
• Confidential Print: North America
• Foreign Office Files for China
• Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan
• Foreign Office Files for Japan
• Foreign Office Files for the Middle East
• Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963
• The Nixon Years
• Women in The National Archives

Primary source materials for the study of the history of North American trade and cultural exchange with China. It covers the 18th and 19th centuries, China, America, and the Pacific. This collection also provides coverage of China’s economic dealings with the whole of East Asia and the Pacific.

From its roots as an Anglican evangelical movement driven by lay persons, this resource encompasses publications from the CMS, the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society and the latterly integrated South American Missionary Society. Documenting missionary work from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the periodicals include news, journals, and reports offering a unique perspective on global history and cultural encounters.

Covers social conduct, power distribution within the family, consumption and leisure, education of men and women, and gendered perceptions of the body to analyze and challenge the changing views and ideas surrounding traditional gender roles.

eBooks can be downloaded to your mobile device and read with the free Bluefire Reader app. You will need the following:

• Bluefire Reader App (Installed on your Apple, Android or Kindle Fire device)
• An Adobe ID
• Safari Web Browser (Apple device users)

Note for Apple Device Users: Pop-ups must be allowed in the settings for the Safari web browser as the downloaded eBook file opens in a new tab before opening in the Bluefire app.

For more complete instructions on downloading to mobile devices or for other help on the EBSCO ebook platform, go to the EBSCO ebook database, click on Help in the upper right of the screen. Click on ebooks User Guide (under Ebooks and Audiobooks on the left column).

An archive of almost every play submitted for license between 1737 and 1824, and hundreds of documents that provide social context for the plays, featuring:

• John Larpent Collection of Plays from the Huntington Library, numbering over 2500
• Supplementary documents including Anna Larpent Diaries
• The London Stage, 1660-1800
• A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800 (Highfill)

A collection of journals printed between c.1685 and 1835. It illustrates multiple aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics covered are wide-ranging and include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion.

Includes:
• Japanese Imperialism and the War in the Pacific, 1931-1945
• Occupation of Japan, 1946-1952
• Japan and Great Power Status, 1919-1930

Primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. The collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.

This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections. They include letters; diaries and journals; account books; printed guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings and sketches; architectural drawings; and maps.

The Grand Tour is source of information about daily life in the eighteenth century, highlighting such everyday issues as transportation, money, communications, food and drink, health, and sex. The material also covers European political and religious life, British diplomacy; life at court, and social customs of Europe’s urban spaces. Cities include Paris, Rome, Florence, and Geneva, including written accounts and visual representations of street life, architecture, and urban planning.

The J. Walter Thompson Company Archive documents the history, operation, policies and accomplishments of one of the world's largest and oldest advertising firms. The papers here reveal many aspects of twentieth-century cultural, social, business, marketing, consumer and economic history while investigating the human psyche.

Leisure, Travel & Mass Culture: The History of Tourism provides an in-depth look at the evolution of British and American working class tourism from c.1850 to 1980.

With every continent represented, the resource gives a broad overview of the destinations unlocked for the average traveler throughout this period, along with specific case studies on pivotal geographical areas, organizations, subjects and travel agencies important for the history of tourism.

Available online for the first time, material from the Thomas Cook Archives allows researchers to discover the history of the world’s oldest travel agency and chart the growth of a major pioneer of package tourism. Periodicals such as the Excursionist magazine, personal accounts from travelers on early Cook’s tours, photographs, advertising brochures, guidebooks, posters and ephemeral items provide a wealth of research material for study.

Every document has been indexed by one or more key themes for ease of navigation. This allows investigation into diverse subjects, such as:

• The evolution of educational travel, particularly in relation to the Polytechnic Touring Association (later Lunn Poly)
• The popularity of outdoor activities, wilderness travel and the environmental impacts of tourism
• The role of travel agencies, including Thomas Cook, Raymond Whitcomb Travel and the Anspach Travel Bureau
• Portrayals of race, particularly within the American south
• The technological advances which played an integral part in the growth of the tourism industry.

Key locations for American and British leisure travel during this period have been highlighted. Important collections on the White Mountains and Yosemite National Park discuss wilderness travel, whilst comprehensive studies of Florida, Coney Island and Blackpool trace the development of crucial seaside resorts. Guidebooks, scrapbooks and travel journals also present the evolution of New Orleans as a key southern vacation city.

To provide context on how imperialism and Empire shaped the growth of this unique industry, guidebooks and handwritten travel journals are also included from the late eighteenth century onward.

Victorian literature of unpublished poems, working notebooks, holograph manuscripts, and drawings from across the nineteenth century. Authors represented in this collection include:

• Matthew Arnold
• The Brontës
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Robert Browning
• Wilkie Collins
• Joseph Conrad
• Charles Dickens
• George Eliot
• George Gissing
• Thomas Hardy
• Henry James
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• John Ruskin
• Alfred Tennyson
• William Makepeace Thackeray

Early modern verse suitable for both literary scholars and historians. Alongside original compositions are copied verses, translations, songs, and riddles. The whole collection is situated within an assortment of manuscripts, some entirely dedicated to poetry, while others contain medicinal recipes, household accounts, draft letters, musical scores, and plays. There are also printed works, with handwritten verse additions.

The Stationers’ Company Archive documents the history of printing, publishing, and bookselling dating from 1554 to the 20th century. It covers the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions, and the history of bookbinding.

Streets of Victorian London depicting gin palaces, brothels, and East End slums of nineteenth-century Britain. From salacious "swell’s guides" to scandalous broadsides and subversive posters, the material sold and exchanged on London’s bustling thoroughfares offers an insight into the dark underworld of the city.

Material found in the resource includes:

• Street ephemera: posters, advertising, playbills, ballads and broadsides
• Penny fiction
• Cartoons
• A complete collection of Tallis’ Street Views
• Chapbooks
• Street Cries
• Swell’s guides to London prostitution, gambling and drinking dens
• Tourist guides and topography
• Manuscripts of George Gissing

There is a strong emphasis on rare or unique material, particularly in the range of ephemera and street literature available. There is also an emphasis on visual material.

The Cabinet conclusions are taken by the secretary of the Cabinet or one of their assistants and consist of summaries of all discussions in Cabinet, together with a note of decisions reached. Cabinet memoranda consist of all papers circulated to members of the Cabinet and to other ministers for information or as a basis for discussion. These classes provide a distillation of the work of all the other departments of government, ranging in subject matter from agricultural policy and trade to nuclear policy and issues of international diplomacy.

This collection also includes 165 files from the Prime Minister's Private Office (PREM 11). These provide an important supplement to the Cabinet records and cover all aspects of policymaking.

Presents multiple perspectives on the history of injury, treatment and disease on the front line. Including scientific advances through hospital records, medical reports, and first-hand accounts. Portrays how war shaped medical practice across the centuries.

This resource makes available the only five major letter collections which exist from fifteenth-century England. The database contains full colour images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise these family letter collections along with full text searchable transcripts from the printed editions, where they are available. The original images and the transcriptions can be viewed side by side.

These letter collections and associated manuscripts take the user into the world of medieval family, business, relationships, trade, politics and community:

The Paston letters have long been a subject of both literary and historical interest and are the largest of the collections and the best known of the five families. Their letters document the life of a gentry family during the War of the Roses. Hundreds of documents and letters exchanged between different family members cover in microcosm the dilemmas of a nation beset by war, disease and legal disputes.

The Celys were a merchant family, and crucial players in the wool trade between England and the Channel ports. This collection, which covers every aspect of their commercial dealings, will fascinate the economic and social historian.

The Stonors were a well-established gentry family in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. These documents cover the longest time period of any of the collections and throw light on both business and domestic issues.

The Plumptons were a dominant northern family. Their documents, which continue right through to the early sixteenth century, reveal a family entangled in the social and economic affairs of the region.

The Armburgh family material is primarily concerned with a dispute over a family inheritance.

European travel writing from the later medieval period. The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China, and South-East Asia. The collection also includes a number of important accounts of travels to or through the Holy Land. It contains a number of medieval maps such as the famous "Beatus" and "Psalter" maps, individual manuscript illuminations, and some modern translations of key travel texts. Supports scholarship in medieval travel, geography, exploration, trade, literature, and the new field of medieval postcolonial studies.

Edward S. Morse (1838-1925) was a great polymath – notable for his work in natural history, ethnography and art history – but, perhaps most famous for his work in bringing Japan and the West closer together. Devoting much of his life to the task of documenting life in Japan before it was transformed by Western modernization, Meiji Japan offers full access to Morse's diaries, journals, and correspondence on a myriad of subjects at the time.

From the century of immigration, through to the modern era, Migration to New Worlds charts the emigration experience of millions across 200 years of turbulent history. Documents the rise and fall of the New Zealand Company, as well as the British, European, and Asian migration with primary source personal accounts, shipping logs, printed literature, and organizational papers supplemented by compilations of teaching and research aids.

This edition of North American Indian Drama contains 256 plays by 49 playwrights. More than half of the works are previously unpublished and hard to find, representing groups such as Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Lenape, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock, Hawaiian/Samoan, and others.

The collection begins in the early 1930s with The Cherokee Night and other works by R. Lynn Riggs, the first American Indian playwright to have his works produced. It progresses through the 20th century with plays produced by the Native American Theatre Ensemble (NATE) and other companies of the 1970s and 1980s, including Spiderwoman Theater, the longest continually running Native American or women’s theatre group in North America. The collection also includes contemporary plays produced by Toronto’s Native Earth Performing Arts, Seattle’s Red Eagle Soaring, New York’s Coatlicue Theater Company, and other groups.

Among the playwrights included are Hanay Geiogamah, Diane Glancy, Bruce King, William S. Yellow Robe, Yvette Nolan, Monique Mojica, Terry Gomez, Daniel David Moses, Laura Shamas, E. Donald Two-Rivers, Elvira and Hortensia Colorado, Jason Begay, Joseph A. Dandurand, LeAnne Howe, and Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. The collection represents groups across the United States and Canada, including Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Hawaiian/Samoan, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock, and others. A significant number of the plays have never been published before.

This resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. "Perdita" means "lost woman," and the quest of the Perdita Project has been to find early modern women authors who were "lost" because their writing exists only in manuscript form.

Combines indexed primary content on far-right and fascist movements, alongside significant coverage of radical left groups. Topics include origins and development of present-day issues, including the resurgence of right-wing politics, evolution of various civil rights movements and the nature of extreme or radical political thought.

The period from 1950 to 1975 witnessed dramatic changes in society. There was the onset of Rock & Roll; the introduction of computers and credit cards; the boom of radio and television; and campaigns for black power, civil rights and women’s liberation. All around the world there were challenges to authority.

Popular Culture explores the dynamic period of social, political and cultural change between 1950 and 1975. The resource offers thousands of color images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia from this exciting period in our recent history. It carries interactive chronology facts, visual resources, and video footage of sights and sounds of the period.

Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict.

Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource compiles the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.

The core of Radical Scatters consists of eighty-two documents carrying over one hundred fragmentary texts composed by Dickinson in the final decades of her life. In addition to the core texts, the archive’s primary materials include fifty-three poems, letters, and other writings by Dickinson with direct links to the fragments.

Contains a range of both rare and well-known wartime publications for soldiers serving in major theaters around the world. Publications are included from many key nations involved in the conflict, such as the US, Canada, New Zealand, India, and the countries of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

This resource features over 1,000 prompt books of 34 of Shakespeare’s plays, including editions owned by notable actors and directors such as Charles and John Philip Kemble, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, and Laurence Olivier. Of these 1,000 prompt books, approximately 10% are for Hamlet, and 6% are for Merchant of Venice and Macbeth, respectively. Seventeen performances of particular cultural importance have been selected as case studies, featuring additional archival material such as photographs, costume designs, and music scores. These case studies include David Garrick’s revised 1772 production of Hamlet, Henry Irving’s famous 1879 production of The Merchant of Venice, and Laurence Olivier’s Academy Award-winning cinema release of Hamlet in 1948.

This collection of films from the communist world reveals war, history, current affairs, culture, and society as seen through the socialist lens. It spans most of the twentieth century and covers countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, East Germany, Great Britain, and Cuba.

Sourced from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, this resource features hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Sources cover a variety of topics including; architecture; art; the British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war. A wide variety of forms of travel writing are included, ranging from unique manuscripts, diaries, and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks, and photographs. The resource includes a slideshow with hundreds of items of visual material, including postcards, sketches, and photographs.

Included these modules
• Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks
• Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema
• Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment
• Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic

The finding aid is the result of a five-year project by staff at The National Archives in the mid-1990s and enables researchers to quickly locate details of documents at TNA relating to women. This finding aid is far more detailed and extensive than anything available elsewhere online and has the benefit of ranging across all of the document classes TNA hold.

The original documents cover the campaign for women's suffrage in Britain, 1903-1928 and the granting of women's suffrage in colonial territories, 1930-1962.

Primary sources on the world's fairs from the Crystal Palace in 1851 and the proliferation of North American exhibitions, to fairs around the world and twenty-first century expos. Sources include official records, monographs, publicity, artwork, and artifacts.