Research Guides: English Language & Literature: American Realism & Naturalism

Primary Source Discovery Databases

These databases attempt to bring together all of their respective primary source collections into one databases for greater discoverability.

Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Gale Primary Sources (formerly Artemis) cross searches all Gale digital archives. These primary source collections provide pages of newspapers, books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs.
AM Explorer This link opens in a new window
AMExplorer allows users to search across multiple Adam Matthew collections that include millions of pages of social sciences and humanities primary sources spanning the 15th – 21st centuries.
ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new window
ProQuest One Literature provides content and tools to support the study of literature from a variety of sources including diverse primary texts, criticism, full-text journals, book reviews, dissertations, eBooks, reference material, audio, and video.

Newspapers & Periodicals

America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains digitized images from hundreds of historic early American newspapers published between 1690 and 1922.
American Periodicals Series Online This link opens in a new window
Contains digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the early 20th century.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
An ongoing project of the Library of Congress, containing newspaper pages from 1880-1922 plus information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920 This link opens in a new window
Contains digitized images of periodicals, broadsides, pamphlets, and monographs focused on 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues.
Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online, 1543-1945 This link opens in a new window
Contains digitized images of periodicals and books documenting feminist thought and initiatives around the world. Both feminist and anti-feminist perspectives are represented, as well as dispassionate accounts of the condition of women through the centuries.
HarpWeek This link opens in a new window
Contains digitized images of the pages of Harper's Weekly published between 1857 and 1912.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
19th Century U.S. Newspapers covers events, culture, and daily life in nineteenth-century America and features publications of all kinds, including major newspapers as well as those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women's rights groups, labor groups, the Confederacy, and other groups and interests.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains digitized images of the pages of mainstream American, African American, and UK newspapers, including The New York Times, L.A. Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Guardian & Observer, The Irish Times, and more.

Manuscripts & Ephemera

American Drama (1714-1915) This link opens in a new window
Contains thousands of dramatic works written by American dramatists from the Colonial period to the beginning of the 20th century. Includes melodramas, frontier plays, minstrel shows, farces, Civil War drama, social and domestic satires, as well as dialogues and rhetorical exercises.
American Fiction (1774-1920) This link opens in a new window
Access guaranteed through May 2027
American Fiction, contains more than 17,800 titles and is comprised of prose fiction written by Americans from the political beginnings of the United States through World War I.
American Poetry (1600-1900) This link opens in a new window
Contains thousands of poems written by American poets from the Colonial period to the early 20th century. Includes Canonical and lesser-known poets, as well as literary groups, such as the Transcendentalists and the Knickerbocker school.

An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
Contains digitized images of posters, playbills, songsheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, more -- all from the 17th century to the present day, covering many topics.

American West This link opens in a new window
Contains original manuscripts, ephemeral material (trade cards, wanted posters, photos, claim certificates, news-sheets etc), maps, and rare printed works of 19th and early 20th century Western Americana from the Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana at the Newberry Library, Chicago.
Early American Fiction 1789-1875 This link opens in a new window
Contains works of prose fiction by American authors from the late 18th century to the late 19th century.

First-Person Narratives of the American South
Contains digitized images of diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives from Southerners, documenting the culture of the 19th century American South.

Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 This link opens in a new window
Contains letters, diaries, pamphlets, and rare printed books from the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. Explores the history of Jewish communities in America, bringing to life the communal and social aspects of Jewish identity and culture.

Mark Twain Project Online
Contains Twain's texts, notes, and letters written between 1853 and 1880.
National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection (1848-1921)
Contains hundreds of books, pamphlets and other artifacts documenting the suffrage campaign.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) This link opens in a new window
Contains primary sources from the Long 19th century, including works in Western as well as non-Western languages, sourced from rare collections at libraries and other institutions around the globe.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
Contains letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives from individuals who immigrated to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Contains diaries, correspondence, and manuscripts written by over 1,300 North American women from the Colonial period to 1950.

Radical Scatters: Emily Dickinson's Fragments and Related Texts, 1870-1886
Contains unpublished poems, letters, and other writings by Emily Dickinson during the years 1870-1886. Images of the manuscripts in the author's handwriting are available to view, as well as extensive commentaries on the history of each fragment.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 (Scholar's Edition) This link opens in a new window
Contains books, images, documents, scholarly essays and commentaries, documenting the multiplicity of women's reform activities and examines perspectives on women's social movements from Colonial times to the present.
Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window
Contains works written by English and American women between 1400 and 1850. Includes verse, fiction, and drama, as well as autobiographies, domestic manuals, and critical commentaries on select works and authors.