Research Guides: Literatures in English Research Guide: Historical Sources

Types of historical sources

In addition to literary analysis, you may need some historical information. For instance:

Historical Primary Sources -- that is, first-hand evidence from that historical period. Old Map

Newspapers
Letters
Speeches
Official documents

Historical Secondary Sources

Books analyzing historical events
Articles analyzing historical events

These are a little different from literary sources.

Primary Historical Sources

Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Digital collection of interviews, speeches,books, pamphlets and other primary historical sources by African-American Authors, 1700-present.
Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Digital collection of primary documents of the 18th century; includes every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 This link opens in a new window
Citations to books produced in Europe before 1750 that mention the discovery and emerging awareness of the Americas.
Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Curated primary source collections from the 19th century; includes primarily British and American Documents, with some resources in non-Western languages.
Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
Digital collection of newspapers from the 17th and 18th centuries; includes publications from London, with additional content from other British and international newspapers.
Gale Primary Sources: Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new window
Collection of historical primary sources documenting the slave trade and the history of slavery in the United States and worldwide.

Google Books
You can limit by date to find some primary sources here.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
Digital collection of historical documents that illustrate women's history int he United States between 1600 and 2000; includes letters, speeches, essays, pamphlets, images and more.

History-Specific Databases

America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
Scholarly journal literature covering the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Scholarly journal literature on the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present.
Humanities Source This link opens in a new window
Covers the humanities broadly, including both literature and history.

Full-Text Collections

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
You are probably already familiar with JSTOR; it is very strong in history and is a good place to check for historical analysis.
JSTOR provided expanded access during the pandemic (June 2020-June 2023). Expanded access expires on June 30, 2023. CUNY will reinstate that access beginning in January 2024.You may review the Electronic Resources Status Dashboard for updates. Questions? Email: access-support@qc-cuny.libanswers.com or Open a Ticket!
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
ProjectMUSE, like JSTOR, is very strong in historical analysis.

Books

CUNY Catalog
Historians love books, so the catalog is often a good place to check.

WorldCat FirstSearch This link opens in a new window
Searchable online catalogue containing library holdings from around the world, especially in the United States and Canada. Find books on certain subjects, identify subject headings, learn which libraries have books and other materials, and borrow items by linking through to the Library's Interlibrary Loan service.Catalogue Link: OneSearch.

Document Collections

Primary Sources

QC offers access to several collections of digitized historical documents.

These are fascinating and provide a real record of the past--not just books, but newspapers, speeches, images, and other primary sources.

However, they can be a little daunting to search.

Browsing

There are several useful ways of browsing:

By historical event
By subject
By collection

The "Browse" menu in Black Thought and Culture and Women in Social Movements allows all of these. Nineteenth Century Collections Online doesn't allow the same kind of browsing, but it does group its materials into "collections."

The "Document Projects" In Women and Social Movements group documents by their relationship to specific social movements.

Searching

Searching for primary documents is not the same as searching for journal articles!

There are several reasons for this:

You need a much more specific date range.
Older writings may use a different vocabulary.
You are searching for evidence rather than analysis; this means that the terms you use to describe a thing probably don't appear in the documents you are searching.
The documents you are searching are much more diverse and may be written for many different audiences.

Keep this in mind when you are choosing your keywords. Use words that you think a writer at this time would use for this audience.

Names are easy; ideas are difficult.

Search Tips:

Limit by date. If you are researching the ideology of slavery, you will find very different ideas expressed in 1859 than in 1700.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, and Slavery and Anti-Slavery have subject or document categories which allow you to search only scientific documents, only literary works, only newspapers, etc.
Use names of people or events if they are available. Searching "John Brown" or "Harpers Ferry" will turn up very different results than "abolitionism."
Use the vocabulary of the people writing the sources. If you are looking for evidence of anti-Catholic sentiment, "Popery" may sometimes be a better search term than "Catholicism."

As with any search, you will acquire additional useful vocabulary along the way.

Historical Journal Searches

Secondary Sources

Searching secondary sources in history has many similarities to searching secondary sources in literature, but there are additional resources you may want to consider.

History-Specific Databases

The databases that cover history exclusively (America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts) allow you to limit your search by historical period, finding only the articles about a particular date range. This is very helpful for more general searches.

For instance, a search about abolitionism from 1830 to 1870 can provide context for events in that particular date range.

"Historical Period" field in America: History and Life

You may also want to note the index terms and use them for searching, as you would in many other databases.

Full-Text Databases

JSTOR and ProjectMUSE have the same advantages and drawbacks when you are searching for historical analysis as they do when you are searching for literary criticism.

Some advice:

Do NOT use dates, especially date ranges! They are unlikely to correspond exactly to the ones mentioned by the author.
Use names or specific, concrete words as search terms--words that the authors of articles are also likely to use.
If you are very interested in analysis of a particular word or phrase, these are good places to look for that.

Books

A lot of important historical scholarship is published as books. Since books often give good overviews, this might often be a better starting place than a database.

Just like authors, historical figures can easily be searched using the subject search.