English 8310 Nineteenth Century American Novel

Background Resources

• Literature Online Reference includes a selection of literary reference works. The author biographies provide information on initial publication and reception of major works.
• The Literary Index indexes many Gale reference collections. Of these, the Dictionary of Literary Biography (Ref. PN451 .D43) usually has helpful information on publication history and Literature and Its Times (Ref. PN50.L574 1997) provides useful historical background.
• The Oxford Companion to American Literature.
• American Eras (Ref. E168.A5118 1997)
• Dictionary of American History (Ref. E174.D52 1976)
• Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History (Ref. E169.1.E624 2001)
• Encyclopedia of American Social History (Ref. HN57.E58 1993)
• Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century (Ref. E169.1.E626 2001)
• Everyday Life: American Social History (Ref. HN57.E93 1998)
• The Gale Virtual Reference Library provides specialized online encyclopedias for background information. You can search across the entire collection, or within specific encyclopedias, such as:
  • American History Through Literature, 1820-1870
  • American History Through Literature, 1870-1920
  • American Decades
  • American Decades Primary Sources
  • Dictionary of American History
  • The People's Chronology
• The Oxford Companion to United States History.
• History of American Magazines (SPEC MU PN4877.M632 1957)
• The Magazine in America 1741-1990 (Journalism PN4832 .T43 1991)
• American Literary Magazines (SPEC Ref. Z12131.P45 A43 1986)
• The Literary Journal in America to 1900: a Guide to Information Sources (Z6951 .C57)
• History of Book Publishing in the United States. (Z473.T42)

To find more materials on publishing and reading, use the following subject headings in the MERLIN catalog:

• American Periodicals--History
• Book Industries and Trade--United States--History
• Books and Reading--United States--History

Finding Primary Sources

• The American Periodicals Series Online (1740-1900) contains the full text of journals and magazines published in the American colonies and United States, 1740-1900, and into the beginning of the 20th century. The Search for Periodicals feature allows browsing by journal title and some background information on each journal.
• C19: The Nineteenth Century Index lists books, journal and newspaper articles, archival materials published during the 19th century.
• 19th Century Masterfile (1802-1906) overlaps C19, but also lists some unique materials.
• The Reader's Guide Retrospective 1890-1982 is the main index we have for the early 20th century.
• Literary Index to American Magazines 1850-1900 (Ref. PS 214.W38 1996)
• Literary Index to American Magazines, 1815-1865 (Ref. Z6513.W44)
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers reproduces every issue of the New York Times (1851-2004) and the Wall Street Journal (1889-1999).
• Illustrated Civil War Newspapers and Magazines
• U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1980 is a vast primary source collection for U.S. political, social, cultural, military and ethnic history.
• Literature Online provides online texts of many English and American literary works with a search mechanism to facilitate text analysis.
  From the main LION menu, choose Search Texts to search for words and phrases within a specific work or group of works. The advanced search feature allows you to define a corpus by period, literary movement, author's gender or ethnicity, and other criteria.
• The Google Books project indexes thousands of books and allows viewing of books that are in the public domain, including most books published prior to 1925.
• The Internet Archive provides access to many texts, among other things.
• Through MERLIN, using the advanced search option
  • limit by date
  • include in your search s: sources 
  • include in your search s: sources and nth cent* e.g., s: sources and 19th cent* and marriage
  • include in your search s: early works and nth cent* e.g., s: early works and 19th cent* and marriage
  • include in your search s: personal narratives

    MERLIN lists not only printed books, but also links to electronic books, and many items contained in large microfilm collections. Microforms and the equipment needed to view, print, or scan the materials are found in Special Collections. See the guide to the Microform Collection for detailed information on the microfilm sets, including some that are not analyzed in the MERLIN Catalog.

• See also the Chronological Listing of Periodicals by Decade.

Finding Critical Materials 

Books, journals, and other library materials can be found through library catalogs:

• The MERLIN catalog shows materials in the MU Libraries.
• The MOBIUS catalog shows materials from Missouri academic libraries.
• WorldCat shows materials from many libraries worldwide.

Use these databases to identify articles within journals.

• Literature Online is the main index for literary studies.
  • Choose Criticism & Reference from the sidebar.
  • Choose Criticism to search both the MLA International Bibliography and ABELL, the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature.
  • Choose Reference to search a variety of literary encyclopedias and handbooks.
  • Choose Web Sites for a select collection of links.
• America History and Life is the main index for the study of American history.

Use additional databases to explore publications from different disciplines or interest groups:

• Academic Search Premier provides the core journals in all fields.
• Alternative Press Index
• Gender Watch
• Index to Black Periodicals (Ref. AI3 .I552 -- Earlier volumes, including title changes, are in the circulating stacks.)
• Women Studies Astracts (Ref. Z7962 .W65)

Click on   to locate a copy of the article online, in the library, or through ILL@MU. You may also access this service from the Libraries gateway under Find a Specific Journal or Article.