The Writer as Social Critic: Sources for Historical Analysis

Course Number:

HST 440/518

Instructor:

Berkeley, Kathleen

For this class you will need both literary and historical resources. Where you will look for resources depends upon which author you select and the time period in which they lived. Feel free to make an appointment to discuss available resources with your liaison librarian, Sue Cody.

Starting Points

These resources will provide an overview of the author in a few pages.

Literature Resource Center

This source compiles the heavily used reference sources on literature published by Gale, e.g., Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Literary Criticism. It does not include the Documentary Series of DLB, however, which you will find in the Reference Collection PS21. D523.

American Writers; A Collection of Literary Biographies

This print resource provides an overview of the writers and their contributions to American literature. Also refer to supplement volumes.

Articles & eResources

Here you will find a variety of literary, historical and general databases useful for your research in this course. Also included are finding aids that will lead to primary source material. Listed first are those useful for literary criticism, followed by the most comprehensive history indexing source, and then resources including both history and literary works. The last two resources are book finding aids.

MLA International Bibliography

Citations and abstracts for articles, essays and reviews on literature, language, linguistics and folklore, 1926-.

America: History & Life

Indexes and summarizes articles from 1700 history journals, some as far back as 1910. Also includes book review citations, and references to dissertations.

Academic Search Complete

a multidisciplinary periodical index to over 8,000 journals and magazines, 4,700 of which are full-text online.

JSTOR

Full-text searching of an archive of over1,000 journals, including 290 history and 254 language and literature journals. Typically excludes the latest 3-5 years of publication.

Project MUSE

Full-text access to over 300 humanities journals.

WorldCat

Cataloged holdings of over 9,000 libraries.

HeritageQuest

The Books section provides full-text access to hundreds of local history titles. You may find biographical sketches on your author written during his/her lifetime here.

Using the Library Catalog

Click here to search the Library Catalog

Local holdings of library's books, videos, government documents, manuscript collections and journal holdings. (Note that the journal information in the catalog tells what issues we have but does not index individual articles.) Some web sites are also cataloged.

Personal Name Searching

Using the Keyword Search option, you can enter the name in any order. This search retrieves records where the name appears in the contents notes as well as the author and subject fields. If your author has a common name, it may retrieve a lot of irrelevant records, e.g., Henry James. Relevancy ranking in the Randall Library Catalog will put the closest matches first.
When searching names as authors or subjects, put the last name first. When there is a lot written about your author, the subject search helps you sort through the works, with a hierarchical display. Try a subject search on Twain, Mark for an example.
As with all history topics where you are looking for primary resources, look for these sub-divisions in subject searches.
- correspondence
- diaries
- interviews
- personal narratives
- pictorial works
- sources
- speeches, addresses, etc.

Books & Library Materials

To find books, first use the library's catalog (you may wish to expand the search from Wilmington to the UNC Library Consortium. Then use WorldCat to expand the search further, to over 9,000 libraries worldwide.

As you search for books, be sure to look at books about the genre your title fits within, and books about the type of author who wrote your book. This will help provide context for your author's works. For instance, when doing research on Charles Waddell Chesnutt, look at works on African American literature and African American authors.

Consider the historical topics included in your book. As you perform keyword searches to research the history, be sure to look at the subject headings on relevant books. Using these headings will likely improve the relevance of your search, especially in WorldCat.

Also search for the papers of the author's colleagues. For instance, correspondence with Chesnutt is included in the papers of Booker T. Washington.

Use Google Books to find sources that mention your author and the work you are researching. If the full text is not provided by Google Books, use WorldCat to find the book in a library and request through Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad).

Websites

Your author may have a website similar to these for the required texts.

Louisa May Alcott (NHCPL and UNCW)

Background on Alcott and the events being presented at the New Hanover County Public Library and UNCW, Fall 2011.

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

This website accompanies the PBS documentary film.

Harriet Jacobs

This website on Harriet Jacobs is from the Historic Edenton State Historic Site.

Dreiser Web Source

The University of Pennsylvania provides this collection of Dreiser correspondence, scholarly essays about this works, photographs and reference material.

Charles Chesnutt Digital Archive

This scholarly site is maintained at Berea College.

Sinclair Lewis Society

Illinois State Univeristy hosts this site.

Primary Sources

In the resources listed below, look for works published at the time your author was active to gain insight into how he or she was viewed at the time.

Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective

This index to scholary journals dates back to 1907, and may provide book reviews of the period your book was published as well as literary criticism and historical analysis.

Readers' Guide Retrospective

This index to popular magazines dates back to 1890. Useful for identifying book reviews and articles from the period the book was written.

New York Times Archive

Full text of the NYT from 1851, this resource is useful for eye-witness accounts as well as book reviews.

HarpWeek

Full text of Harper's Weekly Magazine, 1857-1876.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1841-1902

The Eagle includes national and international news, as well as covering local news and daily life in Brooklyn.

Poole's Index to Periodical Literature

This paper index provides citations to magazine articles from 1802-1907.

Book Review Digest

Indexes book reviews from 1905-2009. This set of volumes is kept in Reference Storage, but we are happy to bring you the volumes you need. Ask at the Learning Commons Help Desk.

Book Review Index

Indexes book reviews from 1965-2008. This set of volumes is kept in Reference Storage, but we are happy to bring you the volumes you need. Ask at the Learning Commons Help Desk.