An annotated list of web sites and other electronic resources related to information covered in Great Events from History: The Nineteenth Century 1801-1900
WEB SITES
The sites listed below were visited by the editors of Salem Press in March, 2006. Because URLs frequently change or are moved, the accuracy of these sites cannot be guaranteed; however, long-standing sites, such as those of university departments, national organizations, and government agencies, generally maintain links when sites move or upgrade their offerings.
General
Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London .
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/research/centreforc19thstudies The CNCS, founded in 1996, is an interdisciplinary project focusing on the period 1790-1914, as “a time when important cultural formations and literary and historical relationships emerge over a number of decades.” The center studies the Romantic, Victorian and Edwardian periods in order to address cross-disciplinary trends such as the idea of democracy, gender debates, the popular culture “industry,” and new accounts of subjectivity and scientific culture.
Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies at the University of Sheffield .
http://www.c19.group.shef.ac.uk/ The center has an interdisciplinary focus that targets “the whole breadth of the ’long Nineteenth Century,’ from c. 1789-c. 1914, covering British, American, and European history, literature, and culture.” Holds seminars and conferences, and works with archives, museums, and galleries to support research and academic programs. Has access to important collections in the history of labor, social, political, and medical history, as well as those of the University of Sheffield library, with more than a million volumes of both primary and secondary works.
H-Net .
http://www.h-net.org/lists/ More than one hundred academic discussion networks, most of which cover nineteenth century topics, can be found at H-Net.
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies .
http://www.nd.edu/~incshp/ INCS is an international group of scholars dedicated to interdisciplinary discussion and research. The organization sponsors annual meetings and enjoys a collaborative relationship with Nineteenth-Century Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal. INCS encourages scholarly work that transcends disciplinary boundaries in its approach to cultural studies.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: The Long Nineteenth Century .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook3.html This highly regarded Web site contain an extensive collection of primary source materials about every conceivable aspect of nineteenth century history, politics, and culture, compiled by Paul Halsall of Fordham University. The site includes a wide range of information about Europe, with specific sections on the Council of Vienna, nationalism, conservatism, liberalism, the revolts of 1848, and significant events in Britain, Austro-Hungary, Italy, and other European countries. There are also numerous pages about the United States (see United States, below). Other sections of the site contain documents about nineteenth century Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, and Japanese expansion. Halsall has also collected primary source documents describing the second Industrial Revolution and how socialism, Marxism, and imperialism in Africa, China, and India were responses to economic growth. Additional sections contain information about Charles Darwin’s theories, social Darwinism, and nineteenth century science and religion. This site is a “must use” for anyone doing research about the nineteenth century.
Nineteenth Century Studies Association .
http://www.msu.edu/~floyd/ncsa/ Sponsors conferences on topics in the nineteenth century, such as “Race and Ethnicity in the 19th Century” (Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, 2007).
North American Victorian Studies Association .
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/navsa/index.cfm Established in 2002, the NAVSA provides “a continental forum for the discussion of the Victorian period, to encourage a wide variety of theoretical and disciplinary approaches to the field, and to further the interests of scholars of the period.” Projects include initiating Web-based archival projects that make Victorian texts more easily accessible to members.
Research Resources for Nineteenth Century Studies .
http://www.sciper.leeds.ac.uk/resources/index.htm Provides an extensive guide to research in nineteenth century topics, including finding aids.
Victorian Web Sites .
http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Victorian.html This page at The Victorian Web provides links to more than 150 Web sites about various aspects of Victorian era history, culture, art, and literature, as well as links to journals and organizations dedicated to the study of the nineteenth century.
WebChron: Web Chronology Project Then Again .
http://www.thenagain.info/WebChron/index.html The Web Chronology Project originally was created by the History Department at North Park University in Chicago. It is now administered by David Koeller, the project’s originator, as part of his “Then Again” Web site. The site contains a series of hyperlinked time lines tracing developments in the United States, Africa south of the Sahara, the Middle East and West Asia, India and South Asia, China and East Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe, and western and central Europe. Other chronologies provide information about Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, as well as art, music, literature, and speculative thought in the Western tradition.
World History International .
http://history-world.org A wealth of information about history from the Neolithic period to the present. Users can access the “Contents A-Z” page for a list of pages with essays about the Americas; Africa, Australia, and the Sea Islands; art and architecture; Asia and the Middle East; Europe; science; world religions; and other general topics. The Americas section includes essays about the American Civil War, Ku Klux Klan, Lewis and Clark, Manifest Destiny, the Mormon migrations, Monroe Doctrine, Reconstruction, and the Spanish American War. There are also three essays about the establishment of Latin American states, the Latin American plantation colony, and Latin American revolts. The Africa section includes essays about the Boer War and David Livingstone’s discoveries in Africa.
Africa
Humanities 211: Culture and Literature of Africa .
http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/ This site was created for a course taught by Cora Agatucci, a professor of English at Central Oregon Community College. The site includes a five-part time line of African history. Part 3, “African Slave Trade and European Imperialism,” offers an overview of African history between the fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including information on the abolitionist movement in England and the United States and the European exploration of Africa. Part 4, “Anti-colonialism and Reconstruction,” provides information and Web links to events occurring in the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, including the height of global imperialism, the Zulu Wars, and the Boer War.
Internet African History Sourcebook .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/africa/africasbook.html Contains information about African history, including documents regarding African societies, the abolition of slavery, exploration and missionary activity, South Africa, and British, Belgian, and French Africa.
Art and Architecture
Art History Resources on the Web: Part 12, Nineteenth Century Art .
http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks5.html Chris Witcombe, a professor of art history at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, compiled this extensive list of Web sites about art history. This page of the site specifically deals with nineteenth century painting, sculpture, and architecture, featuring hundreds of links to information about Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, and other art styles and about individual artists, sculptors, and architects of the period.
A Digital Archive of American Architecture: Nineteenth Century .
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/fa267_19.html Professor Jeffrey Howe of Boston College created this slide collection of nineteenth century American architecture, which includes examples of buildings created in the Neoclassic, Greek, Gothic, Egyptian Revival, Richardson Romanesque, and other styles. Slides also depict period houses, churches, and public and commercial structures.
A Digital Archive of Architecture: Nineteenth Century Architecture .
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/arch/19arch_europe.html Professor Jeffrey Howe of Boston College created this Web site of European architecture. This page features examples of nineteenth century architecture, including buildings designed in the Greek Revival, High Victorian Gothic, and Second Empire Baroque styles. There also is information about the Eiffel Tower, the Vienna Secessionists, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School of Art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Timeline of Art History .
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm The museum’s Web site describes itself as a “chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated especially by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection.” The time line for the period from 1800 to 1900 contains artworks, maps, and chronologies organized by regions of the world, including North America, South America, Europe, Central America and Mexico, Africa, Oceania, and several areas of Asia. The site also features numerous pages devoted to specific topics, including European art in the nineteenth century, arts of the United States in the nineteenth century, and African, Asian, and Islamic art.
WebMuseum, Paris: Famous Art Works Exhibition .
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/ This Web collection of European and American paintings from 1250 through the twentieth century includes two pages specifically about nineteenth century art: “Revolution and Restoration” and “Impressionism.” Each page contains links to information describing painting styles and providing biographical information about specific artists, including Eugène Delacroix, John Constable, Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Manet, and Mary Cassatt. Additional information about artists is accessible through the artist index, an alphabetical listing of artists whose work is featured on the site.
Asia
Internet East Asian History Sourcebook .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/eastasia/eastasiasbook.html This site provides primary source materials tracing historical and cultural developments in China, Japan, Korea, and other East Asian nations. It includes separate sections focusing on religious traditions; the Western intrusion, including European and American imperialism, British East Asia, and the work of missionaries; Japan as a world power; and Chinese history from 1840 through 1949.
Canada
The Canadian Encyclopedia .
http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/ The Canadian Encyclopedia provides authoritative information on what the site describes as “all things Canadian.” The Feature Articles section contains numerous articles about a broad range of nineteenth century people and events, including George Brown and rebellion in Upper Canada, as well as articles about culture, sports, exploration, the military, and society. An extensive time line chronicles significant events throughout Canadian history.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online .
http://www.biographi.ca/EN/index.html The online version of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography contains thousands of biographies about significant Canadians. The biographies can be accessed via alphabetical listings or through the site’s search engine.
oCanada.ca: Canadian History, Nineteenth Century .
http://www.ocanada.ca/history/history_19.php The oCanada.ca Web site contains a time line listing significant events in Canadian history, including this page featuring a chronology of events occurring in the nineteenth century.
Economics
The History of Economic Thought .
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/ Created by the Department of Economics at the New School for Social Research, this site features biographical information and excerpts of texts from more than five hundred economists who can be accessed via an alphabetical index. Friedrich Engels, Thomas Robert Malthus, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, and Robert Owen are among the nineteenth century giants featured here. Another section of the site describes various schools of economic thought; the section about classical economics features information about Utilitarianism, Karl Marx and Marxism, and David Ricardo and the classical Ricardian school, while the section about alternative economic schools features information about Utopians, socialists, and Fabian socialists.
McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought .
http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3113/ An extensive collection of texts about economics, organized by author. The site includes the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Horace Greeley, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Simon Newcomb, Henry Sidgwick, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Herbert Spencer, among other nineteenth century thinkers.
Exploration
Lewis and Clark PBS .
http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/index.html This Web site was designed to accompany Ken Burns’s documentary film The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, aired by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). One section of the site, “Inside the Corps,” contains information about the members of the corps and an essay placing the expedition within the context of early nineteenth century American politics and history. “Native Americans” describes how the Indians were long familiar with the lands that Lewis and Clark “discovered.” The archive contains searchable excerpts from expedition journals, a time line, maps, and a list of related Web links. The site also includes an interactive trail map and “Into the Unknown,” an interactive feature that allows users to pretend they are leading the famed expedition.
Nineteenth Century Exploration of Australia .
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/australia/ This look at the exploration of the interior of Australia features maps and pages detailing the expeditions of individual explorers who trekked throughout the continent in the nineteenth century.
Pathfinders and Passageways: The Exploration of Canada .
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/explorers/index-e.html Created by the Library and Archives of Canada, the site chronicles the many people who discovered and explored the country. It includes several pages devoted to nineteenth century exploration, including information on discoveries in the Arctic and attempts to discover a Northwest Passage.
France
Gallica: XIX Seicle .
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ This French-language site, created by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, features the library’s collections and other materials about French history and culture. The page about the nineteenth century links to images and information about French history, law, science, and philosophy. The literature section provides overviews of various movements in nineteenth century French literature and information about the French theater and the French novel of that period, including separate pages devoted to authors Stendhal, Émile Zola, Victor Hugo, and Honoré de Balzac.
Napoleon Bonaparte Internet Guide .
http://www.napoleonbonaparte.nl/ A guide to help users readily access what its creator describes as “the best Napoleonic sites in the world.” There are hundreds of links to sites about Napoleon, the Napoleonic era, and other topics, as well as articles about Napoleon.
Nineteenth Century France .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook3.html#France This page of Web links about nineteenth century France is part of “Internet Modern History Sourcebook: The Long Nineteenth Century,” created by Paul Halsall of Fordham University. The page provides primary source documents about the revolts of 1848, the Franco Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and the Third Republic.
Nineteenth Century Paris Project .
http://gallery.sjsu.edu/paris/ Designed by Kathleen Cohen, a professor of art history at San Jose State University, and her students, this site is a beautifully illustrated, user-friendly compendium of information about life in nineteenth century Paris. It is divided into general categories: architecture; French politics and government; social classes; technology, describing various industries and technological developments; women’s fashion; furniture; music, including audio clips of music by Hector Berlioz, Georges Bizet, and other composers; the Academy, an overview of “official” French painting and sculpture before Impressionism; breaking away, an overview of the work of the Impressionists and subsequent artists; mass-produced art; and the Symbolist movement in painting and poetry. The section on social classes is especially interesting, featuring a chronology of major events in nineteenth century Parisian history and descriptions of life for men, women, and children of the upper, middle, and lower classes.
Germany
Germany Under Bismarck .
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/europe/bismarck2.htm This series of pages about Otto von Bismarck constitutes part of “A Web of English History,” a collection of links about late eighteenth and nineteenth century British history. The pages devoted to the Iron Chancellor include a biography, collection of quotations, a time line outlining significant nineteenth century developments leading to the eventual unification of Germany, information about Bismarck’s foreign policy and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, and an overview of Bismarck’s domestic German policies.
Nineteenth Century Germany .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook3.html#Germany This page of Web links about nineteenth century Germany is part of “Internet Modern History Sourcebook: The Long Nineteenth Century,” created by Paul Halsall of Fordham University. The page provides primary source documents about German unification, Otto von Bismarck, and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Great Britain
Chartism .
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/chartism.htm One of the many excellent Web sites created by Spartacus Educational, a British organization that creates Web sites designed for history instruction. This site provides information about the people and events associated with the Chartist movement in the 1830’s and 1840’s. The movement aimed to restore perceived inequities in the Reform Act of 1832 by demanding suffrage for all British men (including the working class), and designated electoral districts, annual general elections, secret ballots, and other electoral reforms. The site contains individual pages about movement leaders, movement tactics, British newspapers’ opinions of Chartism, and the nineteenth century parliamentary reform acts relevant to the movement.
The Monarchy, 1042-1952 .
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/monarchy.htm Contains individual pages about each of the British monarchs who reigned from 1042 to 1952, with portraits, biographical details, significant historical facts about their reigns, and links to sites with additional information. This site is particularly valuable for its page about Queen Victoria, which details the many events of her life and her unusually long nineteenth century reign.
Prime Ministers, 1760-1960 .
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/pm.htm A site designed by Spartacus Educational, a British organization that creates Web sites designed for history instruction. Provides portraits, biographies, and information about significant events that occurred during the terms of Britain’s prime ministers, with links to sites with additional information. Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Liverpool, and the other nineteenth century prime ministers are included on the site. The individual pages about each prime minister are easily accessed via a central list of the prime ministers, in chronological order of their terms in office.
Research Resources for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland .
http://www.qub.ac.uk/en/socs/research.htm Contains extensive and wide-ranging resources on both Irish history and culture and the Irish diaspora.
Victoria Research Web .
http://victorianresearch.org/ Includes links to academic journals devoted to nineteenth century topics, bibliographies, links to discussion groups, and an extensive collection of links to related topics.
The Victorian Dictionary: Exploring Victorian London .
http://www.victorianlondon.org/ This quirky but entertaining and informative site provides a range of information about life in nineteenth century London. Articles, many of which are illustrated, can be accessed through an alphabetical list of topics, including advertising, death and dying, childhood, education, the legal system, women, shops and shopping, clothing and fashions, and food and drink. The section about people profiles a broad spectrum of nineteenth century Londoners, ranging from Queen Victoria to Joseph Merrick (better known as the Elephant Man).
The Victorian Web .
http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/victorianweb/ One of the finest Web sites about the nineteenth century, maintained by the National University of Singapore, is an online version of information originally designed for a course at Brown University. The site provides a wealth of information about Great Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria, including political and social history, gender matters, science, technology, economics, and culture. It also provides lists of Web books, a bibliography, and links to related Web sites.
A Web of English History .
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/ This site is an exceptionally good source of information about British politics and history between 1760 and 1830. It includes Peel Web, named for Sir Robert Peel, the dominant figure in Parliament from 1830 through 1850 and a two-time prime minister in the nineteenth century. In addition to its biographical information about Peel, the site provides primary and secondary source materials about other prime ministers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, British political and economic affairs, political parties and reform movements, British foreign policy, and contemporary political literature. There is also a section devoted to nineteenth century Irish history, including information on the Irish Famine and the campaign to repeal the Corn Laws.
Italy
The Italian Unification .
http://www.arcaini.com/ITALY/ItalyHistory/ItalianUnification.htm This page from “The History of Italy” Web site provides an overview of Italian unification. It features a time line detailing historical developments from 1672 through 1871 and an essay about the country’s unification in the nineteenth century, focusing on Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Count Cavour.
Latin America
Casahistoria: Latin American Home Page .
http://www.casahistoria.net/latam.html Casahistoria was created by a teacher in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who wanted to provide a list of Web resources for his undergraduate history students. The site contains information in English and Spanish, including a page of links about Latin American history and culture, with two sections pertaining to the nineteenth century. Independence from Spain links to pages about Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, Mexican independence, and the Spanish-American War. The “Nineteenth Century” section includes a time line of Latin American history from 1800 through 1998 and information about the Triple Alliance War and British and American involvement in Latin America.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: The Long Nineteenth Century .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook3.html In this collection of primary source documents, Paul Halsall of Fordham University includes a section about Latin America. The section features information about the region’s independence from Spain and about several Latin American nations, including Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba.
Literature
Authors Discussed in the Victorian Web .
http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/victorianweb/ The Victorian Web’s home page links to a section called “Authors,” providing an alphabetical listing of more than seventy British authors from the Victorian era. The list links to additional pages of information about the individual authors, including biographies, bibliographies, analyses of their work, and, in some cases, excerpts of their writing. Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot are among the authors included in this excellent compilation. The page also includes links to information about some pre-Victorians, such as Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Alexander Pope, and other eighteenth and early nineteenth century authors.
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes .
http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/ An exhaustively comprehensive examination of all forms of writing in Great Britain and the United States, including literature; legal, political, and church writing; history; journalism; children’s literature; and philosophy. Volumes 12 through 14 contain essays and literary texts composed during the Romantic revival and the Victorian era in England. Volumes 15 through 17 focus on early and later national literature from the United States, including information on Walt Whitman, O. Henry, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Abraham Lincoln.
Literary Resources on the Net: Victorian British .
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/ Jack Lynch, associate professor of English at Rutgers University, has compiled a thorough collection of Web resources about literature. The home page provides a link to a separate page containing information about Victorian era British literature. That page includes links to e-texts and Web sites, discussions of Victorian theater and literary movements, and information about individual authors, including Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, and Lewis Carroll.
Nineteenth Century British and Irish Authors .
http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/19th-authors.html This site, maintained by Nagoya University in Japan, links to information about 411 nineteenth century British and Irish poets, novelists, playwrights, and other writers. The authors are listed chronologically by birth date, from 1751 until 1865. The page also provides a link for information about additional authors not included in the list.
Romantic Links, Electronic Texts, and Home Pages .
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Romantic/index.html This page is part of “The Penn English Web Site,” created by Michael Gamer, associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. It includes a wide range of materials about eighteenth and nineteenth century Romantic literature. The site is divided into several sections, including information about associations and journals devoted to the study of Romantic literature; general links; electronic texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; university professors’ personal home pages about these centuries; and Web sites about individual authors, including Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, the Brontë sisters, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats.
Voice of the Shuttle: Romantics .
http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2750 An excellent collection of Web resources about the humanities compiled by professors at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This page contains links to essays, literary criticism, and examples of prose, poetry, and drama from a long list of British authors from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Voice of the Shuttle: Victorians .
http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2751 Another page from Voice of the Shuttle, this one focusing on British writers from the Victorian era. The page contains links to numerous Web sites, essays, selected writings, and other resources.
WWW.Twainquotes.com .
http://www.twainquotes.com/ A good place to begin a Web-based study of Mark Twain, this illustrated site, designed by independent scholar Barbara Schmidt, features texts of some of Twain’s newspaper articles, selected interviews, and a lengthy collection of the author’s quotes, organized alphabetically by subject. The site also provides links to other Twain Web sites.
Mathematics
The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive .
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/index.html A very comprehensive Web site, created and maintained by the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. The site features biographies of prominent mathematicians which can be accessed by either an alphabetical or chronological index. It also contains information about math history, with separate pages explaining important mathematical discoveries and concepts. Niels Henrik Abel, Gottlob Frege, Sofia Kovalevskaia, Nikolay Ivanovich Lobachevsky, and Charlotte Angus Scott are among the mathematicians included.
Music
American Singing: Nineteenth Century Song Sheets .
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amsshtml/amsshome.html This collection of several hundred song sheets is part of the American Memory Project, the Library of Congress’s collection of sound recordings, images, maps, sheet music, and other materials aimed at documenting the American experience. Song sheets, or single printed sheets containing lyrics but no music, were a popular form of entertainment during the nineteenth century. The collection focuses on song sheets published from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the 1880’s, with the majority dating from the 1850’s through the 1870’s, the zenith of the song sheet craze. The song sheets can be accessed by title, author’s name, or publisher and are presented in both thumbnail and enlarged formats.
Carolina Classical Connection: Classical Period Music Links .
http://www.carolinaclassical.com/links.html
The Classical MIDI Connection: The Classical Period .
The Classical MIDI Connection: The Romantic Period .
http://www.classicalmidiconnection.com/cmc/romantic.html A collection of music midi files. Midi, or musical instrument digital interface, is a digital technology that allows electronic musical instruments and computers to communicate with one another and enables people to listen to music on their computers. The site has an alphabetized list of composers with links to midi files of their music. Separate pages are devoted to music of specific eras. The Classical Period page contains an extensive collection of links and midi files for Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. The Romantic period page features a wide range of nineteenth century composers, including Frédéric Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Edvard Grieg, Félix Mendelssohn, Camille Saint-Saëns, John Philip Sousa, and Sir Arthur Sullivan.
Public Domain Music .
http://www.pdmusic.org This collection of midi and text files of lyrics for American music in the public domain contains many examples of nineteenth century music. The files can be accessed through a list of composers, with an especially good selection of work by Stephen Collins Foster. Files are also organized by style of music, with the Minstrel Songs, Old and New section featuring nineteenth century compositions. Four additional pages are specifically devoted to nineteenth century music: Music from 1800 through 1860; two pages of Civil War-era music; and Music from 1866 through 1899.
Romantic Era Music Links .
http://www.carolinaclassical.com/romantic.html A collection of links to a wide variety of music-related Web sites, with biographical information on composers, descriptions of musical genres and types of compositions, and encoded music files. The page with links to the Classical period includes information on Ludwig van Beethoven. The Romantic era page contains links to information about Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa, Franz Schubert, Richard Wagner, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Hector Berlioz, Franz Lizst, and many other nineteenth century composers.
Philosophy
Philosophy Pages .
http://www.philosophypages.com/ An easily accessible site aimed at students of the Western philosophical tradition. Users can access information via a dictionary of philosophical terms and names, a survey of the history of Western philosophy, and a time line. “Philosophy Pages” also provides links to other philosophy Web sites, recommended books for further study, and essays examining the ideas of several major nineteenth century philosophers, including William James, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Søren Kierkegaard.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html A collection of articles about various aspects of philosophy which can be accessed through an alphabetical table of contents. Includes articles about Darwinism, F. H. Bradley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Karl Marx, and Arthur Schopenhauer.
The Victorian Web: Philosophy Overview .
http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/victorianweb/ The Victorian Web home page includes a philosophy section that provides an overview of nineteenth century British moral, religious, political, economic, and aesthetic philosophy, including information about John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism, David Ricardo, and John Ruskin.
The Web of American Transcendentalism .
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/index.html Virginia Commonwealth University graduate students created this comprehensive Web site to supplement their study of American Transcendentalism. One section of the site contains biographical information and texts of works by American Transcendentalist authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott. “Ideas and Thought” provides an overview of Transcendentalists’ views on nature, aesthetics, religion, education, and other topics, while “Roots and Influences” explores the origins of Transcendentalism and its legacy in American literature, religion, philosophy, and political and social reform. A bibliography and selected Web list recommend resources for further research.
Religion
Religion and the New Republic .
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/re107.html This page is part of “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic,” a Web site accompanying an exhibit at the Library of Congress. The page describes various aspects of religion in the United States from 1800 until the Civil War, focusing on evangelism, which the site describes as the “grand absorbing theme” of American life. The page includes information about evangelical camp meetings, pictures of religious revivals, and pages from revival hymnals. There is additional information about the emergence of the African American church, the Shakers, the Mormons, nineteenth century American religious leaders, and the role of church-related benevolent societies.
Religion in Victorian Britain .
http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/victorianweb/ Includes a section titled “Religion,” a page of links to information about numerous aspects of Victorian era religion in Great Britain, including a time line of religion and philosophy and an examination of the relationship of science and religion. There is also information about specific church denominations and sects, including the Evangelical and Oxford movements.
What Is the Oxford Movement? .
http://parishes.oxford.anglican.org/puseyhouse/oxfdmove.htm This is part of the Web site for the Pusey House and Library in Oxford, England, a site dedicated to the nineteenth century theologian E. B. Pusey. The page describes the involvement of Pusey, John Henry Newman, John Keble, and others in the Oxford Movement, an attempt to bring about a Catholic revival within the Church of England.
William Ellery Channing and American Unitarianism .
http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EHYPER/DETOC/religion/channing.html An overview of the life of William Ellery Channing and his role in establishing the Unitarian religion in the United States, part of a Web site created by the University of Virginia. The site includes a brief look at Channing’s life and career; the text of his speech “Unitarian Christianity,” delivered on May 5, 1819; and Alexis de Tocqueville’s account of his 1831 interview with Channing, excerpted from the book Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (1938), by George Wilson Pierson.
Russia
Russia, 1860-1945 .
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RussiaIssues.htm An examination of Russian history from 1860 until the end World War II, including information about the events and issues in the mid- and late nineteenth century that led to the Russian Revolution. The nature of the Romanov Dynasty, the role of the Russian Orthodox Church, Jewish pogroms, and Czar Alexander II’s Emancipation Manifesto are among the topics explored here.
Science and Medicine
Eric Weisstein’s World of Science .
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/ This online reference has been compiled by a research scientist and former professor of astronomy. It contains several encyclopedias of information about astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. There also are brief biographies and portraits of noteworthy scientists, including Louis Pasteur, Humphrey Davy, Charles Babbage, Niels Henrik Abel, Georges Cuvier, and other nineteenth century figures.
From Quackery to Bacteriology: The Emergence of Modern Medicine in Nineteenth Century America .
http://www.cl.utoledo.edu/canaday/quackery/quack-index.html The Web site was created to accompany an exhibit tracing the development of medicine through printed works that was mounted in 1994 at the University of Toledo Libraries. The site features illustrations, which can be viewed in both thumbnail and enlarged sizes, and text describing nineteenth century medicine, including scientific treatments for disease, alternative health treatments, quackery, patent medicine, women’s health care, mental health, physical fitness and nutrition, nursing, medical education, and medicine during the Civil War.
History of Western Biomedicine .
http://www.mic.ki.se/West.html#West3 Compiled by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, this site contains links to Web sites discussing various aspects of medical and scientific history from ancient times into the twenty-first century. The section “Modern Period, 1601-” includes a list of sites about nineteenth century scientific and medical developments, including the history of the stethoscope, hearing aids, anesthesia, medicine in the American Civil War, and biographical information about John Dalton, Michael Faraday, Elizabeth Blackwell, Louis Braille, Ernst Haeckel, Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and Ferdinand Julius Cohn.
Theater
Nineteenth Century Actors Photographs .
http://content.lib.washington.edu/19thcenturyactorsweb/ One of the digital collections of the University of Washington Libraries, this site features 610 studio portraits of entertainers, actors, and actresses who performed on the American stage in the mid- to late nineteenth century. The photographs are organized and accessed by categories of entertainers and theater professionals, including comedians, theater dramatists, theater managers, musicians and singers, blackface entertainers, and women. There also is an essay about nineteenth century American theater.
Theatre Database: Nineteenth Century Theatre .
http://www.theatredatabase.com/19th_century/ The pages on this site link to biographical information and other Web sites about nineteenth century playwrights and actors, including Henrik Ibsen, W. S. Gilbert, William Charles Macready, and Edmund Kean. There are also Web links to articles about drama in the nineteenth century and the rise of Romanticism in French drama.
Trade, Commerce, and Technology
Cotton Times: Understanding the Industrial Revolution .
http://www.cottontimes.co.uk/index.html A comprehensive examination of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. The site begins its exploration with information about the innovations in the cotton industry in eighteenth century Lancashire, which spurred what the site describes as “history’s greatest upheaval.” Among the site’s features are a time line of events from 1700 to 1900, an alphabetical listing of key figures associated with the Industrial Revolution; separate sections providing biographical information about significant inventors, inventions, engineers, and reformers; overviews of workers’ riots, rallies, and confrontations; and descriptions of the lives of adult and child factory workers. In addition, the site provides a bibliography for further research, a glossary, and links to related Web sites.
Internet History Sourcebook: The Long Nineteenth Century: The Second Industrial Revolution and Advanced Capitalism .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook3.html Paul Halsall’s collection of nineteenth century primary source documents contains a section that links to materials about the lives of workers; new technologies, including electricity and technological advances in the steel and chemical industries; efficiency, automation, and the assembly line; and the modern corporation.
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa111100b.htm These two pages from About.com’s time line of inventions are devoted to the nineteenth century. The time line links to additional pages describing inventors and inventions of the period, including information about Rudolf Diesel, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, Alfred Nobel, Sir Humphry Davy, Richard Trevithick, and the invention of the battery, tin can, microphone, gas lighting, matches, photography, and motion pictures.
United States
Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress .
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html The site provides digitized access to twenty thousand of Abraham Lincoln’s documents, the majority dating from his presidency. The site is divided into three series of general correspondence: Series 1, from 1833 to 1916; Series 2, 1858 to 1865; and Series 3, 1837 to 1897. The general correspondence includes letters, drafts of speeches, pamphlets, newspaper clippings, and notes. Lincoln’s draft of the Emancipation Proclamation is one of the site’s particularly valuable documents. The site features additional information about the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s assassination.
The American Civil War Homepage .
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/cwarhp.html In the site’s own words, this is a collection of “hypertext links to the most useful identified electronic files about the American Civil War.” The site, maintained by George H. Hoemann, an assistant dean at the University of Tennessee, is unusually extensive, with a wealth of information arranged categorically. The compendium of links features information about the antebellum period and the secession crisis; photos and other images of the war; biographical information about important historical figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and Stonewall Jackson; descriptions of battles and campaigns; and Web sites about individual regiments and battalions.
American Cultural History: The Nineteenth Century .
http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/19thcentury.html This accessible and well-illustrated site was created at Kingwood College in Kingwood, Texas. It provides a time line with individual pages for each decade of the nineteenth century, from 1800 to 1890. Each page provides information about American art, architecture, business, economy, books, literature, migration and immigration, education, music, theater, pastimes, science, technology, and social movements during the decade examined. The pages also contain links to other Web sites and recommended books and videotapes for further research.
AmericanPresident.org .
http://www.americanpresident.org/ This accessible and inclusive site was created by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, a research institution that studies the American presidency. The “Presidency in History” section contains several pages of information about each of the presidents, illustrated with period drawings, photographs, and other images; there are brief biographies of each president, followed by more extensive pages of information about each president’s life before and after his term in office, his campaigns and elections, and significant domestic and foreign affairs during his administration. In addition, there are biographies of each First Lady, brief biographies of key cabinet members, lists of presidential staff members and advisers, and links to additional resources.
American West .
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAamericanwest.htm Spartacus Educational has compiled this collection of biographies and other information about the exploration, expansion, and settlement of the western United States during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many of the pages are enhanced with excerpts from diaries, newspapers, and other primary source materials. The site provides access to pages with information about a broad range of topics, including explorers; frontiersmen, mountain men, and fur trappers, such as Kit Carson and Davy Crockett; Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and other criminals and outlaws; soldiers; migrants and settlers; missionaries and religious leaders; judges and lawmen, including Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp; politicians; Calamity Jane, Belle Starr, and other women of the West; inventors and businessmen; artists and writers; Native American leaders and tribes; and significant events and issues related to the western expansion.
America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War .
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/index.html This excellent overview of the Reconstruction era was created by Eric Foner, the De Witt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, and Olivia Mahoney, director of historical documentation at the Chicago Historical Society. It contains text, photographs, cartoons, and other images about the abolition of slavery and the reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. The site is divided by subjects, providing information about the Emancipation Proclamation and the condition of newly freed slaves during the Civil War; responses to slavery by both black and white Americans; an explanation of how many former slaves became a source of free labor after the Civil War; and the politics of Reconstruction, including details of the administration of President Andrew Johnson. The site also provides a Reconstruction time line and links to other resources.
Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Nineteenth Century Documents .
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/19th.htm A collection of digitized primary source materials relevant to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy, and government. A separate page, “Nineteenth Century Documents,” features numerous legal and political documents, listed in alphabetical order, including the presidents’ inaugural addresses and annual messages; papers from the Confederate States of America; Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; treaties between the United States and other nations, including Native American nations; documents pertaining to the Louisiana Purchase; and laws relating to slavery and Native Americans.
First Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 .
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ncuhtml/fpnashome.html A compilation of printed texts from the libraries of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, featuring what the site describes as a look at the “nineteenth century American South from the viewpoints of Southerners.” While some of the narrators are prominent historical figures, many others are unknown women, African Americans, military men who enlisted during the Civil War, laborers, and Native Americans. The site’s texts were found in diaries, the narratives of former slaves, autobiographies, memoirs, and travel accounts. These narratives can be accessed through indexes of authors, titles, and subjects.
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress .
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/doughtml/doughome.html The Library of Congress created this digitized collection about Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became a major leader of the abolitionist movement. The site features 7,400 items, with 38,000 images, about Douglass’s life as an escaped slave, abolitionist, orator, editor, and public servant covering the years 1841 through 1864, with the majority of the papers dating from 1862 through 1895. The papers include Douglass’s correspondence, speeches, articles written by him and his contemporaries, a draft of his autobiography, his financial and legal papers, and scrapbooks. In addition to the papers, the site features a time line of Douglass’s life, links to complete online texts of all three of his autobiographies, and a Douglass family tree.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: The Long Nineteenth Century .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook3.html Among the site’s collection of primary source materials is an extensive section devoted to the United States. The section features documents regarding American expansion and the Manifest Destiny; the antebellum conflict between North and South; the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow; immigration and its effects; American culture; the legal framework of American life; and the Gilded Age.
Selected Civil War Photographs .
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwphome.html Another site created by the Library of Congress as part of the library’s American Memory project. “Selected Civil War Photographs” contains digitized versions of 1,318 photographs, the majority of them taken under the direction of famed photographer Mathew B. Brady, depicting scenes of military personnel, battle preparations, and the aftermath of Civil War battles. While some of the subjects of the photographs are Confederate and Union army and navy officers, there also are images of enlisted men and infantry units. The images are featured in both thumbnail and enlarged versions.
Slavery .
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAslavery.htm An excellent overview of American slavery, this site provides numerous pages containing accounts from Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Henry Box Brown, Sojourner Truth, and other slaves; descriptions of the slave trade, plantation system, the Underground Railroad, and slaves’ lives; discussions of the significant events and issues in the abolition movement; and biographical information about major abolitionists in the United States and Britain. The historical information on many of the pages is enhanced with excerpts from diaries, journals, newspaper reports, and other primary source documents.
Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860 .
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/sthome.html The Library of Congress has organized this digitized collection of about one hundred pamphlets and books published between 1772 and 1889 which pertain to the experiences of African American slaves in the American colonies and the United States. The materials include information about trials and cases relating to slavery, legal arguments for and against slavery, examinations of cases and legal decisions, journals, and other works about the legal system and slavery. The documents on the site can be accessed through indexes of subjects, authors, and titles.
Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive .
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/ A compendium of electronic information about Jefferson, one of the most significant presidents of the nineteenth century, compiled by the University of Virginia. The site includes more than seventeen hundred digitized texts to or by Jefferson, including letters and manuscripts; an online version of The Jefferson Cyclopedia: A Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson, containing Jefferson’s views on government, politics, law, religion, and other subjects; and a collection of Jefferson’s quotes. There also is an electronic text of B. L. Rayner’s Life of Thomas Jefferson, a biography originally published in 1834.
War, Riots, and Revolution (<i>See also</i> United States<i>, above, for sites about the U.S. Civil War</i>)
Anglo Boer War Museum .
http://www.anglo-boer.co.za/index.html The museum, located in Bloemfontein, South Africa, has designed this Web site describing the conflict fought from 1899 to 1902 between the British and soldiers from the Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. It includes an overview outlining the causes of the war, information about important people involved in the conflict, and an explanation of the role of black people in the war.
Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887 .
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ichihtml/hayhome.html A collection, compiled and digitized by the Library of Congress, of manuscripts, broadsides, photographs, and prints about the Haymarket affair, a violent confrontation between labor protesters and Chicago police that took place on May 4, 1886. The site includes materials pertaining to the anarchists’ meeting and bombing on May 4; a thirty-two-hundred-page transcript of proceedings from the subsequent trial of the men who allegedly incited the bombing; and information about the defendants’ convictions, appeals, and execution. Among the materials are two dozen two-dimensional artifacts, including labor banners, an unexploded bomb, and articles from the Chicago police department. A Haymarket chronology and excerpts from the autobiographies of defendants August Spies and Albert Parsons are also available on the site.
Cinco de Mayo, 1862, La Batalla de Puebla .
http://www.nacnet.org/assunta/spa5may.htm Part of a Web site describing Mexican and Chicano holiday traditions, this page provides a brief overview, in both English and Spanish, of the battle on May 5, 1862, in which the Mexican imperial monarchy was overthrown. It also contains a bibliography of English- and Spanish-language books and encyclopedias containing additional information about the battle.
Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions .
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/~Chastain/index.htm An online version of the encyclopedia that describes itself as “the only complete history of all the 1848 revolutions.” The site features numerous essays by historians and professors describing the movements toward liberty, economic equality, and nationalism that developed throughout the world during the nineteenth century. The essay topics include information about German and Italian unification, communism, life in nineteenth century France and the 1848 revolution in that country, Jewish emancipation, political developments in Poland and Hungary, women’s rights, and the United States’ reaction to the revolutions of 1848.
Napoleon, His Army and Enemies: Armies, Campaigns, Battles, Tactics, Commanders .
http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/index.html According to its home page, this site contains more than “1,800 illustrations, maps, charts, articles about Napoleon’s strategy and tactics, about the French, Polish, Prussian, Austrian, Russian, and British armies, their organization, commanders, uniforms, books, clubs, re-enactment groups” and other information about the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. It outlines individual battles fought between 1796 and 1815 and describes military tactics of the period.
The U.S.-Mexican War .
http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/mexwar1.htm Created by the Descendants of Mexican War veterans, the site provides an overview of the conflict. It includes a concise history of the war; images; maps; descriptions of historic battle sites in the United States and Mexico; and speeches, legislation, battle reports, and other primary source documents. There also is a list of frequently asked questions about the war, a chronology of the conflict, and statistics.
War of 1812-1814 .
http://members.tripod.com/~war1812/ This examination of the war between the United States and Britain includes an explanation of the events in Europe and the United States leading to the conflict; numerous pages describing individual battles; descriptions and illustrations of the weapons used during the war; and information about the role of American and British soldiers, women, and Native Americans in the war. The site also provides links to several other Web sites about the War of 1812.
The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War .
http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/ The Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress has compiled this compendium of resources about the Spanish-American War, the period before the war, and the people who either fought in or commented about the conflict. There are separate sections about Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Spain featuring overview essays, maps, chronologies, and indexes of cities that were significant to the conflict. Another section focuses on the literary response to the war, with comments from Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Walt Whitman, and Puerto Rican and Cuban writers. There also is a selected bibliography of Spanish-language books about the conflict.
Women
Civil War Women: Primary Sources on the Internet .
http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/women/cwdocs.html Compiled by Duke University, this is a collection of links to individual diaries, letters, and other primary source materials, available on the Internet, about women in the Civil War.
Emancipation of Women, 1750-1920 .
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/women.htm Another of the many accessible and comprehensive Web sites designed by Spartacus Educational, a British organization that creates Web sites designed for history instruction. Emancipation of Women focuses on the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain. It provides individual pages about key figures in the movement, such as Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Elizabeth Fry, and Harriet Martineau, and the organizations with which they were affiliated, including the Society of Friends, the Unitarian Society, and the Women’s Social and Political Union. In addition, there are descriptions of schooling, marriage, careers, birth control, and other aspects of women’s life in nineteenth century Britain; explanations of the strategy and tactics that women used to attain the vote; and examinations of Parliamentary reform laws enacted between 1832 and 1928. Each page contains numerous links to additional pages of information.
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: The Long Nineteenth Century .
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook3.html A section of this site contains primary source materials about nineteenth century feminism in the United States and Great Britain. It includes excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the text of the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration, and additional information about the women’s suffrage movement and the temperance movement.
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony .
http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/ This site was created in connection with a documentary aired by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) focusing on the two leaders of the nineteenth century American women’s right movement. It features streaming video, illustrations, and texts providing biographical and historical information about Anthony and Stanton and the fight for equal rights and suffrage from 1830 through 1920. Each page of biographical and historical data is accompanied by a chronology of cultural and political events and essays and primary source documents that place the women’s lives in a broader historical context.
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa032299.htm Contains two articles written by June Johnson Lewis, a teacher and Unitarian minister, about the role of women in the American Transcendentalist movement. Part 1 focuses on Margaret Fuller and Mary Moody Emerson; part 2 discusses Harriet Martineau, Julia Ward Howe, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and her sisters, Mary Tyler Peabody Mann and Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne. The site provides links to other Web sites with additional information about these women.
Victorian Women Writers Project .
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/ Created and maintained by Indiana University, the project aims, in its own words, “to produce accurate transcriptions of works by British women writers of the nineteenth century.” Dollie Radford, Ouida, Ella Hepworth Dixon, and Catherine Mumford Booth are among the writers whose works are included in the collection.
Women’s Suffrage .
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAwomen.htm Designed by Spartacus Educational, this site focuses on the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. It provides biographical information on a wide range of women’s rights campaigners, including Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Margaret Fuller, and about campaign organizations, including the American Women’s Suffrage Association and the National Association of Colored Women. There are also biographies of the women artists involved in the suffrage movement and of the men who supported women’s efforts to attain the vote.
SUBSCRIPTION WEB SITES
The following sites are posted on the World Wide Web but are available only to paying subscribers. Many public, college, and university libraries subscribe to these sources; readers can ask reference librarians if they are available at their local libraries.
General
Oxford Reference Online .
http://www.oxfordreference.com The Core Collection of Oxford Reference Online is a virtual reference library of more than one hundred dictionaries, language reference, and subject reference books published by the Oxford University Press. The electronic versions of the books are fully indexed and cross-searchable and provide information on a wide range of subjects, including art, architecture, biological sciences, economics and business, history, law, literature, mathematics, medicine, military history, performing arts, political science, social science, religion, and philosophy. The Premium Collection contains all of the features of the Core Collection plus electronic versions of the Oxford Companions Series.
Oxford Scholarship Online .
http:www.oxfordscholarship.com Oxford Scholarship Online contains the electronic versions of more than one thousand books about economics, finance, philosophy, political science, and religion that are published by the Oxford University Press. The site contains the full texts of these books plus advanced searching capabilities.
Art
Grove Art Online .
http://www.groveart.com This authoritative and comprehensive site provides information about the visual arts from prehistory to the present. In addition to its more than 130,000 art images, the site contains articles on a range of subjects, including fine arts, architecture, China, South America, Africa, and other world cultures, as well as biographies and links to museum and gallery Web sites.
British Isles
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online .
http://www.oxforddnb.com/ The online version of the revised Dictionary of National Biography is a highly authoritative reference source of biographical information. According to the site’s description, the dictionary contains more than “50,000 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to the year 2002.”
History
Daily Life Through History Online .
http://dailylife.greenwood.com/login.asp The site, created by Greenwood Electronic Media, contains articles and entries describing the religious, domestic, economic, material, political, recreational, and intellectual life of people throughout history. It contains information from The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life as well as other books, reference works, and primary source documents. Users can also access chronologies, time lines, and hundreds of Web links.
Music
Grove Music Online .
http://www.grovemusic.com The online version of the highly regarded The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians features more than forty-five hundred articles on musicians, instruments, and musical techniques, genres, and styles. In addition to its articles and biographies, the site provides more than five hundred audio clips of music, and links to images, sound, and related Web sites.
Science
Access Science: McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Online .
http://www.accessscience.com An online version of the McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology and McGraw Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms containing the information found in the latest editions of these books. Users can access biographies, more than three thousand articles, and science news.
ELECTRONIC DATABASES
Electronic databases usually do not have their own URLs. Instead, public, college, and university libraries subscribe to these databases and install them on their Web sites, where they are available only to library card holders or specified patrons. Readers can check library Web sites to see if these databases are installed, or can ask reference librarians if these databases are available.
Biography
Biography Resource Center Produced by Thomson Gale, Biography Resource Center includes biographies of more than 335,000 prominent people throughout history that were previously published in Thompson Gale reference sources. It also features full-text biographical articles from almost three hundred magazines.
Biography Resource Center: African Americans An electronic collection of almost 30,000 biographies of African Americans who have attained prominence in a number of areas, including the arts, business, government, history, literature, politics, and science. Produced by Thomson Gale, the database’s biographies were culled from the company’s Biography Resource Center database. In addition to the biographies, the database provides links to related Web sites, about two thousand portraits, and more than forty-two thousand full-text articles from almost three hundred magazines.
Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated Produced by H. W. Wilson Co., this database contains more than 140,000 narrative profiles, more than thirty-six thousand images, bibliographies, and links to related material. The database’s content derives from some of Wilson’s reference books, including Current Biography and the World Authors series, as well as from information licensed from other reference publishers.
History
American Broadsides and Ephemera Readex, a division of NewsBank, Inc., has created this digital collection of broadsides and other materials that is based on the American Antiquarian Society’s extensive collection of broadsides and ephemera. The database contains about fifteen thousand broadsides printed between 1820 and 1876 and about fifteen thousand pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. The single-sheet printed broadsides present information on a diverse range of subjects, including contemporary accounts of the Civil War, descriptions of natural disasters, and official proclamations. There are also several digitized ephemera collections, including colored cards advertising the routes and departures of clipper ships, trade cards describing goods and services available to the public, letterhead stationery, menus, and theater and music programs.
American History Online This database, produced by Facts On File, contains information about more than five hundred years of political, military, social, and cultural history. Its content derives from the company’s publications, including the Encyclopedia of American History, as well as the Landmark Documents in American History database. Users can access information about historical events and topics, biographies of significant people, more than thirteen hundred primary source documents, time lines, essays providing an overview of significant time periods, maps, charts, and more than thirteen hundred images. In addition, the database includes almost five hundred entries from the Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography, created by Greenwood Electronic Media, is an electronic collection of the almost four thousand narratives of former slaves that was compiled by the Works Progress Administration between 1936 and 1938. The narratives describe the experiences of slavery in the United States and what life was like after the slaves were freed. The narratives can be searched by surname, location, age, and subject index headings. The online collection provides links to related Web sites and enables users to listen to the archives of Folk Culture Sound recordings.
American Women’s History Online An electronic database focusing on five hundred years of American women’s history. Produced by Facts On File, the database contains more than twenty-three hundred biographies; entries about issues pertaining to women, such as court cases and legislation, events, and social issues; primary source documents; time lines containing hyperlinked entries, including a time line of women’s suffrage; more than six hundred images; maps; and charts.
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index The most extensive searchable database for English-language materials is ProQuest’s C19, which is linked to the full-text references it cites. C19 provides records for more than 11 million documents, including books and periodicals found in a variety of printed and microform editions, such as the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (a union catalog of materials published in all languages in the English-speaking world, 1801-1900); The Nineteenth Century from Chadwyck-Healey’s ongoing microform project (more than thirty thousand titles); Periodicals Index Online and Periodicals Archive Online (covering more than 3.5 million articles from more than nine hundred scholarly journals); an American Periodicals series; the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (the standard guide to British periodicals of the period, including more than ninety thousand article records); the British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers; and Palmer’s Index to the Times (1790-1905).
History Center: World History Center: World is an electronic collection compiled by Thomson Gale featuring information from the company’s publications as well as primary source documents and full-text articles from academic journals and periodicals.
History Reference Center A product of Ebsco Information Services, the History Reference Center is a comprehensive world history database. It contains the contents of more than one thousand encyclopedias, reference works, and nonfiction books, the full text of articles published in about sixty history periodicals, thousands of historical documents, biographies, photographs, maps, and historical film and video.
History Resource Center: U.S. History Resource Center: U.S., produced by Thomson Gale, provides primary source documents from digital archives, the full texts of current periodical articles, and multimedia reference articles about United States history. Database users also can access audio and video clips of historic speeches and events and link to digitized special collections.
MagillOnHistory Available on the EbscoHost platform, Salem Press’s MagillOnHistory database offers the full contents of the company’s Great Lives from History and Great Events from History series as well as entries from its many history and social science encyclopedias, such as the award-winning Ready Reference: American Indians, and its decades series, The Fifties, The Sixties, and The Seventies. Several thousand full-length essays cross-link to coverage of historical events with biographies about prominent persons from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Updated quarterly.
World History Online Created by Facts On File, World History Online covers the wide range of historical events from ancient times to the present. Its content includes more than ten thousand biographies; subject entries describing more than fourteen thousand events, places, and cultural events; hundreds of primary source documents; time lines, and more than 650 maps and charts.
Literature
Literary Reference Online An electronic examination of the lives and works of writers throughout history produced by Facts On File. Among its features are author biographies searchable by type of writing or time period and information about the plots, themes, social context, and importance of literary works. Literary Reference Online also contains a guide to more than thirty-five thousand literary characters, a glossary of literary terms, and articles on literary movements, literary groups, magazines, and newspapers.
Literature Resource Center Literature Resource Center, produced by Thomson Gale, includes biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from a wide range of literary disciplines, countries, and eras. The database also features plot summaries, the full text of articles from literary journals, and critical essays.
MagillOnLiteraturePlus Available on the EbscoHost platform, MagillOnLiteraturePlus is a comprehensive, integrated literature database produced by Salem Press. The database incorporates the full contents of Salem’s many reference works and, as of 2006, featured information from Masterplots (series I and II), Cyclopedia of World Authors, Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Cyclopedia of Literary Places, Critical Surveys of Literature, Magill’s Literary Annual, World Philosophers and Their Works, and Magill Book Reviews. The database examines more than thirty-five thousand works and more than ten thousand writers, poets, dramatists, essayists, and philosophers. Essays feature critical analysis as well as plot summaries, biographical information, character profiles, and authoritative listings of authors’ works and the dates of publication. The majority of the essays also include annotated bibliographies to help users conduct additional research. Updated quarterly.
