English 472: American Literature and the Civil War
Bibliographies and General Guides To Research
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature.
1939- .
Ref. Z 2011 .M69
Literary Research Guide : A Guide to Reference Sources in English Literary Studies. James L. Harner.
Ref. Z2011 .H34 2002
A Reference Guide for English Studies. Michael J. Marcuse.
Ref. [q.] PR56 .M37 1990
A Research Guide for Undergraduate Students: English and American Literature. Nancy L. Baker and Nancy Huling.
Ref. PR56 .B34 2000
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Introductory and Background Information
African American Authors, 1745-1945: Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Emmanuel S. Nelson, ed.
Ref. PS153.N5 A32 2000
African-American Writers: A Dictionary. Shari Dorantes Hatch and Michael R. Strickland, eds.
Ref. PS153.N5 A3444 2000
Afro-American Writers before the Harlem Renaissance. Trudier Harris, ed.
Ref. [q.] PS221 .D5 v.50
American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide from Colonial Times to the Present. 5 vols. Lina Mainiero, ed.
Ref. PS147 .A4
American Writers; A Collection of Literary Biographies. 8 vols. Leonard Unger, ed.
Ref. PS129 .A55
Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature. George Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and Phillip Leininger, eds.
Ref. PS21 .R4 1991
Black American Poets and Dramatists: Before the Harlem Renaissance. Harold Bloom, ed.
Online from NetLibrary
Black American Women Poets and Dramatists. Harold Bloom, ed.
Online from NetLibrary
The Cambridge History of American Literature. 4 vols. William Peterfield Trent et al, eds.
Ref. PS88 .C3
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory : Approaches, Scholars, Terms.
Irene R. Makaryk, general editor and compiler.
PN81 .E63 1993
A Handbook to Literature. C. H. Holman.
Ref. PN41 .H6 1986
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Michael
Groden and Martin Kreiswirth, eds.
Ref. PN81 .J554 1994
Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Multiple volumes 1981-
Ref. [q.] PN761 .N5
Oxford companion volumes:
- The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. James D. Hart. Ref. PS153.N5 O96 1997 and online from NetLibrary
- The Oxford Companion to American Literature. William Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Smith, eds. PS21 .H3 1995
- The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. Cathy N. Davidson et al, eds. Ref. PS147 .O94 1995
The Pen is Ours: A Listing of Writings by and about African-American Women before 1910 with Secondary Bibliography to the Present. Jean Fagan Yellin and Cynthia D. Bond, compilers.
PS153.N5 Y45
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Biographical Information
Biography and Genealogy Master Index.
An electronic version of the printed index, containing citations to useful information
in standard biographical sources. It is a great place to begin
searching for biographical information about anyone.
American National Biography. 1999. 24 vols. plus supplement.
The major national biography covering persons important in the history of the United States.
Ref. CT213 .A68 1999
To find biographical books about a certain person, search in LUCIA, for the person using the Subject begins with option. Browse through the subject headings to find the subheading which corresponds to your specific interests. Be alert when searching foreign names, names of rulers, or names of persons in religious orders, as you may need to use varying forms of these names. Many times, LUCIA has cross-references for these.
For autobiographical books by and about a certain person, search in LUCIA for persons as Author. Be sure to consult the library's guide on Biographical Information for further ideas and information.
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Historical Context
Dictionary of American History. 10 vols. Stanley Cutler et al, eds.
Ref. [q.] E174 .D52 2003
Encyclopedia of American Social History. 3 vols. Mary Kupiec Cayton, Elliot J. Goru, and Peter W. Williams, eds.
Ref. HN57 .E58 1993
Encyclopedia of Civil War Biographies. 3 vols. James M. McPherson, ed.
[q.] E467 .E53 2000
Historical Dictionary of the Civil War 2 vols. Terry L. Jones.
Ref. E468 .J777 2002
The Oxford Companion to United States History. Paul S. Boyer et al, eds.
Ref. E174 .O94 2001
The People's Chronology : a Year-by-Year Record of Human Events from
Prehistory to the Present. James Trager.
Ref. D11 .T83 1994
Who Was When? : A Dictionary of Contemporaries.
Miriam Allen de Ford and Joan S. Jackson.
Ref. CT103 .D4 1976
What historians call primary source material will provide you with even more information on context. It's not always easy to say what is a primary source; be sure to check with your professor and discuss just what might be considered primary source material for the purpose of your research. Generally, primary source materials are considered to be those things--speeches, articles, diaries, news reports--produced at the time of the events you are investigating. The material produced after the fact to explain or explore an event is generally referred to as secondary source material.
Primary material from books:
One way to locate primary source materials is to use the Guided Search and include any of the following terms using the Subject Keywords option. Try some of these: Try some of these:
- correspondence
- diaries
- documents
- letters
- memoirs
- narratives
- sources
Primary material from articles:
Poole's Index to Periodical Literature. 1802-1881 with supplements to 1906.
Indexes articles from British and American magazines.
Reference Indexes
Newspapers:
New York Times. 1851-current.
Considered to be the American paper of record. The New York Times
is on microfilm and on the web.
New York Times Index--Reference Indexes/Microform Area
New York Times (1851-2001)
Current issues available from many sources: see BESS
Primary Source Databases:
American Civil War: Letters & Diaries
Contains 460 authors and approximately 32,000 pages of letters, diaries and memoirs. Searchable by names of people, places, battle, day, and more.
North American Women's Letters & Diaries
"Includes the immediate experiences of 442 women, as revealed in approximately 50,000 pages of diaries and letters" dating from the Colonial era to 1950. Searchable by authors, sources, years, personal events, and historical events.
Women Writer's Project
Full text collection of writing by women covering a period from 1400 to 1850.
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Finding Books
To find items owned by the library, search LUCIA. Try a Subject begins with search, for example, american literature. LUCIA will list other subject headings (and subheadings) which may be of interest. LUCIA will also suggest related terms which can also be searched. For advanced research you should consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH, a multi-volume guide to the terms commonly used in catalogs like ours. The LCSH can be found on top of the Ready Reference shelves behind the reference desk on the first floor of the library.
To combine terms for a different kind of search, try Keyword Anywhere. LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search for a phrase, like civil war, by searching with quotation marks around the phrase, as in "civil war". You can search for individual terms connected by logical operators like AND or OR. You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH. You can also search for multiple forms of words by using an asterisk; try a search like this one for "civil war" and litera*. The asterisk acts as a truncation symbol and tells LUCIA to search for all words starting with litera; literature, literary, and so on. You can target your search even more effectively by telling LUCIA to look for the terms in the subject area of the records; compare the Keyword Anywhere search with the Subject Keyword search.
Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system that organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd to find out where a book might be on the shelves.
Search LUCIA for materials in our library; try WorldCat to find materials beyond the Mudd. Make sure you've thoroughly searched our library before going to WorldCat. See a reference librarian if you need help.
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Finding Articles
The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. Some of our indexes include:
Arts and Humanities Citation Index
A citation index to articles in the arts and humanities. Citation indexes allow you to trace the number of times a particular source has been cited. Covers 1980 to the present.
EBSCOhost.
Follow the link for EBSCOhost Web. EBSCOhost provides a single Web source for multiple databases; you might want to select the Academic Search Elite. Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals. Use the Go or Back button on your browser after exiting EBSCOhost to leave the system.
Expanded Academic ASAP.
Broad coverage of academic periodicals. Includes full text of some articles.
Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.
The essential indices to the scholarly literature of world history, in
books and
proceedings as well as journals. Include short summaries of the works indexed.
Humanities Index. 1974-1994.
General index to the humanities literature. More likely to cover interdisciplinary aspects. Before 1974, see International Index to Periodicals.
Reference Indexes
MLA International Bibliography. 1963-
A leading source for the field of literary studies. Wide ranging index to just about anything of a scholarly nature related to literature and language.
Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, look in LUCIA for the title of the journal or newspaper to see if the library owns it. You should also search BESS, an automated search of the library's full-text databases, for electronic copies of articles.
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Web Resources
AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History
A substantial list from the University of Kansas.
American Memory
Sources from the Library of Congress. Includes some of the best historical material on the web, including The Nineteenth Century in Print: The Making of America in Books and Periodicals.
American Treasures of the Library of Congress
A list with links to some of the major documents held in the collections of the Library of Congress. Sorted by major periods.
Documenting the America South
Includes a variety of narratives, including slave narratives, and a library of Southern literature.
Dickenson Electronic Archives
A combination of free and passworded materials.
Internet Resources for English
From librarians of the Mudd.
Making of America
A collaborative effort of the University of Michigan and Cornell
University.
Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture
A multi-media archive.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 from the Scout Report Archives
A classified listing of high-quality web sites on the period.
Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
From the
Virginia Center for Digital History
Voice of the Shuttle.
One of the most widely used sources for information on the humanities and literatures.
Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:
It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources, or this bibliography on Evaluation of Information Sources. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.
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Style Manuals
Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.
Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to
other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
The guide for any academic papers written in the literatures and languages.
RRef. LB2369 .G53 2003
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About Research in American Literature and the Civil War
While you will find material on your topic in resources for literary studies, you may also want to consider searching for material from other fields, like history, gender studies, and more. In addition to consulting catalogs and indexes, be sure to look at bibliographies supplied at the end of relevant articles, chapters, and books, and to search library catalogs for book-length bibliographies.
Remember that in any written work you produce your sources must be fully documented. It may help to look at the information on style before you start your research, so that you will have all the details required for documentation at hand when you need them. Then as you write, go back to the resources on style for details on the exact format of your citations.
The sources listed in this guide were chosen for the broad coverage they provide. Along with direct links to Internet resources and searchable databases, there are links to LUCIA, the library's online catalog. Be sure to check the library's Electronic Resources page regularly to see new databases and indexes; some of these will only be available to users on the Lawrence campus. Also, you may want to take a look at the following guides:
- Biographies
- History 650: The Practice of History - Primary Sources
- History 650: The Practice of History - Secondary Sources
Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.
As always, if you have any questions be sure to ask a Reference Librarian.
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Definitions of terms and abbreviations:
Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready reference, shelves behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Current issues; Level A
Periodical Back Files = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and scores; at end of classes in other collections
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