LibGuides: ENGL 3998: Late-Victorian and Modern Drama: Primary Sources

Finding Archival Collections

ArchiveGrid
ArchiveGrid includes over 7 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,400 archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.

NYPL Library for the Performing Arts

About

The NYPL Library for the Performing Arts houses one of the most extensive research collections in theatre, film, dance, music, and recorded sound.

The Library is open for browsing of its circulating collections. To request access to special collections material, users will need to create a special collections account. It is encouraged that patrons to make an appointment with the relevant division.

The Library for the Performing Arts is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza (entrance at 111 Amsterdam between 64th and 65th) - between the Metropolitan Opera and the Lincoln Center Theater.

Divisions

Billy Rose Theatre Division: offers walk-in access to their general research collections. Researchers may access special collections by emailing theatre@nypl.org or by booking a virtual consultation with one of our librarians, who will make an appointment for you to visit the Library for the Performing Arts.
Jerome Robbins Dance Division: At this time they are not offering walk-in access to their research collections, but researchers can still access them by booking a virtual consultation with one of our librarians, who will make an appointment for you to visit the Library for the Performing Arts. For further inquiries you can contact dance@nypl.org.
Music Division: At this time, the Music Division is not offering walk-in access to our research collections, but researchers can still access them by booking a virtual consultation with one of our librarians, who will make an appointment for you to visit the Library for the Performing Arts. For more information you can email music@nypl.org.
Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound: At this time, they are not offering walk-in access to their research collections, but researchers can access them by booking a virtual consultation with one of our librarians, who will make an appointment for you to visit the Library for the Performing Arts. For more information you can email recordedsound@nypl.org.
Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT): offers walk-in access to their research collections, but for faster access we encourage researchers to make an appointment. For an appointment, please call (212) 870-1642 or email toft@nypl.org.

You can find the general regulations for researchers here.

NYPL Performing Arts Library: Digital Collection

NYPL Digital Collections
Digitized materials from all of the New York Public Library's archival collections.

Digital Collections

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Digital Archive
Contains over 70,000 items representing 40,000 artists are now digitally available, dating back to BAM's opening in the 1860s. Researchers can create personalized collections of digital items based on specific artists, companies, or eras. The archives contains items such a playbills, posters, audio recordings, photographs, and other ephemera.
Digital Public Library of America
Contains millions of items - photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more—from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Users can browse and search the DPLA’s collections by timeline, map, format, and topic; save items to customized lists; and share their lists with others.

Everyday Life and Women in America c.1800-1920
This digital collection provides access to rare primary source material on American social, cultural, and popular history from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes, emphasizing conduct of life and domestic management literature, the daily lives of women and men, and contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
History Vault: Slavery & the Law
Provides access to primary source, cross-searchable, full-text, full-image documents on widely studied topics in 19th and 20th-century American history. Content is applicable to research in history, African American studies, women's studies, political science, social sciences, sociology, and international studies. Contents include NAACP Papers' Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records; Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975; Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, Africa and Middle East, 1960-1969; Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) records, 1880-1930; and more.

Library of Congress Search
Search across digitized materials from the Library of Congress, including materials previously included in American Memory. Facet on date and location to narrow down.
Performing Arts Databases at Library of Congress

Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries
Previously unpublished letters and diaries of women of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century. The women wrote from the many places throughout the U.S. in which they lived, traveled, worked, studied, and observed the lives and historical events around them--including John Brown's raid; the activities of the Ku Klux Klan; numerous wars; experiences in a Colorado mining camp, through Nancy Colburn Hartford's log of her time there; frontier conditions in Florida in 1830, as lived and described by Julia Ann Draper Lazelle; World War I Army training camps and the American Expeditionary Forces in France, through Lizzie Bliss Dewey's correspondence with friends in service; charitable work in the South, documented by the Chase sisters' writings of their experiences.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
North American Women's Letters and Diaries (NAWLD) includes the immediate experiences of 107 women, as revealed in more than 9,000 pages of iaries and letters. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. When complete, the collection will include more than 150,000 pages of primary material spanning more than 300 years.

NYPL Digital Collections
Acts as a living database of items digitized from the New York Public Library’s collections. New materials are added every day, among them prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, and streaming video. You can search images (with filters for date, genre, and other key features), or browse by collection.
Music in Gotham
A CUNY Graduate Center project that chronicles the New York music and theatre scene from 1862 to 1875. Drawing on newspapers and periodical sources as well as private diaries, beginning with the years following those covered in Vera Brodsky Lawrence’s three-volume set, Strong on Music: The New York Musical Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong. Contains searchable database and narrative, covering the performance and reception, with details on cost of performances, venues, producers, cast members, dancers, etc.
OldNYC
Allows you to explore historical photos from the NYPL’s Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s collection. Photographs are attached, by location, to points on a map of all five boroughs of New York City.

Victorian popular culture
Consists of four components: Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic; Circuses, Sideshows and "Freaks;" Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment, and Moving pictures, optical entertainments & the advent of cinema. Includes full-text, full-color reproductions of books, ephemera, handbills, pamphlets, photos, posters, programs, scripts, and other types of materials. Coverage is most extensive for Great Britain; but there is also a fair range of materials for the U.S.A.

Historical Newspapers

African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
African American periodicals, 1825-1995 enables users to search many periodicals by and about African Americans. The collection is based upon James P. Danky's African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (Harvard, 1998). Drawn from holdings of the Wisconsin Historical Society, African American Periodicals ranges over more than 150 years of American life, from slavery during the Antebellum Period to the modern era.
America's Historical Newspapers
For searching and browsing American newspapers published in three centuries, America's Historical Newspapers is the most comprehensive online resource available. Continually expanding, it offers searchable digital facsimiles of thousands of titles from all 50 states. With eyewitness reporting, editorials, letters, advertisements, obituaries and much more, this acclaimed collection uniquely chronicles the evolution of American culture and daily life from 1690 to the recent past. America's Historical Newspapers features Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922; 20th-Century American Newspapers, Series 1-3; and American Ethnic Newspapers. The latter includes African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980; and Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Full-text and full-image articles from major American newspapers: Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore Sun (1837-1985), Boston Globe, Call and Post (1934-1991), Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor (1908-1997), Irish Times (1859-2009), Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Norfolk Journal and Guide (1921-2003), Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001), San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922), Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Scotsman (1817-1950). Every page in PDF files.
The Times Digital Archive
Online, full-text facsimile of the Times (London) and its predecessors, The Daily universal register (1785-1787) and the Times, or, Daily universal register (1788). The archive supports research across multiple disciplines and areas of interest, including business, humanities, political science, philosophy, and numerous other subjects with coverage of all major international historical events.
The Historical Guardian and Observer
The Guardian (1821-2003) and The Observer (1791-2003) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
Vogue Archive
A complete searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month. Every article, cover, photo shoot, illustration and advertisement has been digitized to the highest standard, with rich indexing enabling you to find images by designer and brand names

ENGL 3998: Late-Victorian and Modern Drama

Research Librarian

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