English

Donell Callender

E-mail:
Phone: 806.742.2238 ext. 267
Location: Library, Mezzanine 112
Mailstop: MS 40002

 

What is a Primary Text?

Primary sources include written documents, images and artifacts from the period being studied. Primary sources need not be replicas or facsimiles of the original. For example, the text of the Declaration of Independence is still a primary source when written or typed out on a website. Depending on the project, some materials that we would often consider secondary sources can also serve as primary sources. An example: if one is using census data from the 1855 US census as support for an argument on poverty in American literature, then the census is a secondary source; but if one is analyzing the census itself, then the census is a primary source.

Full-text Databases of Literary Texts

Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collectioncontains the following

 

African American Poetry

Early American Fiction, 1789-1875

English Poetry

Twentieth-century American Poetry

American Drama, 1714-1915

Early English Prose Fiction

Faber Poetry

Twentieth-century English Poetry

American Poetry

Eighteenth-century Fiction

King James Bible

Nineteenth-century Fiction

Canadian Poetry

English Drama

    

 

LION (Literature Online) Fulltext

Eighteenth-century Collections Online (ECCO)

 

Full-text Databases of Literary, Cultural, or Historical Texts

America’s Magazines

America’s Newspapers

American Periodical Series Online

Dictionary of the Old English Corpus

Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926

Periodical Archive Online

 

Note: What to do if these databases don’t provide the information you need?

A number of print indexes indicate where literary texts are reprinted in anthologies or magazines. Check James Harner’s Guide to Literary Research (call no. PR 83 .H34) for a list of such tools.

 

Full-text Databases of Theatre

Theatre in Video

 

Full-text Databases of Art and Music

ARTstor

Classical Music Library

Smithsonian Global Sound

 

Descriptive Bibliography of Editions of Books

Bibliography of American Literature

 

Digital Scholarly Editions

NINES Nineteenth-century Scholarship Online

*developed with Ann R. Hawkins