Adam Matthew Collections

Module I Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
Module II Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945

From early topographical sketches and pioneers’ accounts, to photographs of Buffalo Bill and his ‘Wild West’ stars, explore the fact and the fiction of westward expansion in America from the early eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Within this resource you can use the chronology and data maps to discover facts and events in the history of the American West and view visual resources in bespoke, searchable galleries.

Includes more than 8,600 digitized items produced for, about and, in some cases, by children and youth in the decades between the 1810s and the 1920s, a period in the history of juvenile culture regarded as the first ‘golden age’ of children’s literature. Spans a range of genres of literature for children, from early forms of devotional and instructional primers through illustrated rhymes, tales, stories, novels, and picture books.

China, America and the Pacific offers an extensive range of archival material connected to the trading and cultural relationships that emerged between China, America and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscript sources, rare printed texts, visual images, objects and maps document this fascinating history.

Rare and important highlights of the Wason Collection include five manuscript volumes of the Encyclopaedia Maxima (1547), a 1661 ‘jade book’ bearing an inscription by the Kangxi Emperor, the manuscripts resulting from the mission to China in 1792-4 of the British diplomat Lord Macartney, a set of publications of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (founded 1854), and a variety of 16th- and 17th-century books and manuscripts in Latin, French, Spanish and Portuguese, mostly written by Jesuit missionaries.

From sixteenth century origins as a trading venture to the East Indies, through to its rise a powerful company and de facto ruler of India, to its demise amid allegations of greed and corruption, the East India Company was an extraordinary force in global history for three centuries.

Includes interactive maps and original documents linked to essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion and Empire; and Race, Class and Colonialism, c1783-1969. The images are sources from the British Library, including the Oriental and India Office Collections at the British Library; the University of Birmingham Library; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the Public Record Office and the State Records, New South Wales, Australia.

Document types include: personal narratives, diaries, newspapers, posters, postcards, photographs, printed books, military and government files, ephemera, artwork, personal artifacts and film. Also includes secondary source materials such as interactive maps, and chronologies.

Modules include: Personal Experiences; Propaganda and Recruitment; Visual Perspectives and Narratives; A Global Conflict

The earliest documents in this collection are from the seventeenth century but the majority of the material originates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The material covering North America covers the varied frontier regions from fur trappers in Canada to cowboys in Texas and government in Baja California. It is divided into the frontier regions of the American East, the American Midwest, the American Southwest, California & Mexico and Canada. It covers the exploration of these regions followed by trade with Native peoples, colonial rivalries, expansion of government and new nations and the final settlement and 'closing' of the frontier.

Africa is mainly represented by its frontiers of the south with the British colonial expansion into modern day South Africa. There is also material relating to the exploration of West Africa and the colonial administration of Lagos.

The beginnings of European Australia and New Zealand are covered by British government documents, starting with Arthur Phillip and the penal colony at Sydney. The frontiers of other parts of Australia are also covered by documents from the UK National Archives and some material from Australian archives.

Finally, there is some material relating to Central America, specifically British Honduras (Belize), in the form of the George Arthur Papers. George Arthur’s career here relates to the other regions featured here as he spent time on the Canadian and Australian frontiers.

Digital facsimiles from the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland. Includes diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works. The collection documents the relationship between Britain and India in an empire where the Scots played a central role as traders, generals, missionaries, viceroys, governor-generals and East India Company officials. The dates of the documents range from 1710 to 1937.
 

Includes access to guidebooks and brochures, periodicals, travel agency correspondence, photographs, personal travel journals posters, and ephemeral items.

The Berg Collection is recognized as one of the finest literary research collections in the world, and the Victorian holdings are the undisputed jewel in its crown. A broad range of authors from across the nineteenth century make this an essential research tool for all scholars and students researching Victorian literature. Most of these unique manuscripts are unavailable in any medium elsewhere. Supplemented by some rare printed materials, including early editions annotated by the authors. Each author collection is included in its entirety, allowing users to browse and search the manuscripts. Authors include Matthew Arnold, the Brontes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Gissing, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Ruskin, Alfred Tennyson, and William Makepeace Thackeray.

Documents are sourced from the archive of The Worshipful Company of Stationers & Newspaper Makers, located at Stationers’ Hall in the City of London. Includes materials related to the history of the book as well as publishing history, the history of copyright and the workings of an early London Livery Company. Also includes rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century.

London Low Life is "A full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 19th and early 20th century London."(OCLC)

London Low Life (subtitled on the site as Street Culture, Social Reform and the Victorian Underworld) includes Fast literature, Street ephemera, posters, advertising, playbills, ballads and broadsides, Penny fiction, Cartoons, Chapbooks, Street Cries, Swell’s guides to London prostitution, gambling and drinking dens, Reform literature, andMaps and views of London. Among its topics are the underworld, slang, working-class culture, street literature, popular music, urban topography, ‘slumming’ , Prostitution, the Temperance Movement, social reform, Toynbee Hall andpolice and criminality. 

Listed as themes, you can explore: 
Street Literature and Popular Print 
Politics, Scandal and the News 
Disreputable London 
Sex, Prostitution and Obscenity 
Religion, Charity and Social Reform 
Crime and Justice 
Geography and the Built Environment 
Tourism 
Leisure and Entertainment 
Work, Industry and Commerce 
Women and Gender 

The database has a basic and advanced search. Pdfs of the items received may be downloaded and saved.Citations also will download into citation managers, including EndNote.

Edward Sylvester Morse went to Japan on a scientific expedition in 1877 and was eventually made Chair of Zoology at the new Imperial University of Tokyo. In addition to preserving the household records of a samurai family and many accounts of the tea ceremony, Morse made notes on subjects as diverse as shop signs, fireworks, hairpins, agricultural tools, artists’ studios, music, games, printing, carpentry, the Ainu, gardens, household construction, art and architecture.

The Folger Shakespeare Library has collected prompt books (scripts of the plays marked up for performance) of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as prompt books of other plays performed by influential Shakespearean actors, since the library’s founders, Henry and Emily Folger, purchased their first copy. Alongside these prompt books, the Folger has acquired other material related to performance, such as playbills, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, theatrical account books, photographs, sketches, costumes, props, cue sheets, lighting plots, musical scores, and the correspondence and writings of Shakespearean actors, directors, and managers.

This resource features over 1,000 prompt books of 34 of Shakespeare’s plays, including editions owned by notable actors and directors such as Charles and John Philip Kemble, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Laurence Olivier. Of these 1,000 prompt books, approximately 10% are for Hamlet, and 6% are for Merchant of Venice and Macbeth, respectively. Seventeen performances of particular cultural importance have been selected as case studies, featuring additional archival material such as photographs, costume designs and music scores. These case studies include David Garrick’s revised 1772 production of Hamlet, Henry Irving’s famous 1879 production of The Merchant of Venice, and Laurence Olivier’s Academy Award-winning cinema release of Hamlet in 1948.

Women's travel diaries and correspondence from the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. A wide variety of forms of travel writing is represented, ranging from unique manuscripts, diaries and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks and photographs. The resource includes visual material, including postcards, sketches and photographs. Sources cover a variety of topics including: architecture; art; British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war.

Includes travel accounts by: Mary Adams Abbott, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Annie Ware (Winsor) Allen, Mary Almy, Philinda Parsons (Rand) Anglemyer, Jessie Anglum, Valina Blake, Rettie Downer Blanchard, Mary Anderson Boit, Sarah (Knowles) Bolton, Tabitha Moffett Brown, Cannon Family, Cornelia James Cannon, Eleanor Cobb, Marion Osborne (Graves) Code, Catherine Coyne, Mary (Gardiner) Davis, Freda Mae (Rustemeyer) De Pillis, Julia Coolidge Deane, Josephine (Jackson) Driggs, Mary Reed Eastman, Maria Fay, Lucy H. Fosdick, Mehetable May (Dawes) Goddard, Eve Grantham Kingsland, Florence Ledyard (Cross) Kitchelt, Rowena (Morse) Langer, Lily Larkin, Elizabeth (Stone) May, Edna Bertha (Rankin) Mckinnon, Eva Alberta Mooar, Alice (Rich) Northrop, Chloe Owings, Harriet (Newell Felton) Parker, Helen Jackson Piper, Ida Pruitt, Ruth Elspeth Raymond, Mrs Edward H. Reeves, Lucile (Osborn) Rust, Lillian Schoedler, Grace (Gallatin) Seton-Thompson, Catherine (Filene) Shouse, Sarah Anne (Keegan) Shurtleff, Corinna Haven Lindon (Putnam) Smith, Louise Stoughton, Marie (Barrows) Streeter, M.L. Sullivan, Rosamond Thaxter, Ella Frances Thayer, Sarah Ann Walker, Evelyn Wendt. (OCLC)

Contains four modules: 

Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic 

This section explores the relationship between the popularity of Victorian magic shows and conjuring tricks and the emergence of séances and psychic phenomena in Britain and America. Contains material from the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature at Senate House, University of London, as well as the Harry Houdini archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas. 

Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks 

This section focuses on the world of travelling entertainment, which brought spectacle to vast audiences across Britain, American and Europe in the 19th and early 20th century. From big tops to carnivals, fairgrounds and dime museums, it covers the history of popular shows and exhibitions from both audience and professional perspectives. The collection features hundreds of posters, postcards, photographs, cabinet cards and illustrations, in addition to handbills, pamphlets, manuscripts, printed ephemera, memorabilia, rare books, children’s literature and memoirs of celebrity showpeople. 

Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment

This section features material on music halls, theatre (legitimate and illegitimate), pantomime, pleasure gardens, exhibitions, scientific institutions, and magic lanterns shows and dioramas. Also includes rare books, periodicals aimed at industry and fans, titles from the scarce popular series ‘Dicks’ Standard Plays’, posters and playbills, visual ephemera, and the archives of May Moore Duprez, the American music hall star who topped international bills with her ‘Jolly Little Dutch Girl’ act.

Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema

Provides thorough coverage of Victorian and Edwardian visual entertainments, early optics, magic lantern shows, panoramas, dioramas, early photography, and early motion pictures. The source material is drawn from the collections of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. Based at the University of Exeter, the UK’s largest research center for the history of international cinema and pre-cinema.

Offers insight into the phenomenon of international expositions by presenting official records, monographs, personal accounts and ephemera for more than 200 fairs. The first fair represented in this resource is what many consider the first world’s fair, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations at the Crystal Palace in London, 1851. The latest case study is Montreal’s Expo 1967, but there are documents as recent as Milan’s (successful) bid to host Expo 2015. The largest concentration of documents relate to fairs from the late Victorian-early Edwardian era of 1880-1920; the ‘golden age’ of expositions when neighboring cities raced to outdo each other – sometimes hosting rival fairs in the same year. While there are documents for host nations from every continent, the historical focus of international expositions (and therefore this resource) is Northern European, North American and – in the twentieth century in particular – East Asian.

Module I Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
Module II Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945

From early topographical sketches and pioneers’ accounts, to photographs of Buffalo Bill and his ‘Wild West’ stars, explore the fact and the fiction of westward expansion in America from the early eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Within this resource you can use the chronology and data maps to discover facts and events in the history of the American West and view visual resources in bespoke, searchable galleries.

China, America and the Pacific offers an extensive range of archival material connected to the trading and cultural relationships that emerged between China, America and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscript sources, rare printed texts, visual images, objects and maps document this fascinating history.

From sixteenth century origins as a trading venture to the East Indies, through to its rise a powerful company and de facto ruler of India, to its demise amid allegations of greed and corruption, the East India Company was an extraordinary force in global history for three centuries.

Includes interactive maps and original documents linked to essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion and Empire; and Race, Class and Colonialism, c1783-1969. The images are sources from the British Library, including the Oriental and India Office Collections at the British Library; the University of Birmingham Library; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the Public Record Office and the State Records, New South Wales, Australia.

Document types include: personal narratives, diaries, newspapers, posters, postcards, photographs, printed books, military and government files, ephemera, artwork, personal artifacts and film. Also includes secondary source materials such as interactive maps, and chronologies.

Modules include: Personal Experiences; Propaganda and Recruitment; Visual Perspectives and Narratives; A Global Conflict

Consists of the complete run of documents in the series DO 133, DO 134 and FCO 37, as well as all documents covering the Indian subcontinent in the FO 371 series. Events covered include independence and partition, the Indian annexation of Hyderabad and Goa, war between India and Pakistan, tensions and war between India and China, the consolidation of power of the Congress Party in India, military rule in Pakistan, the turbulent independence of Bangladesh and the development of nuclear weapons in the region.

The files address these events from the standpoint of British officialdom. In addition to high politics, they deal with such issues as economic and industrial development, trade, migration, visits to South Asia by British politicians and by South Asian politicians to Britain and elsewhere, education, administrative reorganisation, conflict over language, aid, political parties, agriculture and irrigation, and television and the press. Together they form a resource of fundamental value to scholars and students of modern South Asia.

Digital facsimiles from the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland. Includes diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works. The collection documents the relationship between Britain and India in an empire where the Scots played a central role as traders, generals, missionaries, viceroys, governor-generals and East India Company officials. The dates of the documents range from 1710 to 1937.
 

Includes access to guidebooks and brochures, periodicals, travel agency correspondence, photographs, personal travel journals posters, and ephemeral items.

Documents are sourced from the archive of The Worshipful Company of Stationers & Newspaper Makers, located at Stationers’ Hall in the City of London. Includes materials related to the history of the book as well as publishing history, the history of copyright and the workings of an early London Livery Company. Also includes rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century.

Launched in 1981 by the University of Sussex as a rebirth of the original 1937 Mass Observation, its founders' aim was to document the social history of Britain by recruiting volunteers to write about their lives and opinions. It is one of the most important sources available for qualitative social data in the UK.

Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict. Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is a ‘best guess’ reconstruction based on modern scholarship of the 1599 theater of the same name that William Shakespeare part owned, wrote for and played in. The new theater stands not far from the original Globe on London's Southbank. The performance archive shows how productions at the reconstructed Globe and Sam Wanamaker Playhouse were conceived, rehearsed, dressed, marketed, sound tracked, how props were used, how the audiences behaved and the theater history and performance lessons that were observed and learned. The architectural archive contains material on how the reconstruction of the theater was designed and planned and some of the conversations and debates that informed construction decisions.

The Folger Shakespeare Library has collected prompt books (scripts of the plays marked up for performance) of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as prompt books of other plays performed by influential Shakespearean actors, since the library’s founders, Henry and Emily Folger, purchased their first copy. Alongside these prompt books, the Folger has acquired other material related to performance, such as playbills, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, theatrical account books, photographs, sketches, costumes, props, cue sheets, lighting plots, musical scores, and the correspondence and writings of Shakespearean actors, directors, and managers.

This resource features over 1,000 prompt books of 34 of Shakespeare’s plays, including editions owned by notable actors and directors such as Charles and John Philip Kemble, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Laurence Olivier. Of these 1,000 prompt books, approximately 10% are for Hamlet, and 6% are for Merchant of Venice and Macbeth, respectively. Seventeen performances of particular cultural importance have been selected as case studies, featuring additional archival material such as photographs, costume designs and music scores. These case studies include David Garrick’s revised 1772 production of Hamlet, Henry Irving’s famous 1879 production of The Merchant of Venice, and Laurence Olivier’s Academy Award-winning cinema release of Hamlet in 1948.

Documents the communist world from the Russian Revolution until the 1980s. The digitized film covers all aspects of socialist life from society, war, culture, the Cold War, memory and contemporaneous views on current affairs. Footage includes documentaries, newsreels and feature films. Geographically the films deal with the Soviet Union alongside significant groupings of material on Vietnam, China, Korea, the German Democratic Republic and Eastern Europe, Britain, Spain, Latin America and Cuba. Includes access to three modules: Module I: Wars & Revolutions, Module II: Newsreels & Cinemagazines, and Module III: Culture & Society.

Women's travel diaries and correspondence from the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. A wide variety of forms of travel writing is represented, ranging from unique manuscripts, diaries and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks and photographs. The resource includes visual material, including postcards, sketches and photographs. Sources cover a variety of topics including: architecture; art; British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war.

Includes travel accounts by: Mary Adams Abbott, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Annie Ware (Winsor) Allen, Mary Almy, Philinda Parsons (Rand) Anglemyer, Jessie Anglum, Valina Blake, Rettie Downer Blanchard, Mary Anderson Boit, Sarah (Knowles) Bolton, Tabitha Moffett Brown, Cannon Family, Cornelia James Cannon, Eleanor Cobb, Marion Osborne (Graves) Code, Catherine Coyne, Mary (Gardiner) Davis, Freda Mae (Rustemeyer) De Pillis, Julia Coolidge Deane, Josephine (Jackson) Driggs, Mary Reed Eastman, Maria Fay, Lucy H. Fosdick, Mehetable May (Dawes) Goddard, Eve Grantham Kingsland, Florence Ledyard (Cross) Kitchelt, Rowena (Morse) Langer, Lily Larkin, Elizabeth (Stone) May, Edna Bertha (Rankin) Mckinnon, Eva Alberta Mooar, Alice (Rich) Northrop, Chloe Owings, Harriet (Newell Felton) Parker, Helen Jackson Piper, Ida Pruitt, Ruth Elspeth Raymond, Mrs Edward H. Reeves, Lucile (Osborn) Rust, Lillian Schoedler, Grace (Gallatin) Seton-Thompson, Catherine (Filene) Shouse, Sarah Anne (Keegan) Shurtleff, Corinna Haven Lindon (Putnam) Smith, Louise Stoughton, Marie (Barrows) Streeter, M.L. Sullivan, Rosamond Thaxter, Ella Frances Thayer, Sarah Ann Walker, Evelyn Wendt. (OCLC)

Offers insight into the phenomenon of international expositions by presenting official records, monographs, personal accounts and ephemera for more than 200 fairs. The first fair represented in this resource is what many consider the first world’s fair, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations at the Crystal Palace in London, 1851. The latest case study is Montreal’s Expo 1967, but there are documents as recent as Milan’s (successful) bid to host Expo 2015. The largest concentration of documents relate to fairs from the late Victorian-early Edwardian era of 1880-1920; the ‘golden age’ of expositions when neighboring cities raced to outdo each other – sometimes hosting rival fairs in the same year. While there are documents for host nations from every continent, the historical focus of international expositions (and therefore this resource) is Northern European, North American and – in the twentieth century in particular – East Asian.