The October 2019 issue of Library Journal includes a substantial review of Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900. Reviewer Rob Tench of Old Dominion University notes that the collection’s “interdisciplinary nature expands appeal to anyone researching the myriad aspects of 19th-century American life and culture.” Here's a brief excerpt from the full review:

Nineteenth-Century American Drama is a comprehensive collection of 4,700 American plays published or produced between 1820 and 1900….The plays reflect their time, providing contemporary and unfiltered perspectives about 19th-century issues such as women’s movements, temperance, westward expansion, immigration, war, industrialism, slavery, reconstruction, and abolition….This is an excellent resource of 19th-century primary materials about American theater, life, culture, history, literature, economics, political science, religious and ethnic studies, and sociology.

This unique new eBook offers these five original articles by faculty specializing in African American history, literature and culture:

• Commemorating W.E.B. Du Bois and “The Crisis”: Reflections on Religion and American History

• Excavating Antebellum Black Politics via America’s Historical Newspapers

• The Robinson Interregnum: The Black Press Responds to the Signing of Jackie Robinson

• Writing the David Ruggles Biography: Newspapers Help Complete the Portrait of a Radical Black Abolitionist

• A True Tale of Adultery, Murder, and Dismemberment in Black Women's History

Each author provides a first-hand description of the discovery of valuable primary sources in Readex databases, including African American Newspapers, African American Periodicals, Afro-Americana Imprints, and other digital collections.

Download the eBook.

The September release of Territorial Papers of the United States, 1765-1953, includes several important collections of letters and correspondence between territories and the executive branch. The subjects under discussion range from suffrage in Indiana Territory to American involvement in the Mexican Revolution to the leasing of school lands in Mississippi Territory.

Bill Extending Right of Suffrage, Feb. 2, 1809

Kentucky Senator and President pro tempore John Pope (1770-1845) read into the Senate record on Feb. 2, 1889, a bill extending the right of suffrage to certain citizens of Indiana Territory.

That the citizens of the Indiana territory, entitled to vote for representatives to the general assembly thereof, shall, at the time of electing their representatives to the said general assembly, also elect one delegate from the said territory to the congress of the United States, who shall possess the same powers heretofore granted to the delegates from the several territories of the United States.

The bill, which goes on to describe various administrative functions of the general assembly and duties of other territorial bureaucracies, would re-emerge from the committee process two years later.

Senate. No. XXV. Bill To Extend Suffrage, etc., Feb. 8, 1811

Joanne B. Freeman, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, is a leading expert on early American politics and culture. In this video, the newest in our Scholars Speak series, Freeman describes the essential role that primary source materials have played in her own research. She also discusses the lasting benefits of studying the humanities.

The author of the award-winning Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic and The Essential Hamilton, Freeman is particularly well known for her expertise in dirty, nasty politics. Her most recent book, The Field of Blood: Congressional Violence and the Road to Civil War was a New York Times notable book of 2018, one of Smithsonian’s top ten history books of 2018, and a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. A co-host of the popular American history podcast BackStory, her online course, “The American Revolution,” has been viewed in homes and classrooms around the world.

For more information about Readex newspaper databases, please contact Readex Marketing.