Overview
These comprehensive online resources offer more than 150,000 early American books, pamphlets, broadsides and rare printed materials. Featuring extensive indexing and full bibliographic information, they together illuminate centuries of American history, literature, culture and daily life. Unique and authoritative, these fully searchable products enable researchers to browse and explore America’s past in unprecedented ways.
Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922: From the Library Company of Philadelphia
Created from the Library Company’s acclaimed Afro-Americana Collection—an accumulation that began with Benjamin Franklin and steadily increased throughout its entire history—this unique online resource will provide researchers with more than 13,000 printed works. These essential books, pamphlets and broadsides, including many… Learn more.
American Children’s Books, Series 1-3, 1654-1819
Research involving children’s books was initially driven by scholarly interest in the concept and history of childhood. But when scholars delved into early American children’s books, they found that such works provide extraordinary insight into many other fields of research. American… Learn more.
American Sermons, Series 1 & 2, 1652-1819
In the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, ministers and preachers delivered powerful weekly sermons that were often printed and distributed across the burgeoning colonies and towns of early America. In many communities, these sermons were the cornerstone of civic and… Learn more.
African Americans and Jim Crow: Repression and Protest, 1883-1922
African Americans and Jim Crow: Repression and Protest offers more than 1,000 fully searchable printed works critical for insight into African-American culture and life from the beginning of Jim Crow to World War I and beyond. In the previous period—from the… Learn more.
African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle, 1865-1883
African Americans and Reconstruction: Hope and Struggle provides nearly 1,400 fully searchable printed works essential for understanding the African-American struggle for identity from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of Jim Crow. In the period immediately following the… Learn more.
American Broadsides and Ephemera (1749-1900)
Built in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society, this full-color digital edition offers fully searchable facsimiles of 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1749 and 1900. Featuring documents produced locally across the country,… Learn more.
American Pamphlets, Series 1, 1820-1922: From the New-York Historical Society
Created to cajole, convince, inform and edify the American people on nearly every issue of the day, pamphlets have had a powerful impact on American life. As America’s population grew rapidly and printing costs declined, the use of pamphlets exploded in… Learn more.
Black Authors, 1556-1922: Imprints from the Library Company of Philadelphia
Created from the renowned holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Black Authors, 1556-1922, is the most complete and compelling collection of its kind. It offers more than 550 fully catalogued and searchable works by black authors from the Americas, Europe… Learn more.
Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920: Imprints from the Library Company of Philadelphia
Created from the renowned holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920, is the largest and most significant collection of its kind. More than 1,200 fully cataloged and searchable books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera cover the… Learn more.
Early American Imprints
Critical to the study of every aspect of early America, Early American Imprints contains virtually every known book, pamphlet and broadside published in America between 1640 and the first two decades of the 19th century—more than 75,000 printed items in all. This… Learn more.
Native American Indians, 1645-1819
By the late 17th century, Britain had established colonies along the New England coast and Chesapeake Bay, alongside small groups of Dutch and Swedish settlers. Many of the region’s Indigenous inhabitants were pushed West, where they joined hundreds of other tribes… Learn more.
Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900
The nineteenth century witnessed unprecedented growth and sweeping changes in the dramatic arts with the number of theaters in the United States growing a hundredfold. Music hall and variety theater came to rival the “legitimate” theater in popularity. Romance gave way… Learn more.
The American Civil War Collection, 1860-1922: From the American Antiquarian Society
From the comprehensive holdings of the American Antiquarian Society comes this remarkable digital edition of its widely used Civil War materials. Featuring more than 13,500 works published between 1860 and 1922, this fully searchable collection offers printed items addressing all facets… Learn more.
The American Slavery Collection, 1820-1922: From the American Antiquarian Society
Winner of the 2017 Outstanding Academic Title Award from the Association of College & Research Libraries' Choice magazine!
This digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s extraordinary holdings of slavery and abolition materials delivers more than 3,600 works published over the… Learn more.
