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Literature & Theater

Scottish poet Thomas Campbell wrote, "To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die." While each life is unique, some experiences and emotions—such as fear, excitement, love, and loss—are universal...

Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations -National Women’s History Alliance 2025 Women’s History Month theme Researchers will uncover diverse voices to build historical...

Zitkála-Šá (February 22, 1876 – January 26, 1938) was an extraordinary woman of many things and many names. She was a Yankton Dakota adorned with the Indigenous name Zitkála-Šá which translates to...

This article, originally published May 13, 2020, has been updated. For many years, faculty and students have been asking Readex to “bring history to life” in new ways. “You have tremendous products,”...

Part 1 recounted the unsolved murder of Joseph Brown Elwell, a wealthy man known for his card playing and womanizing. The Elwell case motivated S.S. Van Dine to write detective stories in the 1920s...

Celebrate Women’s History Month with a look back through the Readex blog archive featuring articles from Readex digitized primary source collections. Read on to discover and celebrate the...

The literature of Early America is a window which gives us a view into major events and everyday minutiae of the time that helped shape the United States into what it is today. In its earliest stages...

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” As You Like It by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s influence over theater and literature far exceeded the borders of Europe and...

In this issue: Big Brother's surveillance of an African-American activist; a ballyhooed British soccer club drops the proverbial ball; and formidable Black female voices in 19th-century media...

In 1895 at least one death was ascribed to a work of fiction. Its overwhelming influence was described in viral terms before viruses were well understood as biological let alone social phenomena. That...

The earliest American sermons were largely delivered by the most erudite men in the Protestant colonies. These eminent divines were concentrated in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where their influence...

The advent of motion picture industry at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was explosive. The American public was besotted by the astonishing and cheap new entertainment. From the earliest days...

An updated version of this blog post (September 2024) is now available. For ten years or more, faculty and students have been asking Readex to “bring history to life” in new ways. “You have tremendous...

Among several common themes in early books for children, instruction in conduct recurs frequently. Searching American Children’s Books, 1654-1819, a new Readex database, whether using Suggested...

In this issue: Seamy urban newspapers seduce and scandalize readers in 19th-century America, weighty themes abound in yesteryear’s children’s books, and did an 1849 execution inspire an enigmatic...

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...

Created to cajole, convince and inform Americans on nearly every issue of the day, pamphlets had a powerful impact on 19th-century life in the United States. Now a unique digital resource provides...

Readex is pleased to announce a diverse array of new digital collections for teaching and research across the humanities and increasingly studied STEM fields. To learn more, visit Readex at booth 2525...

This final release of plays from Nineteenth-Century American Drama includes a devastating assault on Abraham Lincoln, an all-female cast in a courtroom drama meant to ridicule women, and a “Negro...

“The Black Crook”—the progenitor of spectacular theater in the United States—opened at Niblo’s Garden, a 3,000-seat New York City playhouse, on September 12, 1866. Whether this American musical can be...

Hundreds of plays in Nineteenth-Century American Drama are designated as comedies in their titles. Of these, there are scores of scripts subtitled as comedietta which oxforddictionaries.com defines as...

Amy E. Hughes is Associate Professor of Theater History and Criticism at Brooklyn College (CUNY). In this January 2019 interview, she discusses how the study of theater deepens our understanding of...

There are over 200 scripts whose authorship is credited to Anonymous in Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900. An examination of these titles suggests several...

Think about this word: melodrama. What image comes to mind? Brooklyn College theater historian Amy E. Hughes began her presentation at the 2019 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting with that...