19th Century Women and Gender Studies Sources
The following resources are major tools for finding digitized texts related to the history of women and gender.
- Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires Since 1820 This link opens in a new windowOnline archive of documents that views the history of modern empires through women’s eyes, with an emphasis on the voices of the colonized. Includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowA collection of books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the multiplicity of women's reform activities.
- Women and Social Movements, International — 1840 to Present This link opens in a new windowContains primary source writing by women activists, including personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made.
- AM Search This link opens in a new window
UCLA subscribes to selected AM (formerly Adam Matthew) databases comprised of digitized archival material and primary sources. You can use AM Search to search across all of them. UCLA has access to licensed AM content published through 2024. Formerly known as Adam Matthew Archive Explorer.
- American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowCovers the colonial period through the 20th century, and includes unusual and short-lived magazines as well as better-known titles with long runs. Topics encompass a broad spectrum including agriculture, anthropology, art, archaeology, education, family life, fashion, industrialization, literature, medicine, music, photography, politics, religion, science, sport, and temperance. UCLA provides access to Parts I-VII.
- Archives Unbound (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowArchives Unbound includes primary source content with broad topic clusters including: African American studies; American Indian studies; Asian studies; British history; Holocaust studies; LGBT studies; Latin American and Caribbean studies; Middle East studies; political science; religious studies; and women’s studies.
- Calisphere This link opens in a new windowOver one million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more from the collections digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.
- Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 This link opens in a new windowDocuments from the British Foreign and Colonial Offices which cover the whole of South and Central America, plus the non-British islands of the Caribbean, from just after the final Spanish withdrawal from mainland America in the 1820s to the height of the Cold War in the 1960s. Includes coverage of revolutions, territorial changes and political movements, foreign financial interests, industrial and infrastructural development (including the building of the Panama Canal), wars, slavery, immigration from Europe, and and relations with indigenous peoples.
- Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969 This link opens in a new windowFrom the Confidential Print series, issued by the British government's Foreign and Colonial Offices since c. 1820, This collection consists of the Confidential Print for the countries of the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan.
- Library of Congress Digital CollectionsOnline access to manuscripts, ephemera, images, maps, and more. Includes several sets of materials related to the suffrage movement.
- American Periodicals This link opens in a new windowPublished between 1741 and 1900, these periodicals include special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children and women magazines, and many other historically significant periodicals.
- Defining Gender, 1450-1910 This link opens in a new window
Contains primary source material from British and European archives, and includes four thematic areas: Conduct and Politeness, Domesticity and the Family, Consumption and Leisure, Education and Sensibility, and The Body.
- Discovering American Women's History OnlineBrings together hundreds of primary source digital collections covering U.S. women’s history.
- Dovie Horvitz CollectionThe Dovie Horvitz Collection consists of over 1,300 images and scanned texts representing objects and printed matter that reflect the lives of women from the mid 1800s through the mid 1900s.
- Early Experiences in Australasia: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1788-1901 This link opens in a new windowOnline portal of first-person accounts, including letters and diaries, narratives, and other primary source materials.
- Empire Online This link opens in a new windowPrimary source manuscripts and secondary essays relevant to Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion & Empire; and Race, Class & Colonialism, 1783-1969.
- Everyday Life and Women in America Online, c.1820-1900 This link opens in a new windowhousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of books, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, marriage, and more.
- Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new windowPrimary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Includes sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
- Gerritsen Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs (Women's History) This link opens in a new windowFacsimile scans of monographs, periodicals, and pamphlets in 15 languages, started in the late 1800s by Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen. Focus is on 19th and 20th century feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights but includes books published from 1543 to 1945.
- Godey's Lady's Book (via Accessible Archives, 1830-1898)Major historical women's magazine, covering fashion descriptions and plates, biographical sketches, handcrafts, female costume, the dance, equestrienne procedures, health and hygiene, recipes and remedies, and more.
- HEARTH: Home Economics ArchiveHEARTH is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines.
- Human Rights Documentation InitiativeFrom the U. of Texas, this site makes available archived web resources related to human rights organizations and issues.
- Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 This link opens in a new windowContains digitized manuscript materials covering the history of Jewish communities in America through the mid-20th century. Includes letters, scrapbooks, autobiographies, notebooks and more.
- Latin American Women Writers This link opens in a new windowA collection of full text literature and non-fiction by Latin American women from the 17th century colonial period to the present. Includes prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Also included are essays by Latin American feminists and revolutionaries, who address both the universal concerns of women in every age and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region.
- London Low Life This link opens in a new window
Contains primary source materials on Victorian street culture, including ephemera, penny fiction, cartoons, chapbooks, reform literature, and guides to prostitution.
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowPrimary source collections of the 19th century. UCLA access includes: Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; British Politics and Society; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture; Children's Literature and Childhood; Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, and Conquest; European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection; Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature; Photography: The World Through the Lens; Religion, Society, Spirituality, and Reform; Science, Technology, and Medicine: 1780-1925; and Women: Transnational Networks.
- North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950 This link opens in a new windowCollection of letters and diaries of women of varied age groups, ethnicities, and geographical regions, spanning more than 300 years. Includes both published and previously unpublished materials.
- Project Diana: An Online Human Rights ArchiveAn international archive of human rights legal documentation, provided by Yale Law School.
- Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History This link opens in a new windowHundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Sources cover topics including the arts, the British Empire, exploration, race, and more. Contents also include manuscripts, diaries and correspondence, drawings, guidebooks and photographs.
- Victorian Women Writers Project (VWWP)Online collection featuring works of lesser-known British women writers of the 19th century - poetry, novels, children's books, political pamphlets, religious tracts, histories, and more. VWWP contains scores of authors, both prolific and rare.
- Women Working 1870-1930Includes digitized books, manuscripts, and images from Harvard University Libraries and Museums on women in the U.S. economy from 1870-1930.
- Women's Studies This link opens in a new windowDigitized printed and manuscript sources over four centuries, providing a multitude of perspectives on the changing roles of women in history. Modules include: Aristocratic Women; Colonial Discourses; International Women's Suffrage; Women, Morality and Advice Literature; Women, Writing and Travel; Women's Autobiographies; Women's Journals of the Nineteenth Century.
- Women's Studies Archive (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowIncludes the modules Women's Issues and Identities, Voice and Vision, and Female Forerunners Worldwide. Focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries, including documents such as diaries, letters, photographs, news clippings, organizational records, and journals. Primary sources include a record of the issues that have affected women, societal contributions, social status, and women's movements. Topics cover abolition of slavery, alcohol and temperance movements, pacifism and political activism, domestic service, education, health and hygiene, divorce and social reform.
- Women's Studies in Digital ArchivesLists online archives containing primary source materials relevant for Women's Studies.
- Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century This link opens in a new windowOver 1.3 million pages of archival material (manuscripts, monographs, newspapers and periodicals) concerning Latin America and the Caribbean, including major collections about Latin American independence, Brazilian popular groups, Diplomatic activities in Cuba and more. Under this database's former name, Gale World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean included some periodicals and reference books that have been moved to Gale’s Dictionary of Literary Biography and Gale eBooks.