LibGuides: American Literature Late 19th Century: Historical Context

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Featured Books & eBooks

The Columbia Guide to American Women in the Nineteenth Century The experience of women in the nineteenth century has generated a wealth of interdisciplinary research in recent decades. The Columbia Guide to American Women in the Nineteenth Century presents the best of the recent scholarship available in a concise, "one-stop" resource, providing students of women's history and nineteenth-century American culture with an authoritative source of information and interpretation. The authors emphasize areas in which scholars have identified important changes (such as suffrage and reform), topics in which researchers are now making great strides (such as racial, ethnic, religious, and regional diversity), and innovative and relatively recent explorations (for example, work on female sexuality). Accessible overview articles and alphabetical encyclopedia-like entries are combined in a comprehensive, easy-to-use volume. Part 1 contains a historiographical essay followed by a ten-chapter narrative overview. These chapters include discussions of families and households, labor and the workforce, religion and morality, feminism and equal rights, reform and voluntarism, and more. Part 2 is an A-to-Z listing of concise entries on key terms, notable figures, political movements, social and religious organizations, and legislation. Part 3 is an annotated chronology placing events in historical context. Part 4 is a topically organized selection of the best resources for further research, including general historical works, biographies and autobiographies, journals, archives, web sites, novels, and films.
Defining Documents in American History: Reconstruction Era (1865–1877) Allows readers to gain new insights into the reconstruction era and the development of the industrial United States. Provides in-depth analysis of over twenty primary source documents to deliver a thorough examination of this important time in American history. Defining Documents in American History: Reconstruction & the Development of the Industrial United States offers in-depth critical analysis of 20 primary source documents. Articles begin by introducing readers to the document's historical context, followed by a description of the author's life and circumstances in which the document was written. A document analysis, written by professional writers and historians, guides readers in understanding key elements of language, rhetoric, and social and political meaning that define the significance of the author and document in American history. Defining Documents in American History: Reconstruction & the Development of the Industrial United States provides detailed analysis of a wide array of documents, including: The Second Reconstruction Act Louisiana, Mississippi & Ohio State Black Codes Civil Rights Act of 1875 Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation Since the War Harpers Weekly, "Education of the Freedmen" This collection will introduce students and educators to a diverse range of genres, including journals, letters, speeches, government legislation, and court opinions. Documents represent the diversity of ideas and contexts that define social, political and cultural subjects throughout American history.
Defining Moments: Reconstruction Defining Moments: Reconstruction tells the story of the tumultuous period immediately following the Civil War, when the United States faced the enormous challenges of restoring ties with the shattered South and helping four million formerly enslaved people make the transition to new lives as free citizens.
From Battlefields Rising : How the Civil War Transformed American Literature When Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in April of 1861, Walt Whitman declared it "the volcanic upheaval of the nation"--the bloody inception of a war that would dramatically alter the shape and character of American culture along with its political, racial, and social landscape. Prior to the war, America's leading writers had been integral to helping the young nation imagine itself, assert its beliefs, and realize its immense potential. When the Civil War erupted, it forced them to witness not only unimaginable human carnage on the battlefield, but also the disintegration of the foundational symbolic order they had helped to create.