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.
Daily Life in the Industrial United States, 1870-1900 Not just about the rise of the factories or the emergence of the modern city, this fascinating history conveys how it felt to work the assembly line and walk the bustling urban streets. Daily Life in the Industrial United States: 1870-1900 is a narrative-based social history that is ideal for college and high school students researching this era. Thematically organized chapters, devoted to Economic Life, Domestic Life, Recreational Life, and other themes, are broad in scope but include primary documents and telling details that give readers a visceral sense of the lives of people who lived during the era of industrialization. Primary documents range from first-person diaries of individuals who lived during the era, to letters from freed slaves looking to reunite with relatives sold away from them, to speeches and essays by activists including Frederick Douglass and Jane Addams. They reveal how people understood the goals of education, the legal position of African Americans in the South, and marriage, among many other daily phenomena. Readers will become privy to a range of personal experiences while comprehending the importance of the economic and social developments of the period. A chronology, a glossary, a selection of illustrations, and further reading sources complete the work.
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.

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Ellis Island (2:15:52) DESCRIPTION For some it was the Isle of Hope. For others, it was the Isle of Tears. For half a century, Ellis Island was America’s “golden door,” where entrance meant a new life and rejection meant a heartbreaking return to hopelessness. In this A&E Special, we meet an ethnically diverse group of immigrants who recall their extraordinary adventures, from the treacherous passage across the sea to the daunting challenge of starting life over in a new and foreign land. Interviews from the Ellis Island Oral History Project reveal what the immigration experience was actually like, while historians address the island administration’s sometimes insensitive and overly expedient policies. Rare photos and film footage are also included.
Mark Twain in the Gilded Age (2:06) In the 1870s, Twain spoke for the masses in decrying the spirit of unbridled greed that swept America. Fantastic wealth was concentrated in the hands of a very few. "The Gilded Age" exposes money lust and government corruption.
PBS The Gilded Age (01:53:58) The Gilded Age presents a compelling and complex story of one of the most convulsive and transformative eras in American history. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the U.S. population doubled in the span of a single generation, national wealth expanded, and two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life.
Robber Barons or Captains of Industry? (2:15)
What was the Gilded Age? (2:22) Learn about the Gilded Age, a period of immense social and industrial change in US history.