LibGuides: E 371C: Early Celebrity, Janine Barchas: Primary Sources

Research in this Class

This guide provides links to databases, digitized collections, and other information sources useful for E 371C: Early Celebrity Culture, taught by Dr. Janine Barchas. Your librarian is Gina Bastone.

Many of these databases are tricky to search effectively, so please do not hesitate to ask for help!

Primary & Reference Sources

Below are the important primary resources and reference works. The first set in the list are subscription-based and behind a paywall. You have access through the UT Libraries and will need to login with your EID and password. The others are open and freely available, and we have provided the links.

If you need more clarity on what defines primary sources and reference sources, refer to the "About Primary & Reference Sources" page.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Professional reference site for famous British people in history, including all our authors. If you need a biographical reference, this is far more authoritative than Wikipedia.
American National Biography
Similar resource as Dictionary of National Biography, but for Americans—should an interest lead you there.
Includes the content from all 24 volumes of The American National Biography set as well as over 900 fully integrated articles from The Oxford Companion to United States History.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
Over time, words accumulate new meanings and alter in their use. Modern dictionaries (like Webster’s etc.) cannot give you the meaning of a word as you will find it used by Shakespeare or Austen. The dates alongside OED definitions will allow you to pinpoint the meanings for a particular date. This will help avoid anachronistic readings (where a modern application of a word or expression misses the mark aimed at in, for example, a contemporary newspaper article that mentions your early celebrity). Historically accurate interpretation therefore starts with the OED.
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers
This allows you to search old newspapers from the period should you need context for a topic or want to locate contemporary gossip about your celebrity person. The search engine is unforgiving, so you will have to set date parameters and try a great variety of archaic spellings and combinations.
Literature Online (LION)
Use the "Primary Texts" tab for text-mining and searching inside a work. This database allows you to data-mine and search authoritative editions of our novels (in first editions!). In other words, these are not random copies that happen to be out-of-copyright (like Google Books). LION not only gives you a number count (for the word or phrase you’ve searched) but snippet views of the hits in context.

Try searching by author first, then enter word/phrase + title. You’ll want to limit your search to original editions, so you’ll need the year of publication. LION’s texts are typed in (using ORC software) and not photographed/scanned to make for an accurate typescript of the words inside a book but not a view of the actual first-edition pages. (For scans of the original books, see ECCO below.)
ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Searchable full-image database of thousands of eighteenth-century books published in England between 1700 and 1800. Early English Books Online, or EEBO, will give you the century earlier. You can search via keywords in the prelims for fictions, plays, history books, or travel guides. You cannot search by genre, only by keywords by title or author (novel, for example, is not going to get you many early hits, because that word was rarely used on a title page). This is a professional literature database and tricky to use. Be patient and try a variety of likely 18th-century words, variant spellings, and combinations.

Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
Searchable texts of 200K trials at London’s central criminal court. Crime impinges upon a number of our early celebrities.
British Museum Collections Online
Vast collection of prints, drawings, trade cards, satires, portraits, etc. Best source for material on paper (prints & engravings), although they do have other objects too. A search will pull up anything that has your key terms in the catalogue description.
National Portrait Gallery
This is the most likely go-to source for a celebrity pinup of famous British people. (For American figures, turn to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.). Always use the “Advanced Search” function for a museum catalogue.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Not just traditional works of art, but objects from watches to ceramics can be found here in a few clicks, along with accurate historical information about their function or construction. If your celebrity figure inspired figurines or souvenirs, try here.
Royal Museums Greenwich
This is a maritime museum for researching people, ships, or objects associated with the navy.
Locating London's Past
Users can toggle between a central London map of 1746, a Victorian map of about 1880, and modern Google or Satellite views. These maps connect to databases about crime (including the Old Bailey), insurance, and real estate statistics. Pick your desired data and, presto, it visualizes it on the maps. Not as useful as Google Maps until you have a specific set of questions/addresses you want to ask it to map in central London.
Folger Shakespeare Library, “LUNA”
This is the image database for objects and images (including book pages and print) of certain items in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s collections. Great source on theatre history and the merchandising of actors and actresses. Try search term “realia” for non-books.
Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts
The novels published in Austen’s lifetime do not survive in manuscript. But her juvenilia, two unfinished novels, a completed early epistolary novelette (Lady Susan) and one cancelled chapter of Persuasion do, and they are made searchable on this site. You can leaf through pages by Austen written in her own hand! This is seriously cool, if you consider how these manuscripts have not been physically together since her sister Cassandra had them on the kitchen table after Jane’s death.
The British Library
The British Library is the national library of the U.K., equivalent to the Library of Congress in the U.S. You'll find a comprehensive book catalog, along with digital collections and online exhibits.

Books & More

Don’t forget to supplement with books and ebooks in the UT library, and your standard web wits, including Google Maps and Google Books. Resources on the web are always expanding––if you locate something so tremendously helpful that you think it should be on this go-to resource list, please email Prof. Barchas with your finding.

UT Library Catalog
Search the UT Libraries' collections of print books and ebooks. Have questions about borrowing print books during the pandemic? See the library's borrowing guide.

Google Book Search
Search the complete text of digitized books. Keep in mind that books under copyright will show a limited preview. Works published before 1925, or those out-of-copyright and in the public domain, will be available in completion.

Humanities Librarian

Gina Bastone

she/they

Contact:

g.bastone@austin.utexas.edu

Subjects: Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, Disability Studies, English Literature, LGBTQ Studies, Rhetoric, Women's and Gender Studies

Research Help

Email Gina, your course librarian, if you run into issues finding articles and books. Her email address is g.bastone@austin.utexas.edu
Schedule a research consult via Zoom – get live help from Gina, tailored to your chosen topic(s).
Use the Ask A Librarian Chat Service, available until 9 pm, Sunday-Thursday.