Research Guides
American Literature - 20th Century to Contemporary: Finding Primary Resources
Online Newspapers
- Black Studies CenterThis collection contains both primary and secondary sources. An important primary source is "The Chicago Defender" an African-American newspape that has full text articles dating back to 1910.
- World Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
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Full-text articles from 20th century. [UW restricted]
- Los Angeles TimesFull text of paper from 1881 to 1985. [UW restricted]
- New York TimesFull text of paper from 1851 to 2003. [UW restricted]
Online Periodicals
The library subscribes to many online periodicals that will be of interest to scholars of American literature. The resources on this page are devoted to older periodicals. For information on current journals, magazines and newspapers, see the tab "Find Articles" on the English Subject page.
- American Periodicals This link opens in a new window
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Over 1,100 periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals.
- Modernist Journals ProjectThis site offers searchable editions of journals and magazine of the early twentieth century. Some full-text books are available as well.
Fulltext books online
- Project GutenbergWhile free electronic books will be more difficult to find in the 20th century, due to copyright laws, a good place to start would be the Project Gutenberg site. The site contains over 18,000 items that are searchable by title and author.
- The Online Books PageProvides access to a variety of free, ongoing electronic book projects.
Indexes to Periodicals
- Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
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Cites articles from English-language periodicals from scholarly journals and important specialized magazines from 1907-1984. [UW restricted] - Readers' Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new window
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Index to popular American magazines. Covers 1890-1980. Printed version available in Suzzallo Reference [AI3 .R48]. [UW restricted]