Research Guides: 19th Century Theatre History: #2 Finding Books

Browsing the shelves

Books

Rediscover one of the best technologies that was ever invented! The book!

Academic libraries that use the Library of Congress Classification Outline (the majority of them) can easily be browsed for serendipitous discovery of wonderful books in your subject area. All you need to know is the call number range to get yourself situated.

Library of Congress Call Number Areas:

Literature (General). Drama: PN1600-3307

Drama. History: PN 1720-1861
Dramatic representation. The Theater: PN2000-3307
By time period: PN2131-219
Collections of General Literature. Drama: PN6110.5-6120

Book Search

Search here for books, journals and other print materials, videos, sound recordings, e-books, e-journals, databases, and indexes in our local libraries and special collections.

Search BobCat for Books and Articles

Search here for books, journals and other print materials, videos, sound recordings, e-books, e-journals, databases, and indexes in our local libraries and special collections.

Online Books via Ebook Central, and More

Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
Ebook Central is NYU's preferred ebook provider. Users can search, read, highlight, and annotate full-text books in many subject areas, including the social sciences and humanities.
ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) This link opens in a new window
ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) is an online collection of around 5,000 books of high quality in the humanities.
Sabin Americana This link opens in a new window
Provides over 14,000 primary source titles based on Joseph Sabin's bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana. Materials describe every aspect of life in the Western Hemisphere from 1500 to the 1890s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more. Searchable in a variety of ways, including: author, title, year of publication, and subject.
Early American Imprints, Series II. Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window
Search or browse the books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the distinguished bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker. 1801-1819

Annals of the New York stage.
Contents: : volume1. To 1798.-v.2. 1798-1821.-v.3. 1821-1834.-v.4. 1834-1843.-v.5. 1843-1850.-v.6. 1850-1857.-v.7. 1857-1865.-v.8. 1865-1870.-v.9. 1870-1875.-v.10. 1875-1879.-v.11. 1879-1882.-v.12. 1882-1885.-v.13. 1885-1888.-v.14. 1888-1891.-v.15. 1891-1894.

Finding Books Outside of Bobst

WorldCat - FirstSearch (OCLC) This link opens in a new window
Search for books and more in libraries in the U.S. and around the world. Indicates when NYU Libraries holds a copy of a book and shows you nearby libraries with holdings.

Interlibrary Loan
Interlibrary Loan (ILL) is a service which helps eligible patrons obtain materials that are unavailable in the New York University or consortium libraries. It will take 2-5 days to receive your book.

Online Reference

Annals of the New York stage.
Contents: : volume1. To 1798.-v.2. 1798-1821.-v.3. 1821-1834.-v.4. 1834-1843.-v.5. 1843-1850.-v.6. 1850-1857.-v.7. 1857-1865.-v.8. 1865-1870.-v.9. 1870-1875.-v.10. 1875-1879.-v.11. 1879-1882.-v.12. 1882-1885.-v.13. 1885-1888.-v.14. 1888-1891.-v.15. 1891-1894.
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre
A guide to the American stage from its beginnings to the present. Includes entries on playwrights, plays, actors, directors, producers, songwriters, famous playhouses, dramatic movements, classic works, commercially successful plays, and foreign figures that have influenced American dramatic development
Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
This encyclopedia provides authoritative and up-to-date information about theatre and performance from ancient Greek theatre to the latest developments in London, Paris, New York, and around the globe. In addition to performances in playhouses, it covers dance, opera, radio, film, television, and popular performance, including carnivals, circus, and public executions.

Plays Online

Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900
Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900 includes a wide variety of works such as historical plays, melodramas, political satires, minstrel shows, comic operas, musical extravaganzas, parlor entertainments, adaptations of novels, and many others.

American Drama 1714-1915 This link opens in a new window
Containing more than 1,500 dramatic works from the early eighteenth century up to the beginning of the twentieth, American Drama 1714–1915 contains plays in verse, farces, melodramas, minstrel shows, realist plays, frontier plays, temperance dialogues and a range of other genres are represented. Major dramatists include David Belasco, Rachel Crothers, Augustin Daly, Clyde Fitch, Edward Harrigan, James Herne, William Dean Howells and Joaquin Miller.

North American Theatre Online
A large collection of plays and related articles covering many aspects of the Canadian and American theater. In addition to the texts of approximately 3,700 plays, the database contains information on over 57,000 people, 5,400 theaters, 22,000 productions and 2,500 production companies, as well as 10,500 images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other resources.

Drama Online This link opens in a new window
Includes the full text of plays from across the history of the theatre, ranging from Aeschylus to the present day. Includes non-English-language works in translation, scholarly and critical editions, first night program texts, and critical analysis and contextual information. Also includes over 500 images from the Victoria and Albert Museum's archive of production photos.
North American Women's Drama This link opens in a new window
Currently contains 200+ plays by 67 playwrights but, when complete, will contain more than 1,500 plays, of which some 20% have never been published before. Includes some playbills, production information, and a few facts about specific theatres and companies. Texts of plays are searchable.
Twentieth Century North American Drama This link opens in a new window
Contains 1,122 plays by 170 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
Shakespeare Collection This link opens in a new window
The Shakespeare Collection provides access to general reference data, full-text scholarly periodicals, reprinted criticism, facsimile primary source material and the full-text annotated works from The Arden Shakespeare. Users can view page images of the First Folio, key Quartos, and major editions and adaptations of Shakespeare's works, plus works by Shakespeare's contemporaries and promptbooks from the 17th to the 20th century.
Black Drama, 3rd Edition This link opens in a new window
contains the full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by 201 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard-to-find, or out of print.
Alexander Street Literature This link opens in a new window
more than 5,000 full-text plays and film scripts.
Contemporary World Drama This link opens in a new window
Contemporary World Drama examines contemporary theatre and drama from a global context. The collection brings together new work from our existing playwright partners alongside work from up-and-coming playwrights from around the world, including recently produced world premieres, previously unpublished works, etc. from every continent.
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
Literature Online includes full text of literary works in English from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It also includes the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, together with biographic and bibliographic reference materials for each author.
A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose. LION is the single most extensive and wide-ranging online collection of English and American literature.Resources included in this resource are: Bibliographies Biographies Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms Encyclopedia of African Literature Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900-2003 Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 vols.) Encyclopedia of the Novel Handbook of African American Literature New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Oxford Companion to Irish Literature Penguin Classics Introductions Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (2nd Edition)

Play Index

Play Index This link opens in a new window
Use this source to locate plays published individually or in anthologies published from 1949 to the present. Play Index covers a wide range of plays written in or translated into English, including mysteries, pageants, plays in verse, puppet performances, radio and television plays, and classic drama.

Dissertations

A dissertation is a treatise advancing a new point of view resulting from research; usually a requirement for an advanced academic degree. I have included dissertations on the Finding Books section but keep in mind, they are not books.

Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
Dissertations and Theses Global contains indexes, dissertations and some theses. Full-text is available for many dissertations and theses, including those from NYU.
This database has access to almost all American dissertations accepted at an accredited institution since 1861. Masters theses have been selectively indexed since 1962. Abstracts are included for doctoral dissertation records from July 1980 to the present. The Bibliographies of dissertations can be especially helpful to guide you to other sources.
To Search: scroll down to highlighted portion