Research Guides: Actors Page: Researching the Time Period

Time Period Research

Researching the Time Period of a play can be a daunting task. Use this page to find out what is the time period of your play. You may need to search newspapers, archives, books etc. and don't forget documentary films!

The Battle of Bosworth Field - A Scene from the Great Drama of History.

Newspapers

The library has a variety of newspapers in various time periods available for study.

Historical Newspapers (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Search the PDF full text and image archives of more than 100 major U.S. and African American newspapers.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Central is a large, multidisciplinary database with over 11,000 titles, with over 8,000 titles in full-text. It serves as the central resource for researchers at all levels in all markets. Over 160 subjects areas are covered extensively in this product including business and economics, health and medical, news and world affairs, technology, social sciences and more.
New York Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
Search across newspapers dating as far back as the 1700s. Emphasis on regional, small town newspapers.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Contains digital copies of articles from about 1,000 American newspapers from all the current 50 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1900, with strongest coverage of the first half of the 19th century.
American Periodicals Series Online This link opens in a new window
includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century, 1740-1940.
Times Digital Archive (London) This link opens in a new window
Provides the full text of The Times of London newspaper from 1785-1985.

For current articles (1985-present) from The Times of London see Academic (Lexis-Nexis).

Historical Databases

Use these historical databases to find information about actors, actresses, time period etc. Some go back as far as 1400!

America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Indexes literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes 1,700 journals and also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1964 to present.
Historical Abstracts with Full Text (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Indexes more than 1,700 academic historical journals in over 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1955 to present.
Theatre in Context Collection This link opens in a new window
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. Includes Black, Asian American, Latino and North American women's drama.
American Broadsides and Ephemera This link opens in a new window
Facsimile images of broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900.
Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
18th & 19th century. A collection of databases containing full-text versions of historical books, periodicals, and other documents pertaining to American history before 1900. Includes Godey's Lady's Book
Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text and full-page-image access to books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, government documents and ephemera printed in America over three centuries printed in America from 1639-1800.
Early American Imprints, Series II. Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window
1801-1819. Covering every aspect of American life during the early decades of the United States, this primary source collection provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first 19 years of the nineteenth century.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Eighteenth Century Collections Online provides access to facsimile page images and full text of works published in the British Isles (plus some from North America) during the 18th century. The collection includes books, pamphlets, and broadsides. Users can search within texts keyword and download them as PDFs.
Eighteenth Century Journals This link opens in a new window
Dates covered: 1685-1815
Newspapers and periodicals printed from 1685 to 1815 which cover all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Material comes from the Hope Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, one of the finest surviving collections of eighteenth-century periodicals and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The titles chosen for this project have been screened carefully against EEBO, Early English Newspapers and ECCO so that there is minimal overlap.
Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
Major online periodical archive that makes the back files of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the full text of a growing number of digitized.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
Digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.

Letters & Diaries/Oral Histories

Letters & Diaries/Oral Histories are great places to find first hand information about actors, time periods etc.

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
1500-1900. Drawn from more than 1,000 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
1800-1950. provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada. Much of the material is previously unpublished. Several thousand pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews, indexed and searchable for the first time, are included.

Avery Fisher Center

Avery Fisher Center
Looking for costume, dialect or time period ideas? Come to the AFC and view the thousands of DVD's avail. Search by topic

Multi-Volume Sets

Here are several multi-volume sets that provide easy access to information about time periods in America and Europe, they are excellent for Background Research.

American decades
This series covers the decades from 1910-1989. Covers theArts, Business, Economy, Education, Fashion, Politics, Law, Social trends, Media, Medicine, Religion and Science.
American eras primary sources. The colonial era, 1600-1754
Similar to the volumes above, covers the eras of pre-20th century America
20th century day by day : [100 years of news from January 1,1900 to December 31, 1999]
Entries are short and will give you a good overview of a time period. These volumes are found in the Social Science and Humanites Reference Room on the 1st fl. of Bobst and cannot be checked out. You will need to photocopy the short entries.
Day by day, the forties
Summary: : A continuous ten-column chart shows day-to-day events for the decade in categories including world affairs, technology, nature, culture, and lifestyle.
twenties D723 .D43 2008
thirties D723 .D39 2007
Fifties D842.5 .M44 1979
Sixties D840 .P27 1983 v. 1 v.2
seventies D848 .L4 1988 v.1 v.2
Eighties D848 .M45 1995 v. 1 v.2
nineties D856 .A93 2004 v. 1 v. 2

Finding background Information in the Catalog on Europe

To find similar information on Europe begin with an encyclopedia. You can find them in the reference room, AE5 .E363, or use online ones by entering the titles, "Britannica" or "Columbia encyclopedias" in the Catalog.

To access the history collections in the Catalog enter:

History AND choose country

This will result in a collection of general histories being displayed.

To locate chronologies follow a similar method:

Chronology AND Europe

Credo Reference Online

Credo is a collection of dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographical sources, quotations, bilingual dictionaries, and measurement conversions covering topics from the arts to the sciences.

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Online collection of dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographical sources, quotations, bilingual dictionaries, and measurement conversions covering topics from the arts to the sciences.

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