Getting Started:
CLIO and WorldCat
Use CLIO to find books, journals, videos, and manuscript collections at Columbia. Subject headings can be a topic, organization, person, or place
Women--Great Britain--History
Women--Great Britain--Social Conditions
Women--Ireland--History
Women--England--History
Women--Scotland--History
Suffragists--Great Britain
Women Travelers
Women's Social and Political Union
Pankhurst, E. Sylvia
If you aren't sure of a subject heading, try a keyword search.
Use WorlCat to search beyond the Columbia campus; search by subject keyword, organization, or name. Request titles not in the Columbia collection through Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan.
Selected Encyclopedias and Biographical Dictionaries
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Biography Resource Center - full text database of hundreds of biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias
The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928. (1999). Butler Ref R396.3 C856 Clio Record
Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia / Margaret Schaus. (2006). Butler Ref R940.1 W842 Clio record
Tudor England: An Encyclopedia (2001). Butler Reference R942.05 T811. Clio record
Britain in the Hanoverian Age 1714-1837 (1997). Butler Reference R942.07 B77. Clio record
The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture ( Butler Ref 942.081 Ei32. Clio record
Finding articles in scholarly journals (secondary sources)
Historical Abstracts - major index for articles in on modern world history (1450 to present, excluding North America).
The Royal Historical Society Bibliography - most comprehensive index for articles on British and Irish history
Victorian Database Online - includes books and articles
Gender Studies Database - most important index for women's studies
LGBT Life - most important index for LGBT studies.
ProQuest - excellent interdisciplinary database, includes a subset of women's journals called Genderwatch. ProQuest is very good for searching across a variety of sources: including scholarly publciations, magazines, trade publications, and newspapers.
Published Primary Sources (books, pamphlets, newspaper and magazine articles)
15th-20th century
Gerritsen Collection of Women's History Online - vast collection of primary sources in women's history. Primary 19th & 20th centuries though inclues earlier publications. Especially strong in suffrage and feminist publications 1880-1920. International, with emphasis on US and British publications. Can be searched by keyword, or browsed by publication title and issue. Includes books and journals. Full-text searchable.
LION (Literature Online) - Full-text database of literature and literary criticism. Because of the size of the database, it is important to narrow searches by time period. Searches may be limited to women authors.
Times Digital Archives - 1785-1985. Full Text of the London Times.
The Making of the Modern World: the Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature, 1450-1850 -
15th-17th Century
EEBO (Early English Books Online) - . Currently includes pdfs of nearly 118,000 books and pamphlets. Of these, 11,500 are full-text searchable (using original spelling). if you are searching by subject, type women in the subject search box, click "select from list" and scroll through the list selecting appropriate terms.
18th-19th Century
ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) - 1701-1800. Broad full-text collection of books and pamphlets.
British Periodicals - includes a variety of18th and 19th-century popular, political and literary journals with a few focused on women's writing: The Female Spectator (1754), Belle Assemblee (1806-1832), Court & Lady's Magazine (1832-1848), The Rose, the shamrock, and the thistle (1862-1865). Full text searchable.
19th-20th Century
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (1801- 2003/04) - Full text searchable database of House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Bills, and Command Papers, 1801-2004; and of Accounts and Papers, Reports of Commissioners, and Reports of Committees, 1801-1969. If you're researching the 19th century, use the Nineteenth Century Hierarchical Subject List to drill down to your topic. The other subject list contains pertains primarily to the 20th century.
19th Century Masterfile - pretty bad search interface, and does not search or link to full text; but an otherwise useful index of 19th century English and American periodicals and newspapers. Combines several periodical indexes, including Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1906), Index to Periodical Articles in Religion (1890-1899) and Index to Periodicals (1890-1906).
The Making of Modern Law : Legal Treatises 1800-1926 - Full text searchable. Uses the same subject headings as CLIO, e.g. domestic relations, marriage, divorce, marital property, custody of children, women legal rights.
20th century
Readers' Guide Retrospective - 1890-1982. Primarily an index of US publications, but includes some British titles
Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective - 1907-1984
Finding Articles from the 18th, 19th, or early 20th Century and Sources from the British History Subject Guide
Highly selective list of subject bibliographies of primary and secondary sources - Ask for other suggestions
Women in English Social History, 1800-1914: A Guide to Research / Barbara Kanner. 3v. (1987-90). Butler Reference R016.396 K13 Clio record.
Women in Context: Two Hundred Years of British Women Autobiographers, A Reference Guide and Reader / Barbara Kanner. Butler Reference R042.08 K133 Clio record
British Women’s History: A Bibliographical Guide / June Hannam, Ann Hughes, and Pauline Stafford. Butler Reference R016.396 H195 Clio record
Women and the British empire: An Annotated Guide to Sources / Susan F. Bailey. (1983). Butler Stacks Z7964.G7 B34 1983 - dated but useful chapters on Wives of Administrators, Settlers, Missionaries, and Native Women.
Women, 1870-1928 : a select guide to printed and archival sources in the United Kingdom / Margaret Barrow. 1981. Butler Reference R016.396 B279. Clio record
Women and British Periodicals, 1832-1867: A Bibliography / E. M. Palmegiano. 1976. Butler Reference R016.396 P18 Clio record
The Women of England: From Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present: Interpretive Bibliographical Essays / Ed. Barbara Kanner. Butler Reference R016.396 W8444. Clio record
Women and Religion in Britain and Ireland: An Annotated Bibliography from the Reformation to 1993 / Dale A. Johnson. 1995. Butler Reference R016.39602 J63 Clio record
Women in Ireland: An Annotated Bibliography / Anna Brady. 1988. Butler Reference R016.396 B72 Clio record
Irish Women in England: An Annotated Bibliography / Clare Barrington. 1997. Butler Reference R016.396 B277. Clio record
The Glory of Women: Prescriptive Literature - online bibliography with some links to full-text
Selected thematic collections of full-text research material
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
Victorian Women Writers Project
Women's Travel Writing, 1830-1930
Women travellers from and to the United States, as well as selected American and European women travellers to non-Western areas. From the University of Minnesota.
Studies in Scarlet: Marriage & Sexuality in the U.S. and U.K., 1815-1914
"Presents the images of over 420 separately published trial narratives of American, British, and Irish cases 1815-1914 involving domestic violence, bigamy, seduction, breach of promise to marry, and the custody of children, as well as trials for murder and rape. These trials are especially rich sources for the study of the history of women in early modern society." (--site description)
Sources from the British History Subject Guide for additional titles.
Archives and Manuscript Collections at Columbia
Archives and Manuscript Collections Relating to Women in the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library - This is a list of major collections; you can also search CLIO (by keyword, limiting to "archival collections") to find individual oral histories, or material in other collections.
Microform Collections of Primary Sources Relating to Women - a list or microfilmed collections available in 401 Butler. Includes: Women Advising Women (advice literature to 1837), Women and Victorian Values (1837-1910), Harriet Martineau papers, Sylvia Pankhurst papers; Virginia Woolf manuscripts, and papers of Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler.
