LibGuides: History 381: Exploring the Modern City: New York, London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, and Beyond: V. Other Sources

1. London

The Metropolitan Poor: Semifactual Accounts, 1795-1910: A printed, six volume collection of primary sources. (305.56909421)
Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London, 1674-1834: The largest body of texts ever published detailing the lives of ordinary people, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court. (345.42)
19th Century English Poor Law Union and Workhouse Records: Correspondence between Poor Law unions and the central administration in London. Correspondence includes letters, memos, reports, and other accounts of activities within the region covered by the union. Includes source material for the study of education, local politics, labor movements, and public health. Covers 1834- 1871. (362.5830941)
John Johnson Collection: An Archive of Printed Ephemera: Selections from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera. Documents Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This collection can be browsed by place; be sure to browse both general place names (e.g. London) and specific (e.g. Newgate Prison). (941.08)

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Correspondence between Poor Law unions and the central administration in London. Correspondence includes letters, memos, reports, and other accounts of activities within the region covered by the union. Includes source material for the study of education, local politics, labor movements, and public health. Covers 1834- 1871. (362.5830941)
Victorian Popular Culture This link opens in a new window
Comprises four sub-collections: Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema; Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment; Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks; and Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic. (941.081)
London Low Life This link opens in a new window
Rare books, maps, guidebooks, and ephemera that document street life in 19th and early 20th century London. (941.081)
Women in the National Archives This link opens in a new window
Documents from the British National Archives, with emphasis on the period 1903-1963. (941.082)
Mass Observation Online This link opens in a new window
Papers from the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex. Mass Observation was an organization that existed between 1937 and the 1950s, and attempted to document everyday life in Britain using diaries, surveys, reports, and photograph. (941.084)

2. Paris

Bibliothèque Bleue: Popular printed works from the 17th to the mid-19th centuries, including recipe books, almanacs, how-to books, hagiographies, prayer books, popular fiction, romans de chevalerie, songbooks, burlesques, and more. (944.04)
Pamphlets and Periodicals of the French Revolution of 1848: Over one hundred pamphlets and periodicals published between 1848 and 1851. (944.07)
Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century: Mostly images documenting 19th century Paris. Collection organized around nine broad thematic categories: Architecture, Art, City Planning, Colonialism, Government and Politics, Literature, Medicine, Public Works, and Social Life. (944.36106)
The Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871: Over one thousand photographs and images made during the Siege and Commune. From the Deering LIbrary at Northwestern University. (944.36106)

3. Berlin

Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940: Over 200 contemporary texts, translated into English (many appearing here for the first time), that have been collected in an attempt to recreate the built environment of pre-World War II Berlin.

German Anti-Semitic Propaganda This link opens in a new window
170 books and pamphlets.

4. Shanghai

China, America and the Pacific This link opens in a new window
Ship logs, manuscripts, business records, newspapers, books, maps, realia, ephemera, paintings, photographs, and other illustrative documents, organized around 18 research themes: Cultural Exchange; Arts and Artifacts; Religion, Faith, and Philosophy; Social Life; Education; Crime; Employment and Labor; Health and Welfare; Race Relations; Travel and Tourism; Exploration and Discovery; The Natural World; Migration and Immigration; Politics, War, and Diplomacy; Trade and Commerce; Regulation and Legislation; Transport and Communication; and Advertising and Consumption. (658.7880973)
China: Culture and Society This link opens in a new window
Collection of pamphlets from the Charles W. Wason Collection at Cornell University Library. Covers the period 1750-1929. (951.03)
China: Trade, Politics and Culture This link opens in a new window
English-language documents from London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, and from the British Library. Includes diaries, journals, correspondence, atlases, travel narratives, missionary periodicals, government documents, scrapbooks, and more. (951.03)

5. New York

Photographic views of New York City, 1870s-1970s, from the Collections of the New York Public Library: Over 50,000 digitized photographs. Supports browsing by Topic, Personal Name, Place, and Date.
Atlases of New York City: Over 11,500 digitized maps, mostly from the 1850s and 1860s, with some from the 1920s. Includes full color reproductions of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for New York City. See also the digital collection Maps of New York City and State and New-York City Directory, for 1854-1855.
Mid-Manhattan Picture Collection: Over 30,000 digitized images. Supports browsing by Topic and Date.
Changing New York, 1935-1939: Over 300 images. Supports browsing by Topic, Name, and Place.
"Classic Six:" New York City Apartment Building Living, 1880s-1910s: Collection of promotional materials from real estate developers. Includes supplementary documents like trade catalogs for luxury appliances and furnishings. See also the digital collection Fifth Avenue New York, From Start to Finish.
Streetscape and Townscape of Metropolitan New York City, 1860-1942: Digitized photographs and prints. Supports browsing by Topic, Name, and Place. See also: Collection of Photographs of New York City, and: Street Views of New York City.
The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909, Compiled from Original Sources and Illustrated by Photo-Intaglio Reproductions of Important Maps, Plans, Views and Documents in Public and Private Collections: 6 volume print collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Photographs taken by inspectors of the New York City Tenement House Department: Over 1,100 digitized photographs from a 1934-1938. See also: Photographic negatives of the New York City Tenement House Department, 1902-1914.
Records of the New York World's Fair, 1939-1940: Over 13,500 archival records digitized from New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division.

6. Other Cities

Women and Social Movements in the United States This link opens in a new window
Books, brochures, audio recordings, cartoons, diaries, court reports, interviews, letters, speeches, videos, and more. (305.4090320973)
Everyday Life & Women in America This link opens in a new window
Books, periodicals, pamphlets, and broadsides.(305.4090340973)
Jewish Life in America This link opens in a new window
Letters, scrapbooks, autobiographies, notebooks and other materials from the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City. (305.8924073)
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Non-fiction works, including interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, and letters. Supports browsing by date, event, and other subjects. Colonial times to the present. (305.896073)

North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial to 1950: Letters and diaries from 1,325 women. Can browse collection by place written, place sent, and place written about. Based on seven published bibliographies. (305.409032097)
Women Working, 1800-1930: Over 3,000 books, pamphlets, magazines, trade catalogs, diaries, memoirs, and institutional archives, as well as 1,400 photographs, all from Harvard University's library and museum collections, documenting women's work in the United States. (305.4090340973)
African American Communities: Newspapers, periodicals, oral histories, organizational records, personal papers, pamphlets, and ephemera that document the history of African American communities in Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, New York, North Carolina. Highlights of the collection include the Chicago Urban League records (1917-1985), the Town of Pullman records (1876-1919), the Lea Demarest Taylor papers on housing and race relations, 1893-1966, the Urban League of St. Louis records, and an extensive oral history collection. Collection is organized around five broad themes: Desegregation, Urban renewal and housing problems, Civil rights activities and protests, Race relations and community integration, and African American culture. (305.896073)
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930: Over 2,000 books, pamphlets, serials, diaries, biographies, manuscripts, and archival materials, as well as over 7,800 photographs from Harvard University's library and museum collections. (325.73)
Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey: The Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey was published in 1942 by the Chicago Public Library Omnibus Project of the Work Projects Administration of Illinois. Its purpose was to translate into English and classify selected news articles appearing in the Chicago area foreign language press from 1861 to 1938. The project consists of a file of 120,000 typewritten pages translated from newspapers of 22 different foreign language communities in Chicago.(325.77311)
Homicide in Chicago, 1870-1930: A database version of the Chicago Police Department's Homicide Record Index, which chronicles 11,000 homicides in the city between 1870 and 1930. (364.15209773)
Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics: Books, serials, pamphlets, incunabula, and manuscripts from Harvard University's library and museum collections, documenting nine major themes in the history of medicine: Cholera Epidemics in the 19th Century; the Great Plague of London, 1665; the Boston Smallpox Epidemic, 1721; "Pestilence" and the Printed Books of the Late 15th Century; Spanish Influenza in North America, 1918–1919; Syphilis, 1494–1923; Tropical Diseases and the Construction of the Panama Canal, 1904–1914; Tuberculosis in Europe and North America, 1800–1922; the Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia, 1793. (610.9)
Urban Planning, 1794-1918: An International Anthology of Articles, Conference Papers, and Reports: 185 primary source documents. Browse by author, subject, or date, or perform keyword searches on the entire corpus. (711.4092)

Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) This link opens in a new window
Thematically organized collections of books, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, and statistics that document the global history of the 19th century. Currently, the database includes the following collections: Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; British Politics and Society; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture; and European Literature, 1790–1840: The Corvey Collection. (909.81)