Research Guides: HIST 358: The Self before the Selfie (HC): Background Information

Portrait of a Princess as a Solitary Reader

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Maria Adelaide, princess of France, in Turkish-style clothes,1753, Uffizi Collection (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Research Portals

Connected Histories: British History Sources, 1500-1900
This provides a federated search across digital projects and has the added benefit of being focused solely on Britain.
Early Modern Resources
A portal categorizing open access databases and web sites by subject, geographic region, and material type.

18thConnect
A web portal and research environment devoted to digital projects concerning the 18th century. Many primary texts and images are accessible by subject, author, and other categories. Use the Advanced Search to refine by format, discipline, genre, and so on.
- Only some content will be available full text. Please contact a subject librarian to find full-text copies of sources not available in 18thConnect.

Printing History

French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Database, 1769-1794
"The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe project uses database technology to map the trade of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), a celebrated Swiss publishing house that operated between 1769 and 1794.

As the STN sold the works of other publishers alongside its own editions, their archives can be considered a representative source for studying the history of the book trade and dissemination of ideas in the late Enlightenment."

Finding Background Information

The resources on this page provide overviews of ideas, people, and events in the history of t Europe in the age of the Enlightenment. They are a quick way to find out the basic facts and identify current points of debate.

When using an article in an encyclopedia or handbook, always check the bibliography for further reading at the end of the article. It will provide a selective list of the books, articles, and, frequently, Web resources considered to be the most up-to-date and reliable.

Finding In-depth Material -- Readings by Topic

Professor Graham recommends the primary and secondary texts on the tab above Readings by Topic. These web pages provide reading lists that deal with many different aspects of the eighteenth century:

Handbooks

Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment
Brings together essays examining the Enlightenment from the point of view of philosophy, religion, literature, art, medicine, anthropology and architecture.
Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Régime
Histoire et dictionnaire du temps des Lumières
This reference work provides very detailed coverage of France and Europe during the 18th century with additional material about the Enlightenment around the globe. In addition to entries on people, events, and ideas, there is extensive treatment of social and cultural history topics.
A new history of French literature
Provides an outstanding overview of French literature with an emphasis on its place in the wider cultural history of the nation.
A new history of German literature
In this book leading scholars and critics capture the spirit of German culture in some 200 original essays on events in German literary history.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Important source of scholarly, brief biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond,from the earliest times to recent years. Articles focus on noteworthy people from all walks of life.

Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime by William Doyle (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2012-01-13

An international team of contributors surveys and presents current thinking about the world of pre-revolutionary France and Europe. In this wide-ranging and authoritative collection, old and newer areas of research into the Ancien Regime are presented and assessed. The result shows what a lively field of historical enquiry the Ancien Regime remains, and points the way towards promising new directions for thinking and writing about the intriguing complex of historical problems which it continues to pose.

Subject Guide

Margaret Schaus

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Subjects:Africana & Black Studies, Cities, Classics, Gender & Sexuality Studies, History, Islamic Studies, Latin American & Iberian Studies, Peace & Conflict Studies, Political Science, Writing Program

Encyclopedias

Britain in the Hanoverian age, 1714-1837
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
Europe 1450 to 1789
Online subject encyclopedia for early modern Europe which provides historical background for social and cultural topics.

Oxford Art Online
Includes full-text articles on every aspect of the visual arts from prehistory through the present. Contains images and provides links to related sites.