Letters & Correspondences

Contemporary American Poetry- Eng 5000 - Sewell

Tracking down correspondence can be tricky, below you’ll find links to freely available online resources, library databases, and books.   

Books Available in the Library

• American Poets
• English Poets

Library Databases Containing Correspondence 

• Black Abolitionist Papers: 1830-1865 (ProQuest)
  This collection searches a unique set of primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865. Approximately 15,000 articles, documents, correspondence, proceedings, manuscripts, and literary works of almost 300 Black abolitionists show the full range of their activities in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany.
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale)
  Access the digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of approximately 26 million pages, the product allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more.

Digitized Letters & Correspondence

• The Hathi Trust
  The Hathi Trust is a huge digital repository, but you can use it to search specifically for correspondence by going to the advanced search page. In the first search box put “Correspondence” and select “Subject” form the dropdown menu next to the search box. In the second search box put “poetry” and again select “subject.” The scroll down and tick the box for “Full view only” and then hit “Search.”
•  American Founding Era Collection
  A gateway into one of the great conversations in history. These newly prepared digital editions of the papers of many of the major figures of the early republic are presented in a fully searchable and interoperable online environment.
• The Browning Letters

  While we have most of these in print, it is useful to see the original writing.

• Epistolae: Medieval Women's Letters
  Epistolae is a collection of letters to and from women dating from the 4th to the 13th century AD. These letters from the Middle Ages, written in Latin, are presented with English translations and are organized by the women participating. Biographical sketches of the women and descriptions of the subject matter or the historic context of the letter is included where available.

• The First World War Poetry Digital ArchiveThe First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 7000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research.
  • The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas.
• The Walt Whitman Archvie

  Here you will find transcriptions and page images of Whitman's poetry manuscripts.

• Correspondences from The Rossetti Archive

  The Rossetti Archive facilitates the scholarly study of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the painter, designer, writer, and translator who was, according to both John Ruskin and Walter Pater, the most important and original artistic force in the second half of the nineteenth century in Great Britain.

• Nineteenth Century Scholarship Online

  NINES is a federated search across a number of related digital projects around the nineteenth century. It includes access to curated digital correspondences to major poets including Swinburne, Blake, Dickinson, Hunt, Arnold and Arnold.

• Phono Post

  A digital archive of recorded audio messages sent through via post sponsored jointly by Princeton, the Einstein Foundation and the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School.