ProQuest Historical Periodicals

American Periodicals Collection components

APS chronicles the development of America across 150 years. The journals in this collection cover three broad periods:

• 89 journals published between 1740 and 1800 offer insights into America's transition from colonial times to independence. The journals support research for a range of academic fields. Titles include Massachusetts Magazine, which published America's first short stories, and Thomas Paine's Pennsylvania Magazine, which reported on inventions. One of the first mass printings of the Declaration of Independence, a letter by George Washington on the crucial Battle of Trenton, and the thoughts of Benjamin Franklin are among the highlights of content from this period.
• The first 60 years of the 19^th century became the golden age of American periodicals, with general interest magazines, children's publications, and more than 20 journals for women. Many of the publications reflect on the growing debate over slavery, including the serialization of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom’s Cabin in National Era that preceded the novel. Also available are hard-to-find materials, such as Edgar Allan Poe's contributions to the Southern Literary Messenger, as well as the first appearances of Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories in New England Magazine, and Margaret Fuller's contributions to the Dial.
• 118 periodicals published during the Civil War (1861-1865) and Reconstruction (1865-1877) eras reflect the nation in turmoil and growth, and titles from the 1880s through 1900 capture the settling of the West and the emergence of modern America. Early professional journals, including Publications of the American Economic Association and Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, popular titles such as Scribner's and Lippincott’s issued by publishing houses, celebrations of Americana in Ladies’ Home Journal, and the incisive political and social commentary of Puck and McClure’s illustrate the variety of the American experience.

American Periodicals from the Center for Research Libraries builds on the coverage of American Periodicals Series Online by offering access to publications that focus on additional geographical regions and topics. The key areas covered by these publications include labor, trade, literature, science, photography, and the women’s movement.

This collection offers full-color scans of original printed publications archived at the Center from Research Libraries (CRL). It spans the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and makes available the full runs of hundreds of periodicals.

Major trade titles range from those that reflected the norms and conventions of their age, such as the American Annual of Photography, to vehicles for innovation, like The Craftsman, through which Gustav Stickley popularized the Arts and Crafts style of architecture. Influential political periodicals include Free Russia, the first anti-Tsarist journal in the English-language. Notable literary magazines also feature, such as Hampton’s Magazine, which published work by, among others, Jack London and P. G. Wodehouse and whose editors included Theodore Dreiser.

Because American Periodicals contains digitized images of periodical pages, researchers can see all of the original typography, drawings, graphic elements, and article layouts exactly as they were originally published.