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Gale Research Complete: Archives Unbound Guide

A subject focused guide for the Archives Unbound Collections available in Gale Research Complete

Society & Culture

Etiquette and Advice, 1631-1969

Extent:
429 Monographs; 96,632 pages
Date Range:
1631-1969
Source Institution:
Winterthur Museum
 
The Etiquette and Advice collection from Winterthur Museum contains more than 440 British and American books on etiquette from as early as 1631 well into the 20th century, and represents complete published works as well as scarce printed ephemera.
Dena Attar wrote of etiquette in her book A Bibliography of Household Books Published in Britain, 1800-1914: "The literature of etiquette is full of paradoxes. On the surface, it is the written code for a fixed, formal and recognized system of behavior, yet the volume of books and articles on etiquette produced between 1800 and 1914 speaks more urgently of uncertainty and change. Common themes were the decay of modern manners and the instability of society, and writers often described their books as necessary correctives for wider social problems."

Society, Culture & Politics in Canada: Canadiana Pamphlets from McMaster University, 1818-1929

Source Institution:
McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Extent:
81,857 images
Date Range:
1805-1929 (predominantly 1818-1929)
 
This collection contains pamphlets that deal with many aspects of Canadian history, literature, social and political conditions. Included are pamphlets on religion and churches, all levels of government, elections, peace movements and war service, Communism, local communities and labor organizations to name but a few of the topics covered. Approximately 250 pamphlets date from before 1867. Several of the pamphlets are in the French language. There are a very small number of pamphlets in this collection that have no relation to Canada; they are mainly British and American although a number of pamphlets concern Cuba and Third World countries. At least one pamphlet about Ireland is in Gaelic; a few pamphlets are in other languages.

Film & the Film Industry

D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation

Extent:
1,991 Manuscripts, 1,992 pages, 1,991 images
Date Range:
1915
Source Institution:
Epoch Producing Corporation
 
When it was released in 1915, "Birth of a Nation" was a groundbreaking film that introduced new forms and cinematic techniques. Yet the film is more often referred to as "the most controversial film ever made in the United States." The film was based on the novel The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas Dixon, Jr., published in 1905. The Birth of a Nation employs equal parts fiction and history as it follows two families over the course of several years through the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Study of the film is a must for those wishing to examine American social history, the Lost Cause, and attitudes toward African Americans prevalent throughout the United States in the early part of the twentieth century.

The principal aim of this digital collection is the presentation of The Birth of a Nation in the most authentic and complete form possible. This descriptive edition has chosen as its point of orientation the film in its first exhibited form, as shown at Clune's Auditorium, Los Angeles, California, on February 8, 1915. The collection does not provide the film in its totality, but provides a shot-by-shot analysis, with annotations, that establishes as accurate an appreciation as possible of the film in its earliest exhibited state. The guide that accompanies the collection is critical to understanding the information provided with each scene.

FBI File: Hollywood and J. Edgar Hoover: Communists in the Motion Picture Industry

Source Institution:
Federal Bureau of Investigation Library
Extent:
14,419 images
Date Range:
1925-1961
 
J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, held longstanding interest in the Hollywood film industry as well as deep distrust of anyone on the political left. In August 1942 he ordered the bureau's Los Angeles office to report on "Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry." Various FBI reports chronicled the working of major film studios such as MGM, Paramount, RKO, and Warner Brothers, and studio management and labor union power struggles. The FBI's investigation of Hollywood resulted in many thousands of pages and show a growing operation organized in the early 1940s that continued throughout the Cold War.

Subjects include: American Federation of Labor; Communist International; front organizations; Council of Hollywood Guilds and Unions; Screen Directors Guild; Screen Office Employees Guild; Screen Cartoonists Guild; Screen Writers Guild; Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee; Hollywood Ten; FBI support of anticommunist organizations; Humphrey Bogart; Charles Chaplin; Cecil B. DeMille; Katharine Hepburn; Gary Cooper; Frank Sinatra; among other topics.

FBI File: Hollywood and J. Edgar Hoover: Investigations of Actors and Directors

Source Institution:
Federal Bureau of Investigation Library
Extent:
9,398 images
Date Range:
1922-1961
 
This publication contains reporting from informers, such as Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild; data on influential figures; and FBI "reviews" of mainstream films that were believed to contain Communist propaganda. Documentation includes: FBI surveillance and informant reports; Justice Department and FBI memoranda, correspondence, and analyses; news clippings and articles; excerpts from HUAC hearings; briefing papers; speech excerpts; and transcripts of conversations. Subjects include: Lucille Ball; Humphrey Bogart; Bertolt Brecht; James Cagney; Charles Chaplin; Jules Dassin; Walt Disney; Howard Fast; Lillian Hellman; Danny Kaye; Gene Kelley; Peter Lorre; Groucho Marx; Vincent Prince; Edward G. Robinson; James Stewart; Gloria Swanson; and others.

Hollywood, Censorship, and the Motion Picture Production Code, 1927-1968

Source Institution:
Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California. Source Note: Motion Picture Association of America Production Code Administration collection, selected from the holdings of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California. This collection comprises the content of the former microfilm product entitled.
Extent:
30,899 images
Date Range:
1927-1968
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Production Code Administration Files collection documents forty years of self-regulation and censorship in the motion picture industry. The Production Code was written in 1929 by Martin J. Quigley, an influential editor and publisher of motion picture trade periodicals, and Reverend Daniel A. Lord, a Jesuit advisor to Hollywood filmmakers. Officially accepted in 1930 by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the precursor organization to the MPAA, the Production Code presented guidelines governing American movie production. The five hundred titles selected were chosen by the staff of the library's Special Collections Department, with advice from film historian Leonard J. Leff.

Through the Camera Lens: The Moving Picture World and the Silent Cinema Era, 1907-1927

Source Institution:
Library of Congress
Extent:
115,972 images
Date Range:
1907-1927
 
For those within the film industry, information and opinion were shaped by a number of aggressive trade publications, each competing for the same limited number of subscribers. Chief among these was the Moving Picture World, which, setting a standard for the broadest possible coverage, reviewed current releases and published news, features, and interviews relating to all aspects of the industry.
he Moving Picture World began publication on March 9, 1907, and appeared weekly until January 7, 1928, when it became Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World. Interestingly, the cover of the first issue of the new magazine featured an advertisement for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, headed "Mergers Make Greatness!"

Art & Music

American Art-Union, 1839-1851: The Rise of American Art Literacy

Source Institution:

New-York Historical Society Museum and Library

Extent:

49,793 images

Date Range:

1839-1851

This collection consists of 109 volumes and 1 box of records from 1838 to 1860. Volumes include minutes of annual meetings, executive committee, committee of management, and purchasing committee; register of works of art in the American Art-Union, including title of the painting submitted, the artist, price asked, cost of frame and whether or not a picture was purchased or rejected; letters addressed to the American Art-Union, including many from agents around the country, and pertaining to the sale of subscriptions; letters from artists to the American Art-Union with index; letterpress books containing copies of letters sent by the American Art-Union; and newspaper clippings.

Robert Winslow Gordon and American Folk Music

Source Institution:
Library of Congress
Extent:
17,246 images
Date Range:
1909-1932
 
Robert Winslow Gordon (1888-1961), a native of Maine, attended Harvard College and taught in the department of English at the University of California at Berkeley. His monthly column in Adventure Magazine, "Old Songs that Men Sing," attracted attention from readers across the United States, and he received thousands of letters containing songs and queries. In 1928 Gordon became the first archivist of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture) in the Library of Congress. He was a pioneer in using mechanical means to document folk musicians, and his cylinders and discs in the Library of Congress form part of his legacy. The collection of Gordon manuscripts contained here, primarily from 1922 to 1932, offers researchers online access to the daily workings of an important twentieth-century American folklorist.

Literature and Lore

The Shakespeare Collection

Source Institution:
Various
Extent:
Manuscript/Monographs
Date Range:
1517-1975
Language:
English
 
The Shakespeare Collection contextualizes the legacy of this great poet and playwright, containing a selection of over 200 prompt books (annotated working texts of stage managers and company prompters) from the 17th to 20th centuries, the extensive diaries of Shakespeare enthusiast Gordon Crosse documenting 500 UK performances from 1890 to 1953, the First Folio and Quartos, editions and adaptations of Shakespeare's works from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, more than 80 works Shakespeare is thought to have been familiar with, as well as works composed by Shakespeare's contemporaries.

German Folklore and Popular Culture: Das Kloster. Scheible.

Source Institution:
Various libraries
Extent:
13,776 images
Date Range:
1845-1849
 
Das Kloster is a collection of magical and occult texts, chapbooks, folklore, popular superstition and fairy tales of the German Renaissance compiled by Stuttgart antiquarian Johann Scheible, between 1845 and 1849. In addition to the Das Kloster volumes, this collection provides additional volumes of unique perspectives on Central European culture and tradition. Included are texts essential for the study of German folk traditions, the Reformation, wit and humor and 19th-century literature.

Literature, Culture and Society in Depression Era America: Archives of the Federal Writers' Project

Source Institution:
Library of Congress
Extent:
37,407 images
Date Range:
1933-1943
 
The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was the most controversial and contentious program of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), an integral part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal." This bold, imaginative and wide-ranging enterprise is the key to understanding literature, culture and society in America during the Depression era.

This collection presents the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) publications of all 47 states involved in the project, which ran from 1933 to 1943. Forming the most complete collection of publications from all participating states, this archive contains more than 450 individual items, many of which are typed or mimeographed and received only limited circulation. The FWP was a part of "Federal One," the arts project established by the WPA to cover music, theater, art and writers. The WPA recognized that steelworkers, bricklayers, share-croppers, and factory workers were not the only section of the economy hit by the Depression. Academics, post-graduate students, journalists, playwrights and novelists were also unemployed. In five years the WPA spent millions, provided literary training and, more significantly, the opportunity for participants to observe, eat and write.

The Southern Literary Messenger: Literature of the Old South

Source Institution:
Lost Cause Press
Extent:
23,949 images
Date Range:
1834-1864
 
The Southern Literary Messenger enjoyed an impressive thirty-year run and was in its time the South's most important literary periodical. Avowedly a southern publication, the Southern Literary Messenger was also the one literary periodical published that was widely circulated and respected among a northern readership. Throughout much of its run, the journal avoided sectarian political and religious debates, but, the sectional crisis of the 1850s gave the contents of the magazine an increasingly partisan flavor. By 1860 the magazine's tone had shifted to a defiantly proslavery and pro-South stance. Scholars and students of history, journalism, and literature can discern much about how the hot-button topics of slavery and secession were presented in southern intellectual and literary culture in the early stages of the Civil War.