Readex Enlarges Early American Newspapers with Series 11, 1803-1899
December 3, 2014 (NAPLES, FL) — Featuring essential historical newspapers collected by the American Antiquarian Society, Early American Newspapers, Series 11, 1803-1899 will be launched in December 2014 by Readex, a division of NewsBank. This searchable chronicle of 19th-century America will offer access to more than 130 newspapers covering diverse facets of local, regional, and national U.S. history, culture and daily life. Created for students and scholars in diverse academic disciplines, Series 11 also significantly extends the political and geographical breadth and depth of the 10 previous series of Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922.
"This new collection of early American newspapers adds enormous value to Readex's historical newspapers program by delivering essential, high-demand content. Researchers will create new scholarship, and fresh insights, as they explore documents that capture, as first witnesses, crucial events in American history," said Remmel Nunn, Vice President for Publishing, Readex.
Series 11, 1803-1899, includes newspapers from every U.S. state. Among these are many of the more influential newspapers in each American region—publications that survived on their own merits after the first wave of less-popular titles in the region died out. Also included are elusive runs of especially noteworthy newspapers that have only recently become available: the New York Herald, soon to have the largest circulation of any paper in the world; New York World, one of the most powerful political papers in America; Charleston Mercury, an early advocate of Southern succession; Cherokee Advocate, the first newspaper in Indian Territory; and Sacramento Daily Union, heralded as “The Oldest Daily in the West.”
Other notable titles in Series 11 include the Philadelphia Gazette, one of the most successful newspapers in the region during a time when Philadelphia was the second largest city in America; New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, offering unusually detailed economic coverage, including slave-trade pricing; Missouri Democrat, the most eminent conservative daily in St. Louis when the city was the main gateway to the West; Austin State Gazette, one of the most prominent newspapers in Texas from the pre-Civil War era until Reconstruction; Phoenix Herald, founded 33 years before Arizona became a state; and the Weekly Alta California, San Francisco’s populist and independent paper chronicling the transformation of San Francisco into a major city. Additional titles in Series 11, all included for the first time in Early American Newspapers, are the Lynchburg Virginian, North Carolina Standard, Washington Weekly Union, Christian Register, Louisville Democrat, Cherokee Phoenix and many others.
As part of America’s Historical Newspapers—the definitive source of American historical newspapers—Early American Newspapers, Series 11, shares a common interface with all other Readex newspaper collections, enabling seamless searching with 20th-Century American Newspapers, American Ethnic Newspapers, American Newspaper Archives, Caribbean Newspapers, and all previous series of Early American Newspapers.
About the American Antiquarian Society
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is both a learned society and a major independent research library. The AAS library houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, sheet music, and graphic arts material printed from first contact through 1876 in what is now the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. The AAS collections also contain manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary works, bibliographies, and other reference works related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century. The library contains more than two-thirds of all known imprints created in America before 1821, making it the single greatest repository of such materials in the world. Additionally, the Society’s holdings of American printed materials dating from 1821 through 1876 are among the strongest anywhere.
About Readex, a division of NewsBank
For more than 60 years, the Readex name has been synonymous with research in historical materials and government documents. Recognized by librarians, students, and scholars for its efforts to transform academic scholarship, Readex offers a wealth of Web-based collections in the humanities and social sciences, including the Archive of Americana, a family of historical collections featuring searchable books, pamphlets, newspapers, and government documents printed in America over three centuries, and the World Newspaper Archive, created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries. Also available are the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports and the Joint Publications Research Service Reports, two of the U.S. government’s fundamental sources of foreign intelligence gathered from publicly available media during the second half of the 20th century.
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For more information, contact Readex Marketing Director David Loiterstein by calling 1.800.762.8182 or emailing dloiterstein@readex.com.