Guides: HI 2341: “Furies from Hell” to “Femi-Nazis”: A History of Modern Anti-Feminism: Primary Sources

Primary Sources for History

Primary sources are materials that provide firsthand testimony to a subject under investigation. Researchers often use these firsthand accounts of specific events to understand events from the viewpoint of people living during that time period. Primary sources include documents and artifacts from the time period under study, such as letters, diaries, photographs, newspaper articles, pamphlets, government records, songs, poems, and videos. Primary sources also include writings and recordings by witnesses who experienced the events or conditions being documented. For example, oral histories, autobiographies, and memoirs are primary sources.

Song: "Put Me on an Island (Where the Girls are Few)"

Written by Will Setters in 1908; Performed by Wilkie Bard (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1289943/put-me-upon-an-island-sheet-music-setters-will/)

Chorus:

Put me upon an island where the girls are few
Put me amongst the most ferocious lions in the Zoo
You can put me upon a treadmill and I'll never fret
But for pity's sake don't put me near a Suffragette

Library Databases with Primary Sources

JSTOR: Primary Sources
Primary source collections currently available on JSTOR are multidisciplinary and discipline-specific and include select monographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, oral histories, government documents, images, 3D models, spatial data, type specimens, drawings, paintings, and more.

New York Times (Historical): 1851-2020 This link opens in a new window
Search full text and images 1851-2020 including news, illustrations, editorials, and advertisements.
Coverage: 1851-2020
Full Text: Yes
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Examples of Websites with Primary Sources

To find primary sources via Google, try adding keywords like journals, papers, letters, documents, primary sources, or documentary history to your search terms. Primary sources can often be found on library, museum, and government websites.

American Archive of Public Broadcasting
FRAmes on GENder (Atria, Institute on gender equality and women's history)
FRAmes on GENder brings together books, articles and pamphlets that were influential in the development of feminist ideas in 29 countries during the second half of the 20th century.
Primary Source Set: Women's Suffrage (Library of Congress)
Woman Suffrage Memorabilia
A Site Devoted to Such Artifacts as Buttons, Post Cards, Ribbons, Sheet Music, and Ceramics. By Kenneth Florey, emeritus professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University.
Women's Suffrage in Sheet Music (Library of Congress)
For an example of an anti-suffrage song, see "Since my Margarette become-a-da-suffragette."
Women’s Liberation Movement Print Culture (Duke University Libraries)
Manifestos, speeches, essays, and other materials documenting various aspects of the Women's Movement in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.

Primary Sources: Books at WPI

Sometimes collections of primary source documents are republished in books. To find books like these, search WPI Library Search for books about your topic and add keywords like journals, papers, letters, documents, primary sources, documentary history, or sourcebook to your search terms.

Here are some examples of books containing reprinted primary sources:

Documenting First Wave Feminisms: Vol. 1, Transnational Collaborations and Crosscurrents by Nancy Forestell (Editor); Maureen Moynagh (Editor)
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 0802091342
Publication Date: 2012-01-14
Contemporary feminists are used to juggling many different identities at once, balancing affiliations based on race, nation, class, and sexuality. First-wave feminists also negotiated--or failed to negotiate--similar tensions in their international organizing. Using primary documents dating from the abolitionist movement to the Second World War, Maureen Moynagh and Nancy Forestell investigate the tensions inherent in organizing early transnational feminist movements. Documenting First Wave Feminisms: Volume 1 provides a historical framework to bring together voices of women both canonical and less well known, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Mabel Dove, who were active in feminist movements in all corners of the world. Suffrage, imperialism, citizenship, sexuality, and moral reform are shown to be key issues in a variety of exchanges across North America, Europe, the global south, and the Pan-Pacific region. This source book is as nuanced as first-wave feminism itself and will prove a valuable resource for studying women's rights in an increasingly globalized world.
Documenting First Wave Feminisms: Vol. 2, Canada - National and Transnational Contexts by Maureen Moynagh; Nancy Forestell
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 0802091350
Publication Date: 2014-01-10
This book is the second of a two-volume anthology of primary source documents on feminism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unique in its extensive treatment of the first-wave feminist movement in Canada, it highlights distinct elements of its origins and evolution. The book is organized into thematic rubrics that address key issues, debates, and struggles within the first wave in Canada, as well as international influences and Canadian engagement in transnational networks and initiatives. Documents by Indigenous, Anglophone, Francophone, and immigrant female activists demonstrate the richness and complexity of Canadian feminism during this period. Together with its first volume, Documenting First Wave Feminisms reveals a more nuanced picture, attentive to nationalism and transnationalism, of the first wave than has previously been understood.