Americas and Oceania Collections blog

Exploring the Library’s collections from the Americas and Oceania

3 posts categorized "Fashion"

28 September 2022

E-resources: magazines and comics

This month’s e-resources blog explores five wonderful resources offering full-text access to a wide variety of magazines and comics. 

Please note: all of these resources can be accessed remotely with a British Library Reader Pass.

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive, 1880-2015 covers the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to the 21st century. It includes numerous trade magazines which have effectively provided the main historical record for their subject areas throughout the 20th century – Variety (1905-2000), The Hollywood Reporter (1930-2015), Billboard (1894-2000) and Broadcasting (1931-2000) – as well as more specialist titles, such as American Cinematographer (1930-2015), Backstage (1961-2000) and Emmy (1979-2015). The inclusion of consumer and fan magazines enables researchers to retrieve industry news items, features on technological breakthroughs and in-depth interviews with major artists, together with photographs and illustrations, gossip columns, listings, reviews, charts and statistics. Items such as advertisements, covers and short reviews of films, music singles or other works have been indexed as separate documents enabling researchers find all the relevant material for their search topic.

Men’s Magazine Archive contains a handful of US titles, with two being particularly notable. Founded in 1845, the tabloid-style National Police Gazette was in print for over 120 years and initially covered matters of interest to the police – in particular, lurid murders and Wild West outlaws. It also focused on sport, and its plentiful images of burlesque dancers and strippers meant it was a fixture of nineteenth and early twentieth century barber shops. In many ways, the Gazette was a forerunner to illustrated sports weeklies, girlie magazines, celebrity gossip columns, and sensational journalism. Published in New York, The Argosy/Argosy was one of the “big four” pulp (all-fiction) magazines. It had many different iterations, and its writers included Upton Sinclair, Zane Gray and the former dime novelist William Wallace Cook. From the early 1940s, much of its fiction content was replaced by “men’s magazine” content. The magazine ceased publication in 1978.

Amidst a magazine page with two columns of text and a large headline there is a an image of man standing in a river wearing jeans, a jacket and a hat while holding a couple of large fish with his right hand
Argosy. New York, Vol. 376, Issue 3, (1 March 1, 1973). Included in the Men's Magazine Archive, published by ProQuest and available at the British Library.

Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War contains over 1,500 journals and magazines written and illustrated by service personnel in the infantry, artillery, air force, naval, supply and transport units, military hospitals and training depots of all combatant nations. Not only did these magazines create a sense of esprit de corps and raise the spirits of the unit through humorous stories, poems, jokes and parodies, but they also documented the unit’s unique circumstances and experiences. The vast and previously unrecognised corpus of war poetry, written by a multitude of hitherto unknown poets, offers a vital counterpoint to the more established authors who emerged from the Great War. NB – a similar resource, Service Newspapers of World War II, was covered in our e-resources blog in November 2021.

Breather o Heather

Underground and Independent Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels is the first-ever scholarly online collection for researchers and students of adult comic books and graphic novels. From the first underground comix of the 1960s, to the work of modern sequential artists to the present day, it covers the full spectrum of this visual art form and offers 200,000 pages of original material alongside interviews, commentary, criticism, and other supporting materials. Please note that it contains graphic material that some may find offensive.

Vogue Archive contains the entire run of US Vogue, from its founding to the present day and includes all text, graphics, ads covers and fold-outs, indexed and in colour. Vogue was founded in New York in 1892 as a weekly society paper catering for Manhattan's social elite. After being purchased by Condé Nast in 1909, not only did the quality of the paper, printing and illustrations all improve, but there was a new focus on fashion and the magazine quickly became one of the icons of the modern age. The Archive’s contents represent the work of the greatest designers, photographers, stylists and illustrators of the 20th and 21st centuries and are a primary source for the study of fashion, gender and modern social history.

 

 

07 February 2022

E-resources for Women in the United States

This fourth instalment of our Americas e-resources blog series focuses on women in the US, both historic and contemporary, but may also prove a useful starting point for exploring women’s lives and experiences in other parts of the Americas and Oceania.1 

Having recently curated a large exhibition on women’s rights in the UK at the British Library, we are well aware of the challenges involved in organising a topic as varied, contested and capacious as ‘women.’ It has been interesting to see, therefore, how some of the major digital recourses have been organised into different thematic strands.

On Adams Matthews's Gender: Identity and Social Change, for instance, themes include women’s suffrage, feminism and the men’s movement as well as employment and labour, education and the body.

Image of a woman in dungarees driving an old-fashioned harvesting machine. Other agricultural labourers and haystacks are in the background.
'Gender: Identity and Social Change'; an e-resource available at the British Library.

Drawing from collections in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, the resource offers full text access to monographs, periodicals and archives from the early nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Among other riches is the archive of Betty Friedan, feminist activist and co-founder of both the National Organisation for Women and the National Abortion Rights League (digitised from the Schlesinger Library). The archive includes Friedan's survey and accompanying notes about the satisfaction of female graduates in 1957, a piece of work which informed her seminal 1963 publication The Feminine Mystique. As letters sent to Freidan shortly after the book’s publication reveal, some readers objected strongly to the notion of ‘the problem which has no name’, the existence of women’s malaise which The Feminine Mystique identified.

A type written letter to Betty Friedan from a reader opposed to these thesis she put forward in The Feminine Mystique.
Letters from original readers of The Feminine Mystique, 5 January - 24 December 1967, © Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Betty Friedan. Republished by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Accessible at the British Library on the e-resource 'Gender: Identity and Social Change'.

 

A yellow programme for the 6th Conference on Men & Masculinity; it is typewritten with two columns of text in the bottom half.
Programme for the 6th Men and Masculinity Conference, 17 September - 25 October 1979. Content compilation © 2017, by the MSU Library. All rights reserved. Accessible at the British Library on the e-resource 'Gender: Identity and Social Change'.

For an analysis of women and popular, commercial culture, Proquest’s Vogue Archive is hugely illuminating. With full of coverage of American Vogue from the magazine’s first issue in 1892 to the current month, the archive showcases evolving fashions, photography and design as well as being a record of culture, society and aspiration over more than a century. The subject search engine allows for close analysis and the outline statistics for coverage across years provides both a snapshot of topics and their popularity at any given time. A search for ‘abortion', for instance, reveals a peak of 158 mentions between 1990 and 1999, compared to 74 between 1970 and 1979, and 9 from 1960 to 1969. Careful indexing and high-resolution colour page images render the magazine accurately and allow for detailed searches as well as providing evidence of the frequency fashion, style, photography.

A magazine cover featuring a headshot of an African American woman smiling at the camera; on the left of the page are written hints about the articles within the magazine.
Beverly Johnson, the first African American woman to be photographed on the cover of Vogue. Vogue; New York Volume 164, Issue 2, (1 August, 1974): C1. Copyright Conde Nast Publications. Accessible at the British Library on the 'Vogue Archive' e-resource.

Everyday Life & Women in America is published by Adam Matthews and supports the study of American social, cultural and popular history. Offering access to rare primary source material from both the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History at Duke University and The New York Public Library, it includes fully searchable monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. One of the periodicals on offer is Town Topics: The Journal of Society (1887 – 1923). In its day, this was an essential source of articles and commentary on art, music, literature, society, gossip and scandal not only for the socially ambitious, but also for established families like the Vanderbilts and Astors. Today, this full-run of issues provides a unique insight into the Gilded Age.

Everyday Life & Women in America is also rich in guides to social conduct and domestic management literature. One example from a vast selection is American Ladies' Memorial; an indispensable home-book for the wife, mother, sister; In fact, useful to every lady throughout the Unites States (1850). This covers topics such as embroidery and painting as well as etiquette and behavioural advice. In ‘A few Rules for the Wise’ the author advises ‘ladies’ should ‘Control the temper’ as well as ‘use but little ceremony, else your guests will not feel at ease.’

An elaborately decorated black and white cover for a women's periodical.
American Ladies' Memorial; an indispensable home-book for the wife; mother; sister; In fact; useful to every lady throughout the Unites States. Boston, MA. Accessible at the British Library on the e-resource 'Everyday Life & Women in America'.

For the records pertaining to suffrage and women’s rights organisations as well as women at work during the World War II, a good place to start is the History Vault women’s study module Struggle for Women's Rights: 1880-1990, Organizational Records. This includes financial records, letters, papers, diaries and scrapbooks and more taken from the University Publications of America Collections. Records include those from the National Women’s Party, League of Women Voters and the Women’s Action Alliance, the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor and the correspondence of the director of the Women’s Army Corps. A recent addition are the birth control campaigner, sex educator and nurse Margaret Sanger’s papers.

Three platforms worth exploring, despite being somewhat challenging to navigate, are The Gerritsen Collection, Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History, and North American Women’s Letters and Diaries. The latter contains the first-person experiences of 1,325 women through 150,000 pages of diaries and letters, while Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History brings together hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. A wide variety of forms of travel writing are included, from unique manuscripts, diaries and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks and photographs. The resource includes a slideshow with hundreds of items of visual material, including postcards, sketches and photographs.

Spanning four centuries, The Gerritson Collection draws together content from Europe, the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand. This archive of books, pamphlets and periodicals on suffrage, women’s consciousness and feminism was originally collected by the nineteenth century Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs Gerritsen and her husband. Today, the collection contains more than 4,700 publications including a substantive body of material pertaining to anti-suffrage, for example Carrie Chapman Catt's Ought Women to Have Votes for Members of Parliament? (1879) and Anti-Suffrage Essays by Massachusetts Women (1916).

The black and white front cover of The Anti-Suffragist; under the title is the index of contents.
Anonymous : Front Cover; Anti suffragist, devoted to placing before the public the reasons why it is inexpedient to extend the ballot to women. Volume 4, Issue 2 (1912) pg. 0_1. Accessible at the British Library on the e-resource 'The Gerritson Collection'.

This is the tiniest snapshot of the material available via the Library’s electronic resources pertaining to women in the US, but hopefully it demonstrates the wealth of primary and secondary source material that have been collated from archives and libraries around the world and made available through single-access platforms.

Later this month, we will look at the Library's Americas literary e-resources!

Polly Russell, Head, The Eccles Centre

Endnotes:

1. All of the databases referred to here are full-text and need to be consulted on-site at the Library.

18 November 2019

British Library x Charles Jeffrey Research Competition launched: show & tell top picks from the American Studies team

Lora Afric, Languages Cataloguing Manager, reflects on some highlights from a year of fashion collaboration at the Library

For the third year running the British Library has worked with the British Council for Fashion on a Research Collaboration Project and this year radical Glaswegian designer, Charles Jeffrey, joined forces. To mark the start of this collaboration, a catwalk show of Jeffrey’s brand Loverboy SS20 collection ‘Mind’s Instructions’ was staged at the Library earlier in the year. This was followed by a Masterclass in October organised for BA final year and MA students, and a launch of the Research Competition

Charles Jeffrey considers knowledge to be a ‘form of armor’. His brief instructs students to compile a research-focused fashion portfolio inspired by the British Library resources. A show and tell is an interactive part of the Masterclass which is run as part of the project. It gives curators the opportunity to engage with students and inspire them with samples of particularly visually intriguing collection items. 

Model on catwalk showing example of collection created by Charles Jeffrey Loverboy
‘Mind’s instructions’ Loverboy SS20 collection – the British Library, May 2019, reproduced with permission

 

In this blog post the Americas team have selected some of the most popular items shown on the day. You can see the selections from the European team on their blog on the same topic. It is not surprising that items featuring colours, patterns and poetry appealed to fashion students the most. The designs will reveal whether ‘Perhaps peace can still be found in the beautiful and the unexplained?’ as Jeffrey Charles states in his brief. 

 

Opening of Kenneth Patchen's Glory never guesses & other stories showing yellow and orange pages with text and zebra and butterfly in the background
Kenneth Patchen, Glory never guesses & other stories, [United States?], 1955 (RF.2017.b.42)

 

Glory never guesses & other pages by Kenneth Patchen

Published in the United States in the summer of 1955, although the exact location and publisher remains ambiguous, this vibrant collection of 18 poems from the original manuscript pages of American poet Kenneth Patchen features decorations and drawings reproduced through silk screening.

Various flora and fauna, including birds, turtles, butterflies and a zebra, and looping elaborate script, adorn the pages of delicate Japanese paper. Only 200 copies, all hand-run, were produced by Frank Bacher. Patchen became well-known in poetry circles for reading his work with jazz as an accompaniment, and you can almost hear the colourful play and rhythm of the words jump up from the page thanks to Bacher’s lively and rich reproduction.

We chose this item for the show and tell not just for its visual appeal, but also because we thought its use of materials, textures and techniques might spur some inspiration. For those interested in the materiality of books and the book form, there is a thematic vein of such amongst a number of artists’ books held at the Library including metal books (like HS.74/2323), wax books (such as RF.2018.a.56) and even coffee-stained books (see Cup.550.g.669).

Rachael – Curator, North American Published Collections

 

Five images showing colourful cover and inside pages of Cartonera books from Latin America
Cartonera books from Latin America

 

Cartonera books from Latin America

As history has often taught, there are always unexpected opportunities that arise from moments of crisis. The Cartonera phenomenon is a happy Fenix arising from the cardboards piles of the streets.

When Argentina, experienced the great economic depression of the years 1998-2002,  with the consequence of a huge job loss, and the obvious recession of the publishing and cultural sectors,  people started pouring out the streets not only for rioting but also to find an alternative way of life.

Cardboard pickers, cartoneros, started collecting paper and cardboard from the street finding the selling profitable. Eloísa Cartonera, became the first Cartonera publisher that, from 2001-2, started producing books “con cartón comprado a los cartoneros en la vía pública” (with cardboard bought from the cardboard pickers from the streets), although this is not a completely new phenomenon since it arguably takes its primordial roots from the 70’.

The aim of the Cartonera publishers was, since the beginning, to spread poetry and literature at a mass level in Latin America, and at a very low price.

Since then very well established writers, artists and poets, have donated or created for the cause, such as Washington Cucurto. A founder of Eloisa Cartonera and cult author whose realism compositions feature negritude, poverty and homosexuality in Latin America. 

I selected the hand-made Cartonera books for the show and tell for the visual aspect of their recycled appeal alongside their inspiring potential to open the scope for creativity.

Annalisa – Cataloguer, American Collections

 

The Fashion Research Competition and the staff favourite winners will be announced on 31 January when, during a reverse show and tell, students will reveal/show their work inspired by the British Library collections. 

For featured European collection items please see the parallel European studies blog.

 

Blog by Lora Afric, Languages Cataloguing Manager

 

Suggested reading

Kenneth Patchen, Glory never guesses: & other pages. [United States?] : [publisher not identified], [1955] RF.2017.b.42

Ricardo Piglia, The pianist (Buenos Aires, 2007) YF.2011.a.2591

Carlos D'Angelis, No ve la mía (Buenos Aires, 2007) YF.2010.a.6178

Dulcinéia Catadora [ed.], Em mãos ([Brazil], [2013]) RF.2019.a.343

Yarezi Salazar, El secreto de mi tía abuela ([Monterrey, Mexico], [2010]) RF.2019.a.328 

Carlos Emílio Corrêa, A outra forma da ilha de goa (Lima [Paraguay], [2018]) RF.2019.a.330

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