Research Guides: Primary Sources in American History: Magazines&Journals

Historical Magazines & Journals

General databases

Bowdoin College Library has an unusually large collection of magazines and journals from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The following databases and indexes are best for identifying specific articles in these older magazines and journals.

American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection
Documents the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction through American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912.
American Periodicals Series Online
American independence, general interest, children's publications, journal articles for women, Civil War - magazines and journal articles. Dates of coverage: 1740-1900
Humanities and Social Sciences Index Retrospective
Offers a broad range of subject coverage in the humanities and social sciences with high-quality indexing of more than 1,300,000 articles in nearly 1,100 periodicals, dating as far back as 1907, as well as citations of over 240,000 book reviews. Dates of Coverage: 1907-1984.
Independent Voices
A digital collection of latter half 20th-century alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries.

Nineteenth century readers' guide to periodical literature

Periodicals Archive Online
Archive of hundreds of digitised journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences. International in scope. Dates of Coverage: 1665-2000.
Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature/Readers' Guide Retrospective
Indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America. Dates of Coverage 1890-Present.

Making of America Journals, University of Michigan
Making of America Journal Collection, Cornell University

Specialized databases

African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
African American history, culture and daily life in the 19th and 20th centuries. Dates of coverage: 1825-1996
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
An archival research resource containing primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting, theater, and video games are all included.
ProQuest One Business
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Combines the broad journal coverage of the ABI/INFORM database with specialty business resources. It includes industry reports, country reports, company data (annual reports, profiles, SWOTs), market research, and analyses.
Women's Magazine Archive
An archival research resource comprising the full backfiles of leading womens interest consumer magazines. Coverage starts in the late-19th century.

Making of America. This digital collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

Individual publications

Bloomberg Businessweek Archive
Covers 1929 - 2000.
Ebony Magazine Archive
Full text (including covers and advertisements) from November 1945 to June 2014.
U.S. News & World Report Magazine Archive
1926-1984; includes predecessor titles.
Vogue Archive
The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition), from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images.

More magazine and journal databases