Cengage Gale recently launched the first stage the Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO).  This multi-year digitization project will bring together in one collection monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, and more.  At present there are four components completed:  Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; British Politics and Society; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture; and European Literature: 1790-1840: The Covey Collection.

European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection contains about 18,000 monographs in English (7637), French (6491), and German (3578) from the Romantic Era, plus others in Romanian, Hungarian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Slovak, Turkish, and Russian.  Many of the monographs in this collection are rare, especially those by women authors.  The collection, built by Victor Amadeus in the first half of the nineteenth century and housed at his castle, Castle Covey near Paderborn Germany, was rediscovered in the 1970s, and not fully appreciated until the 1990s. The collection includes fictional works, novels, plays, and poems, on subjects such as murder, fishes, biblical literature, orphans, hostages, Joan of Arc, chefs, and more.  Unfortunately the titles cannot be sorted by author.  The collection reflects the taste of the collector:  none of Jane Austen works are present, although there are selected works by Byron, Radcliffe, and Fanny Burney, which were published by German publishers.

The British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture collection includes documents from the British library related to: the English stage after the Restoration, 1733-1822; receipts and archvies from Drury Lange; Drury Lane under Sheridan; archives of the Royal Literary Fund; Haymarket archive; Royal Philharmonic  Society music manuscripts; Wandering Minstrels archive; and popular literature collections.

Explore these two, plus the Asia and the West and British Politics and Society collections. 

Searching NCCO can be idiosyncratic, so if you need help with your research, be sure to contact the Research Center to make an appointment with a librarian.  In addition to NCCO, the library can help you explore all of our rich digital collections to find the sources you require.

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