Subject Guides

The Glory of Woman: Prescriptive Literature

This bibliography provides an introduction to prescriptive literature, including conduct-of-life books, domestic arts manuals, and etiquette guides. The genre of prescriptive literature highlights the social and cultural forces that shape women's everyday lives. Materials range from 1631-2001.

Digital Collections

Everyday Life and Women in America c. 1800-1920

Provides access to rare primary source material on American social, cultural, and popular history from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of 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, emphasizing conduct of life and domestic management literature, the daily lives of women and men, and contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.

Secondary Sources

Burr, Virginia Ingraham. The Secret Eye : the Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889. Chapel Hill, NC: 1990.

An abridged version of the Ellas Gertrude Clanton Thomas diaries containing an introductory essay on Southern women diarists.

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