Library Research Guides: FREN 303: Women, Royalty and Power in the Literature of the Ancien Regime (archived): Sources

Suggested Databases and Websites

WorldCat Discovery This link opens in a new window
Database of the contents of thousands of library catalogs worldwide that can be searched to find books, journal titles, and other materials beyond those owned by Wellesley.

Digitized texts and images

Gallica
The digital presence of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It contains millions of digitized newspapers, magazines, images, and sound recordings relating to France and French history and culture.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Searchable and browsable page images of every significant title printed in the United Kingdom, including works in French, between 1701 and 1800; includes books, pamphlets, broadsides, & ephemera
Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
The Internet Archive is a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form, including texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages.
Artstor This link opens in a new window
Digitized images of art, architecture, and other forms of visual culture from around the world, from museums, archaeology, photo archives, slide collections, and art reference works, dating from B.C.E. to present.

Requires creation of an Artstor account to download images. This account also grants you off-campus access for 60 days. If your account is inactivated or you need to create an account, make sure to use a library link (such as this one) to get to Artstor so that you will be recognized as a Wellesley user.

Scholarship and Secondary Sources

Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Articles on world history from 1450, published from 1954-present. Includes French-language scholarship. Limit by historical period.

Search Tip

Searching full-text primary documents from the 18th century can be a problem, either because of mistakes transforming the text to something machine-readable, or because 18th century spelling was not yet standarized.

To combat this, try combining several spellings of search words, such as:

smallpox OR smalpox OR small-pox

Also try truncation to get variations in spelling that have the same root:

adverti* to get advertize or advertise

Topic-Specific Resources

Work in progress...I'll be adding to this section as the semester proceeds.

Coiffures

Histoire de la coiffure des femmes en France (1886)
Recollections of Léonard, hairdresser to Queen Marie-Antoinette, tr. from the French by E. Jules Méras
The likely apocryphal memoir of Marie-Antoinette's hairdresser, translated from the French by E. Jules Méras.
L’art de la coiffure des dames françoises (1768)
Legros, coiffeur to Queen Marie of France (wife of King Louis XV), describes the tools and techniques required to create more than twenty-five of the most fashionable hair styles of that era. Lavishly illustrated. Supplement (published separately)
Costumes français sous Louis XIV

Book Studies

American Book Prices Current
Annual record of books, manuscripts, autographs, maps and broadsides sold at auction (despite name, ABPC also covers UK and many European auctions). ABPC is the standard tool used by dealers, appraisers, auction houses, and scholars.
Grand-Carteret - Les almanachs français
The venerable reference guide to French almanacs in all their forms.