English Research Guide

Primary sources can provide unique details about the Early Modern Period. These items are produced during this time period by those who lived through it. For example, you might look at sources such as plays, poems, letters, texts, ballads, and other works produced between 1500-1800 to a glimpse into this time period. Remember that primary sources are produced by people who lived during a specific time period.  

Archives are a great location for primary sources. Archives preserve rare and unique items from the past. You may come across one-of-a-kind collections, photographs, manuscripts, pamphlets, and other items that aren't found anywhere else. Below is a list of archives that may prove useful to you as you search for primary sources. For additional help, consult a librarian to assist you   

General Resources:

• Deciphering seventeenth-century handwritten recipes: a brief introduction to palaeography

• Early English Books Online (University of Michigan)

Botanical Resources:

• Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris: A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers

• Scientific Plant Literature

• The Ex-Classics Website - Gerard’s Herbal

• John Parkinson and the Rise of Botany in the 17th Century

• The gardener’s labyrinth 

• A new herball or A new herball

• The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes

• William Turner's Herball 

  • About William Turner

Animal Resources:

• The Orbis Pictus by Johann Amos Comenius (the first children’s book published in 1658)

• The historie of foure-footed beastes

• The book of beasts : being a translation from a Latin bestiary of the twelfth century

• The Old English Physiologus

• The Medieval Bestiary 

• The workes of that famous chirurgion Ambrose Parey

• On Monsters and Marvels

• Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures

• Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings In Early Modern Literature

• The Care Of Brute Beasts: A Social And Cultural Study Of Veterinary Medicine In Early Modern England

Human/Body Resources:

• On the Fabric of the Human Body in Seven Books or De humani corporis fabrica libri septem

• The secret miracles of nature: in four books. Learnedly and moderately treating of generation, and the parts thereof; the soul, and its immortality; of plants and living creatures; of diseases, their symptoms and cures, and many other rarities not treated of by any author extant ... Whereunto is added one book containing philosophical and prudential rules how man shall become excellent in all conditions, whether high or low, and lead his life with health of body and mind

• Praxis medicinae, or, the physicians practice

• The Natural Faculties (Foundational text from Greece that informed many Early Modern ideas about the body).

Unlike primary sources, secondary sources are not produced by the people who lived during a specific time period. These resources are typically produced years later and include commentary or analysis that was not possible at the time.

You can access secondary sources available at the Cal Poly Humboldt Library through the OneSearch catalog. You might, for example, try a search using one of the following combinations:

 early modern period AND poems

early modern period AND plays

17th century AND ballads

Note that you will want to use the Boolean AND when you use multiple terms. OR can be used when you have two similar or related terms (ex: poems OR poetry) and NOT can be used to exclude items.

Secondary sources can be found in our library catalog or databases. For a list of English-specific databases, visit the Finding Articles tab on this research guide.