Digitized newspapers, diaries, and ephemera provide windows to the time period in which these works were written. Book reviews, authors' activities, and coverage of national events all bear witness to the social forces and mores that influenced literary works. Collections below designated with an opened lock icon are fully available open access materials- the Library of Congress, Google Books (which don't always provide the full book), and Project Gutenberg are major players in making public domain materials available. Collections without the icon are subscription databases which the library pays for, and which are available to you as a student. From off campus, you need to log into them using your network credentials.
