Related areas:

• Africana Studies
• American Indian Studies
• Film
• Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Latino/a Studies
• Linguistics
• Medieval Studies
• Philosophy

back to top

Primary Source Databases for English

The Library provides networked access to many more full-text, primary source databases than can be listed here. Others may be located through the Library Catalog and Find Databases, which contains an alphabetical list of online resources related to Linguistics, Language and Literature.

Columbia Granger’s world of poetry: the electronic Granger’s

Indexes poetry in published anthologies. Contains full text of anthologized poems in the public domain, poetry excerpts from copyrighted works, and citations providing poem title, author, publisher, subject(s), and a list of anthologies in which the selected poem appears. 15,000 authors are represented with references to 558 separate anthologies (1992 release). Also contains audio readings of canonical works, and allows side-by-side comparison of texts.

Literature Online. (LION)

A full-text collection of poetry, drama, and prose with complementary references sources. Primary texts include English poetry from 600 to the present; American and African-American poetry from 1603 to the present; English drama; English prose; articles, monographs and dissertations from the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature; full-text articles from literary journals; and biographical information on widely studied authors. Subsumed in the database are the contents of several Chadwyck-Healey CD-ROM products, including: The Bible in English; Database of African-American Poetry, 1760-1900; Database of Twentieth Century African American Poetry; Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare; and English Poetry.

Early English Books Online (EEBO)

From the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War, Early English Books Online) contains over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475 - 1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).

Eighteenth Century Collections Online. (ECCO)

A comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. When completed, the full collection will include nearly 150,000 titles and more than 33,000,000 pages of searchable material.

Evans Digital Edition.

Online version of the microfiche set Early American imprints, 1639-1800, based on the renowned American bibliography by Charles Evans and enhanced by Roger Bristol's Supplement to Evans' American bibliography. Serves as the foundation for research on every aspect of 17th and 18th century American life. Upon completion, Evans Digital will consist of over 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images.

North American Slave Narratives

Contains full text of "books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920."

TEAMS Middle English Texts

"The TEAMS Middle English Texts are published for TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) in association with the University of Rochester by Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan... The focus is upon literature adjacent to that normally in print, which teachers need in compiling the syllabi they wish to teach. The editions maintain the linguistic integrity of the original works but within the parameters of modern reading conventions.[web site]"

Theatre in Video

Contains performances of the world’s leading plays and film documentaries on the subject of theater in streaming video. Some plays presented in multiple productions exemplifying various interpretations of the text, and technical and cultural differences among the presentations. Stage work of directors and actors are cross-searchable and available for side-by-side comparison. Interviews with directors, designers, writers, and actors, along with excerpts of live performances, provide illustration of the development of texts and the productions.

Wright American fiction, 1851-1875

"A collection of 19th century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are currently 2887 texts included (1,883 unedited, 1,004 fully edited and encoded) by 1,450 authors"--Title screen.

Secondary Source Databases for English

The Library provides networked access to many more secondary source databases -- indexes and full-text -- than can be listed here. Others may be located through the Library Catalog and Find Databases.

Annual bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) 1920 - date.

Compiled by members of the Modern Humanities Research Association. Lists English-language articles, books, doctoral dissertations and reviews published anywhere in the world pertaining to the English language, English/American literature and film. Covers English, American and Commonwealth writers. Overlaps to some degree with the MLA, but includes some journals and articles the MLA does not, particularly reviews of academic books. Some ABELL citations link to full-text articles in JSTOR. Parallels print version in Olin stacks (Z2011 M68; last vol. in Ref)

Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)

ISI citation databases -- under the collective name Web of Science -- are multidisciplinary databases of bibliographic information indexed to be searched by subject, author, journal, and/or author address. They can also be searched for articles that cite a known author or work. Cited reference searching allows use of a given work as if it were a subject term, to identify more recent articles on the same topic. search by footnoted source (1975 - date)

FRANCIS (International Humanities & Social Sciences)

A multilingual, multidisciplinary database indexing books and journal articles in the humanities (63%), social sciences (33%), and economics (4%). It is strong in religion, the history of art, and literature, with particular emphasis on current trends in European and world literature. Updated monthly, FRANCIS covers 1984 to the present.

Humanities International Index

A comprehensive database covering journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities and provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracting for over 1,700 journals and contains more than 1.5 million records. Humanities International Index includes deep backfiles for some of the most important journals in the area of humanities. The database includes all data from American Humanities Index plus bibliographic records from a multitude of international journals, books and reference works. This database provides citations and abstracts for articles, essays and reviews, as well as original creative works including poems, fiction, photographs, paintings and illustrations.

International Index to the Performing Arts (IIPA)

IIPA Full Text covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry--including dance, film, television, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, broadcast arts, circus performance, comedy, storytelling, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic and more. Full text from 1999 onward.

JSTOR: the Scholarly Journal Archive.

JSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, music, ecology and botany, business, and other fields. It includes the following collections: Arts & sciences I, II and III, General science, Ecology and botany, Business, Language and literature.

MLA Bibliography

The largest and most comprehensive database covering scholarship in the modern languages, linguistics, literature, folklore, and drama, including film, opera, radio, television and theater. Literary criticism and literary theory are covered extensively. Approximately 4,000 journals and series are screened, and entries for books are included. Records appear both for collections of essays and for their contents. Print volumes covering 1922 - 1962 are in Olin Reference.

19th Century Masterfile: a paratext resource

19th century masterfile/Poole's is a reference service for scholars, bibliographers, and students of the Nineteenth Century. It is a scholarly tool for mining the riches of this extraordinary period. Access is by annual subscription. It is a great deal more than an enhanced Web edition of William Frederick Poole's Index to Periodical Literature. It is a continually expanding resource for the study of Nineteenth-Century cultural and intellectual life.

Periodicals Index Online(formerly, PCI)

Electronic index to thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, covering each periodical from its first issue. Every article is indexed. The scope is international, including journals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages. Coverage currently extends from 1665 through 1995.

World Shakespeare Bibliography.

Published for the Folger Shakespeare Library by The Johns Hopkins University Press, [1999?]- Electronic coverage as of June 3, 2003: 1968-2003. When complete, it will provide annotated entries for all important books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare and published or produced since 1900.

Online Reference Sources for English

Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism

c1997- .

A full-text searchable database of articles on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also treats related persons and fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped literary theory and criticism. Each entry includes a selective primary and secondary bibliography

Literature Online (LION)

LION provides full-text searching of the following literary reference works. From the main screen, go to Criticism & Reference, then click on the Reference link. Check off the titles or titles you wish to search. The list includes:

Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story (Columbia University Press, 2001)
Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature (Columbia University Press, 1980)
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford University Press, 1990)
Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (Columbia University Press, 1995)
Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998)
Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (Routledge, 1994)
Encyclopedia of the Novel (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998)
New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton University Press, 1993)

Literature Resource Center (LRC)

A complete literature database combining biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information on authors and their works (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, and journalism). Draws from Gale Group's core literary databases including Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB), and Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC). Provides additional search capability for Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature and Gale literary index.

Middle English Compendium

The MEC provides access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English dictionary; a "hyperbibliography" of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies; and an associated network of electronic resources.

Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED presents in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectical usage and slang. This edition contains the complete A to Z sequence of the Second Edition, its three-volume Additions Series, and also draft material from the revision programme, which represents the latest progress towards the Third Edition.

Oxford Reference Online

Searchable database of 100 language and subject dictionaries and reference works of Oxford University Press. Each topical division contains searchable versions of the latest editions of published dictionaries and encyclopedias. Includes:
Concise Oxford Companion to African-American Literature
Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature
Oxford Companion to American Literature
Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature
Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature
Oxford Companion to English Literature
Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
Dictionary of Shakespeare
Oxford Companion to Shakespeare
Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre
Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry in English
Dictionary of Writers and their Works

Dictionary of Old English, Old English Corpus.

A complete record of surviving Old English except for some variant manuscripts of individual texts. A catalogue of the texts included in the corpus is available in Angus Cameron's "A List of Old English Texts" in A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, ed. R. Frank and A. Camero (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), pp. 25-306 (Olin Library PE273 P69 +)

Voice of the Shuttle: Web Site for Humanities Research.

Based at UC-Santa Barbara, VOS is a huge compendium of links to academic sites in a wide range of humanistic disciplines, including Literary Theory, Minority Literatures, Creative Writing, Gender Studies, Cyberculture and many more.