English: Digital primary sources and archive collections
Resources for English Studies
Digital primary sources and archive collections
The databases listed below include an extensive range of primary sources including primary texts, manuscripts, diaries and letters. The resources span from the Medieval period through to the 21st Century.
A list of archival newspapers, periodicals and magazines is available via the separate tab on this subject guide. Other primary sources such as audio, video and images are listed on the multimedia tab
Primary source collections (Permanent)
- Acta Sanctorum This link opens in a new windowThis database is an electronic version of the complete print edition published in sixty-eight volumes by the Société des Bollandistes. It is a collection of documents examining the lives of saints, organised according to each saint's feast day. It runs from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940. The entire Acta Sanctorum is available, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indices along with Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina reference numbers.
- African Writers Series This link opens in a new windowkey texts of modern African literature with unique importance in the history of postcolonial writing. Includes works by Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Steve Biko and Nadine Gordimer. Includes The Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry. Now part of Literature Online database
- British Literary Manuscripts Online: Medieval and Renaissance This link opens in a new windowBritish Literary Manuscripts Online presents facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works, and similar materials. Searching is based on tags and descriptive text associated with each manuscript. Images of the complete manuscript can be viewed, manipulated and navigated on screen.
Please note that the text of the manuscripts themselves is not searchable. - Defining Gender 1450-1910 This link opens in a new windowexplores the study and analysis of gender. Primary sources from the fifteenth to early twentieth century provide an insight into both traditional models of gender and contemporary perceptions
- Drama Online This link opens in a new windowaccess to the core collection of over 1700 playtexts from Methuen Drama, Arden Shakespeare, and Faber and Faber. Also includes access to over 650 Nick Hern Modern Plays.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO) via Proquest This link opens in a new windowdigital facsimiles of nearly every book published in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and other works in English printed from 1473-1700 (Formaerly available via JISC Historical Texts)
- Early European Books This link opens in a new windowtraces the history of printing in Europe from its origins through to the end of the 17th Century, with full-colour, facsimile images of rare and hard-to-access printed sources
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) - via Gale This link opens in a new windowBooks, panphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800
- Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new windowprimary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present.
- Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period This link opens in a new windowIrish Women Poets of the Romantic Period includes more than 80 volumes of poetry by approximately 50 Irish women writing between 1768 and 1842. Compiled and edited by Stephen Behrendt of the University of Nebraska, the database also offers numerous biographical and critical essays prepared by leading scholars specifically for the project
- The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera This link opens in a new windowfully searchable colour images of 65,000 items from the Bodleian Library's John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries
- The Listener Historical Archive This link opens in a new windowdeveloped as the medium for reproducing broadcasts, The Listener (1929-1991) was the weekly newspaper published by the BBC. As well as commenting on and expanding on the intellectual broadcasts of the week, The Listener also previewed major literary and musical programmes and regularly reviewed new books. It also provided an important platform for new writers and poets, with W. H. Auden, Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin being notable examples.
- Manuscripts Online This link opens in a new windowonline primary resources relating to written and early British printed material, covering the period 1000 to 1500
- Mass Observation Online This link opens in a new windowThe Mass Observation Archive is a huge database of diaries, directives, surveys, photographs and reports collected in the UK from 1937-1992
- Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO) This link opens in a new windowdigitised full-text historical sources for Medieval and Early Modern Britain. Published by Tanner Ritchie with some material from the University of St Andrews Library's Special Collections
- Medieval and Early Modern Studies This link opens in a new windowPrimary source materials covering social, cultural, political, science and religious perspectives from 12th to early 18th centuries. Sources include manuscripts relating to Arthurian legends, early music, renaissance man, masculinity 1600-1800 and medieval and early modern women as well as several other areas.
- Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new windowunique resource containing collected letters from five families from 15th Century England. Manuscript images are in full colour with accompanying searchable transcriptions
- Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new windowunique resource containing collected letters from five families from 15th Century England. Manuscript images are in full colour with accompanying searchable transcriptions
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowsearchable full-text primary sources for the 'long' 19th century (1789-1914). Collections include: British Politics and Society, European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection; Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; and British Theatre, Music,and Literature: High and Popular Culture
- Parker Library This link opens in a new windowdigital collection of 538 English mediaeval manuscripts held by the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, which span from the 6th Century Gospels of St Augustine to 16th Century records relating to the English Reformation
- Past Masters: English Letters This link opens in a new windowincludes Jane Austen - works and letters, George Eliot - notebooks, Katherine Mansfield - collected letters, Mary Shelley - journals, novels and selected works, Wollstonecraft - works
- The Romantic era redefined This link opens in a new windowThe database is a searchable collection of literary, political, scientific and sociological works focusing on the period between 1800 and 1830. It includes primary texts and works from previously unrecognized writers from Britain, the British Empire and North America, as well as critical essays written specifically for this collection.
Primary sources - individual authors (permanent)
- Ben Jonson Online This link opens in a new windowa fully searchable version of the Print Edition, including all the original introductions, collations, and commentary. It also includes an array of textual and contextual materials.
- Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot This link opens in a new windowCollected, uncollected and unpublished prose of T.S. Eliot. Currently includes the following 8 volumes - The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot, Apprentice Years, 1905-1918, The Perfect Critic, 1919–1926, Literature, Politics, Belief, 1927–1929, English Lion, 1930–1933, Tradition and orthodoxy 1934-1939, The War Years 1940-1946, a European Society 1947-1953 and Still and Still Moving 1954-1965
- The New Oxford Shakespeare This link opens in a new windowAccess to the modern critical edition, the critical reference and authorship companion.
- The Shakespeare Collection This link opens in a new windowcoverage of Shakespeare's work, critical reception, textual history, performance history and cultural and historical context. Includes the complete Arden
Shakespeare, primary sources, historical editions, contemporary criticism and the facility to compare texts on screen. - The W. B. Yeats Collection (1885-1995) This link opens in a new windowfull-text; contains the major work of W.B. Yeats in all genres, including poetry, plays, criticism and fiction, collected in 22 volumes.