English: Specialist Databases for English
Resources for English Studies
Specialist databases for English
- 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
- 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.
- Book History Online This link opens in a new windowAn international bibliography in the field of book and library history, BHO "provides a comprehensive survey of all scholarly publications written from a historical perspective. Included are monographs, articles and reviews dealing with the history of the printed book, its arts, crafts, techniques and equipment, its economic, social and cultural environment, as well as its production, distribution, preservation and description.
- 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. - Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot This link opens in a new windowCollected, uncollected and unpublished prose of T.S. Eliot.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
- 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
- Dictionary of Irish Biography Online This link opens in a new windowThe Dictionary of Irish Biography, a collaborative project between Cambridge University Press and the Royal Irish Academy, is the most comprehensive and authoritative biographical dictionary yet published for Ireland. It contains over 9,000 signed biographical articles which describe and assess the careers of subjects in all fields of endeavour, including politics, law, religion, literature, journalism, architecture, painting, music, the stage, science, medicine, engineering, entertainment and sport.
- Dictionary of Old English: A to Le This link opens in a new windowThe Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (C.E. 600-1150) of the English language. An essential electronic reference for all scholars of Old and Middle English.
- Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus This link opens in a new window"The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus is an online database consisting of at least one copy of every surviving Old English text
- 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.
- Electronic Enlightenment This link opens in a new windowcollection of edited correspondence linking people across Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century
- ESTC (English Short Title Catalogue)"The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) lists over 460,000 items: published between 1473 and 1800;mainly, but not exclusively, in English; published mainly in the British Isles and North America; from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries" (from web site)
- Fontes Anglo-Saxonici This link opens in a new windowThe Register aims to identify all written sources which were incorporated, quoted, translated or adapted anywhere in English or Latin texts which were written, or are likely to have been written, in Anglo-Saxon England, including those by foreign authors.
- Frankfurt and Liepzig Book Fair Catalogues This link opens in a new windowDeveloped in the 16th century, the book fair catalogues for the Spring or Easter and Autumn or Michaelmas Fairs provided the widest possible overview of the books on offer during this period. Only when other sources of information began to take their place did they cease publication in 1860. The digitisation is based on the microfilming of the book fair catalogues from 1594 onwards.
- Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new windowAccess to Gale Literature's contemporary authors and contemporary literary criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Shakespearean Criticism and Poetry Criticism. Includes critical essays and 130 literary journals.
- International Medieval Bibliography This link opens in a new windowPart of Brepolis medieval bibliographies. Brepolis International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) contains articles from journals, collected essays, conference proceedings and Festschriften. Select the database from the list on the Brepolis homepage.
- 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. The Listener is one of the few records and means of accessing the content of many early broadcasts. 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.
- Literary Theory This link opens in a new windowa database of works covering the history and theory of literary criticism
- 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 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
- Middle English Compendium This link opens in a new windowcontains three Middle English electronic resources: the Middle English Dictionary, a Bibliography of Middle English prose and verse, and a Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse.
- 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
- Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present This link opens in a new windowOrlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present includes biographical and writing career entries on British women writers, selected non-British or international women writers, and selected British and international men. The entries contain contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies. Also includes dated items representing events and processes (in the accounts of these writers, but also in the areas of history, science, medicine, economics, the law, and other contexts)
- Oxford Scholarly Editions Online: Medieval Prose This link opens in a new windowDatabase making Oxford texts in Medival prose available online for the first time.
- 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
- Project Gutenberg"Project Gutenberg offers over 40,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online." (from database)
- RILM (Repertoire International de Literature Musical) Abstracts of Music Literature This link opens in a new windowprovides an interdisciplinary context for music studies, and therefore actively tracks a range of disciplines that includes dramatic arts, librarianship and literature.
- 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.
- Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period This link opens in a new windowScottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period is a definitive collection organized by Nancy Kushigian of the University of California, Davis and Stephen Behrendt of the University of Nebraska. In addition to 60 volumes of Romantic poetry composed by Scottish women, the database includes extensive contemporary critical reviews and numerous scholarly essays specially commissioned for the project by Alexander Street. This database contains over 9,027 pages
- BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource This link opens in a new windowhundreds of TV and radio programmes from the BBC’s Shakespeare collection, as well as more than a thousand photos from classic Shakespeare productio
- The New Oxford Shakespeare This link opens in a new windowAccess to the modern critical edition, the critical reference edition and authorship companion. Includes extensive explanatory and performance notes. Choose to read either edition or read noth, scrolling alongside each other for comparison
- 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.
- TEAMS Middle English Textsonline full text of Middle English works
- Twentieth Century Drama This link opens in a new window"Featuring plays from noted playwrights as well as lesser known dramatists, the collection includes works by over 300 writers" (from database)
- 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.
- Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900 - See under C19: the Nineteenth century index This link opens in a new window
- World Shakespeare Bibliography Online This link opens in a new window"searchable electronic database consisting of the most comprehensive record of Shakespeare-related scholarship and theatrical productions published or produced worldwide between 1960 and 2013." (from database)
- Oxford bibliographies online. Literary and critical theory This link opens in a new windowLiterary theory has become the hegemonic methodology for the study of text and is often regarded both as a sub-discipline in itself and as a critical tool through which to liberate deeper and more complex meanings from texts. It encompasses a massive range of topics, including periods, movements, themes and works that make it a dynamic field of study. Given that literary theory draws from other disciplines such as linguistics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, the social sciences and work from non-Anglophone cultures and traditions, the very scope which makes it a necessary tool for contemporary academics and intellectuals can be off-putting in terms of locating a starting point for any specific inquiry. Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory will offer clearly-signposted pathways through the different areas, and will make clear references to the other disciplines which feed in to, and are often transformed by, literary theory