Literature
LIS413
Simmons College
Brendan Rapple
19 July, 2005
Literature
 Imaginative works having some claim to artistic value, e.g.:
• poetry; legends and folk tales; drama; short
stories; novels.
 Certain non-fictional works of high artistic quality:
• Literary nonfiction may include almost any writing
except the strictly technical.
 Don’t Forget Oral Literature!
Elements of Literature
 Content
 Form
Literary Forms
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Allegory
Fiction
Ode
Ballad
History
Parody
Biography
Idyll
Poetry
Comedy
Letters in Literature
Saga
 Diary
 Satire
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Dime Novel
Lyric
Science Fiction
Drama
Masque
Elegy
Miracle Play
Short Story
Epic
Mystery Story
Sonnet
Essay
Tragedy
What is English?
 Is English the language or does it pertain to the
country?
Fashions in Curricula and Teaching
Often Change Quite Drastically
“Not so long ago the ‘literature’ profession was
organized almost everywhere around the close
reading of a stable, determinate set of
masterworks. While the faculties and curricula of
many college/university depts. continue to reflect
this older consensus and while traditional
scholarship, though clearly on the wane, continues
to be produced, it is increasingly evident that the
old paradigm has lost its importance” (Harris).
Curricular Changes
 “Many of the most publicized changes in higher education in the past
three decades have been curricular. Critics inside and outside
academe have wrung their hands over a variety of course
appearances, adjustments, and alleged "disappearings" (the dirty
work of "leftist" faculty hit squads). A major thrust of most of these
curricular reforms was to acknowledge the historical importance and
cultural contributions of groups, doers, and thinkers beyond the
limited cast or "canon" of Western white males featured in prevailing
texts and syllabi. This, in turn, led to the inclusion of women and other
"minorities," an emphasis on conflict and pluralism, a globalization of
the curriculum in general, a questioning of the canonical criteria of
"greatness," and a rise in cross- and interdisciplinary studies.
Simultaneously, an influx of "postmodernist" theory from France and
Germany threatened the humanities and social sciences by
overturning or seriously challenging virtually all of their traditional
("modernist") assumptions and intellectual procedures. All of these
changes posed a major threat to the status quo and induced no little
angst in the halls of ivy.”
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James Axtell. Virginia Quarterly Review (2003)
Now Traditional Literature Depts. Have Evolved
into Depts. of English Studies
 With courses and programs in
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literary theory
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rhetoric and composition
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technical writing
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creative writing
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cultural, TESOL, linguistics, children’s and adolescen
literature
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language arts
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English education
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pedagogical theory.
Literary Criticism Now Less Eurocentric
“Literary criticism now investigates entire ranges of literary
production that do not share in Western culture. Critics treat the
writings of poets, playwrights, and novelists, from postcolonial
regions in the Pacific, Caribbean, and South Africa who use pidgin
forms of English and sometimes French to articulate their own
social realities and histories. They also give new attention to
writings and songs from ‘fourth-world’ peoples, that is, from
minorities marginalized in ghettos within first-world cultures.”
English Studies/Literary Studies is turning
more and more into Cultural Studies
Criticism of Cultural Studies
 “The downside of the equation between cultural studies and
literary studies is that, carried to its logical conclusion, cultural
studies can dispense with the literary altogether. Studies of
consumerism, for example, can be based on the analysis of
shopping malls or Home Depot layouts; no literary texts are
required. Teen culture can be explored through music, film,
and computer games. Current social mores and cultural
constraints can be profitably studied by examining Internet
discourse. And so on. Everything, after all, can be a text and so
why not a golf course? A skating rink? A theme park?”
Marjorie Perloff. Crisis in the Humanities
Literature in Libraries
The exact proportions of the two types of material, i.e.
primary and secondary lit., are dependent both
-- on a particular library's perception of its needs
-- on its fiscal abilities to meet them
Differences in Collecting Between
Public Libraries
Academic and Research Libraries (here the acquisition of
literary scholarship, i.e. secondary material, is foremost)
Materials Commonly used by Literary
Scholars
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Books – scholarly and more popular
Periodicals
Conference Papers/Proceedings
Dissertations/Theses
Microforms
Media
Manuscripts
Bibliographies
Book reviews
Encyclopedias
Maps
Kinds of Texts
 Manuscripts: handwritten, typed, or word-processed texts that precede
printed, published texts -- often drafts.
 Original Editions: first and other eds. (in author’s lifetime) whose form
of publication is authorized by author.
 Subsequent Editions: many types.
 Scholarly Editions: texts of works that have been determined by
editor(s) to have some degree of authority (based on manuscript,
original, and subsequent editions).
 Anthologies
Electronic Texts
 Some are quite basic – just the text.
 Some e-texts are typed, some are scanned.
 OCR (optical character recognition) is often used.
 Increasingly PDF is used.
 Sometimes HTML markup language is used.
Added Value to Texts
 Scholarly essays
 Biographical materials
 Annotations
 Timelines
 Bibliographies
 Images
 Sound
 Video etc.
Hypertext Fiction
 http://www.sunypress.edu/joyce/hypertext.html
 Reach, a fiction, The Iowa Review Online, Spring 2000.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/hypermedia/michael_joyce/ReachTitle.html
Types of Literary Scholarship
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Descriptive Bibliography
Editing
Historical Studies
Criticism
Theory
MLA. Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures (1992)
Descriptive Bibliography
 “Descriptive bibliography may be defined as the close
physical description of books and other printed objects: a
systematic report concerning their type, paper, printing,
illustrations, and binding, and how the circumstances of their
publication and distribution may have affected their physical
appearance. . . . The description typically concludes with
relevant details of the book's authorship, publication and
distribution.”
Terry Belanger and Richard Noble
http://www.virginia.edu/oldbooks/reading/desbib00.html
Challenges for Descriptive Bibliography of
Digital Texts?
Editing
 Producing “reliable” or “authoritative” versions of a text
Historical Studies
 Major emphasis on primary sources, e.g. manuscripts, first editions.
 Often a broader range of sources studied, e.g. non “literature” related.
 Often utilizes special collections.
Criticism
 Particular focus on the creative work itself.
 Often more stress on Text than Context.
Theory
 Literary theory “is the theory (or the philosophy) of the interpretation of
literature and literary criticism. Its history begins with classical Greek
poetics and rhetoric and includes, since the 18th century, aesthetics and
hermeneutics. In the 20th century, "theory" has become an umbrella term
for a variety of scholarly approaches to reading texts, most of which are
informed by various strands of Continental philosophy.”
 “Broad schools of theory that have historically been important include the
New Criticism, formalism, Russian formalism, and structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, feminism and French feminism, new historicism,
deconstruction, reader-response criticism, and psychoanalytic criticism.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_theory
General Bibliographies
 Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of
English Books Printed Abroad 1475-1640 (STC) (Pollard & Redgrave)
Textbook 1147
 Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and
British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries 1641-1700
(Wing)
Textbook 1148
 Together they form major part of the online database Early English Books
Online
General Bibliographies
 Pen is ours: a listing of writings by and about african american women
before 1910 with secondary bibliography to the present. (Schomburg
Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers)
by Jean Fagan Yellin, Cynthia D. Bond (1991)
Textbook 1146
Index to Periodical Literature
(W. F. Poole)
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A retrospective subject index to the contents of 479 British and
American periodicals between 1802 and 1906 (originally in
print)
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Incorporated into the database Nineteenth Century Masterfile
which includes an electronic version of Poole's Index to
Periodical Literature and a number of other indexes. Provides
indexing to newspapers and journals of the nineteenth century,
as well as some government documents.
Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals l824-I900
 Identifies authors of articles in the major nineteenth
century quarterly and monthly periodicals.
(print and CD-ROM)
Textbook 1155
20th Century
 American Humanities Index (1975- ) – Print and Online
Textbook 19
 Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature (print and Online) provides comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest
periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of
20th century America.
 Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science) (print and
Online) -- provides access to the bibliographic information and cited
references of all items published in more than 1,100 of the world's
leading arts and humanities journals.
Textbook 20
Retrospective Bibliographies of English Studies
e.g.: The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (1987)
Textbook 1145
 5 Volumes.
 Updates The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (CBEL)
(four volumes in 1941)
• A selective bibliography of primary and secondary sources in
English literature, from 600 A.D. to 1950. Volumes are divided
by time period, and then further subdivided by subject, form,
genre, and author. "An indispensable reference source and
often the best place for beginning research."
Current Bibliographies of English Studies
 Year's Work in English Studies (192-)
Textbook 1156
 Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (1921-) – Print & Online -contains over 783,000 records covering monographs, periodical articles, critical editions
of literary works, book reviews, collections of essays and doctoral dissertations published
anywhere in the world from 1920 onwards. Textbook 1151
 MLA International Bibliography (1921+ Print; 1963+ Online)
contains over 1.6 million citations from more than 4,400 periodicals (including peerreviewed e-journals) and 1,000 book publishers. The coverage is international and is
represented by literature from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South
America. While the majority of records are from English-language publications, at least
sixty other languages are represented including French, Spanish, German, Russian,
Portuguese, Norwegian, and Swedish. Textbook 1060
 Literature Online
Literature Online (LION) is a fully searchable library of more than 350,000
works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 150 full-text literature
journals, and other key criticism and reference resources.
Other Indexes
 Essay & General Literature Index
Access to nearly 65,000 essays contained in some 5,300 anthologies and collections. Each
year more than 300 single and multi-author collections are indexed as well as more than 20
selected annuals and serials. Coverage includes all of the humanities and social sciences,
including literary works, art history, drama, and film. Online coverage is 1985 to present.
1900 - 1984 is available in print
Textbook 23
 British Humanities Index
BHI indexes over 320 internationally respected humanities journals and weekly magazines
published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as quality newspapers
published in the UK.
 Play Index
Textbook 837
 Short Story Index
Textbook 1231
 Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry Textbook 1267
 International Bibliography of Theatre (1985- )
Textbook 829
Primary Bibliographies
 “Emphasis is on identifying, by means of description of the actual physical
pieces, the works that constitute the canon of a period, genre, author, subject,
or other limited area. Typical features include facsimiles or transcriptions of
the title and copyright pages and substantial details about a work's format
pagination, contents, typography, paper, binding, dust jacket, and printing and
publishing history, including data about the size of its press run, the price of a
copy, and the like. Locations of the copies upon which the descriptions are
based may be provided.”
Primary Bibliographies
Classic Examples:
 A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the
Restoration (1939) -- Greg
 American Bibliography -- Evans
 W. H. Auden: A Bibliography, 1924-1969 -Bloombield& Edward Mendelson
Bibliography of American Literature (Jacob Blanck) (9 vols. in print) –
provides nearly 40,000 records of the literary works of approximately 300
American writers from the period of the Revolution to 1930. Coverage: 17751930
Textbook 1142
Other Primary Bibliographies
 Lyle Henry Wright's American Fiction, 1774-1850 (rev. ed, 1978)
Textbook 1220
 Preston M. Yancy’s The Afro-American Short Story: A Comprehensive
Annotated Index with Selected Commentaries (1976)
Textbook 1219
Secondary Bibliographies
 Scarecrow Press's Scarecrow Author Bibliographies
 Kent State University Press's The Serif Series: Bibliographies and
Checklists
 Northern Illinois University Press's (and now Garland's) Annotated
Secondary Bibliography Series on English Literature in Transition,
1880-1920
 Borgo Press's Bibliographies of Modern Authors
•
and many others
General Research Guides
Examples:
 Richard D. Altick The Art of Literary Research (1993) 4th ed.
Textbook 1051
 James L. Harner. Literary Research Guide: An Annotated Listing of
Reference Sources in English Literary Studies (2002) 4th ed.
 Dorothea Kehler’s Problems in Literary Research: A Guide to Selected
Reference Works (1997) 4th ed. Textbook 1054
 Michael J. Marcuse's A Reference Guide for English Studies (1992)
Textbook 1135
Specialized Research Guides
 John H. Fisher's The Medieval Literature of Western Europe: A
Review of Research (1966)
 David J. DeLaura's Victorian Prose: A Guide to Research (1973)
 Richard J. Finneran's Anglo-lrish Literature: A Review of Research
(1976)
 Joel Myerson's The Transcendentalists: A Review of Research and
Criticism (1984)
One Volume Handbooks
 Margaret Drabble's The Oxford Companion to English Literature
(2000) 6th ed. Textbook 1186
 James D. Hart's Oxford Companion to American Literature (1995)
6th ed. Textbook 1166
 Mary E. Snodgrass’s Encyclopedia of Southern Literature (1997)
Textbook 1161
 Jack Salzman's The Cambridge Handbook of American Literature
(1986) Textbook 1159
Multivolume Encyclopedic Surveys
 A. H. Ward and A. R. Waller's Cambridge History of English
Literature (1907-1933) 15 vols. Textbook 1210
 William Porterfield Trent et al.'s Cambridge History of American
Literature (1917-1921) 8 vols. Textbook 1209
 The Oxford History of English Literature (usually referred to as
the OHEL) 15 vols. Textbook 1214
 Albert C. Baugh's A Literary History of England (2nd ed. 1997) 4
vols. Textbook 1213
Chronologies
 These are useful in literary research for putting authors and their
works in the perspectives of the concurrent political, social, religious,
artistic, and scientific activities.
 E.G.:

Richard M. Ludwig and Clifford A. Nault, Jr.'s Annals of
American Literature, 1602-1983 (1986)
Textbook 1206

Samuel Rogal's A Chronological Outline of American Literature
(1987)
Textbook 1211
Examples of DICTIONARIES
 C.Hugh Holman and William Hammon's A Handbook to Literature
(1996) Textbook 1075
 A. M. H. Abram's A Glossary of Literary Terms (1993) Textbook
1074
 Wendell V. Harris’s Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and
Theory Textbook 1068
 Roger Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms Textbook
1070
Examples of BIOGRAPHIES
 American National Biography (ANB)
 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography DNB (
 Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB)
 Contemporary Authors
 Biography Resource Center
 Biography and Genealogy Master Index
 Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated
Examples of DIRECTORIES
 The Writers Directory (1971- ) 1203
 The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses
(1965- )
1055
Examples of CONCORDANCES
 Strong's Analytical Concordance to the Bible
 John S. P. Tatlock and Arthur G. Kennedy's A Concordance to the
Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1927; reprint, 1963)
 Marvin Spevack's A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the
Works of Shakespeare (1968-1980)
 Jess B. Bessinger, Jr.'s A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic
Records (1978)
 And many online concordances
Journals Devoted to Individual Authors
 Shakespeare Quarterly (1950- )
 Thomas Hardy Annual (1983- )
 James Joyce Quarterly (1963- )
 Keats-Shelley Journal (1952- )
 Poe Studies (1967- )
 The Thomas Wolfe Review (1977- )
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And many others
Other Online Databases
Language & Literature
Other Online Databases
African-American Poetry, 1750-1900
Description: Nearly 3,000 poems written by AfricanAmerican poets in the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
American Drama
Dates: (1600-present)
Description: When complete, this collection will contain more than
2,000 plays by American dramatists that chronicle the history and
culture of America through its dramatic writing. At present, American
Drama includes 711 plays by dramatists such as Thomas Paine,
Edward Hitchcock, and James Lawson.
American Poetry 1600-1900
Description: Over 40,000 poems by more than 200
American poets from the Colonial Period to the early
twentieth century.
Archive of Celtic-Latin Literature-fulltext
(CD)
Dates: (400-1200 A.D.)
Description: Celtic-Latin literature from 400-1200 A.D.
Asian American Drama
 Asian American Drama contains more than 250 plays by over 40
playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related
productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Many of the plays
have never been published before. The collection begins with the works of
Sadakichi Hartmann in the late nineteenth century and includes such
contemporary playwrights as Philip Kan Gotanda, Elizabeth Wong, and
Jeannie Barroga. The database also includes selected playbills, production
photographs
Bible in English, 990-1970
Description: 20 different versions of the English Bible from
the tenth to the twentieth century.
Black Drama
 Black Drama contains the full text approximately 1,200 full text plays
plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 150
playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the
Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works
are rare, hard to find, or out of print. The collection includes
previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes,
Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds,
and Zora Neale Hurston.
Canadian Poetry
 Created in partnership with the Electronic Text Centre at the University of
New Brunswick Libraries, this unique collection currently contains the full
text of more than 12,000 poems by 142 poets including Bliss Carman,
Isabella Valancy Crawford and Archibald Lampman, and will soon offer a
comprehensive survey of Canadian poetry from the seventeenth century to
the early twentieth.
Children's Literature
 The CLCD database provides bibliographic data, reviews, awards, and lists
for children's books, audio books, and videos. The database contains over
900,000 catalog records, and 130,000 full text reviews from 24 review
sources. Approximately 1500 new reviews are added each month. There are
retrospective reviews going back 10 years. Additionally, there are links to
author sites, publishers, parent resources, curriculum resources and
information on reading measurement programs.
Contemporary Literary Criticism Select
Description: Contemporary Literary Criticism Select presents
significant published criticism on the life and works of novelists, poets,
playwrights, short story writers, and other creative writers now living
or who died after December 31, 1959.
Early American Fiction
Dates: (1789-1850)
Description: Early American Fiction provides both images and text for
a well-defined and comprehensive collection of early American fiction.
Presently includes 440 titles by 80 authors, including first printings of
works by James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert
Montgomery Bird, Washington Irving, Catharine Sedgwick, and
Nathaniel Hawthorne. A list of the authors with brief biographical
details is included.
Early English Prose Fiction
Dates: (1500-1700)
Description: Early English Prose Fiction contains 211 works in English
prose by writers from the British Isles from the period 1500-1700.
Early American imprints. Series I, Evans, 1639-1800
Early American Imprints, Series II - Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819
Vast full-text resource of information about every aspect of life in 17th - and
18th-century America as well as the first couple of decades of the 19th.
Subjects covered range from agriculture and auctions through foreign
affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War,
slavery, temperance, witchcraft and just about any other topic imaginable.
Early English Books Online
EEBO brings nearly every English language book published
from the invention of printing in 1475 to 1700 to the Internet.
Works by Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus,
Boyle, Newton, Galileo; musical exercises by Henry Purcell
and novels by Aphra Behn; prayer books, pamphlets, and
proclamations; almanacs, calendars, and other primary
resources are all in full facsimile. This interdisciplinary
database includes well over 100,000 early printed titles listed
in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475- 1640),
Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and the Thomason
Tracts.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
 When complete, this database will deliver every significant English-language and
foreign-language title printed in Great Britain between 1701 and 1800, along with
thousands of important works from the Americas. It will comprise nearly 150,000
titles and editions and will allow full-text searching of more than 33 million pages
of material. Titles included in ECCO are based on the English Short Title Catalogue
bibliography and are sourced from the holdings of the British Library, as well as
other national, university, research, and public and private libraries. The database
includes a variety of materials - from books and directories, Bibles, sheet music and
sermons to advertisements - and works by many well-known and lesser-known
authors, all providing a diverse collection of material for the researcher of the
eighteenth century. Variant editions of each individual work are frequently offered
to enable scholars to make textual comparisons of the works. The database is
divided into seven subject areas: History and Geography; Fine Arts and Social
Sciences; Medicine, Science and Technology; Literature and Language; Religion
and Philosophy; Law; General.
Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 1700-1780
Description: 96 complete works in English prose from the
period 1700-1780, by writers from the British Isles. Includes a
scanned version of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and two different
editions of Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela and of Swift's
Gulliver's Travels.
English Drama 1280-1915
Description: A combination of Chadwyck-Healey’s English
Verse Drama and English Prose Drama full-text databases. 4,000
plays by 1,200 authors from the late thirteenth century to the early
twentieth century.
English Poetry 600-1900
English Poetry 2nd Edition
Description: Essentially the complete English poetic canon from 600 to 1900.
Over 165,000 poems by more than 1,250 poets drawn from nearly 4,500 printed
sources.
English Poetry, Second Edition builds on the earlier English Poetry (600-1900) with
enhanced functionality and the addition of more than 20,000 poems from several
new categories. Containing more than 183,000 poems by over 2,700 poets, English
Poetry, Second Edition now provides good representation both of the literary
heritages of Commonwealth and ex-colonial countries and of the poetic legacies of
English writers who have only been brought back to scholarly attention during the
last thirty years.
Faber Poetry Library
Dates: (20th Century)
Description: A collection of some of the most influential
poets of the twentieth century. The Faber list spans the
seventy-year history of this major publishing house, and
includes the poetry of James Joyce, Siegfried Sassoon, T.S.
Eliot, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney. In total
The Faber Poetry Library contains 140 volumes by 50 poets
Linguistics and Language Behavior
Abstracts
Dates: 1973-present
Description: This database covers a wide range of areas related to the
nature and use of language. Major topics include phonetics,
phonology, syntax and semantics. Complete coverage is also given to
various fields of linguistics including descriptive, historical,
comparative, theoretical and geographical linguistics.
Literary Theory
Dates: (Ancient Greece to the present)
Description: Literary Theory traces the history of literary theory and
criticism from Plato to Judith Butler. It contains over 1,000 works by
more than 350 writers, including: formal treatises on criticism, essays
and manifestos, literary prefaces, theories of imagination, taste and
aesthetics, and major examples of contemporary theory.
Literature Resource Center
Description: Literature Resource Center provides access to biographies,
bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and
literary discipline. Combining many of Gale's literary databases in a
single online service, the Literature Resource Center database covers
more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other
writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,500 of the most-studied authors.
Middle English Compendium
Description: The Middle English Compendium is composed of 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, including a large collection of Middle English texts.
Hypertext links offer quick connections between, for example, an MED
citation, bibliographical information about its source, and an electronic
version of the source, if one is included in the collection.
Nineteenth Century Fiction
Description: 250 novels from the period 1782 to 1903, including
works by all the major Victorian novelists such as Dickens, Thackeray,
the Brontës, Eliot and Hardy, as well as the landmarks of Gothic and
other fiction from the Romantic period.
North American Theatre Online
 North American Theatre Online contains tens of thousands of records
for people, places, theatres, productions, production companies, and
more. It also includes more than 40,000 pages of full-text reference
works and content from hundreds of top theatre Web resources. The
database will continue to grow quarterly, aiming to cover everything
related to the North American stage from the 1600s to the present.
Past Masters
 Includes three collections of full text databases: (1) philosophy and
theology from Plato to Wittgenstein; (2) English letters: correspondence,
diaries, memoirs and notebooks from distinguished British writers,
statesmen, scientists, churchmen, explorers and philosophers in British
history;. (3) women writers: letters, journals, and notebooks from important
women writers in the English language. Past Masters uses authoritative
editions from established, scholarly publishers.
Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
 This is an electronic collection of over 60 volumes of lyric poetry by about
fifty Scottish women, written between 1789 and 1832. The database also
contains critical reviews, essays and associated bibliographical and
biographical material. There are also selected pertinent web sites.
Oxford English Dictionary-full-text
Dates: (latest edition)
Description: The Second Edition provides a comprehensive
history of the English language and illustrates its development by
quotations from both scholarly and popular works. In total the
second edition of the OED contains nearly two and a half million
quotations.
Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare,
1591-1911
Description: Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare contains
eleven major editions from the First Folio of 1623 to the
Cambridge edition of 1863-6, twenty-eight separate contemporary
printings of individual plays and poems, selected apocrypha and
related works. In addition it contains more than one hundred
adaptations, sequels and burlesques from the seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the whole of Bell's
Acting Edition of Shakespeare's Plays (1774). In the great majority
of cases texts have been captured entire, with all introductions,
prefaces, appendices, indices, notes editorial and authorial, essays,
tables, figures, illustrations etc. reproduced in full. Half title pages,
publisher's advertisements and decorations have not been
captured. Hypertext links have been created to connect editorial
matter to the texts whenever possible. Where omissions have been
made they are noted in the relevant bibliographic entry.
Théâtre du Grand Siècle
Dates: (1600-1699)
Description: Théâtre du Grand Siécle includes the full text of
seventy-seven plays by Corneille, Molière and Racine. This
constitutes the complete works of Corneille, Molière and Racine.
Teatro Español del Siglo de Oro
Dates: (1998)
Description: The Teatro Español del Siglo de Oro full text
database contains more than 800 plays written by 16 dramatists
during the sixteenth and seventeenth century in Spain. These
important dramatic works are either edited by the playwrights
themselves or by an editor "endorsed" by the playwright. The
entire text of each play is included and searchable.
Times Literary Supplement Centenary Archive
Dates: (1902-1980)
Description: An index to the TLS together with images of the
publication. Many of the previously anonymous contributors have
been identified. Full-text searching will be available by the end of
2000.
20th Century African-American Poetry
Dates: (20th century)
Description: A database of modern and contemporary AfricanAmerican poetry from the early twentieth century to the present.
Features 10,000 poems by around 70 of the most important AfricanAmerican poets of the last century.
20th Century American Poetry
Dates: (20th century)
Description: This collection includes 52,000 poems drawn from 750
volumes by over 300 poets, includingAdrienne Rich, Andrei
Codrescu, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov,
Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Cathy Song.
20th Century English Poetry
Dates: (20th century)
Description: A collection of 594 volumes of poetry by
282 poets from 1900 to the present day, including W. B.
Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Graves, A. E. Housman,
John Betjeman, Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison, Benjamin
Zephaniah and Carol Ann Duffy, and incorporating the
poets in The Faber Poetry Library.
W.B. Yeats Collection (1885-1995)
Dates: (1885-1995)
Description: The major works of W.B. Yeats in all genres,
including poetry, plays, criticism and fiction, published between
1885 and 1995.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary,
Unabridged
Dates: (1993)
Description: Webster's Unabridged is America's
premier lexicographical work. This electronic version
comprises the text of Webster's Third New International
Dictionary, Unabridged, published in 1961, and
subsequent updates which take account of current
usage.
ARTFL - Textual Database of French literature
Dates: (1200-present)
Description: Includes nearly 2,000 French texts ranging from classic
works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and
technical writing covering the 13th-20th Centuries. Database includes
literature, philosophy, arts, sciences. The eighteenth, nineteenth and
twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection
of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance
texts.
Autour du Romantisme : Le Roman, 1792-1886 / Catalogue des lettres ;
chronologie et biographies rédigées sous la direction de R. Robert.
Dates: (1792-1886)
Description: Contains the works of Arlincourt, Borel,
Chateaubriand, Dumas, Feydeau, Hugo, Karr, Lamartine,
Maistre, Nerval, Sade, Souza, Staël, and Vigny, as well as
many other French authors of the 19th century.
Bertolt Brechts Werke im WWW
Dates: (1999)
Description: The first authorized electronic edition is based
on Bertolt Brecht, Ausgewählte Werke in sechs Bänden,
Jubiläumsausgabe um 100. Geburtstag. Published in
cooperation with Suhrkamp Verlag.and encoded in SGML.
Le Corpus Montaigne
Dates: (1533-1997)
Description: The complete written works of Michel de Montaigne,
(1533-1592) including the editions in his lifetime, the Gournay editions,
twenty-four subsequent major editions, the best translations in
English, German, Spanish.
La Critique Littéraire de Laharpe à Proust
Dates: (1800-1899)
Description: Contains 115 works of twenty-nine French writers
from Alexis and Baudelaire to Saint-Beuve, Schlegel and Zola. In
addition, works by literary critical specialists to explore the rapid
development of literary theory between 1788 and 1925.
Dictionary of Old English Corpus
Dates: (600-1150 A.D.)
Description: Compiled as part of the Dictionary of Old
English project at the University of Toronto, the
Dictionary of Old English Corpus in Electronic Form is
an online database consisting of at least one copy of every
Old English text. In some cases, more than one copy is
included, if it is significant because of dialect or date. As
such, the DOEC represents about three million words of
Old English and another two million words of Latin, or
about six times the collected works of Shakespeare.
Autour du Romantisme : Le Roman, 1792-1886 / Catalogue des lettres ;
chronologie et biographies rédigées sous la direction de R. Robert.
Dates: (1792-1886)
Description: Contains the works of Arlincourt, Borel,
Chateaubriand, Dumas, Feydeau, Hugo, Karr, Lamartine,
Maistre, Nerval, Sade, Souza, Staël, and Vigny, as well as
many other French authors of the 19th century.
Goethes Werke im WWW
Dates: (1997)
Description: Electronic version of Goethes Werke, Weimar: H.
Böhlau, 1887-1919; Goethes Gespräche. Leipzig: Biedermann, 18891896; Goethes Werke, Nachträge zur Weimarer Ausgabe, München:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990.
Kafkas Werke im WWW
Dates: (1992)
Description: The Kritische Kafka-Ausgabe des S. Fischer
Verlages bei Chadwyck-Healey is the complete critical edition
published by S. Fischer Verlag digitized and encoded in SGML
The web site text has German and English versions.
Les Romanciers Réalistes et Naturalistes 18201910
Dates: (1820-1910)
Description: Complete prose works of Balzac, Daudet, Flaubert,
Les Goncourt, Huysmans, Maupassant, Stendhal, Vallès and Zola
plus a selection of authors such as Les Familiers de Médan and Le
Manifeste des Cinq.
Schillers Werke im WWW
Dates: (1998)
Description: The electronic edition of the Nationalausgabe of
Schiller's works, established in 1940 as the definitive edition of his
works, letters and conversations.