Research Resources:
Subject Research Guides:
Literatures in English:
Full-Text Literature Collections
Large collections of literary and historical texts, often representing particular periods.
These indexes/databases are available from the Libraries'
Indexes and Database pages.
You may find the correct index by looking in the Alphabetical lists or by looking in
Arts and Humanities Indexes section
under Language / Linguistics or Literature.
The Rutgers University computer network allows access,
either in any of the libraries or by remote access from home or office,
to an increasing number of electronic sources--including periodical indexes,
catalogs, the full texts of literary works, discussion groups, electronic journals, etc.
The following is a list of some of the more interesting and immediately relevant sources
for students in literature. Connect through the
Libraries Home Page ),
and click on "Not logged in" to log in.
In many instances, the most important sources in a group are listed first
(out of alphabetical order) and highlighted by two asterisks (**).
** Literature Online (LION)
A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 243 full text literature journals, and other key critical and reference resources. A collection that in effect comprises a significant proportion of the corpus of English and American Literature.
Black Drama: 1850 to the Present
Contains the text of 1200 plays by 201 playwrights, together with detailed information on productions, theaters, and production companies. Featured playwrights include Amiri Baraka, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ntozake Shange.
Black Thought and Culture
The full text of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writing by leading figures in African American life and
culture, including Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells, A. Phillip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson and hundreds of
others. Types of material include articles and essays, monographs, speeches, interviews, pamphlets and correspondence. Approximately twenty
percent is previously unpublished, including transcripts from the Columbia University Oral History Project. Also available online for the first
time is the complete run of the Black Panther newspaper, 1966 through 1980.
Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800
Access to every book, pamphlet, and broadside published in the American colonies or the
United States between 1639 and 1800. Among the vast range of publications included are: advertisements, almanacs, bibles, catalogs, charters
and by laws, contracts, cookbooks, elegies, eulogies, laws, maps, narratives, novels, operas, plays, poems, primers, sermons, songs, speeches,
textbooks, tracts, travelogues, and treaties. Includes 37,000 works and 2,400,000 page images.
Early English Books Online (EEBO).
A full-text, online image collection containing practically all books (nearly 120,000) printed in the English language and non-English language books printed in British territories from 1475 to 1700. Based on Pollard & Redgrave's Short Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and
their revised editions.
Early English Books Online-Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP).
This online structured SGML/XML text edition collection contains 25,000 books printed in English up to the 18th century, in the areas of English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, and the fine arts-fully searchable by words in the text. In essence a subset of EEBO, with enhanced full-text searching.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Digital versions of more than 180,000 English language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800, allowing full text searching of more than 33 million pages of material. In essence, every significant English language and foreign language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from Britain's American territories. Includes books and broadsides, Bibles, tract books, and sermons, and printed ephemera-with works by many well-known and lesser known authors, all providing a diverse collection of material for the researcher of the eighteenth century. Searchable by author, title, place or year of publication, publisher, and by text words. Additional features include a chronology of the century, direct links to a series of key documents in several fields, and an image gallery including contemporary portraits of major figures and the famous diagram depicting the stowage plan of a British slave ship.
Everyday Life of Women in America, c.1800-1920.
Includes thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs,
pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education,
employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic
management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and
rural cultures.
Hathi Trust
A shared digital repository, with nearly 700,000
viewable public domain volumes as of October 2009. Goals of the repository, among whose
partners are the University of Michigan, University of Illinois, and the University of California
system, include building a reliable and increasingly comprehensive digital archive of library
materials converted from print that is co-owned and managed by a number of academic
institutions; dramatically improving access; and helping to preserve these important human
records by creating reliable and accessible electronic representations. See also
GOOGLE
BOOKS, though Hathi Trust seems a project better suited for
academic researchers, with more reliable bibliographic information and additional features.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial Times to 1950
Provides full text access to the personal writings of American women from all classes and walks of life, from the colonial period to 1950. Includes approximately 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries, plus 7,000 pages of previously unpublished materials. Represented are all age groups, all ethnic groups, many geographical regions, the famous and the unknown.
Women Writers Online
Database of the Brown University Women Writers Project provides access to more than two hundred and fifty texts of pre-Victorian women's writing in English from 1450-1850. So far included in the database (in addition to verse, fiction, and drama) are philosophy, religion, medical texts, letters, history, autobiography and biography, domestic manuals, education, natural history, and politics. Featured authors include Mary Astell, Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Sidney, and Ann Yearsley.
Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
This is a collection of 19th century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are currently 2,887 volumes included (1,763 unedited, 1,124 fully edited and encoded) by 1,456 authors. Created at Indiana University and freely available on the web.
