Research Resources:
Subject Research Guides:
Literatures in English:
Other Related Internet Resources
Major Gateways
These gateways comprise the ideal starting place for web searching.
The English Server (Carnegie Mellon University)
Offers more than twenty thousand works, most in literature and the humanities.
Literary Resources on the Net (Jack Lynch, Rutgers–Newark)
A great source with breakdowns by period and topic.
On-line Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)
An index to more than 10,000 free, unabridged English language books on the web.
Voice of the Shuttle (Alan Liu, English Department, University of California, Santa Barbara)
A very fine Humanities site, with sections devoted to Literature in English, Literary Theory, Women's Studies, etc. Very comprehensive and well done.
Text Archives and Other General Sites
Major collections of texts, with thematic or national or chronological groupings.
American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library (Library of Congress)
An important ongoing project, and a fine source for text and images. The strength of
the project is historical rather than literary, but many students of American Literature
and culture will find it invaluable.
Bartleby (Steven H. VanLeeuwen)
An eclectic set of texts ranging from Agatha Christie to William Butler Yeats, most from
editions in the public domain. Has moved from its original home at Columbia University
to a commercial–though as yet free–site.
CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: The online resource for contemporary and historical Irish documents in literature, history and politics. (University College Cork)
A growing collection of Irish texts, with a very strong selection of Oscar Wilde, plus
lots of political and historical documents.
Electronic Text Center (University of Virginia)
Contains thousands of SGML-encoded texts and images, with some restricted to U of
Virginia users, but most accessible to the public. See in particular
The Modern English
Collection covering 1500 to the present.
Oxford Text Archive (Oxford University)
One of the oldest and most important sites. Some texts are available for free downloading or searching; others must be purchased.
Project Gutenberg (Michael Hart)
One of the largest text archives, but one aimed explicitly at the casual reader, rather than
the scholar. In essence a large collection of e-texts that one can download, in "plain vanilla ASCII" and then either read, or encode, as wished. All texts are from public domain editions, and as such might not be ideal for scholarly use.
Representative Poetry Online. (Department of English, University of Toronto)
A collection of 1600 poems by 266 poets from the middle ages to the beginning of the
20th century.
English and American Literature by Period
A very brief selection of major works and some interesting projects.
Old English
Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies (Georgetown University)
Probably the best source for Old English and Medieval texts and related materials. A
sampling is included below, for direct access.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Labyrinth, Georgetown University)
Parker Manuscript.
Beowulf (Labyrinth, Georgetown University)
The Dobbie Edition.
Exeter Book (Labyrinth, Georgetown University)
Includes "The Wanderer," "The Seafarer," and 95 "Riddles."
Old English "Minor Poems" (Labyrinth, Georgetown University)
A substantial selection, including "The Battle of Maldon."
Vercelli Book (Labyrinth, Georgetown University)
Includes Andreas and "The Dream of the Rood."
Middle English
Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies (Georgetown University)
Probably the best source for Old English and Medieval texts and related materials. A
sampling is included below, for direct access.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia)
Based on the Robinson 2nd edition (1957).
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Cressida (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia)
Based on the Windeatt edition (1984).
Everyman (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia)
Based on the Cawley edition (1961).
Pearl (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia)
Based on the Gordon edition (1957).
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia)
Based on the Tolkien & Gordon edition as revised by Davis (1967).
TEAMS Middle English Texts (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages, University of Rochester).
Includes texts of about 300 works in "student editions" with notes, glossary, and
introductions. Excludes Chaucer and Langland to focus on other texts not as easily available.
More texts are added regularly.
Renaissance and Seventeenth Century
The Abraham Cowley Text and Image Archive.
Texts of some of his poetry plus images of early editions.
Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet.
A very fine Shakespeare site created and maintained by Terry A. Gray, with links to full- text of the works, and a good deal of relevant scholarly material.
The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe: An Electronic Edition. (Tufts University)
A good example of genuine scholarly work on the Web. Created as part of the Perseus Project (originally focusing on ancient Greece and Rome).
The Plays of Thomas Middleton. (Chris Cleary)
An electronic edition, not just a transcription.
The Milton-L Home Page
A site sponsored by a Milton discussion group, with links to electronic texts, articles, reviews, and other relevant materials.
Milton Reading Room (Dartmouth University, Thomas Luxon)
Links to the works, electronic texts based on originals, not modern scholarly editions,
plus a bibliography of recent criticism.
Renaissance Electronic Texts. (University of Toronto)
A series of old-spelling, SGML-encoded editions of early individual copies of English Renaissance books and manuscripts, and of plain transcriptions of such works, published on the World Wide Web as a free resource for students of the period.
Renascence Editions: An Online Repository of Works Printed in English Between the Years 1477 and 1799 (University of Oregon, Richard Bear)
The editor describes these as "non-critical teaching editions" of a number of major
Renaissance works, from Roger Ascham to Mary Wollstonecraft.
Edmund Spenser Home Page. (King's College, Cambridge University, Andrew Zurcher)
Links to electronic texts, plus discussion groups and other resources.
Eighteenth Century
Jane Austen Information Page (Henry Churchyard)
Includes electronic texts and much other information.
The American Society of Jane Austen Scholars Home Page. (The Society)
Includes e-texts, links to the society's journal and newsletter, and other useful sources.
Anna Laetitia Barbauld Web Site. (University of Saskatchewan)
A brief page, but useful for its links.
Aphra Behn Page (Ruth Nestvold)
Links to electronic texts and some scholarly information.
Eighteenth Century Studies (English Server, Carnegie Mellon University)
A collection of (mostly) primary texts, including poetry, memoirs, novels, treatises, etc.
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (University of Groningen, Netherlands)
Interesting example of a site based on a student project.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Based on 1792 Boston edition (printed by Peter Edes for Thomas and Andrews).
Romanticism and the Nineteenth Century
The Education of Henry Adams (American Studies Program, University of Virginia)
A searchable text, based on the 1918 Houghton Mifflin edition.
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century: A Selection of Published Works (Digital Schomburg, New York Public Library)
Around 40 works including titles by Harriet Jacobs and Phillis Wheatley.
Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward (Geoffrey Sauer, English Server, Carnegie Mellon Univ.)
Based on the 1917 edition, with additional editorial work by Sauer.
William Blake Home Page. (Morris Eaves, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi; University of Virginia)
A highly regarded site, with a growing number of texts and wonderful reproductions.
British Fiction, 1800–1829: A Database of Production, Circulation, and Reception (Professor Peter Garside, Cardiff University)
British Fiction allows users to examine bibliographical records of 2,272 works of fiction written by approximately 900 authors, along with a large number of contemporary materials (including anecdotal records from letters and other reports, circulating-library catalogues, newspaper advertisements, reviews, and subscription lists).
British Poetry, 1780-1910: A Hypertext Archive of Scholarly Editions (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia)
A model electronic publishing project, headed by Jerome McGann and David Seaman.
Includes some Coleridge, Tennyson, and Rossetti.
British Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832: An Electronic Collection of Texts (Nancy Kushigian, Shields Library, University of California Davis)
More than eighty texts by sixty poets.
Willa Cather Archive (University of Nebraska)
A highly regarded site including primary material (scholarly editions of O Pioneers and My
Antonia, first editions of several works, non fiction, interviews), scholarship (including
Cather Studies), biographical information (including the full-length biography by James
Woodress) and other material designed for teachers and students. An up-to-date site with
plans to include additional critical editions and other material.
John Clare Page (Simon Kovesi, Nottingham Trent University)
E-text of The Village Minstrel and Other Poems plus links to the Clare Society, a bibliography, chronology, articles, and other links.
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. (John Ockenbloom, Carnegie Mellon University)
A hypertext formatted version of a Project Gutenberg text.
Dickinson, Emily. Poems.(Bartleby)
Based on edition by Mabel Loomis Todd (Boston: Little Brown, 1896).
Documenting the American South. (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
A fine full-text site with several relevant clusters of texts–First Person Narratives of
the American South, Library of Southern Literature, and North American Slave
Narratives, among others.
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. (Bartleby)
Based on the edition by Robert Bridges (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918).
Henry James Scholar's Guide to Web Sites (Richard D. Hathaway, SUNY New Paltz)
A web page with links to electronic versions of quite a few novels and stories, plus
lots of related materials.
The Poetical Works of John Keats (Bartleby)
An electronic edition of the 1884 edition by Francis T. Palgrave.
Making of America (Cornell University)
A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
Nearly one million pages of text from books and journals.
The Cornell share of a multi-institutional initiative. Now includes a fine search engine.
Making of America (University of Michigan)
A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
More than three million pages from books and journals.
The Michigan share of a multi-institutional initiative. Includes a fine search engine.
Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. (Bartleby)
Based on the Putnam's Monthly version, November and December 1853.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick (Peter Batke, Princeton University)
A searchable html text.
William Morris Home Page (William Morris Society)
Includes links to some poetry, fiction and non-fiction.
Romantic Circles (Neil Fraistat, Steven E. Jones, Donald H. Reiman, Carl Stahmer--University of Maryland)
Includes a growing number of electronic texts and a wide variety of scholarly materials–
bibliographies, reviews, conference information, and Romantic Circles Praxis Series,
a collection of critical and scholarly articles.. A great starting place.
The Rossetti Archive: The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti--A Hypermedia Research Archive.
When completed, the project as a whole will provide students and scholars with access to all of DGR's original works, pictorial as well as textual. These original materials are gathered into the Archive along with a large corpus of contextual materials, most drawn from the period when DGR's work first appeared and established its reputation (approximately 1848-1920), but some of which stretch back to the 14th-century sources of his Italian translations. All of these documents are encoded for full structured search and analysis.
Victorian Women Writers Project (Perry Willet, Indiana University)
A model project, constantly growing. Especially good for the second and third rank of Victorian women writers. Includes poetry, novels, children's literature, religious tracts,
political pamphlets, etc.
Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive. (Kenneth Price and Ed Folsom, University of Virginia)
Includes text and image of the different editions of Whitman's work, plus images
of his manuscripts.
Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads Bicentenary Project. (Dalhousie University)
A full text and image version of the 1798 edition.
Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875.
"The Wright American Fiction online collection attempts to include every novel published in the United States from 1851 to 1875. It includes works by well known writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, along with a great many forgotten authors, whose works may have been very popular in their own time. There are currently 2,887 volumes included (1,883 unedited, 1,004 fully edited and encoded) by 1,450 authors.
Twentieth Century
A smaller selection, reflecting the limitations imposed by copyright.
Chesterton, G. K. G. K. Chesterton's Works on the Web (Martin Ward, University of Durham)
A sampling of his fiction, poetry, and polemical works, with numerous links to related sites.
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folks (Bartleby)
The 1903 edition.
Literary Theory
Cultural Studies (Iowa State University)
Part of the English Server at Carnegie Mellon. More focused on full-text works than
the following two sites, which are otherwise more extensive.
Literary Resources: Theory. (Jack Lynch, Rutgers–Newark)
A good collection, though the Voice of the Shuttle Literary Theory Page might be
more effectively organized.
Voice of the Shuttle: Literary Theory Page. (Alan Liu, UC Santa Barbara)
An extensive collection, ranging from the classical period to contemporary, including
everything from full-text (mostly older materials), to bibliographies, syllabi, bookstore links, critic/theorist home pages, discussion groups, and some journals, etc.
Electronic Journals (Free on the Web)
Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice.
Began in fall of 1997.
Early Modern Literary Studies (Sheffield Hallam University)
A refereed journal focusing on literature, literary culture, and language in the 16th and 17th centuries. Includes articles, responses, and reviews. Begun in 1995.
Internet Library of Early Journals. (Electronic Libraries Programme Project, Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Oxford)
A small (so far) collection of digital version of 18th and 19th century journals, including
Gentleman's Magazine, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, and Notes and Queries
(1849-69). Full-image versions.
Making of America (Cornell University)
Currently includes the following journals: The American Missionary (1878 - 1901);
The American Whig Review (1845 - 1852); The Atlantic Monthly (1857 - 1901);
The Bay State Monthly (1884 - 1886); The Century (1881 - 1899); The Continental Monthly (1862 - 1864); The Galaxy (1866 - 1878); Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1850 - 1899); The International Monthly Magazine (1850 - 1852); The Living Age (1844 - 1900); Manufacturer and Builder (1869 - 1894); The New England Magazine (1886 - 1900); The New-England Magazine (1831 - 1835); New Englander (1843 - 1892);
The North American Review (1815 - 1900); The Old Guard (1863 - 1867); Punchinello (1870); Putnam's Monthly (1853 - 1870); Scientific American (1846 - 1869); Scribner's Magazine (1887 - 1896); Scribner's Monthly (1870 - 1881); The United States Democratic Review (1837 - 1859).
Making of America. (University of Michigan)
Currently includes the following journals: Appleton's 1869-1881 (2 series); Catholic World 1865-1901; DeBow's 1846-1869 + 1952 index (3 series); Garden and Forest 1888-1897 (from Library of Congress); Ladies Repository 1841-1876 (3 series);
The Old Guard 1864; Overland Monthly 1868-1900 (2 series); Princeton Review 1831-1882 (3 series); Southern Literary Messenger 1835-1864 + 1936 Contributor index;
Southern Quarterly Review 1842-1857 (3 series); Vanity Fair 1860-1862.
Spectator. (Montclair Electronic Text Archive, Montclair State University, Brian Hancock)
As of October, 2003, includes complete and searchable texts
of The Spectator, The Tatler, Johnson's Rambler, The Plays of Richard
Steele, Le Specateur Francais, Der Bidermann (French and German
analogues of the Spectator) plus Bailey's New Universal Etymological
English Dictionary (1772 edition).
Studies in Bibliography (Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia)
The entire run of the journal, save for the two most recent years, is available online
Many other scholarly and popular journals are now available on the web, but accessible
only to subscribers or to faculty and students at subscribing institutions. Rutgers has
several packages of journals of interest to students and teachers in literature–limited
to Rutgers users via remote access, but available to all using computers in the
Rutgers libraries. Especially notable are Project Muse, JSTOR, and
Academic Search Premier.
See: Electronic Journal Lists
for further information.
Reference Sources (Free on the Web)
Age of Fable.
Bullfinch's retelling of Greek and Norse myths, plus Arthurian and other romances, in
a 1913 edition. Free access, as of 7/26/00.
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
Searchable 1996 edition. Free access, as of 7/26/00.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
A standard source for tracking down allusions and phrases–but a very early edition (1898), now in the public domain and hence free.
Cambridge History of English and American Literature.
An old (i.e. public domain) edition, originally published in 18 volumes between 1907 and
1921.
Familiar Quotations.
Bartlett's classic, in the 10th edition (1919).
Interplay: An On-line Index to Plays in Collections, Anthologies and Periodicals.
Index to plays in collections, anthologies, and periodicals, with more than 17,500 citations.
Simpson's Contemporary Quotations--The Most Notable Quotations: 1950–1988.
1988 edition of another standard quotation dictionary. Free access, as of 7/26/00.
See also the Electronic Reference Sources for a listing of additional sources. Bartleby.com offers a number of other works as well.
