African American Women in the Nineteenth Century
This is a digital collection of 42 published works by 19th-century black women writers published before 1920 and prepared by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Each work is available as a full-text PDF, and the list can be browsed in full or by genre - fiction, poetry, biography, autobiography, and essay. The site provides brief biographical information about each author and the era in which she wrote.
Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts on the Internet
"The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection of about 14,000 "classic" public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy." There is a search feature and also the ability to browse by author, by title, or by tag.
Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP)
Note: The CASP website was down when checked in 2023; if the link above doesn't work, the content can be viewed through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine using this link to a 2021 capture of the homepage.
"CASP is the first research project of its kind devoted to the systematic exploration and documentation of the ways in which Shakespeare has been adapted into a national, multicultural theatrical practice. Originally launched in 2004 by Professor Daniel Fischlin, CASP Version 2 was released in 2007 offering more than double the content, including learning, teaching, multimedia, and research resources and pedagogical tools related to how Shakespeare has been adapted into (and out of) Canadian Theatre" (CASP). Includes the CASP database to search for Canadian adaptations of Shakespeare, interviews with scholars and playwrights, essays, multimedia, and more.
A Celebration of Women Writers
"The Celebration of Women Writers recognizes the contributions of women writers throughout history. Women have written almost every imaginable type of work: novels, poems, letters, biographies, travel books, religious commentaries, histories, economic and scientific works. Our goal is to promote awareness of the breadth and variety of women's writing." (A Celebration of Women Writers) The search function provides for searching by name, date, country and ethnicity. Browsing by author name, century, country and ethnicity is also available. Also included are bibliographies, biographies, criticism and some full text.
CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts (University College Cork)
CELT is a database of Irish literature as well as historical, political, religious, scientific, medical, and genealogical documents. Some documents originally in Irish or Latin have been translated into English, and some Irish documents have been translated into French and German as well. Others are available in the original Irish, English, Latin, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, or French.
Digital Collections: Literature & Poetry (Library of Congress)
The Literacture & Poetry digital collections curated by the U.S. Library of Congress include "Selected Digitized Books" (which has over 150,000 items), an audio archive of authors reading their work, three collections related to Walt Whitman, and a collection of manuscripts for ten unpublished plays written by Zora Neale Hurston.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
This is "a comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century, the world's largest library of the printed book on microfilm. Eighteenth Century Collections Online's digitized format features over 138,000 English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas." Materials include books and directories, pamphlets, broadsides, sheet music, Bibles, sermons and advertisements and works by many well-known and lesser-known authors. Subjects covered include: Language and Literature; History and Geography; Social Science; Fine Arts, Music, Art and Architecture; Medicine, Science and Technology; Religion and philosophy; Law; and Reference. The Collection also contains works from women writers of the 18th Century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous editions of the works of Shakespeare. Multiple editions of each individual work are offered to enable scholars to make textual comparisons of the works.
LiteraryHistory.com
"Academic, scholarly, and critical articles on British poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists, and biographers of the twentieth century, nineteenth century, and eighteenth century; and on American poets, novelists, playwrights, and essayists of the twentieth century and nineteenth century. All articles are open access and free." Indexes provided include: 20th Century Literature; 19th Century Literature; 18th Century Literature; and African American Literature. Each of these indexes is searchable and browsable. Because this website links to other sources, you may encounter dead or redirected links; please ask a librarian for help if you are having trouble accessing something that sounds interesting.
Luminarium: An Anthology of English Literature
Luminarium: An Anthology of English Literature contains texts and supplemental materials for Medieval (1350-1485), Renaissance (1485 - 1603), 17th Century (1603-1660) and Restoration - 18th Century (1660-1785) British literature. Clicking on one of the four periods brings up a list of authors (or in the case of Medieval literature, also lyrics, plays, and anonymous works such as Everyman), a link to essays and articles, and a link to additional sources. For each author, there are links to biographical information, text, secondary sources, quotes etc.
The Middle English Compendium (University of Michigan Library)
"The Compendium has been designed to offer easy access to and some interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary (MED); a Bibliography of Middle English primary texts, limited to those cited by the MED and based on the MED bibliographies; and a searchable full-text Corpus of Middle English prose and verse." (Middle English Compendium)
Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)
The Online Books Page was founded, and is edited, by John Mark Ockerbloom and is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. It includes a listing of more than 30,000 English works that are freely available on the Internet. It is searchable by author and title and browsable by author, title, subject and new listings.
Poetry Archive
"The Poetry Archive is a not-for-profit organisation that produces, acquires and preserves recordings of poets reading their own work out loud. We make substantial excerpts from our recording sessions freely available online through this website and our dedicated Children's Poetry Archive."
This is a British website that also includes some poets from Canada and other countries/regions. You can search by poet or poem, or browse by item type, region, or a poem's theme, form, or use of poetic devices. (Terms related to form and device are under "Glossary.") Some biographical information is also included.
Project Gutenberg
"Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971...". Over 70,000 books are available in their catalog; 100,000 titles available through their Partners, Affiliates, and Associates. The collection focuses on works whose U.S. copyright has expired. (As a general rule, that means the books were published at least 95 years ago.) The Online Book Catalog is browsable by author, title, language, or recently posted and searchable by author name, title, language or words in the full text of the eBook. This is a place to find the actual texts of books, not scholarship about them.
Representative Poetry Online (University of Toronto)
Representative Poetry Online is a collection of 4,700 English poems by 723 poets, beginning with Caedmon and continuing through the present day. "It is based on Representative Poetry, established by Professor W. J. Alexander of University College, University of Toronto, in 1912 (one of the first books published by the University of Toronto Press)." You can search by poem title, poem line, poet, publication year, rhyme scheme, poem form, poet's nationality, literary period, or literary movement. Other features include a timeline, a glossary, a collection of criticism, and a number of bibliographies, including one for Canadian poetry.
Romantic Circles
Romantic Circles is a refereed scholarly Website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture. It is currently published by the University of Colorado, Boulder. The site is divided into a number of sections including the Praxis series (volumes of peer-reviewed scholarly essays about Romanticism); the Romantic Circles Electronic Editions (a searchable archive of texts of the Romantic era); Romantic Circles Reviews & Receptions (reviews of key works of scholarship in the field ); Pedagogies (resources for teachers and professors of Romantic Studies to help them design and use online materials for teaching and is peer-reviewed); and Scholarly Resources (a set of "online research tools approved by the General Editors of the site, intended for the study of the Romantics, their contemporaries, and their cultural contexts").
Shakespeare First Folio (UBC)
A full digitized copy of Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies : published according to the True Originall Copies [second issue of the first folio edition] via UBC Library. Choose "Open in Image Viewer" to look through the book online, or choose "Download as PDF" for a full PDF copy. Provided for research and reference use only.
Shakespeare's First Folios Compared
First Folios Compared allows users to view dozens of digitzed copies of the First Folio and to compare different versions in a side-by-side viewer.
Shakespeare Resource Center
This site provides a collection of information on the life and works of William Shakespeare. The site provides original material as well as annotated links to Shakespeare-related resouces elswhere on the Web. Some links may be dead or redirected to irrelevant content.
Sonnet Central
Note: This site was last updated in 2012, but the content is still accessible as of 2023.
Sonnet Central is "an archive of English sonnets, commentary, and relevant web links and a forum for poets to share and discuss their own work." Sonnets are grouped by period and country of origin but can also be accessed through an alphabetical list of authors or through a java navigation page. The java navigation page includes a number of links including Sonnets by Place and Time, Sonnet Criticisms, Bibliography and a Listening Room. "All of the sonnets included here (as well as most of those that are linked) are modernized texts for the general reader and are not presented for purposes of scholarly work."
Victoria Research Web - Scholarly Resources for Victorian Research Web
The Victoria Research Web "is dedicated to the scholarly study of nineteenth-century Britain, and to aiding researchers, teachers, and students in their investigations of any and all aspects of this fascinating period."
The site is divided into a number of sections including Research Resources, Journals (contributor and subscription information, tables of contents, and online resources for some of the major journals in the field and a listing of book publishers), Discussion Group (includes a link that facilitates the searching of the Victoria Archives), Teaching (includes collection of syllabi and text suggestions contributed by teachers of 19th-century British history and literature), and Other Victorian Resources (includes an annotated guide to related resources). The site also includes a useful bibliography - Victorian periodicals: aids to research. This site is updated regularly.
The Victorian Web
The Victorian web provides a comprehensive overview of the literature, history, and culture in the age of Victoria.. The site is divided into twenty-three sections. The sections of particular interest for literature in this time period are Victorianism, Gender Matters, Genre & Style, Authors, Music & Theater, VW Books, Victorian Texts, Bibliography, Economics, Periodicals, Resources, and Book Reviews. Each section includes commentaries on individual themes that provide an introduction to the topic.
The William Blake Archive
The William Blake Archive provides access to reproductions of Blake's visual and literary works that have been sourced from a variety of collections around the world. The works are searchable, browsable, and divided into categories by form (such as Illuminated Books or Paintings & Drawings). They also offer three lists of resources for further research that may be useful to those seeking reference or scholarly resources.
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." The collection of books, based on Lyle Wright's American Fiction 1851-1875, includes 2,887 volumes and can be searched or browsed.
Created by: Cathy Callaghan, B.A., M.L.S.
Modified by Suzanne Jones and Katelyn Browne
Date Created: 28-February-2009
Date Revised: 14-February-2024