English literature

Sources for Background Information

Dictionaries, Encyclopedias (Electronic Databases)

• Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature (xreferplus)
• Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (xreferplus)
• Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature
• Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature
• Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
• Literature Resource Center
• Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English
• Oxford English Dictionary
• Dictionary of Writers and their Works

Dictionaries, Encyclopedias (Internet Resources)

• Allibone"s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Searchable digital copy of 1859-71 edition from the Making of America project.
• Cambridge History of English and American Literature

Searching the Library Catalogue

Use the basic word(s) anywhere or advanced keyword search in the library catalogue. You can search using words like - Canada, Canad?, histor?, etc.

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Core and Additional Databases

Periodical Indexes, Bibliographies, Full-text Databases

• ABELL Online (Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature)
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science)
• British Humanities Index
• Essay & General Literature Index Online
• JSTOR
• Literature Resource Center (Gale)
• MLA Bibliography
• Project MUSE
• Waterloo Directory of English Periodicals and Newspapers 1800-1900
• Humanities Full Text (Wilson)
• English Short Title Catalogue
• Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue
• Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 2001-  
• Year's Work in English Studies, 2001-  

Multidisciplinary Databases

• ArticleFirst (OCLC)
• Electronic Collections (OCLC)
• ProQuest Research Library

Selected Internet Sites

• McGill University Department of English
• Internet for English
  A tutorial from the Virtual Training Suite designed for UK higher education.
• Literary Resources on the Net
  Maintained by Jack Lynch, Asst. Prof. of English, Rutgers University.
• Voice of the Shuttle: English Literature
• EServer: Accessible Online Publishing
  Links to a variety of resources in field of English literature (among other subjects): full texts, journals, literary theory, gender criticism, etc.
• Literary Index (Gale)
  Master index to every literary series published by Gale, many of which are located in the McLennan Reference collection and/or at the Literature Resource Center (Gale) and including Contemporary Authors , Contemporary Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Something About the Author, Shakespearean Criticism, and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism.
• Romantic Chronology
  Database searchable by date and/or topic, of historic and literary personnages, events, and movements in the romantic period (17th - 19th century), with links to online articles, bibliographies, web pages, historical and literary sources, etc.
• Online Literary Criticism
• Twentieth-century Authors
• Luminarium: Sixteenth Century Renaissance English Literature (1485-1603)
• Online Chaucer Bibliography
  Includes materials from the Annotated Chaucer Bibliography published annually in Studies in the Age of Chaucer.
• Contemporary Postcolonial and Postimperial Literature in English
• Old English at the University of Virginia
  Includes Old English Aerobics, a series of texts and exercises for students of old English.
• Internet Library of Early Journals: A digital library of 18th and 19th Century journals
  Ca. 20 consecutive years of Gentleman's Magazine, The Annual Register, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Notes and Queries, The Builder, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.

Concordances (Internet Resources)

• Web Concordances
  For selected works by Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
• Victorian Literary Studies Archive: Hyper-Concordance
  To works of over 100 authors.

Other Resources

Library Guides

• English Literature: A Selective List of Reference Sources
• Literature and the Bible: A Selected List of Reference Sources
• English Language books Printed Before 1700: A Guide to Their Location (ed. 1974; corrected 1977)
  Print copy only, available at the McLennan Reference Desk.
• English Literature: A Guide to Serial Bibliographies (1981)
  Print copy only, available at the McLennan Reference Desk.
• English Literature Reference Sources (1992)
  Print copy only, available at the McLennan Reference Desk.