English Literature
This guide provides a general introduction to Library and information resources for the study of literature in English.
Internet resources
As differentiated from our Library licensed databases, the large, curated catalogue of internet resources in the three broad subject sections below are mostly free to access. In some cases users may be required to register or create an account. Every effort has been made by the Academic Support Librarian to ensure that the website content is suitable for academic study, but it is the user's own responsibility to check the authority, currency and accuracy of content.
Highlights of important internet resources

Introduces women writers of African and African-Caribbean descent living in Britain, the criticism their work has generated, and relevant past and future activities, in particular academic events centred on the promotion and exploration of Black British Women’s Writing as a field. Over 400 bibliographical references.

The Carlyle Letters Online
The Carlyle Letters Online includes over 12,000 letter written by Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle from 1812 to 1859, including correspondence with more than 600 recipients, such as Rober Browning, George Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill and Charles Dickens. Coverage 1812-1859.

Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson
The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson was founded in 1955 to replace the Oxford Edition of 1825 and make accurate texts of Johnson's complete works widely available. Works include Johnson's debates, poetry, sermons, literary criticism, essays and other genre.

American Literature Sites
Including Nineteenth-Century Periodicals and Primary Sources

First Scottish Books
Including The Chapman and Myllar Prints held at the National Library of Scotland

Historical Monographs Collection
Cornell University's collection of monographs on a range of topics

The John Milton Reading Room
The John Milton Reading Room: the complete poetry and selected prose of John Milton, with introductions, research guides, and hyperlinked annotations. Thomas H. Luxon, General Editor © Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1997-2020.

Illustrated Shakespeare Collection
Facsimiles of books held in University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. This online collection, originally published in venues as disparate as Philadelphia and Leipzig, includes images produced by an array of technologies available in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Full text and digital archives
- British Women Romantic Poets 1789 to 1832 An electronic collection of texts from the University of California, Davis
- The Carlyle Letters Online The Carlyle Letters Online includes over 12,000 letter written by Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle from 1812 to 1859, including correspondence with more than 600 recipients, such as Rober Browning, George Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill and Charles Dickens. Coverage 1812-1859.
- Digital Scriptorium Image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in American institutions
- Early Modern Literary Studies : Electronic Texts Links to select electronic texts of fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century materials which are on the Internet
- First Scottish Books Including The Chapman and Myllar Prints held at the National Library of Scotland
- Group for Literary Archives & Manuscripts : Resources Finding literary archives in the UK and Ireland
- The Harvard Classics : the Shelf of Fiction (in 70 volumes) The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume “5-foot shelf of books” and the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century.
- Historical Monographs Collection Cornell University's collection of monographs on a range of topics
- Illustrated Shakespeare Collection Facsimiles of books held in University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. This online collection, originally published in venues as disparate as Philadelphia and Leipzig, includes images produced by an array of technologies available in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
- Internet Library of Early Journals This is an archived version. This resource is no longer being updated.
- The John Milton Reading Room The John Milton Reading Room: the complete poetry and selected prose of John Milton, with introductions, research guides, and hyperlinked annotations. Thomas H. Luxon, General Editor © Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1997-2020.
- A Library of American Literature : From the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time in 11 volumes The 6,000 pages of the 11 volumes contain over 2,500 selections by more than 1,100 authors.
- The Library of the World’s Best Literature : An Anthology in 30 volumes With 5,550 selections and over 1,000 essays on primary authors and literary genres, this 20,000-page anthology stands as a monument of the best critique and editorial expertise of the early twentieth century. Combined with the three reference volumes, it forms a complete universe of world literary study.
- Location Register of English literary manuscripts and letters Includes information about the manuscript holdings of British and Irish repositories of all sizes, from the British Library to small-town museums, and about literary authors of all genres, from major poets to minor science fiction writers and romantic novelists.
- The Oxford Shakespeare The 1914 Oxford edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare ranks among the most authoritative published in the twentieth century. The 37 plays, 154 sonnets and miscellaneous verse constitute the literary cornerstone of Western civilization.
- The Short-Story: Specimens Illustrating Its Development With a selection of 23 short stories from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the twentieth century, Brander Matthews—a pioneer of dramatic scholarship and professor at Columbia University—demonstrates, “the slow evolution of this literary species through the long centuries of advancing civilization.”
- The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson was founded in 1955 to replace the Oxford Edition of 1825 and make accurate texts of Johnson's complete works widely available. Works include Johnson's debates, poetry, sermons, literary criticism, essays and other genre.
History of the book
- First Scottish Books Including The Chapman and Myllar Prints held at the National Library of Scotland
See also the History of the Book section of this subject guide.
Literary theory
- Cultural Studies and Theory A collection of web links
- Society for Critical Exchange The SCE is North America's oldest scholarly organization devoted to theory.
Reference resources
- Black British Women Writers The Black British Women Writers website seeks to stimulate the discussion of the literary art of women writers of African and African-Caribbean descent living in Britain. It introduces these authors, the criticism their work has generated – already over 400 bibliographical references at the moment of the website's launch – and some of the scholars who have produced this criticism; it also provides information about relevant past and future activities, in particular academic events centred on the promotion and exploration of Black British Women’s Writing as a field.
- How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography By Michael Engle, Cornell University Library
- ipl Literary Criticism he ipl Literary Criticism Collection contains critical and biographical websites about authors and their works that can be browsed by author, by title, or by nationality and literary period.
Literary prizes
- James Tait Black Memorial Prizes The James Tait Black Prizes, established in 1919, are Britain's longest running literary awards.
- Literary Traveler Literary Traveler is dedicated to the exploration of the literary imagination. It aims to bring you inspiring, informative articles about writers, creative artists, and the places that they lived and traveled.
- Women's Prize for Fiction Previously known as Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)
Directories, Bibliographies, Projects, and Book Reviews
- Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation This resource lists foreign translations of the works of Scottish authors from 1500 onwards,
- Scottish Theatre Programmes The National Library of Scotland holds a rich collection of material that charts both the development of live performance and the story of the theatre industry in Scotland from the 19th century onwards. The Scottish Theatre Programmes database gives access to records of an extensive collection of programmes, playbills and posters. These items from theatres and other venues date from the 19th century onwards. The database is continuously being updated. Currently searching 13663 programmes.
- Women Writers Project A long-term research project devoted to early modern women's writing and electronic text encoding.
Internet resources for creative writing
- Creative Writing Studies Word Press account is needed.
Virtual Training Suite - Internet for English
Virtual Training Suite is a set of free Internet tutorials to help you develop Internet research skills for your university course. All of the tutorials are written and reviewed by a national team of lecturers and librarians from universities across the UK.
Internet for English is a free online tutorial to help university students develop their Internet research skills.
Google Scholar
You can use Google Scholar to search for academic resources including journal articles, peer-reviewed papers, books and theses.
Further:
RefSeek
RefSeek (https://www.refseek.com/) is a web and document search engine for students and researchers that aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. RefSeek searches more than five billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, journals, and newspapers. You can also find a lot of English Literature related resources there.