Reference and data sources for English studies
Sources below include subscription services accessible to members of the University of Sheffield via MUSE and freely available internet sites.
| Reference and full text databases: Online reference works | |
|---|---|
| Cambridge Dictionaries online | Free online dictionaries from Cambridge University Press |
| Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics | Comprehensive essays on major authors, periods and genres |
| Glossary of Literary Terms | Free resource from Gale |
| Newbury House Online Dictionary | Free online dictionary of American English which includes photographs |
| Oxford English Dictionary (OED) | Second edition plus additions |
| Online Etymology dictionary | Dictionary of the development of English words |
| Webster's third new international dictionary via LION | Unabridged full text dictionary |
| Reference and full text databases: Primary texts | |
|---|---|
| African American Women Writers of the 19th Century | Searchable database of 52 works by 19th century African American women writers from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library |
| American Verse Project | Searchable online collection of hundreds of published collected works of poetry of the 19th century, from the University of Michigan |
| British Poetry 1780-1910: a hypertext archive of scholarly editions | A subset of the holdings of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library |
| Dictionary of the English language (Johnson) | Texts of 1st and 4th editions |
| Early English books online (EEBO) | Page images and some digital text of books published in England 1475-1700 based on Pollard and Redgrove and Wing short title catalogues |
| Eighteenth century collections online (ECCO) | Page images and some digital text of books published in England 1700-1800 |
| Electronic Literature Directory | An extensive database of listings for electronic works of poetry, fiction, drama and nonfiction, including hypertexts and other interactive works, and kinetic or animated poems |
| Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Libraries | An on-line archive of standards-based texts and images in the humanities and user community |
| Emory Women Writers Resource Project | Collection of edited and unedited texts by women writing in English from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century |
| English poetry via LION | Poetry from Anglo-Saxon period to end 19thC |
| Hamlet on the Ramparts | A collection of texts, images and films related to Hamlet's first encounter with the ghost (Act I, scenes 4 and 5), created by the MIT Shakespeare Electronic Archive |
| Internet Poetry Archive | University of North Carolina web site which provides attractive multimedia presentations of contemporary poetry, including readings, bibliographies, and recordings of interviews with poets such as Seamus Heaney |
| Internet Shakespeare Editions | Project to make scholarly, fully annotated texts of Shakespeare's plays available over the Internet |
| Jane Austen Information Page | Online resource of primary and secondary textual and graphic material for the study of Jane Austen |
| LION | Large collection of texts in English |
| Modern English Collection | Searchable collection of texts dating from 1500 to the present, from the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia |
| Oxford Text Archive | Aims to provide access to and facilitate the creation and use of electronic texts. Contains an enormous range of electronic texts |
| Project Gutenberg | The original free texts project |
| Victorian Women Writers Project | A large collection from Indiana University Libraries of texts by British women writers of the 19th century |
| Reference and full text databases: Other resources | |
|---|---|
| Chaucer MetaPage | Web page of project initiated at 33rd International Congress of Medieval Studies, with the aim of organising and enhancing Chaucer resources on the WWW |
| Corvey Women Writers on the Web | Electronic guide to British women's writing of the Romantic era, based on the holdings of the Corvey Library in Germany, and hosted by Sheffield Hallam University |
| Johns Hopkins guide to literary theory & criticism | Wide geographical, cultural and chronological coverage |
| Literary Encyclopedia and Literary Dictionary | Contains date lists, biographies and text profiles for major English literary publications and authors, along with a glossary of literary terms and an English style book |
| Location Register of 20th Century English literary manuscripts and letters | Searchable register |
| NewsBank | Full text newspaper service |
| Performing Arts Data Service | Digital research data resources relevant to the performing arts and electronic media |
| The Researcher's Guide Online: British Film, Television, Radio and Related Documentation Collections | A searchable database of over 550 film, television, radio and related documentation collections in the UK and Ireland |
| Romantic Circles | Site from the University of Maryland devoted to the study of Romantic period literature and culture |
| Web Concordances and Workbooks | University of Dundee site providing concordances and workbooks for works by Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins |
| Print Reference Works | |
|---|---|
| Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics | WBL REF 403 (E) |
| Encyclopedias and Dictionaries of Folklore | Within WBL REF 398 |
| Catalogue of dated and datable manuscripts in BL, Oxford and Cambridge | WBL REF 016.91 |
| Catalogues of Manuscripts from various libraries | Mainly within WBL 3 B 016.91, BQ 016.91 |
| Encyclopedia of post-colonial literatures in English | Information Commons 819.03 (E) |
| Holocaust literature: an encyclopedia of writers and their work | WBL REF 809.93 (H) |
| Index of English Literary Manuscripts | WBL B Q 820.01 (I) |
| International companion encyclopedia of children's literature | WBL REF 372.412 (I) |
| Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts | WBL REF 820.99 (L) |