RESEARCH GUIDE: ENGLISH & AMERICAN LITERATURE

This is a guide to the major print and online bibliographic resources in English and American literature. While basic resources are included, there are many others that cannot be covered here because of length. For assistance in using these resources, or to find additional information, contact a Reference Librarian.

Reference Sources | Books | Journal Articles | Literary Criticism | Texts | Dissertations | Selected Internet Sites

1. Reference Sources

1.1 General

• American Writers -- REFERENCE PS129.A55
• British Writers
• Dictionary of Literary Biography
• Major Characters in American Fiction -- REFERENCE PS374.C43M35 1994
• Oxford Companion to American Literature -- REFERENCE PS21.H3 1995
• Oxford Companion to Irish Literature
• Oxford Encylopedia of American Literature -- REFERENCE PS21.E537 2004
• Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature
• Oxford Reference Online: Literature
• Twayne Companion to Contemporary Literature in English -- REFERENCE PS225.T88 2003

1.2 Biography (See also Finding Biographical Information for additional resources)

• Contemporary Authors -- REFERENCE Z1224.C6
  • A multi-volume set. Provides brief biographical and bibliographical information on authors, literary and non-literary, from many countries. An excellent resource for tracking down information on little known writers. The Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series (REFERENCE Z1224.C62) provides updates on authors included in Contemporary Authors when their biographical information requires a "significant change."

1.3 ETHNICITY/GENDER

• African American Writers -- REFERENCE PS153.N5A344 2001
• Asian-American Literature -- REFERENCE PS153.A84A82 1999
• Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English
• Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature (Oxford Reference Online)
• Contemporary American Women Poets -- REFERENCE PS151.C665 2002
• Feminist Companion to Literature in English
• Harlem Renaissance -- REFERENCE PS153.N5H245 2003
• Hispanic Literature of the United States -- REFERENCE PS153.H56K36 2003
• Native North American Literature -- REFERENCE PS508.I5N38 1994
• Oxford Companion to African-American Literature -- REFERENCE PS153.N5O96 1997
• Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States -- REFERENCE PS147.O94 1995

1.4 GENRE

• Contemporary Dramatists
• Contemporary Novelists
• Contemporary Poets
• Critical Survey of Drama
• Critical Survey of Long Fiction
• Critical Survey of Poetry
• Encyclopedia of American Poetry: 19th Century -- REFERENCE PS316.E63 1998
• Encyclopedia of American Poetry: 20th Century -- REFERENCE PS323.5.E53 2001
• Facts on File Companion to the American Short Story -- REFERENCE PS374.S5F33 2000
• Notable American Novelists -- REFERENCE PS371.N68 2000
• Oxford Companion to American Theatre (Oxford Reference Online)
• Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English (Oxford Reference Online)

2. Books

• Centre Library Online Catalog
  • Find books, e-books, journal titles, electronic resources, and more in the Centre College library.
• Kentucky Virtual Library
  • Find material in other Kentucky libraries, including the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville.
• Worldcat
  • WorldCat contains records for the holdings of several thousand libraries. This is an excellent starting point for finding material beyond the Centre College library.
• Interlibrary Loan
  • Use the Interlibrary Loan service to borrow books and journal articles from other libraries.

3. Journal Articles

3.1 Core Resources for Finding Articles

• Academic Search Premier 
  • A multi-disciplinary index to periodicals that covers over 8,000 scholarly and popular periodicals, and includes full-text for more than 4,500 of these. Designed specifically for academic institutions, ASP spans most areas of study. Coverage varies, but most titles begin in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
• MLA International Bibliography
  • The largest and most comprehensive database covering scholarship in the modern languages, linguistics, literature, folklore, and drama. MLA provides access to scholarly articles in approximately 4,000 journals and series. It also covers relevant monographs, book chapters, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies and dissertations. Coverage is from 1926 to the present.
• OmniFile Full Text Mega 
  • Collection of Wilson full-text databases, including Humanities Full Text, a good resource for finding scholarly journal articles. Indexing begins in 1984; full-text of selected articles in 1995.

3.2 Additional Resources for Finding Articles

• Arts and Humanities Search
  • An international interdisciplinary index to the literature of the arts and humanities. Although this is a citation database, there are links to Centre's e-journal holdings to locate the full text if available. Coverage is from 1980 to the present.
• Essay and General Literature Index
  • Indexes essays and articles from anthologies and collections published in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. This database focuses on the humanities and social sciences, with subject coverage ranging from economics, political science, and history to criticism of literary works, drama, and film. Coverage from 1985 to the present.
• JSTOR 
  • Full-text back files of core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. JSTOR includes many journals in the area of English literature. Note: coverage varies by title, but the most recent 2-5 years is not available.
• Project Muse 
  • Full-text from nearly 250 academic journals in the humanities and social sciences. Project Muse includes many journals in the area of English literature. Coverage varies by title.
• Short Story Index
  • An index to short stories written in, or translated into, English that have appeared in collections and selected periodicals. Coverage is from 1984 to the present.

3.3 Electronic Journals

• Electronic Journals in Literature
  • Browse a list of electronic journals in literature available to Centre College users.

4. Literary Criticism

• Contemporary Literary Criticism -- REFERENCE PN771.C59
  
  • Each print volume in this long-standing series profiles approximately 6-8 novelists, poets, playwrights and other creative and nonfiction writers by providing full articles or excerpted criticism taken from books, magazines, literary reviews, newspapers and scholarly journals. Each of the approximately 200 essays per volume is prefaced by a full citation and annotation and most entries in the print series include an author portrait.

5. Texts

• African American Women Writers of the 19th Century 
  • Digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-century African America women writers. Each individual title as well as the entire database can be searched.
• American Verse Project 
  • Electronic archive of volumes of American poetry prior to 1920.
• Bartelby.com 
  • Links to anthologies and works by individual authors.
• British Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832 
  • Electronic text editions of poetry by British and Irish women written between 1789 and 1832.
• Documenting the American South 
  • A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.
• Luminarium 
  • Texts of medeival, Renaissance, and 17th century English authors.
• Online Books Page 
  • Links to over 25,000 online books and texts.
• Representative Poetry Online 
  • Includes over 3,000 English poems by 500 poets from the Old English period, to the work of living poets today.
• Victorian Women Writers Project 
  • Works by British women writers of the 19th century. Includes anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, poetry and verse drama.
• Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875 
  • A collection of 19th century American fiction that attempts to include every novel published in the United States from 1851 to 1875.

6. Dissertations

• Dissertation Abstracts
  • The primary source for over 1.4 million doctoral dissertations (and selected master's theses) from over 1000 North American and European universities. Coverage is from 1851 to the present. Abstracts are available for dissertations since 1980, abstracts for theses since 1988.
• WorldCat Dissertations and Theses
  • A subset of the WorldCat database, allows user to locate some 5 million items cataloged as dissertations, theses or published materials based on theses or dissertations including those published prior to 1861.

7. SELECTED INTERNET SITES

• Literary Resources on the Net
• Voice of the Shuttle: American Literature
• Victorian Web
  This award-winning site contains a wealth of information on Victorian era topics (political, social, gender, philosophy, religion, science, technology, visual arts, etc.), including primary and secondary sources, biographies, photographs, essays, and links about the Victorian era.

Last updated January 16, 2008