English & Creative Writing: Resources

"The most comprehensive index of scholarship in literature, language, folklore, film, new media, and rhetoric and composition. Covers articles in periodicals, books, and book chapters. Does not index book reviews."

In contrast to discipline-specific indexes like the MLA Bibliography, Proquest Central is the largest single periodical resource available, bringing together complete databases and a vast amount of full-text content across all major subject areas, including Business, Health and Medical, Social Sciences, Education, Science and Technology, and Humanities.

"Provides complete biographical and bibliographical information and references on more than 120,000 U.S. and international authors."

"Lists monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews, and collections of essays published anywhere in the world; unpublished doctoral dissertations are covered for the period 1920-1999. The bibliography consists of 77 volumes, beginning in 1920 and issued annually; a number of items published between 1892 and 1919 have been indexed retrospectively."

"A scholarly, multidisciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for over 10,000 publications, including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, and others. Also includes full-text access to over 5,000 journals."

"Indexes essays and articles in anthologies and collections, emphasizing the humanities and social sciences." This content is sometimes absent from subject indexes which largely address journals and magazines.

"IBZ online contains over 2.434.000 journal articles from about 10.700 journals covering the years 1983ff. Approximately 120.000 entries are added to the database annually containing a subject classification. IBZ is updated on a monthly basis and is therefore more up-to-date than the CD-ROM edition which is updated twice a year."

"Lion includes Chadwyck-Healey fulltext databases: English poetry, English drama (combining English verse drama and English prose drama databases), Early English prose fiction, Editions and adaptations of Shakespeare, The Bible in English, The King James "Authorized" Version, Eighteenth-century fiction, American poetry, and African-American poetry. Lion also includes reference databases: Annual bibliography of English language and literature; Bibliography of American literature; Webster's Third new international dictionary, unabridged; and Periodicals contents index: Literature."

"Contains Masterplots (12 volumes), Masterplots II (61 volumes), Cyclopedia of World Authors (5 volumes), Cyclopedia of Literary Characters (5 volumes), Magill's Literary Annual 1990-2002 (26 volumes), Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (4 volumes) and Magill Book Reviews. In addition, this database also includes Critical Surveys (53 volumes), Magill's Choice: Notable Poets (3 volumes), Magill's Choice: Shakespeare (1 volume), Magill's Choice: 100 Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction (2 volumes) and World Philosophers and Their Works (3 volumes)."

"Provides peer-reviewed biographies of American maritime authors and links to electronic texts and selected criticism and multimedia materials."

Use JSTOR's advanced search for greater power and flexibility.

Use Project Muse's advanced search for greater power and flexibility.

"For nearly half a century, James D. Hart’s Oxford Companion to American Literature has offered a matchless guided tour through American literary culture, both past and present. This concise version contains brief biographies of important authors, plot summaries of individual works, descriptions of important literary movements, and a wealth of information on other aspects of American literary life and history from the Colonial period to the modern era. It devotes approximately 325 of the biographical entries to contemporary writers, such as William Kennedy, Grace Paley, and Raymond Carver."

"This comprehensive guide spans sixteen centuries of the literature and literary culture of Ireland. From the ogam alphabet in the 4th century, to contemporary writers such as Roddy Doyle and Seamus Heaney, there is a wealth of information on writers and their works, movements, genres, topics, folklore, and historical, religious, and cultural events."

"Green’s Dictionary of Slang is an unprecedented 10.3 million-word collection of the impertinent, vile, censored, hip, witty, and fascinating slang words of the English language. Covering five centuries of innovation in all English-speaking regions of the world, the Dictionary is the most authoritative, scholarly approach to slang ever attempted. Over 100,000 words are defined; each word is authenticated by genuine and full-referenced citations of its use."

"Asian American literature dates back to the close of the 19th century, and during the years following World War II it significantly expanded in volume and diversity. Monumental in scope, this encyclopedia surveys Asian American literature from its origins through 2007. Included are more than 270 alphabetically arranged entries on writers, major works, significant historical events, and important terms and concepts. Thus the encyclopedia gives special attention to the historical, social, cultural, and legal contexts surrounding Asian American literature and central to the Asian American experience."

"A full-text searchable database of articles on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also treats related persons and fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped literary theory and criticism. Each entry includes a selective primary and secondary bibliography."

"This volume provides over 1,700 biographical entries on poets writing in English from 1910 to the present day, including T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Carol Ann Duffy. Authoritative and accessible, it is a must-have for students of English and creative writing, as well as for anyone with an interest in poetry."

"This Companion provides a comprehensive survey of women writers across four centuries of American history. There are biographical entries on poets, novelists, and playwrights, such as Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Kate Chopin, Maya Angelou, Wendy Wasserstein, and Tama Janowitz, as well as writers who have made contributions in other fields, such as Betty Friedan, Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B Anthony. Written by a team of experts, the Companion includes Susan Faludi writing on backlash, Jane Gallop on Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Trudier Harris on Toni Morrison. Personal, cultural, and historical issues, such as AIDS, racism, sexual harassment, and the Civil War, are examined alongside accounts of women publishing and contemporary literary theory, such as black feminism, lesbian literary theory, and deconstruction."

"This bestselling dictionary provides clear and concise definitions of the most troublesome literary terms, from abjection to zeugma. Now expanded and in its fourth edition, it includes increased coverage of new terms from modern critical and theoretical movements, such as feminism, schools of American poetry, Spanish verse forms, life writing, and crime fiction."

"This award-winning Encyclopedia surveys the vibrant terrain of American literature in 350 essays from leading scholars, encompassing the range and depth of American literary history from the 1600s to the present day. The Encyclopedia includes essays on poets, playwrights, essayists, and novelists, as well as major works and essays on literary movements, periods, and themes. No mere catalog of dates, events, and synopses, the Encyclopedia's articles offer historical perspective and social context along with a range of possibilities with regard to critical approach."

"The Encyclopedia provides comprehensive coverage of literature from the Abbey Theatre to Israel Zangwill, covering the entire history of literature in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the major literary languages (Anglo-Saxon, English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, and Latin). It includes substantial accounts of individual authors (e.g., Spenser, Pope, Austen) and detailed histories of particular themes, movements, genres, and institutions, whose impact upon the writing or the reading of literature was significant (e.g., The Stationers' Company, the sonnet, the ‘School of Night, ’ or the Sublime)."

"This encyclopedia provides authoritative and up-to-date information about theatre and performance from ancient Greek theatre to the latest developments in London, Paris, New York, and around the globe. In addition to performances in playhouses, it covers dance, opera, radio, film, television, and popular performance, including carnivals, circus, and public executions. Entries range from short definitions of terms to lengthy considerations of genres and movements, such as feminism and psychoanalytic criticism. Entries on cities and regions place performance in its local social and political context. Written in accessible language, this encyclopedia brings together an international cast of over 300 specialist contributors."

"This absorbing and accessible A-Z explains the meanings of allusions in modern English. Fascinating to browse through, the book is based on an extensive reading programme that has identified the most commonly-used allusions. For the third edition all entries have been reviewed, revised, and thoroughly updated to ensure the consistency of coverage of allusions and references. New to this edition is the inclusion within each entry of a short summary definition for the allusion or reference, ideal for quick reference, and at least one illustrative citation from a wide range of source materials in almost every entry."

"The first historical dictionary devoted to science fiction, this shows how science-fictional words and their associated concepts have developed over time, with full citations and bibliographic information. It also documents the enduring legacy of authors and their fans."

"Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase & Fable is dedicated to the history, culture, and mythology of the Emerald Isle. With a stunningly eclectic array of more than 6,000 entries on words, phrases, names, titles, people, events, and places, it is an invaluable work of reference."

"From the Bloomsbury Group to the Camberwell Carrot and Samuel Johnson to Boris Johnson, Brewer's Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable shines a welcome light into the enticingly shadowy corners of London's language, culture, and history. More than 2,000 entries encompass words, phrases, historical events, notable London characters (both real and fictional), customs and ceremonies, institutions, artistic and literary works, celebrations and events, inventions, streets and districts, anecdotes, names and nicknames, terminology, and slang."

"With thousands of contemporary words and phrases and a wide selection of entries on the cultural preoccupations of our times, Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable is an invaluable guide to modern language and culture. Focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries, it applies the trademark Brewer’s treatment to a fascinating selection of buzzwords, catchphrases, slang, nicknames, fictional characters and intriguing cultural phenomena from pop culture to politics, literature to technology."

"The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation’s Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips,graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest’s continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature."

"An essential guide to authors and their works that focuses on the general canon of British literature from the fifteenth century to the present. There is also some coverage of non-fiction such as biographies, memoirs, and science, as well as inclusion of major American and Commonwealth writers."

"This Companion examines the broad sweep of fiction-writing in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century, from 1900 to the outbreak of the First World War, a period when novels in Britain were produced more cheaply, and read more widely, than ever before."

"Foremost in its field, the second edition of The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature offers a comprehensive record of Australian writing from European settlement to the early 1990s. Written in clear, accessible language, the Companion contains entries on writers, plays, novels, poems, newspapers, journals, anthologies, literary prizes, movements, and professional organizations. It also includes useful plot summaries, detailed biographies, and a number of essay-length articles on key areas, such as Aboriginal writing and science fiction. "

"The second edition of the acclaimed Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature has been thoroughly updated with more than 340 new entries on new writers, new books, and extended entries on established authors. In keeping with the original, entries cover fiction, prose, poetry, drama, prominent writers, literary magazines, publishers, and more general topics. From The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz to the Rebel Angles, Sandra Birdsell to Eric Wright, Caribbean-Canadian literature to War literature, this completely revised edition is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Canadian literature."

"This Companion examines English-language writers and writing throughout the twentieth century, in all major genres and from all around the world. All the great literary figures are included, whether American or Australian, British, Irish, or Indian, African or Canadian or Caribbean ... Fiction, plays, poetry, and a whole range of non-fictional writing are explored; also included are entries on literary movements, periodicals, and over 400 individual works. This is the most comprehensive single-volume guide to modern (and postmodern) literature in English. "

Complete with a keyword index and expanded information on authors and particular quotations, this definitive guide to quotations in English means that you will always know who said what, where, and when."

"The South Carolina Encyclopedia Guide to South Carolina Writers expands the range of writers included in the landmark South Carolina Encyclopedia. This guide updates the entries on writers featured in the original encyclopedia and augments that list substantially with dozens of new essays on additional authors from the late eighteenth century to the present who have contributed to the Palmetto State's distinctive literary heritage."

"Drawing on the resources of the Oxford English Dictionary and offering coverage of over 6000 slang words and expressions from the Cockney 'abaht' to the American term 'zowie', 'Stone the Crows' is a lively and authoritative dictionary of slang from the 20th and 21st centuries."

"This is the most comprehensive guide to modern poetry in English. Celebrated poets offer intriguing views on their fellow poets, such as Tom Paulin on Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney on Robert Lowell, and Anne Stevenson on Sylvia Plath. 1,500 poets are covered from W.H. Auden to Benjamin Zephaniah. There is worldwide coverage, including America, Britain and Ireland, New Zealand, Trinidad and Zimbabwe. There are also entries on magazines, movements, and critical terms."

"Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online provides more than 16,000 biographical and critical essays on the lives, works, and careers of the world's most influential literary figures from all eras and genres. This literature resource includes the DLB main series, the DLB Documentary Series, and the DLB Yearbook Series - all delivered in an easy-to-use 24/7 online format that matches the exact look and feel of the print originals."

"Contains over two million entries for eminent individuals who lived in North and South America, and Western and Central Europe. The entry for each person contains the name, variations of the name, pseudonymes, the years of birth and death or years mentioned, occupation, source quoted and bibliographic information about the sources used."

"Contains over 10,000 scholarly biographies of people who were significant in Australian history and died prior to 1981. Additional articles will be added for people who died more recently."

Indexes nineteenth century literature, including newspapers, periodicals, books, and government publications.

Extensive resources for LGBTQ history across 19 topical collections ranging from ACT UP to The Mattachine Society Records of New York City, 1951-1976.

"Contains more than 100,000 pages pages of poetry, fiction, and over 450 plays written in English and Spanish by Chicano, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Latino authors working in the US."

"The Middle English Compendium has been designed to offer easy access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies, and an associated network of electronic resources."

Complete printed text of Acta Sanctorum, from the edition published in sixty-eight volumes by the Société des Bollandistes in Antwerp and Brussels.

Part of the Archive of Americana.

"Composed from several collections of the State University System of Florida, this site provides a fully searchable database of digitized children's books. Full text and illustrations are provided via PDF files. Selections are predominantly from the United States and Great Britain originally published from the 17th through the 20th centuries."

The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was the most controversial and contentious program of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), an integral part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal." This bold, imaginative and wide-ranging enterprise is the key to understanding literature, culture and society in America during the Depression era."

Search more than four million collections at depositories principally in the United States and Canada. Invaluable for identifying collections in unexpected places. See your liaison librarian for help with this and other archival search tools.

Search across more than 300 United Kingdom depositories for relevant archival collections.

Search across almost 7,000 participating European depositories for relevant archival collections. Same look-and-feel as Archives Hub (UK) and integrating its content.

"The Location Register has become established as a standard reference source for the study of English literature. It includes information about the manuscript holdings of 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. Marie Corelli and Ruby M. Ayres are included in the same way as Virginia Woolf and Dorothy M. Richardson."

The principal federal Canadian archive. In English and French.

The United Kingdom's principal public archive. Digitized content, research guides, and finding aids.

The principal federal archive for the United States. See your liaison librarian for additional assistance with this and other archives.

The archive of the French state, accessible in French, English, and Spanish.

Numerous American newspaper titles. Extensive geographic and chronological coverage.

British newspapers from 1732 to 1950 representing England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Extensive English titles reflect a diversity of regions within England.

A vast publicly-accessible full-text database representing many -- but not all -- states with coverage largely prior to 1923.

Invaluable access to widely-circulated, non-academic twentieth-century American periodicals.

"Continuously published since 1872, Publishers Weekly has consistently been the authoritative voice for US publishing industry news and book reviews, with ongoing coverage of the British book trade. The complete archive includes up to 400,000 book reviews, 5,000 author profiles/interviews, and bestseller lists from 1895 forward."

"The Index translationum is a list of books translated in the world, i.e. an international bibliography of translations. The database contains cumulative bibliographical information on books translated and published in about one hundred of the UNESCO Member States since 1979 and totalling more than 1.600,000 entries in all disciplines : literature, social and human sciences, natural and exact sciences, art, history and so forth. It is planned to update the work every four months."

"Updated with the use of the Oxford English Corpus, this edition contains over 4,000 entries that answer the most frequently asked questions about language and language use."

"From writing poems to birthday cards, from the garret to the classroom, this volume has what every budding writer needs. It contains over 45,000 words, including proper names and foreign terms and also has notes on how to use rhymes most effectively."

"This resource contains rhymes for over 45,000 words presented in a clear and user-friendly layout. Its features include an index in-text notes, examples, creative writing tips, and an introduction giving a brief outline of the history of rhyming."