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."

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."

"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."

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."

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."

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.

"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."