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British Literature Research Guide

Biographical Resources  -  General and background information on an author.

• British Writers REF PR 85.B698
• Cambridge History of English Literature REF PR 83 .C3 1907
• Dictionary of Literary Biography REF PS 21.D5

Databases

• Academic Search Complete (EBSCO)
• CAMIO
• Contemporary Authors, Literary Criticism (Gale)
• JSTOR Arts & Sciences III
• Literature Criticism Online (Gale)
• Literature Resource Center (Gale)
• MLA Directory of Periodicals (EBSCO)
• MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO)
• ProjectMuse Humanities Collection
• Twentieth Century American Poetry (ProQuest)
• Twentieth Century English Poetry (ProQuest)

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias Dictionaries & Encyclopedias  - General and background information on a topic.

• Oxford English Dictionary REF PE 1625 087 1989
• Cyclopedia of Literary Characters REF PN 44 M3 1963

Electronic Resources

Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts A collection of digital documents including items from American literature, English literature, and Western philosophy. Allows users to make their own ebook version, including PDF documents.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare  Contains information on the works of William Shakespeare includes a discussion area as well as links to his plays and poetry. Plays are arranged in three categories:  tragedy, comedy, and history.

English Literature and Composition Resources on the Internet This site contains a list of links to sites with information on English literature, composition/rhetoric and writing.

English Literature on the Web Extensive list of links to literary resources.

The English Server  This site publishes texts in the arts and humanities, broadly defined. The collections include art, architecture, drama, fiction, poetry, history, political theory, cultural studies, philosophy, women's studies, and music.  A search engine for the site is provided.

Literary Resources on the Net  A collection of links to sites on the Internet dealing especially with English and American literature, excluding most single electronic texts, and is limited to collections of information useful to academics.

Luminarium Information regarding Middle English literature, Renaissance literature, and 17th century literature.   All the sections focus on English Literature and each has essentially the same format:  clickable names of writers or works.

Medieval Feminist Index The Medieval Feminist Index covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages.

Shakespeare and the Internet  This site attempts to be a complete annotated guide to the scholarly Shakespeare resources available on Internet.

Surfing with the Bard  Provides all kinds of information about Shakespeare and his plays. Includes a creative Shakespeare 101 guide to the Bard and his language-which points out the use of Shakespearean motifs in such popular programs as Star Trek:  The Next Generation. 

The Victorian Web The Victorian Web is the WWW translation of Brown University's Context 61, which serves as a resource for courses in Victorian literature.

Literary Criticism - Literary criticism analyzes, compares and contrasts, interprets, or evaluates works of literature. The print and electronic resources listed below contain biographical information on authors and critical essays regarding their literary works. Most of these indexes list scholarly journals and books on a specific work. Choose the reference work which is most related to your author and the literary time period.

• Black Literature Criticism REF PS 153 N5 B556
• Critical Survey of Short Fiction REF PN 3321 C7
• Gale's Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism REF PN 761 .N56
• Gale's Literature Criticism from 1400-1800 REF PN 86 L56
• Gale's Contemporary Literary Criticism REF PN 771 .C59
• Gale's Twentieth Century Literary Criticism REF PN 771.G27
• Poetry Criticism REF PN 1010.P499
• Shakespearean Criticism REF PR 2965 .S44
• Short Story Criticism. REF PN 3373 S 386
• Survey of Long Fiction REF PN 81 C7 1983

The best sources to use above are the ones with "criticism" in their title. These multi-volume works have an index in the last volume which indexes all of the volumes by the title or by the author. The excerpts in the "criticism" resources are actual reprints from scholarly journals and books. Each article or book excerpt/reprint can be used as a quote or source in a research paper. Logan Library may not have the journal or the book, but the most important part of the literary criticism is reprinted in these books.

Print Indexes

• Granger’s Index to Poetry REF PN 1022 G7 1986 -- Use to locate a poem in an anthology or collection of poems. First line, then title of poem, then abbreviation of book in which it can be found. The abbreviations are clarified in the beginning of this index.
• Granger’s Anthology: The World’s Best Poetry REF PN 6101 W5

Plot Summaries - Includes type of work (drama, poetry, biography, novel, history, speech, treatise, etc.), characters, a critique or short critical analysis of the book and a plot summary.

• Magill's Masterpieces of World Literature REF PN 44 M3 1952 -- Includes type of work (drama, poetry, biography, novel, history, speech, treatise, etc.), characters, a critique or short critical analysis of the book and a plot summary.
• Masterplots Digests of World Literature REF PN 44 M33 1976 --*Includes type of work, characters, a critique or short critical analysis of the book and a plot summary.
• Masterplots II Women’s Literature Series. REF PN 471.M37 1995
• Masterplots II Short Story Series (1907) REF PN 3326.M27
• Magill’s Critical Survey of Poetry (Foreign Language Series) REF PN 1111.C7 1984