Printer Friendly VersionWhile thousands of websites on literature are freely available on the Internet, not all are reputable
sources of information. Listed below are links to full-text resources on the web. Although this is not a comprehensive list, it should help you to begin your research process.
This is a continually evolving list and is subject to change. If any of the links are broken or you have any suggestions for added links, please contact Melissa Van Vuuren at vanvuums@jmu.edu.
Full-Text Resources (Primary Sources)A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z African American Women Writers of the 19th Century Part of the New York Public Library's Digital Collections, this collection contains the full text to 52 works of poetry, fiction, biography, and autobiography by 19th century African American women writers. Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts Comprises a collection of approximately 600 "public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy" (Alex). Created by the Library of Congress, American Memory contains digitized print materials as well as audio and visual resources on American history, literature, government, and culture. The literature collection includes the Federal Theatre Projecy; Zora Neale Hurston's plays; the Manuscripts Division; 19th-Century Books;19th-Century Periodicals; Portraits of Creative Americans; and Walt Whitman's notebooks. Provides the full text for reference works, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction works. British Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832 (UC-Davis) Serves as a scholarly archive for "E-text editions of poetry by British and Irish women written (not necessarily published) between 1789 (the onset of the French Revolution) and 1832 (the passage of the Reform Act), a period traditionally known in English literary history as the Romantic period" (UC-Davis). Chronicles of England or "Brut Chronicle" (Michigan) Provides online access to the "Brut Chronicle," an English prose chronicle that traced English popular history in the Middle Ages. The contents are fully searchable; however, users may also browse the digitized page images of the manuscript. CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts Provides online resources for over 800 texts covering Irish history, literature, and politics. Includes documents in Irish, English, Latin, French, Spanish, and German. Collect Britain (British Library) Provides access to a collection of 90,000 images and sound files, including "maps, manuscripts, topographical drawings, photographs, rare sound recordings and even long-forgotten advertisements and music-hall songs" (British Library). Complete Works of Jane Austen (Indiana) Includes the full-text of Jane Austen's novels: Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. May be searched using simple word or phrase searches, proximity searches, and boolean searches. Complete Works of William Shakespeare (MIT) Provides the full text for all of William Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare's poetry is currently unavailable from this website. Corpus of Middle English Prose & Verse (Michigan) Comprises 54 Middle English prose and verse texts from the University of Michigan faculty. The collection may be either browsed or searched using simple, proximity, boolean, and citation searches. Indexes over 118,000 digital books in reference, literature & languages, history, social sciences, medicine & health, math & sciences, philosophy & religion, law, the arts, and children's literature. Site access is free but requires a login. Digital Library Projects (UPenn) Provides access to digital library projects from the University of Pennsylvania. Text collections include "A Celebration of Women Writers" and the "Online Books Page," which serves as a guide to digitized texts on the web. Image collections include the Penn Library South Asia Archives and the Furness Image Collections. Documenting the American South (UNC) Provides primary source materials on the history, literature, and culture of the American South. Emory Women Writers Resource Project Provides access to "edited and unedited texts by women writing in English from the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century" (EWWRP). Etext Center (Virginia) Includes open access and restricted access e-texts. Open-access texts include collections of Modern English, Middle English, Early American Fiction, and the Dictionary of the History of Ideas as well as religious resources and foreign language collections. Hanover Historical Texts Project Primary source texts in the public domain from Europe and the United States. Text dates span from Ancient Greece and Rome to the nineteenth century. Humanities Text Initiative (Michigan) Serves as a guide to e-texts that have been digitized by the University of Michigan, including Benson's Glossarial DataBase of Middle English, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the American Verse Project. Internet Library of Early Journals Provides access to a digital collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century century journals, including Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Gentleman's Magazine, Notes & Queries, and The Builder. Provides access to classic literary works and classic scientific works. All works are in the public domain. LEME: Lexicons of Early Modern English (U of Toronto P) Searches and displays word-entries from monolingual English dictionaries, bilingual lexicons, technical vocabularies, and other encyclopedic-lexical works, 1480-1702. Literature @ SunSITE (UC - Berkeley) Provides access to literary texts from primarily American authors. This site is part of a larger collection of works digitized by the University of California Berkeley. Literature - Library & Archives of Canada Provides access to select texts from Canadian literature. Includes the Canadian Poetry Archive, the Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie KIng, research aids, and visual exhibitions. Making of America (Cornell) A digital library of American social history from the antebellum period through the reconstruction with strengths in education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, science, and technology. Collection is complemented by the Making of America site hosted by the University of Michigan. Making of America (Michigan) A digital library of American social history from the antebellum period through the reconstruction with strengths in education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, science, and technology. Collection is complemented by the Making of America site hosted by the Cornell University. New Zealand Electronic Text Centre A freely-accessible archive of "New Zealand and Pacific Islands texts and heritage materials, which offers an ever expanding set of images and full-text books, manuscripts and journals" (NZETC). Online Medieval & Classical Library Includes Classical and Medieval literary works and can be searched or browsed by title, author, genre, and language. Oxford Text Archive (Arts & Humanities Data Service) Provides a collection of literature, languages, and linguistics. Collection may be searched by author and title or browsed by author, language, and title. Perseus Digital Library (Tufts) Aims to increase digital access to texts in the humanities. Include collections on the classics, papyri, the English Renaissance, London, California, the Upper Midwest, the Chesapeake, Tufts History, and the Boyle Papers. Provides electronic access to contemporary poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries from 31 English poetry magazines. Provides access to over 18,000 digitized books. The database may be searched using the online catalog or browsed according to author, title, language, category, and recency. Project Gutenberg of Australia The sister site of Project Gutenburg, this site also provides free access to digitized books. Includes works such as the Project Gutenburg Library of Australiana; texts on Australian explorers, history, and discovery; and the Dictionary of Australian Biography. Renascence Editions (UOregon) An online repository for digital editions of works printed in English between 1477 and 1799. Representative Poetry Online (UToronto) Serves as a repository for poetry online. Site contents are indexed according to poet, poem title, first line, last line, timeline, and calendar. May be searched by keyword. Also includes a glossary of poetic terms and forms, writings on poetry, a bibliography, and links. SETIS Australian Literary & Historical Texts A collection of over 300 Australian literary and historical texts. Turning the Pages (British Library) Provides electronic access to select illuminated manuscripts from the British Library. Includes works such as Sketches by Leonardo, Mozart's Musical Diary, The Original Alice by Lewis Carroll, Masterpiece of the Renaissance, Jane Austen's Early Work, the First Atlas of Europe, and the Oldest Printed 'Book'. University of Maryland Reading Room Gives access to electronic texts that have been organized into the following categories: drama, fiction, historical documents, nonfiction, poetry, religion, and speeches. Victorian Women Writer’s Project (Indiana) Seeks to provide transcripts of works written by 19th century British women writers. Includes "anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, religious tracts, children's books, and volumes of poetry and verse drama" (VWWP). William Blake Archive (Library of Congress & NEH) Comprises the works of William Blake, including illuminated manuscripts, paintings, drawings, and engravings. William Shakespeare in Quarto (British Library) Provides digital access to "93 copies of the 21 plays by William Shakespeare printed in quarto before the theatres were closed in 1642" (British Library). An online magazine of international literature. Features book reviews and literature in translation from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe,and the Middle East. Includes links to websites, online journals, print journals, organizations, blogs, book publishers, and additional resources on interational literature. World of Dante (Virginia) Provides an interactive digital version of Dante's Inferno in both Italian and English. Also includes a map of Dante's map of hell. Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875 (Indiana) Provides electronic access to over 2,800 volumes of 19th century American fiction. Works may be viewed as either rekeyed text or page images. |
