English Language & Literature

Resources for conducting literary research on English & American Literatures.

Shakespeare - quick starts

Reference Shelf

Concordance of Shakespeare's Complete Works
A Dictionary of Shakespeare
ISBN: 9780192806383
Shakespeare's Theatre: A Dictionary of His Stage Context
ISBN: 9780826456403
Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
ISBN: 068431200X
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
ISBN: 9780198601746
Who's Who in Classical Mythology
ISBN: 0415260418

World Shakespeare Bibliography

World Shakespeare Bibliography
Contains citations and annotations to Shakespeare-related scholarship and theatrical productions published or produced worldwide since 1961.

Shakespeare Survey Online

Shakespeare Survey Online
Shakespeare Survey is an annual publication of Shakespeare studies and production, publishing the best international scholarship in English. Many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism.

Manuscripts & Ephemera

The Bodleian First Folio, Arch. G c.7
Digital facsimile of the Bodelian Library's copy of the First Folio. Images, digital text, and XML are all available for download.
Folger Digital Image Collection
Contains high resolution images from the Folger Shakespeare Library, including books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and more.
Folger Digital Texts
These are reliable, expertly edited, and free digital Shakespeare texts for use by researchers. Read the plays online, download PDFs for offline reading, search a play or the whole corpus, navigate by act, scene, line, or the new Folger Throughline Numbers.
Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project
Contains personal and professional papers of the eminent actor Edward Alleyn (1566-1626) and theatrical entrepreneur Philip Henslowe (d. 1616). As a group, these manuscripts comprise the largest and most important single extant archive of material on the professional theater and dramatic performance in early modern England.
Horace Howard Furness Shakespeare Library
A collection of primary and secondary texts that illuminate the theater, literature, and history of Shakespeare, Shakespearean texts, theatrical production and criticism.
The Map of Early Modern London
The Map of Early Modern London (MoEML) maps the streets, sites, and significant boundaries of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century London (1560–1640).
Romeo and Juliet: Searchable Database for Prompt Books
Includes two fully-searchable databases containing information from approximately 170 prompt-books for productions of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. These productions range from the seventeenth century to the 1980s.
Treasures in Full - Shakespeare in Quarto
See 107 copies of the 21 plays by Shakespeare printed in quarto before the 1642 theater closures.

British Literary Manuscripts Online: 1120 -1900
Contains facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works from the Middle Ages and Renaissance through the Restoration and Victorian era.
Defining Gender, 1450-1910
Contains digitized images of rare print and manuscript texts on many aspects of gender, sexuality and culture in Great Britain from 1450-1910.
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Contains works published in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America from 1473-1700. Includes novels, pamphlets, broadsides, calendars, sermons, almanacs, and much more.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
Contains works published in Great Britain and the early Americas during the eighteenth century.
Empire Online
Contains maps, manuscripts, pamphlets, paintings, drawings and rare books devoted to colonial history, politics, culture and society.
English Drama (1280-1915)
Contains dramatic works published in the British Isles from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth century. Includes Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, as well as Medieval morality plays, mystery cycles, and nineteenth-century closet dramas.
English Poetry (600-1900)
Contains poems published in the British Isles from the eighth century to the early twentieth century. Includes canonical and lesser known poets, including women poets.
English Poetry, 2nd Edition
Contains poems published by poets in the British Isles and the British Empire, including Commonwealth and ex-colonial countries.
State Papers Online
Brings together 16th- and 17th-century British State Papers and links these rare historical manuscripts to their fully text-searchable Calendars, offering behind the scenes glimpses of the workings of the Tudor and Stuart governments.