LibGuides: English and Creative Writing: Research Sources

Online literature collections

ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new window
ProQuest One Literature (formerly known as Literature Online or LION) contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and more than 500,00 primary works. These primary texts comprise of poetry, prose and drama and include rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources such as comics and theatre performances.
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
Literature Online includes more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 323 full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources, as well as access to the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) and MLA International Bibliography.
Includes biographies for 4,100 authors, and also online access to a number of reference works, such as The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms and The Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English . There are also links to relevant websites for primary texts and critical and biographical material.
Historical texts This link opens in a new window
Contains over 450,000 books published from 15thC to the 19thC. Contents:
Early Historical Texts brings together four historically significant collections for the first time: Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) 65,000 texts from the British Library 19th Century collection and the UK Medical Heritage Library (UKMHL).
Early English Books Online:
The scanned images and full-text digital versions of over 125,000 books published in English up to 1700, from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the English Civil War

Eighteenth Century Collections Online:
A digital collection of all the books published in Great Britain and its colonies during the eighteenth century, comprising some 33 million pages from more than 180,000 titles. The collection includes books in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish and Welsh. Eighteenth Century Collections Online contains a variety of printed materials including books, Bibles, sheet music, sermons and advertisements published from 1700-1799 and the content is comprised from eight subject areas:

History and Geography
Social Science
Fine Arts, Music, Art & Architecture
Medicine, Science and Technology
Literature and Language
Religion and Philosophy
Law
General Reference

British Library 19th Century collection:
Over 65,000 recently digitised editions from the British Library's 19th century collection, comprising over 25 million pages of previously rare and inaccessible titles.

UK Medical Heritage Library Collection (UKMHL)

The UK Medical Heritage Library (UKMHL) is the culmination of a three-year project between Jisc, the Internet Archive, the Wellcome Library and nine other partner institutions to digitise more than 15 million pages in over 66,000 works. The Wellcome Library have provided their entire 19th Century collection, while the other participating libraries have contributed selections from their special collections, to encompass a broad and diverse range of relevant publications from the period.

Sporting full colour page images, PDF downloads and searchable OCR full text for all publications, The UKMHL collection is a valuable resource. The subject areas covered are broad and include topics such as consumer health, sport and fitness, food and nutrition as well as medicine and medical practices, providing a valuable resource for study in the medical humanities and beyond.

The “Visualising Medical History” sister-project has created powerful visualisation tools unique to the UKMHL collection, which researchers can use to search the content in new and hitherto untapped ways. The visualisations are available in a separate “Labs” area.

The Poetry Archive
Searchable database of poets and poems in English, with selected recordings of poet's reading their own work. There are critical articles on the poets, and a glossary of poetic terms.

19th century books from the British Library collection This link opens in a new window
Part of the JISC Historic Books e-collection. Includes 65,000 digitised first editions, covering philosophy, history, poetry and literature. Includes the original typeface and illustrations for each book. To search just this collection, make sure that only BL 19th Century is selected as "data source".

Newspaper archives

Newspapers are a great source of information for all types of research. From articles, reviews, opinion pieces, etc. they give an insight into both contemporary and historical events.

Nexis This link opens in a new window
Nexis is the best newspaper database for searching current global, national and local news. It has coverage from the 1990s onwards.
Nexis also includes 80 sources of company information, plus thousands of biographies of government officials, politicians, celebrities, investors and business contacts.
Gale News Vault This link opens in a new window
Cross-searches SHU's collection of Gale historical newspapers, comprising Newspapers from British Library from 1757 to 1950 and The Times, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Economist, TLS Historical Archives. With the power to search millions of digitized facsimile pages, Gale NewsVault provides an unparalleled window to the past.
Uses search interface with enhanced features such as thumbnail images; browse newspapers by title and by place of publication; full-text searching with hit-term highlighting; read newspapers cover to cover in full screen, using an advanced image viewer; save print and bookmark; grab, pan, zoom and crop images; and cross-browse all newspapers published on the same date.
Guardian, The (1821-2003) and Observer, The (1791-2003) This link opens in a new window
The Guardian and The Observer, provide facts, first-hand accounts, and opinions on political, business, sports, literary, and entertainment events for the past 200 years. Full text with article images in PDF format.
LGBT magazine archive This link opens in a new window
This magazine archive will offer backfiles of many of the key periodicals the LGBT field. Titles will include The Advocate , Gay Times and Gay News and The Pink Paper
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Digitised resource, based on the collection of Rev. Charles Burney (1757-1817), which contains approximately 1,270 titles. It includes newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides and some general periodicals, such as The Tatler and The Spectator.
19th Century British Newspapers This link opens in a new window
A collection of 178 national and regional newspapers chosen by the British Library to represent 19th Century Britain. The emphasis is on newspapers which helped lead particular political or social movements such as Reform, Chartism and Home Rule. Every front page, editorial, birth and death notice, advertisement and classified ad is accessible.
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images.
This is joint project of the British Library and Chadwyck-Healey .

Magazine & periodical archives

LGBT magazine archive This link opens in a new window
This magazine archive will offer backfiles of many of the key periodicals the LGBT field. Titles will include The Advocate , Gay Times and Gay News and The Pink Paper
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive (EIMA) This link opens in a new window
Archive for studying film & entertainment industries from vaudeville/silent movies to 2000. Core US/UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theatre included, plus film fan magazines & music press titles. Sources in high-resolution, with indexing of all articles, covers, ads and reviews.
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images.
This is joint project of the British Library and Chadwyck-Healey .
19th Century UK Periodicals, Series 1 - New readerships: Women and children, sports and leisure, humour and satire This link opens in a new window
New Readerships comprises 92 Victorian periodicals in a searchable and browseable digital format. The focus is on the growth of publishing in the 19th Century. Covers children, humour, leisure & sport, politics, religion, and women. Includes Punch (1841-1900). Complements British Periodicals.
The Vogue Archive This link opens in a new window
A complete searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been included, with rich indexing enabling you to find images by garment type, designer and brand names. The Vogue Archive preserves the work of the world's greatest fashion designers, stylists and photographers and is a unique record of American and international fashion, culture and society from the dawn of the modern era to the present day.
Economist Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
The Economist Historical Archive delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2010. Full-colour images, multiple search indexes, and the facility to browse each and every issue - all combine to offer a unique primary source covering the 19th and 20th centuries.
Terms of use.Advanced search allows searching of entire document or limiting to words in title, author, keyword, issue or document. Searches can also be limited to date range and/or section. You can also browse whole issues by date.

Primary source archives

AM explorer This link opens in a new window
Contains millions of pages of primary source collections spanning the 15th – 21st centuries which empower students and researchers to develop critical thinking.
themes include Borders and Migrations, Gender and Sexuality, Global History, and War and Conflict.
• Single point of access through AM Explorer with built-in federated search functionality across all collections
• Wealth of additional features to enhance student engagement including Handwritten Text Recognition, Data Visualisation, Video and Oral Histories

African Writers' Club
Over 250 hours of radio programmes about African literary, social and cultural affairs.

Archives hub This link opens in a new window
Use the Archives Hub to find unique sources for your research, both physical and digital. Search across descriptions of archives, held at over 390 institutions across the UK.

The National Archives
The National Archives website is a very useful resource for anyone interested in social, family and community history. There are sections on family history, military history, and learning and research, including the catalogue and DocumentsOnline. It is also possible to search census records from 1841 to 1901. There are charges for downloading some records.
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Searchable resource included on the website are the ARCHON Directory, which gives contact details for record repositories, and the National Register of Archives (NRA), which contains information on British manuscripts and historical records. There are also sections on hospital records and migration records.

The Catalogue contains 10 million descriptions of documents from central government, courts of law and other UK national bodies, including records on family history, medieval tax, criminal trials, UFO sightings, the history of many countries and many other subjects.

There are also links to other related online archive resources.

Mass Observation Online This link opens in a new window
Mass Observation was a pioneering social research organisation whose papers provide insights into the cultural and social history of Britain from 1937 to 1965. The material at the Mass Observation Archive, and now on Mass Observation Online, offers an unparalled insight into everyday life in the 1930s and 1940s.
Mass Observation Online provides integrated access to almost 400,000 digital images of material from the Mass Observation Archive (MOA). In addition, it functions as a finding aid for all material held on Adam Matthew Publications microfilm, and in the Mass Observation Archive.How much material can I copy?Images from this collection may be downloaded, printed and photocopied for educational purposes including course packs. (See FAQ's in MOA for further information.)Can I use images in my essays?Yes. Links may be created for essays submitted electronically. Photocopies and printouts of images may be used to accompany printed essay material.
Gale News Vault This link opens in a new window
Cross-searches SHU's collection of Gale historical newspapers, comprising Newspapers from British Library from 1757 to 1950 and The Times, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Economist, TLS Historical Archives. With the power to search millions of digitized facsimile pages, Gale NewsVault provides an unparalleled window to the past.
Uses search interface with enhanced features such as thumbnail images; browse newspapers by title and by place of publication; full-text searching with hit-term highlighting; read newspapers cover to cover in full screen, using an advanced image viewer; save print and bookmark; grab, pan, zoom and crop images; and cross-browse all newspapers published on the same date.

Web resources

Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians
Discover 1,200 Romantic and Victorian literary treasures, new insights by 60 experts, 25 documentary films, 30 inspirational teachers’ notes and more.
Writers Directory
This unique, searchable database contains profiles of some of the UK and Commonwealth's most important living writers. Included in the profiles are biographies, bibliographies, critical reviews and information about awards.
New Writing North
New Writing North was established in 1996 to support writers in the north of England to fulfil their creative ambitions.
British Library Sounds
Listen to a selection from the British Library’s extensive collections of unique sound recordings, which come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds.

Online dictionaries & reference sources

Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
Oxford English Dictionary,is regularly updated. and is a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past.
It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world, from North America to South Africa, from Australia and New Zealand to the Caribbean. It also offers & etymological analysis and listing of variant spellings, and it shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet.If the word can not be found it will give the closet alphabetial entry.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
The Oxford DNB aims to provide full, accurate, concise, and readable articles, based on current scholarship, on noteworthy people from all walks of life who have left their mark on British history. No living person is included in the dictionary.
The dictionary includes people who were born and lived in the British Isles; people from the British Isles who achieved recognition in other countries; people who lived in territories formerly connected to the British Isles at a time when they were in contact with British rule; and people born elsewhere who settled in the British Isles for significant periods or whose visits enabled them to leave a mark on British life.
Oxford Reference Online: Premium This link opens in a new window
Oxford Reference Online gives access to the world's largest reference collection, allowing for a single cross searchable resource. Comprises 100+ quick reference titles from the Core Collection plus 50,000+ longer in-depth entries from an expanding range of titles in the Oxford Companies series.
It adds and revises titles regularly. All 20,000+ quotation entries from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. 5,300+ illustrations, including full-colour maps, line diagrams and tables, 36,000+ bibliographies and 1,400+ external web links, as well as enhanced search functions to access results by category. Timelines currently cover events from the 20th century only. At the end of every results page there is information on 'how to cite this entry'.

English and Creative Writing

Online literature collections

Newspaper archives

Magazine & periodical archives

Primary source archives

Web resources

Online dictionaries & reference sources

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