English and Literature

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Use this guide as a starting point to find information for your assignments. Discover the best keywords and databases to use for your topic by asking a librarian for a Subject Search.

Watch the 3 minute video SUMMON HELP to learn how to use the search engine Summon to find both books and articles from UNE University Library. For more extensive research use the databases listed below...

Key databases
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Assignment help
Related guides
Web sites and Internet resources

Key databases - alphabetical list

First try JSTOR or Literature Resources from Gale containing MLA Bibliography the standard source for literary criticism of world authors.

AustLit Australian flag Selected Full Text
AustLit indexes materials on Australian literature.

Chaucer Bibliography Online
This bibliography covers Chaucer studies from 1975 until the present.

Duke Scholarly Collection Full Text
The Duke Journals deal with academic research into the humanities and the social sciences.

Gale Databases Selected Full Text
The Gale Databases cover the arts and humanities, social sciences, science and technology. They includes peer-reviewed journal articles, ebooks and online encyclopedias.

JSTOR Full Text
JSTOR contains the full-text journals across the disciplines from archaeology to zoology.

Literature Resources from Gale Full Text
Literature Resources includes full-text articles, overviews, author biographies and criticism. In addition, Literature Resources incorporates the MLA International Bibliography.

MLA
MLA is the standard guide to literary criticism of world authors. It also includes coverage of folklore and linguistics.

Newsbank Full Text Australian flag
Newsbank has the full-text of more than 100 newspapers from Australia and overseas.

ProQuest Full Text
ProQuest includes academic and non-academic content in a wide range of fields, from arts, literature, and social science to business, science, technology, and medicine.

The Source Selected Full Text
The Source covers children's literature awards and prizes worldwide. It includes a subject, author, genre and title guide to books, short stories and poetry for children.

Trove Full Text
Trove is an initiative of the National Library of Australia and provides a single point of access to the resources of the deep Web. It has particular value for research into Australian history, social sciences and literature.

Encyclopedias and dictionaries

American History Through Literature 1820-1920
Australian National Dictionary
Cambridge Dictionaries Online
A Companion to Digital Literary Studies
Library of Congress' Performing Arts Encyclopedia

Oxford Reference Online
Oxford Reference Online offers a range of dictionaries and encyclopedias listed by subject.

This dictionary contains dictionaries, companions, encyclopedias and thesaurii. Literature titles include Oxford dictionaries and Companions for American, Australian, Canadian, Classical, English, Irish and New Zealand literature. There are also items on science fiction, mythology, poetry, children's literature and Shakespeare.

Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms

Assignment help

Please see a Guide to Online Research on your unit home page. This will be targeted to your assignment topic.

Web sites and Internet resources

Australian Literature

ASAL The Association for the Study of Australian Literature provides a directory of postgraduate research on the topic of Australian literature, as well as publications and a newsletter.
Australian Journals Online Provided by the National Library, this database searches hundreds of e-journals online.
Australian Literature Links to websites maintained by the National Library of Australia
Australian Literary and Historical Texts Sydney University Library's SETIS (Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service).
Australian Poetry Library containing the works of over 170 Australian poets. Free to read online and developed by Sydney University and CAL (Copyright Agency Limited).

Children's Literature

Children's and YA Literature on the Web Links to useful resources about awards, book reviews, and collections of literature for children and young adults.
Children's Literature Web Guide Links to internet resources related to books for children and young adults provided by the University of Calgary.

English Resources

The Carlyle Letters Online: A Victorian Cultural Resource Thousands of letters written by Scottish author and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881) and his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801 - 1866) provided by Duke University Press.
Early Modern Literary Studies This full text e-journal with holdings dating back to 1995 concentrates on sixteenth and seventeenth century English literature.
Eighteenth Century Resources This portal page has sites arranged in categories such as eighteenth century authors, theatre and drama, gothic resources, romanticism, women writers, French, German and Italian literature, and includes scholarly works written about the eighteenth century.
English Literature Resources Compiled by the London School of Journalism, this resources site offers free electronic texts, general and author-specific web sites on English literature, and includes a section titled "Help for Students".
JAC A peer reviewed journal publishing theoretical articles on a variety of topics related to rhetoric, writing, multiple literacies, and the politics of education. Articles date from 1980 to the present.
Labyrinth Library Old English and Anglo-Saxon literature resources and e-texts from Georgetown University.
Paris Review interview archives published since the 1950s, interviews with literature's major writers
Victorian Database Online Search over 100,000 records listing books, articles, and dissertation abstracts published from 1945 to 1999 on every field of nineteenth-century British studies. This is a bibliographic database only — it does not provide full text documents.