English Databases

National and regional newspapers, including those from country and university towns, those from the new industrial centers of the Midlands, as well as newspapers from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Coverage: 1800-1900.

Politics, society, literature, diplomacy, theater, music, high & popular culture, etc. Books, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, and statistics. Coverage: 1800-1899.

19th century U.S. urban and regional newspapers. Fully searchable. Coverage: 1800-early 20th century.

A fully searchable collection of high-quality e-books in the humanities which have been reviewed and recommended by scholars. These titles are offered by the American Council of Learned Societies in collaboration with twenty learned societies, over 100 contributing publishers, and librarians at the University of Michigan's Scholarly Publishing Office.

Early history of African American poetry, from 1746 to the major poets of the nineteenth century.

American history, literature, culture, and daily life. Choose this database to search the following as one file: American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series 1, 1760-1900; Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800; Supplement from the Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP) 1670-1800; Supplement from the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) 1652-1800. Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819; Supplement from the Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP) 1801-1819; Supplement from the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) 1801-1819. Coverage: Varies.

Fully searchable facsimile images that capture daily life in America. Wide variety of items, including clipper ship sailing cards, early trade cards, theater and music programs, stock certificates, advertisements, menus, and social invitations. Coverage: 1760-1900.

American Fiction, 1774-1920 contains more than 17,800 titles and is comprised of prose fiction written by Americans from the political beginnings of the United States through World War I. It gathers extensive content in one place and allows researchers to explore the development of American literature in a changing culture through novels, short stories, romances, fictitious biographies, travel accounts, and sketches. These texts reveal much about the socioeconomic, political, and religious tenor of America through centuries of radical change, enabling students and researchers to answer key questions about history, society, identity, psychology, race, gender, and culture.

Complete poems, including any accompanying text (dedications, notes, etc.) written by the poet. Coverage: 1600-1900.

Black Drama, now in its expanded third edition, contains the full text of more than 1,700 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.

Black Thought and Culture contains 1,303 sources with 1,210 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and other fugitive material.

British Literary Manuscripts Online

presents facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works, and similar materials. Searching is based on tags and descriptive text associated with each manuscript. Images of the complete manuscript can be viewed, manipulated and navigated on screen.

Sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Books and journal articles from journals published by Cambridge University Press. Coverage: Varies by title.

CLCD Enterprise PreK-12 database is the premier academic and research resource for courses needing to locate Childrens and Young Adult books and other media. The content includes over one million fiction/non-fiction titles, thousands of awards and quality reviews including author/title links, lesson plans and teaching guides. The search engine offers multiple options including 50 search filters to find materials for determining interest & reading levels; selecting trade books based on standards; creating thematic, annotated biographies; interpreting reviews; developing classroom collections and more.

The backfiles of a variety of 20th-century serials covering many aspects of children's lives and interests. These include titles focusing on education, entertainment / literature, news, and religion / moral development. As well as shedding light on the history of childhood and family life during this period, these titles provide alternative perspectives in the study of 20th-century advertising/marketing, popular culture, education, media, and print culture.

Explore a stunning collection of rare books, games, ephemera, and artwork from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that reveals the socio-cultural history of these times. Coverage: 1820s to 1920s

Communications, journalism, and mass media studies. Journal articles, also searchable cited references. Coverage: 1915-present.

This collection examines the richness and diversity of contemporary theatre and drama from a global context. Contemporary World Drama brings together new work from our existing playwright partners alongside work from up-and-coming playwrights from around the world, including recently produced world premieres, previously unpublished works, etc. from every continent.

COVE Studio is an anthology maker and annotation tool that offers over nine million words of pre-coded texts ready for inclusion in course anthologies. Professors can create custom reading lists of works in the public domain and share them with their classes. The platform allows for professors and students to then collaboratively comment and annotate the text of the anthology for deeper discussion and interactivity.

Digitized reference books (encyclopedias, directories, dictionaries, thesauri, atlases, quotation dictionaries, handbooks, etc.) in many subjects. Searchable full text across all volumes. Date coverage: Varies by title. Access available to unlimited users.

Dictionary of Literary Biography provides comprehensive access to the series dedicated to making literature and its creators better understood and more accessible to students and interested readers while simultaneously satisfying the standards of librarians, teachers, and scholars. The series provides reliable information on authors and their works in an easy to understand, engaging format, while placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history. Dictionary of Literary Biography includes the main series, documentary, and yearbook volumes.

The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (600 - 1150 A.D.) of the English language, using today's most advanced technology.

The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus is an online database consisting of at least one copy of every surviving Old English text. In some cases, more than one copy is included, if it is significant because of dialect or date. As such, the DOE Web Corpus represents over three million words of Old English and fewer than a million words of Latin, or almost five times the collected works of Shakespeare.

Provides online access to a digital streaming video collection of unique films of current, leading British theatre productions. Includes behind-the-scenes documentaries as well as teaching and learning resources to facilitate a deeper understanding of the productions and texts. Learning resources include a detailed introduction, plot summary, character biographies, a relationship map, language analysis, scene study, performance background and historical context for each play.

Drama Online Core Collection includes 1,100+ playtexts from pre-eminent theatre lists such as Methuen Drama, Faber and Faber, and Arden Shakespeare, as well as contextual and critical background through scholarly works and practical guides. Access to the following collections outside of the core: Aurora Metrobooks, Nick Hern Books, National Theatre Collection, Playwrights Canada Press, and Shakespeare's Globe on Screen.

From canonical English-language dramatists such as Ben Jonson, Aphra Behn, and Oscar Wilde, to the diverse cast of ethnicities who contributed unique sensibilities to the dramatic canon of the U.S. from Lynn Riggs to Jeannie Barroga, users can now study the length and breadth of English-language drama from the late thirteenth century through to the early twenty-first century.

Books and other items printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America, and works in English printed elsewhere. Coverage: 1473-1700.

Early English Prose Fiction is a balanced and representative collection of fictional prose works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and many of these important texts are difficult to obtain elsewhere.

Diverse array of printed sources from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Early European Books includes digitized books from major European libraries including the National Library of France, the National Library of Florence, the National Library of the Netherlands, the Wellcome Library, London, and the Royal Library, Denmark. EEB provides digital access to continental printed texts before 1701 with full-color, high-resolution images scanned directly from the original printed sources. Each item in the collection is captured in its entirety, complete with its binding, edges, endpapers, blank pages, and any loose inserts, providing information about the physical characteristics and provenance histories of the original artefact. There are over 53,000 books included, in languages including French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Dutch, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish. Collections 1-19.

Reference works, scholarly books, literature, and fiction. Full text. Coverage: Varies by title.

Collection of databases devoted to a variety of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and science. See titles of individual databases for further information. Coverage: Varies by title.

Formerly 19th Century Masterfile. Covers scholarly sources from the 12th century to early 20th century. Includes Earl Gregg Swem's Virginia Historical Index; Poole's Index to Periodical Literature; Niles' Register; American Memory; links to images in ArtSTOR; plus many more. Citations to magazine articles, books, newspapers, patents, and US/UK government documents, and images. Coverage: 1106-1930 (varies by source).

English- and foreign-language titles printed in Great Britain from 1701-1800, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Searchable full text. Includes books, pamphlets, and broadsides. Coverage: 1701-1800.

A unique archive of almost every play submitted for licence between 1737 and 1824, and hundreds of documents that provide social context for the plays. Primary source documents with on the Larpent collection of plays and Anna Larpent's Diaries. Includes the London Stage Database and the Biographical Dictionary Database.

Searchable poems and letters from Dickinson's correspondence with her sister-in-law. A Rotunda Collections database. Coverage: Late 1850s-1886.

The collection contains over 160,000 poems, essentially comprising the complete canon of English poetry of the British Isles from the 8th century to around 1900. Drawn from nearly 4,500 printed sources, more than 1,250 poets are represented.

Citations to more than 460,000 books, serials, pamphlets, advertisements, songs, election propaganda, and other ephemeral material published mainly in the British Isles and North America. From the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries. Database now freely available from the British Library. Coverage: 1473-1800.

Searchable full text of works acted on or intended for the stage, which are either wholly or predominantly in verse. Based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Also known as Chadwyck-Healey English Verse Drama. Coverage: 1270-1899.

This Corvey Collection contains over 2 million printed pages of English-language works, many of them comprising multiple volumes. It thus constitutes one of the most important collections of British Romantic-era writing in existence anywhere. The extent of its scholarly significance is indicated by the considerable number of exceedingly rare publicationsand even numerous previously unknown worksby British writers (and women writers in particular, whose works comprise over 1,000 of the titles) who were active during the Romantic period. In addition to the English-language literary texts, the Corvey Collection of European Literature also includes 3,658 works in French (including more than 500 by women) and 2,653 works in German, all of them dating primarily from the period 17901840.

Gale Literary Index is a master index to the major literature products published by Gale. It combines and cross-references author names, including pseudonyms and variant names, and listings for titles of works into one source. Gale Literary Index provides quick and easy access to author and title listings from over 130 literature products from Gale and the imprints Charles Scribner's Sons, St. James Press, and Twayne Publishers. The referenced products themselves will contain complete biographies on authors and critical essays on their writings.

Integrates literature resources from Gale into a single research environment. The following collections are available within this interface: Literature Resource Center, Literature Criticism Online, LitFinder,Scribner Writers Online, Twayne's Authors Online, MLA International Bibliography, and Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Harpers Weekly, the news and literary journal published in New York City. Searchable full text, including news, illustrations, cartoons, literature, editorials, and advertisements. Coverage: 1857-1877.

Based on the recently discovered working draft of Typee, the database showcases the many revisions of the novel from its publication in 1846. A Rotunda Collections database.

Humanities Index Retrospective 1907-1984 indexes nearly 800 humanities-related periodicals and provides access to over 1,000,000 articles, including citations of over 155,000 books reviews.

Literature & the literary arts, philosophy, the arts, history, culture, and creative thought. Journal articles, books, and other sources from around the world. Coverage: Varies by title.

Contains all of the content available in International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance as well as full text for 100 titles, including Canadian Theatre Review, Dance Chronicle, Dance Teacher, Modern Drama, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Research in Dance Education, Research in Drama Education, Studies in Theatre and Performance, TDR: The Drama Review, Theater, and many more. Additional full text available includes more than 50 books & monographs.

Multidisciplinary full-text journal articles from 1,500 major journals. Please note: In many cases, JSTOR does not include the most recent 3 to 5 years of these journals. Please use other databases to retrieve recent articles, especially for current events topics. Coverage: Varies by title. Access is available to 2007+ alumni; requires W&M userid and password.

Complete text of The Letters of Christina Rossetti (ed. Antony H. Harrison, University Press of Virginia, 19972004). Searchable letters of the Victorian poet. A Rotunda Collections database. Coverage: 1843-1895.

Complete text of The Letters of Matthew Arnold (ed. Cecil Y. Lang,University Press of Virginia, 1996; 2001). Searchable letters of the 19th-century poet and cultural critic. A Rotunda Collections database. Coverage: 1829-1888.

Language and linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Citations to journal articles, books, and dissertations. Coverage: 1973- present.

A broad range of authors from across the nineteenth century make this an essential research tool for all scholars and students researching Victorian literature. Literary Manuscripts Berg traces the genesis of some of the periods greatest literary masterpieces through the unique manuscripts of their authors, many unavailable elsewhere. They are supplemented by rare printed materials, including early editions annotated by the authors.

This resource offers literary scholars the opportunity to examine manuscripts of 17th and 18th century verse held in the celebrated Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds. Alongside original compositions are copied verses, translations, songs and riddles. The whole collection is situated within an assortment of manuscripts, some entirely dedicated to poetry, while others contain medicinal recipes, household accounts, draft letters, musical scores and plays.

The Stationers Company (London, est. 1403) Archive is one of the most important resources for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions and the history of bookbinding. Explore extremely rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century in this invaluable resource of research material for historians and literary scholars. Includes trade, membership, administrative, and court records.

Literature criticism, biographies, work & topic overviews, reviews, and full text of many literary works. Coverage: Varies by subject.

Social history, industry & labor, government, sports, hobbies, etc. Publications of all 47 states, including city guides and original artwork. An Archives Unbound database, pulling material from the Archives of the Federal Writers' Project (WFP). Coverage: 1933-1943.

A fully searchable, virtual library of Greek and Latin literature with English translations. Includes epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, travel, philosophy, and oratory; the great medical writers and mathematicians; and, those Church Fathers who made particular use of pagan culture.

An extraordinary digital collection bringing to life the teeming streets of Victorian London, and inviting students and scholars to explore the gin palaces, brothels and East End slums of the nineteenth century's greatest city. Includes wide range of materials including chapbooks, slang dictionaries, cartoons, and visualized data. Covers the nineteenth century.

An extensive collection of manuscript materials for the study of medieval travel writing in fact and in fantasy. A collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries around the world, dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries, with a focus on accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China.

English-language dictionary and thesaurus. Coverage: Current.

MLA Handbook Plus is a new, subscription-based digital product providing online access to the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook

Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the MLA International Bibliography is the definitive index for the study of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, folklore, and film, covering scholarly publications from the early 20th century to the present.

The New Play Exchange, a National New Play Network project, is the worlds largest digital library of scripts by living writers. Designed and built with the needs of the entire new play sector in mind, it serves writers, producers, directors, artistic directors, literary managers, dramaturgs, publishers, agents, actors, professors, students, and even fans of the theater.

Discover the work of one of the worlds most important publishing dynasties through this collection from the historic John Murray Archive. From book history to travel writing, politics to poetry, this newly digitised resource introduces an unparalleled repository for nineteenth century culture and the literary luminaries who shaped it.

This edition of North American Indian Drama contains 256 plays by 49 playwrights. More than half of the works are previously unpublished, and hard to find, representing groups such as Cherokee, Mtis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Lenape, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock, Hawaiian/Samoan, and others.

E-book database, including anthropology and religion, art, cinema, music and theatre, economics and politics, history, law, literature and language, philosophy, women and gender. The titles are available to download with a choice of formatted digital editions and also a discount is given on purchases of paper copies by members of the university.

Definitions for most of the words in the English language. Also information on their origins and quotations showing their range of meanings from the time they entered the language to the present. Coverage: Current and historical.

Cross-searchable library containing the full text and abstracts of classic and newly published Oxford books. Swem Library has access to Biology, Business & Management, Classical Studies, Economics and Finance, History, Law, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Music, Neuroscience, Palliative Care, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Public Health & Epidemiology, Religion, Social Work, and Sociology subject modules.

Formerly the International Index to the Performing Arts, the Performing Arts Periodicals Database indexes around 400 scholarly and trade journals, magazines, books, and newspapers covering theater, dance, film, television, stagecraft, broadcast arts, storytelling, and more. It draws from both current files and selected backfiles to 1864 and 134 publications are included in full text.

Arts, humanities, and social sciences. Journal articles. Coverage: Varies by title. Access is available to 2007+ alumni; requires W&M userid and password.

Collection of databases devoted to disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. See titles of individual databases for further information. Coverage: Varies by database.

This database features around 600 titles covering Art, Architecture, Design, History, Philosophy, Music, Literature, Theatre and Cultural Studies. Titles include both scholarly peer-reviewed journals and selected trade and consumer titles relevant to applied arts and cultural studies.

This digital resource offers unparalleled access to the single largest collection of working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers anywhere in the world. With access to the annotated full manuscripts of such notable works as The Prelude and Michael, or Samuel Taylor Coleridges Dejection: An Ode this project is unrivalled in its content and scope.

These high-definition, surround-sound recordings of William Shakespeares plays featuring the worlds best Shakespearean actors, like David Tennant, Sir Antony Sher, Paapa Essiedu, and Simon Russell Beale, and directors like Robin Lough and Dewi Humphrey.

Includes biographical and critical essays on the lives and works of more than 1,400 authors from around the world. Entries include concise essays, citations, and biographical information, placing the author's work in personal and historical context.

Shakespeare in Performance showcases rare and unique prompt books from the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeares plays as they were performed in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.

This collection of documents offers insights into the performance practice in the particular space of the reconstructed Globe Theatre. It details the way in which the theatre was constructed as a place of radical experiment. It documents over 200 performances through prompt books, wardrobe notes, programmes, publicity material, annual reports, show reports, photographs and architectural plans.

In the summer of 2012, as part of the London Olympic Games' Cultural Olympiad and the World Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare's Globe hosted the hugely successful Globe to Globe Festival. This unprecedented six-week event saw companies from across the world perform at Shakespeare's Globe in over 30 different languages. Now you can watch 10 of these performances on Drama Online. The Shakespeare's Globe to Globe Festival on Screen 1 collection will support all courses in Shakespeare's plays, and especially those exploring: global performance; intercultural production, interpretation and reception; and themes such as gender across global cultures. All films will have audio in their original language alongside fully translated English subtitles.

This products aim is to index all the important collections and anthologies of short stories that are published each year. All literary genres are covered. Approximately 200+ monographs are captured per year, with approximately 3,000-4,000 analytics (chapters/stories).

Something About the Author series examines the lives and works of authors and illustrators for children and young adults and is the preeminent source on authors and literature for young people. Something About the Author Online includes both the main series and Something About the Author Autobiography Series, totaling more than 290 volumes, 20,000 entries, and nearly 30,000 images.

The Southern Literary Messenger (1834-1864) was one of the most successful and influential literary magazines in the South. Published in Richmond, Virginia, it is a source on Southern history, European history, military history, secessionism, states rights, and slavery issues. Contributors included prominent southern authors Edgar Allan Poe, Philip Pendleton Cooke, William Gilmore Simms, and Henry Timrod. An Archives Unbound database. Coverage: 1834-1864.

Weekly literature review published in London. Complete facsimile edition, fully searchable. Book reviews, arts reviews, poems, letters, and commentary pieces. Coverage: 1902-2014.

An archival research resource containing a vast collection of rare magazines by and for servicemen and women of all nations during the First World War. Over 1,500 periodicals written and illustrated by serving members of the armed forces and associated welfare organisations published between 1914 and the end of 1919 are included.

Offers in-depth introductions to the lives and works of writers, the history and influence of literary movements and to the development of literary genres. This online series features the content of more than 800 books that comprise three print series --United States Authors, English Authors and World Authors.

Primary source database focusing on North American and European adult comic books and graphic novels. The collection includes original material from the 1960s to today along with interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism from journals, books, and magazines.

Victorian Popular Culture is a portal comprised of four modules, inviting users into the darkened halls, small backrooms, big tops and travelling venues that hosted everything from spectacular shows and bawdy burlesque, to the world of magic, spiritualist seances, optical entertainments and the first moving pictures. Four sections include: "spiritualism, sensation and magic" ; "circuses, sideshows and freaks" ; "music Hall, theatre and popular entertainment" ; "moving pictures, optical entertainments and the advent of Cinema."

Open access database containing the scholarly output of the W&M community, including masters theses and dissertations from 1920 to today.

Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO): William Shakespeare provides an interlinked collection of authoritative Oxford editions of Shakespeare's works.

Scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare. Citations to books, journal articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, production reviews, audiovisual materials, electronic media, etc. Coverage 1960-present.

WorldCat Discovery includes access to a wide variety of electronic, licensed, physical and locally digitized materials. Users can discover more than 1.8 billion items in local libraries and around the world with a single search.