Research Guides: English Literature: Sources by Period

Old & Middle English

Primary Sources

Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library
University of Toronto's rare books library where you can work with manuscripts, letters, and other sources created during the medieval period.

British Literary Manuscripts Online
Search for digitized copies of Medieval English literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook
Medieval and ancient primary source documents, maps, secondary sources, bibliographies, images and music.
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America from 1473 to 1700, as well as works in English printed elsewhere.
Medieval Travel Writing
Medieval manuscripts and travel writing from around the globe, dating between the 13th and 16th centuries.
Early English Books Online - Text Creation Partnership
Approximately 73,000 accurate, searchable, full-text transcriptions of early print books.

Literature Online: Primary Texts
Collection of 350,000 full text works of English-language poetry, prose and drama from the 8th to the 21st century.
Middle English Text Sources (METS)
Collection of edited medieval texts representing the medieval literary traditions and cultures of Britain and Ireland.
Folger Digital Collections
Explore Folger Library's digital collection of books, manuscripts, and letters dating from the 15th to 17th centuries.

English Drama
More than 3,900 full-text plays in verse and prose from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth.

Records of Early English Drama (REED) Online
Search county, diocese, and private records of drama, secular music, and other popular entertainment in England from the Middle Ages until 1642. Also includes historical background, performance traditions, integrated translation, timelines of London playhouses, and digital map providing visualization of regional and local performance patterns.
Records of Early English Drama (REED) Print
24 print issues indexing county, diocese, and private records of drama, secular music, and other popular entertainment in England from the Middle Ages until 1642. Also includes historical background, performance traditions, glossaries, and translations.

Secondary Sources

International Medieval Bibliography (IMB)
Research covering the 4th to 15th centuries in Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa.

Year's Work in English Studies
Full-text archive of bibliographical reviews of scholarly books on English language and literatures written in English since 1921.
Chaucer Bibliography Online
Searchable index of Chaucer studies from 1958 until the present.
Oxford Academic Books
Oxford University Press ebook platform spanning the arts & humanities, law, medicine & health, science & mathematics, and social sciences.

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Oxford English Dictionary
Comprehensive dictionary providing information on the history and evolution of the English language, including early and medieval English.

Dictionary of Old English
Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (C.E. 600-1150) of the English language.
Middle English Dictionary
Searchable database of Middle English lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500.
Essentials of Early English
An introduction to the early stages of the English language: Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English. Also a handbook for students beginning the study of Early English language, whether for linguistic or literary purposes.
Brill Medieval Reference Library Online
Full text access to Brill's Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, and the Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages.

Oxford Reference Online
2 million topic entries drawn from Oxford University Press’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias.

Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages
3,000 concise and detailed articles on all aspects of the period from the fifth to the fifteenth century.
Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages
A detailed and reliable reference tool for medievalists and students of European, Byzantine, Islamic, and Asian contexts from 500 to 1500.

15th & 16th Century

Primary Sources

Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library
University of Toronto's rare books library where you can work with manuscripts, letters, and other sources created during the 15th & 16th Century.

British Literary Manuscripts Online
Search for digitized copies of English Renaissance-era literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works.
Shakespeare Collection
Digitized editions of Shakespeare’s works including the Quatros (1594-1634), the First Folio (1623), and later 17th, 18th, and 19th century editions. Also includes digitized editions of the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries and influential predecessors.
Women Writers Project
Full-text collection of early women’s writing in English published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or otherwise inaccessible.
Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700
Manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Early English Prose Fiction
Full text of over 200 works of prose fiction from 1500-1700 preceding the emergence of the realist novel. Genres include: prose romance, jest books, rogue literature.

English Drama
More than 3,900 full-text plays in verse and prose from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth.

Secondary Sources

Shakespearean Criticism Online
An online series providing coverage of critical interpretations of the plays and poems of William Shakespeare from the earliest stagings and publications to the present.
Shakespeare Criticism: A Selection, 1623-1840
A digitized collection of criticisms addressing Shakespeare's works, the first essay published only seven years after his death.
World Shakespeare Bibliography Online
Searchable electronic database consisting of Shakespeare-related scholarship and theatrical productions published or produced worldwide from 1960 to the present.
Shakespeare Survey Online
Yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Each volume is devoted to a theme, or play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of that year's textual and critical studies, and of the year's major British performances.

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

A Dictionary of Shakespeare
Includes entries on the plays and major characters, on Shakespeare's life and his contemporaries, on actors, theatres and directors, plus commentary by Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, and others.
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare
An authoritative guide to Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Includes commentary on performance, interpretation, and the influence of Shakespeare’s works up to the early 21st century.

Lexicons of Early Modern English
Search dictionaries, Latin-English grammars, hard-word glossaries, herbals, spelling lists, glossed texts, collections of definitions, concordances, and nearly two hundred antiquarian manuscript essays about etymologies delivered before the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries.

John Donne Companion
Biographical and historical information as well as an index of people, places, characters, allusions, ideas, concepts, individual words, phrases and literary terms that are relevant to the interpretation of Donne's poetry and prose.

17th & 18th Century

Primary Sources

Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library
University of Toronto's rare books library where you can work with manuscripts, letters, and other sources created during the 17th and 18th century.

Women Writers Project
Full-text collection of early women’s writing in English published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or otherwise inaccessible.

Poetry Manuscripts from the Brotherton Library
A collection of 190 digitized manuscripts of seventeenth and eighteenth-century verse held at the University of Leeds.

Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700
Manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The William Blake Archive
Scholarly digital editions of the poems, prints, and paintings of William Blake (1757-1787).
Oxford World's Classics Online - 18th Century
Full text searchable editions of 34 eighteenth century novels with introductions, notes, chronologies, and bibliographies.

17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection
Digitized collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century English newspapers. Also includes pamphlets, proclamations, and newsbooks from across the period.

Secondary Sources

Routledge Library Editions: William Blake
Small collection of important book-length critiques of Blake's work.
Gothic Literature: A Gale Critical Companion
Scholarly interpretation and criticism of 18th century gothic literatures.

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake
Key reference source for the interpretation or analysis of Blake's work.

19th Century

Primary Sources

Robertson Davies Library at Massey College
Rare books collection focusing on nineteenth century book design and printing. Contact Massey College Librarian to schedule a visit.
Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library
University of Toronto's rare books library where you can work with manuscripts, letters, and other sources created during the 19th century.
Oxford World's Classics Online - 19th Century
Full text searchable editions of 285 nineteenth century novels with introductions, notes, chronologies, and bibliographies.

Children's literature and culture, 1800-1925
Digitized collection of rare books, games, and ephemera from the early 19th to the early 20th centuries with a focus on work made for (and sometimes by) children.
Women Writers Project
Full-text collection of early women’s writing in English published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or otherwise inaccessible.
Black Women Writers
A database providing access to the writings of Black women with coverage beginning in the 19th century.

Emily Dickinson Archive
High-resolution images of Dickinson’s surviving manuscripts available in open access.
Routledge Critical Heritage: John Keats
Reviews and commentary written in response to the original publication of the poems of John Keats.
Walt Whitman Archive
Digitized early editions of Leaves of Grass and other published works, manuscripts, and letters. Includes useful background information on the author's life and work.

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Emily Dickinson Lexicon
Search by keyword or browse alphabetically through more than 9,000 words in Dickinson’s poetry. Based on word usage during the author's time.
The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Shelley
Comprehensive guide to the poems, prose, biography, ideas and contexts of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The Palgrave literary dictionary of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Comprehensive guide to the works and contexts of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

20th & 21st Century

Black Women Writers
A database providing access to the writings of Black women from the 19th to 21st century. Highlights include work from the Harlem Renaissance, Black Power and Black feminist movements, and work reflecting Caribbean and African voices of the 20th century.

Oxford World's Classics Online - 20th Century
Full text searchable editions of 95 twentieth century novels with introductions, notes, chronologies, and bibliographies.
Routledge Critical Heritage: Virginia Woolf
Reviews and commentary written in response to the original publication of novels, essays, and other writings of Virginia Woolf.
Routledge Critical Heritage: Ezra Pound
Reviews and commentary written in response to the original publication of poetry, essays, and other writings of Ezra Pound.
Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English
1,600 entries on post-colonial literatures of 50 countries. Entries discuss genres, major subjects, critical author biographies, country and regional context, and more.

Across the Timeline

Intelex past masters: full text humanities
A collection which includes of the complete text of published and private writings (letters, diaries) by a selection major English authors of the 17th to early 20th centuries.

Oxford Scholarly Editions
Annotated primary texts including work by writers from the 8th to 20th centuries, as well as work from the Roman and Greek periods.

Black Drama
Full text of more than 1700 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 Black playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print.
Black Short Fiction and Folklore
More than 11,000 works of short fiction produced by writers from Africa and the African Diaspora from the earliest times to the present. Compiled from early literary magazines, archives, and the personal collections of the authors. 30 percent of the collection is fugitive or ephemeral, or has never been published before
Black Women Writers
A database providing access to the writings of Black women from the 19th to 21st century. Includes typewritten documents, photocopied journals, and other hard-to-find primary sources.
Representative Poetry Online
4,700 English poems by 723 poets; from the earliest poem recorded in Old English to the work of living poets today.
English Drama
More than 3,900 full-text plays in verse and prose from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth.

Research Guides

English Literature

Old & Middle English

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

15th & 16th Century

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

17th & 18th Century

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

19th Century

Primary Sources

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

20th & 21st Century

Across the Timeline

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