Library
Web Reference Sites
Literature
Bloomsbury
Research Centre: Site is a free on-line database of
reference books of over 17,000 entries, cross-referenced
and indexed. A search engine is available to search on a
wide range of subjects including literature, art, myth, human
thought, quotations and a thesaurus, or browse through each
book at your leisure.
The Cambridge History of English
and American Literature: Contains over 303 chapters and 11,000 pages,
with essay topics ranging from poetry, fiction, drama and essays to history,
theology and political writing in the early part of the 20th century.
Chapter
One: This site allows you to read the first chapters of selected new
books.
Critical Reading: An Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism
FreeBooknotes: This site is a guide to free book summaries, literature notes,
and study guides (like “Cliff Notes”) for over 250 books.
Gale Glossary of Literary Terms
Introduction
to Modern Literary Theory: Summaries of major literary theories.
Literature and Life: Explore this unique collection of African-American
literature and the people, ideas, and eras that the work represents - From PBS.
Literary Movements: Provides a brief overview, including definitions and
links, of selected movements in American literature and culture.
Perspectives
in American Literature: This searchable site provides outlines and bibliographies
of hundreds of authors, themes, and literary movements in the U.S. from colonial
days to the present.
The Reader’s Handbook: Extract from the Preface: “The object of this
Handbook is to supply readers and speakers with a lucid but very brief account
of such names as are used in allusions and references, whether by poets or prose
writers,— to furnish those who consult it with the plot of popular dramas, the
story of epic poems, and the outline of well-known tales...”
Simond’s History
of American Literature
Study Guides
to Various Works: Lots of great study guides on classic books.
The Web Concordances
and Workbooks: Online concordances of Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, Blake,
Wordsworth, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Asian Literature
Resources
Chinese Poems with English Translation
Persimmon: Asian Literature,
Arts, and Culture
Rubaiyat: Online text
American Writers: On this companion Web site for a C-SPAN special series, this
site offers an in-depth look at 45 American writers who helped
shape a nation, featuring biographical and historical background
information for each featured author.
Shakespeare: Site contains the full 1,350-page Oxford Shakespeare.
The searchable material includes 37 plays, 154 sonnets and miscellaneous documents.
Shakespeare’s Grammar: Understanding the language of Shakespeare.
4Literature: Read any one of thousands of classic books free at this site.
The archives include the works of Shakespeare, religious
and historical documents, children's fairy tales, Greek and
Roman classics, and books by famous American authors of the
19th century.
Bibliomania: works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and a few reference
titles.
BookBrowse.com: Read excerpts from
bestsellers, new fiction and non-fiction.
BookBrowser: Fiction reading lists, book reviews, forthcoming titles, author
information and much more.
BookWire: Provides articles on the latest book industry news, access to
literary journals and reviews, and an expansive directory of book sites around
the world. Users can also search updated bestseller lists, find listings of literary
events, and read author interviews.
Classic Reader: At this site you can read, search, and annotate great works
of literature by authors such as Dickens, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and many others.
The collection currently contains 651 books and 906 short stories by 196 authors.
The EServer: Publisher of free texts in
the arts and humanities.
FreeBooknotes.com: Site lists over 200 books, and has indexed book notes
from all the major study guide sites.
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction: The most comprehensive and well-researched
anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume “5-foot shelf of books” and
the the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary
figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth
century.
IPL Books Collection: The
Internet Public Library Online Texts Collection contains over 16,000 titles
that can be browsed by author, by title, or by Dewey Decimal Classification.
NovelGuide: Free source for literary analysis.
The On-Line Books Page: The On-Line Books Page is a directory of 9,000+
books that can be freely read right on the Internet.
Project Gutenberg: Free online classic books.
Searchebooks.com: A search engine
that indexes the full text of thousands of online books.
Shakespeare: Site contains the full 1350-page Oxford Shakespeare.
The searchable material includes 37 plays, 154 sonnets and miscellaneous documents.
Short Stories: Collection of classic short stories.
Short Stories from East of the
Web: Site offers numerous free classic short stories sorted by genre:
fiction, nonfiction, children, humor, romance, science, etc.
The World eBook Library: This site has thousands of downloadable ebooks,
including classic works of literature, serials, bibliographies, dictionaries,
encyclopedias, and other reference works in a number of languages and countries
around the world. You can browse and search by author and title.
Wright American Fiction: The Wright American Fiction online collection attempts
to include every novel published in the United States from 1851 to 1875. It includes
works by well known writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, along with a great many forgotten authors, whose
works may have been very popular in their own time.
Bartleby Verse Collection: With thousands of poems by hundreds of authors,
this site offers one of the largest free collections of searchable verse on the
Internet.
British Poetry 1780 -1910
The Classroom Electric:
Dickinson, Whitman, and American Culture: Here users can explore images
of original manuscripts, rare photographs, notebooks, scrapbooks, letters,
and maps in sites informed by cutting-edge scholarship.
English 88: Modern and Contemporary American Poetry
Glossary of Poetic
Terms
Internet Poetry Archive: This
archive makes available selected poems from a number of contemporary poets.
Modern American Poetry
The Museum of American Poetics
The Poetry and Literature Center of the Library Congress
Poetry Archives: Searchable
database of thousands of classical poems.
Poetry.com: Search for poets by name,
100 best poems and more.
Poets.org: The Academy of American
Poets Website features searchable databases of poetry and poets, recordings
of poems being read, and much more.
