LibGuides: Literature: Consult research guides

Reader's guides

Companions, plot summaries, critical overviews, reading guides and more.

Gale Literature This link opens in a new window
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Literary criticism in articles and overviews. Includes Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online, Literature Criticism Online, Literature Resource Center, Scribner Writers Series, Something About the Author, and Twayne's Authors.

Magill's Literary Annual
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Plot summaries and citations of published reviews.

ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new window
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Poetry, drama and prose; also literature criticism journals, ebooks, and key reference resources.

Index of serialized fiction

The FictionMags Index Family
The FictionMags Index is aimed at those researching a specific author or title and to reflect this, the emphasis is on the index listings with the associated cover scans (where available) displayed as thumbnails (which can be "clicked on") to display larger images.
The standalone indexes are aimed more at those interested in browsing the history of a magazine or genre and, to reflect this, the associated cover scans (where available) are displayed in a larger size side-by-side with the contents data.
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General fiction, plus separate indexes for crime, sci-fi, adventure and western magazines.

Reviews of recent scholarship

Literature Reviews - Oxford Handbooks Online This link opens in a new window
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Scholarly research reviews on major authors, literary movements, and critical approaches.
Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new window
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Scholarly topic overviews and annotated bibliographies with expert literature reviews from a wide range of disciplines.
Video tutorial for Oxford Bibliographies

MLA International Bibliography - "review article" search
Example MLA search to find articles discussing recent scholarship - substitute your broad category of interest in the top box
YWES Year's Work in English Studies
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This journal publishes annual analytic overviews of new literary criticism organized by genre and time period.
Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory.
Annual review of new scholarship
Literature Compass
Journal with articles that skew toward literature reviews.

Find reference books

Literary Research Guide
An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies
James L. Harner

Dictionaries

Gale Literature This link opens in a new window
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Literary criticism in articles and overviews. Includes Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online, Literature Criticism Online, Literature Resource Center, Scribner Writers Series, Something About the Author, and Twayne's Authors.
ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new window
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Poetry, drama and prose; also literature criticism journals, ebooks, and key reference resources.
Credo General Reference This link opens in a new window
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Dictionaries, specialized encyclopedias, quotations, thesauri, and bilingual dictionaries.
Dictionary of Literary Biography (Gale Literature) This link opens in a new window
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Substantial biographical overviews of literary authors.
Reliable information on authors and their works, placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history. Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online includes the main series, documentary, and yearbook volumes. Also searchable in Gale Literary Sources.
Lexicons of Early Modern English This link opens in a new window
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1480-1702
Explore word histories in this compilation of over 150 dictionaries from the early modern period
Compiles over 150 monolingual, bilingual, and polyglot dictionaries and glossaries from the early modern period in which either source or target language is English, as well as linguistic treatises, and encyclopedic or topical works. A half-million word-entries devised by contemporary speakers of early modern English describe the meaning of words, and their equivalents in languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other tongues encountered then in Europe, America, and Asia.
Theatre in Context This link opens in a new window
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Reference texts in American theater, as well as images of posters, playbills, photos, architectural images, floor plans, and other ephemera.
Update frequency: quarterly

Motif-index of folk-literature
Stith Thompson. Motif-index of folk-literature : a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediaeval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends.

Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
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Meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past.
Online version of the Oxford English Dictionary. 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. It also offers the best in etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy This link opens in a new window
Dynamic encyclopedia of philosophy.
Professional philosophers donate their time and labor to collaboratively write, referee, and maintain encyclopedia entries. A freely available encyclopedia.

Research guides available as ebooks

An Introduction to Literary Studies by Mario Klarer
ISBN: 9780415811910
Publication Date: 2013

Print Research Guides

Literary research guide : an annotated listing of reference sources in English literary studies by James L. Harner
Call Number: Z2011 .H34 2002
ISBN: 0873529839
Avoid reinventing the wheel by discovering what research aids already exist. Published by the MLA, Harner's guide is the definitive source list for literary scholars.
The Art of Literary Research by Richard D. Altick; John J. Fenstermaker
Call Number: PR56 .A68 1993
ISBN: 0393962407
Publication Date: 1992-09-17
For interested readers who have other vocational plans, its authors-experienced researchers themselves-provide an intimate view of the way professional scholars go about their specialized and challenging tasks.
Textual scholarship : an introduction by D.C. Greetham
Call Number: Z1001 .G7 1992
ISBN: 0815317913
A critique of modern textual criticism by Jerome J. McGann
Call Number: P47 .M34 1992
ISBN: 0813914183
A rationale of textual criticism by G. Thomas Tanselle
Call Number: PN81 .T318 1989
ISBN: 0812214099

Literature

Reader's guides

Index of serialized fiction

Reviews of recent scholarship

Dictionaries

Research guides available as ebooks

Print Research Guides

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