English

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries & Handbooks

Brewer's dictionary of phrase & fable Reference PN43 .B65 1995
British writers PR85 .B688
7 vols. + supplements
Contemporary authors; a bio-bibliographical guide to current writers in fiction, general nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures, television and other fields. Reference Room PN451 .C6
185 vols. Some volumes are also available at Englewood Cliffs. Also online in the Gale Literature Resource Center
Contemporary literary criticism Reference Room PN771 .C59
131 vols. Some volumes are also available at Englewood Cliffs. Volumes from 1995 are online in the Gale Literature Resource Center, along with articles on major writers from earlier volumes.
European writers Reference Room PN501 .E9 1983
14 vols.
Middle English dictionary Reference Room PE679 .M54
25 vols.
New Cambridge bibliography of English literature Reference PR83.Z9 N45
5 vols.
Scribner writers series master index Reference Room PN451.S35 1997

Unless indicated otherwise, all of the above print resources are located at the O'Toole Library, Jersey City Campus.

Selected Internet Resources

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century A full text collection of 52 books from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. This collection of books and pamphlets published prior to 1920 is keyword searchable and includes fiction, poetry, essays and biography
Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts After locating selected texts in English and American literature or Western philosophy, Alex provides a search engine that will display the hits in context.
Assignment Calculator This very helpful site from the University of Minnesota lets you create a timeline of activities that are necessary to write a research paper and provides definitions, tutorials, research guides, and other helpful aides.
Beowulf: Ben Slade Reads in Old English Beowulf Sails to Denmark, read in Old English with an image of the text that displays the correct letters and diacritics.
Cambridge History of English and American Literature An encyclopedia in 18 volumes orginally published between 1907 and 1921, it is a classic review of English literature from its beginnings to the end of the Victorian era. The Web version is searchable. The O'Toole Library has a set on the second floor at PR83 .C2 1907
EDSITEment The National Endowment for the Humanities has created a page with links to top humanities sites and a search engine for those sites.
Electronic Text Center Maintained by the University of Virginia. English, French, German, Japanese and Latin texts, reviews and criticism.
English Renaissance in Context (ERIC) From the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image at the University of Pennsylvania, this site provides eight tutorials on Shakespearean plays for students and access to over 300 facsimiles.
English Server Carnegie Mellon's eserver.org covers everything from literature to cooking, with many stops along the way.
Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction Provides fiction from a wide range of authors. It cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century.
Humbul Humanities Hub Links to humanities resources in Archaeology, Classics, History, Philosophy, History of Science, Religion & Theology, American Studies, Humanities Computing, Linguistics, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian and Slavonic Studies; Comparative Literature.
Hyper-Concordance A searchable concordance to British, Irish, and American literature of the Victorian, late-nineteenth and early 20th centuries, encompassing authors from Coleridge to Hardy, Gissing, Eliot, and Eugene O'Neill.
International Children's Digital Library This site will eventually contain over 10,000 children's books drawn from 100 cultures. Each book is presented in full-text with full color image. It requires Java and special software (6.2Mb) that can be downloaded from the site, along with a high-speed connection. The project was developed by the Internet Archive and the University of Maryland and sponsored by federal Institute of Museum and Library Services in partnership with other academic and government agencies.
Internet Library of Early Journals This project of the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford have created searchable digial image files of three 18th-century journals (Gentleman's Magazine, The Annual Register, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society) and three 19th-century journals: Notes and Queries, The Builder, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
ITER ITER is a citation only datase but provides extensive coverage of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). It consists of two databases, "Journals," over 210,000 records from 500 scholarly journals, and "Books." The Books database is under construction but currently contains approximately 44,000 records. This database is available off-campus to current SPC students, faculty, and staff. Use your Library barcode to login.
Language Resources & Dictionaries This site contains information about online language lessons, translating dictionaries, native literature, translation services, software, and language schools.
Learning English Practice your English with the BBC. The BBC in London presents exercises based on shopping, news, and other real-life situations to help you learn English.
Literary encyclopedia and literary dictionary "The Literary Encyclopedia is an authoritative, up-to-date reference work written by named scholars most of whom are current university teachers." Still under construction, it does provide basic information about authors or genres, allows you to create a timeline, find Books in Print, get instruction on scholarly writing from its English Style Book or browse a Glossary of Terms.
Literary Research Tools This page contains links compiled by Jack Lynch, Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers.
LSU Libraries Webliography Author Guides This directory is an index of indexes. It contains pointers to individual author guides or other cumulative documents that deal with specific writers.
Luminarium This site combines three categories (Medieval, Renaissance, and 17th century) to provide a starting point for students and enthusiasts of English Literature.
Modern American Poetry Site This is a multimedia supplement to the Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2000) by Cary Nelson, this site has photos, brief biographies, and excerpts from critical studies of the poems in the Anthology.
Modern English Collection Maintained by the University of Virginia, this site includes works by African-American and Native American writers, Women writers, The Civil War, and Best Sellers 1900-1930.
New York Review of Books An electronic version of the print edition. A fee is required to access some reviews.
Online Calendar of Henry James's Letters and A Biographical Register of Henry James's Correspondents, published by the University of Nebraska Press. This is a database of all of all known letters written by James, with brief biographical information on his contacts and indications as to where the letters may be found.
Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies (ORB) Prepared by medievalists and peer reviewed, ORB features an online encyclopedia and and a textbook library. The section on "What Every Medievalist Should Know" consists of annotated bibliogrphies on all aspects of Medieval life and culture.
Poets.Org: the Academy of American Poets Brief biographies and some full text from major American poets, a poetry classroom, poetry news, and discussions of poetry are available from this site.
Postmodern Culture An Electronic Journal of Interdisciplinary Criticism.
Projects and Publications from the University of Virginia Electronic Texts Center This site includes links to the Bibliographical Society and its journals in full-text, tutorials on bibliographic description, and other resources on bibliography and textual criticism.
Resources for the history of books and printing Provides links to sites about the history of books.
Shakespeare The complete works, with a search engine and glossary and links to other resources.
Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the Seventeenth Century Facsimile prompt-books and other stage texts, published by the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia.
Spectator Project From Rutgers, this is "an interactive hypermedia environment for the study of The Tatler (1709-1711), The Spectator (1711-14), and the eighteenth-century periodical in general"
Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive Leaves of Grass in its various editions, along with Whitman manuscripts, archives, and photos.
Web English Teacher Designed for those teaching English, either as literature or a language, this site is also useful for literature students. Under "Literature (Prose)" for example, you will find biographies of authors and selected essays, such as Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue", on her experience growing up in a house in which English was not the native language.
Wired for Books "Developed by the Ohio University Telecommunications Center, with the kind assistance of the Ohio Humanities Council, this site brings together a number of rather fine audio recordings of authors reading their own works, video recordings of a number of plays, and an extensive archive of author interviews conducted by Don Swaim from his national syndicated program, Book Beat, which was produced in the 1970s and 1980s. The site contains a number of great renditions of various works especially for children, including some fine readings of the stories of Beatrix Potter and a great performance of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as directed and narrated by Karen Chan. " -- Scout Report
Xrefer this site from the UK provides cross-searching across reference dictionaries from Oxford University Press (The Oxford Dictionary of Art, Dictionary of Business, Concise Medical Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of Music, Dictionary of Quotations, Who's Who in the Twentieth Century, the Oxford Companion to English Literature and the Oxford Paperback Encyclopedia); Penguin (Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women, Business Dictionary, Dictionary of Psychology, Dictionary of Sociology, and the Penguin Encyclopedia of Places); Bloomsbury Press (Bloomsbury Biographical Dictionary of Quotations, Thematic Dictionary of Quotations, and Bloomsbury Thesaurus) and the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music from Macmillan Press.