*English Language & Literature

Twentieth-Century American Poetry brings together 50,000 poems by over 300 poets. The major works of the modernist period can be read alongside contemporary works.

The early history of African American poetry, from the first recorded poem by an African American (Lucy Terry Prince's 'Bars Fight', c.1746) to the major poets of the nineteenth century, including Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

Containing more than 1,500 dramatic works from the colonial period to the beginning of the twentieth century, American Drama 1714–1915 provides literary researchers and historians with a comprehensive survey of American dramaturgy from its origins up to the era of sensational melodrama and manners comedy exemplified by the work of such playwrights as David Belasco, Clyde Fitch and William Vaughn Moody.

American Poetry contains over 40,000 poems by more than 200 poets, covering the Colonial period to the early twentieth century, and drawn from over 1,200 printed sources. Use with other poetry collections in Literature Online.

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. Showcasing innovative new publishing methods characteristic of the golden age of children’s literature, from mass-produced chapbooks to richly illustrated ‘book-beautifuls’, this resource examines the way in which new concepts were introduced to young readers, encouraging an engagement with the imagination which went on to fundamentally shape established notions of childhood.

Full text of over 250,000 poems, mostly in English, but also including poems in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Information about and citations from thousands more poems, plus biographies of poets and analyses of poems.

Drama Online introduces new writers alongside the most iconic names in playwriting history, providing contextual and critical background through scholarly works and practical guides. The constantly growing collection meets the full range of teaching needs for theatre studies, literature courses and drama schools. From the epic to the monologue; ensemble to one-person plays; comedy to tragedy; the historical to the contemporary; and from the highly political to the profoundly personal, there is plenty to discover.

Early English Prose Fiction is a balanced and representative survey of fictional prose in English from the period 1500-1700, comprising more than 200 works. The collection explores the rich diversity of prose fiction preceding the emergence of the realist novel as its dominant form. The database includes numerous rare texts inaccessible in print form together with early editions of all the best-known works of the period.

Eighteenth Century Drama features three distinct areas:
Primary source documents- the focus of which is the Larpent collection of plays and Anna Larpent's Diaries; The London Stage Database; and The Biographical Dictionary Database.

Examine complete images of 190 manuscripts of seventeenth and eighteenth-century verse held in the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds. These manuscripts can be read and explored in conjunction with the Brotherton Collection Manuscript Verse Index, which includes first lines, last lines, attribution, author, title, date, length, verse form, content and bibliographic references for over 6,600 poems within the collection.
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. There are also several printed works, with handwritten verse additions.

London Low Life is a full-text searchable resource, containing color digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London. In addition to the digital documents, London Low Life contains a wealth of secondary resources, including a chronology, interactive maps, essays, online galleries and links to other useful websites.

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.

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

Theatre from Alexander Street features performances of works by American, European, Asian, and other worldwide dramatists from the past several centuries. In addition to performances, Theatre also features dozens of documentaries and interviews about theatre, discussing the history of theatre, acting methods, pioneering dramatists and actors, and much more.

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.

This primary-source collection documents the literary, intellectual and cultural milieu of Revolutionary Cuba. Sourced from the archives of the Casa de las Américas in Havana, it provides unprecedented access to files covering more than a thousand writers, thinkers and artists from Cuba and abroad.

Defining Gender provides access to a vast body of original British source material that will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective

History of Disabilities: Disabilities in Society, Seventeenth to Twentieth Century provides historical evidence demonstrating how society has interacted with and regarded individuals considered to have disabilities.

Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare contains eleven major editions from the First Folio of 1623 to the Cambridge edition of 1863–66, twenty-eight separate contemporary printings of individual plays and poems, selected apocrypha and related works. In addition it contains more than one hundred adaptations, sequels and burlesques from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the whole of Bell's Acting Edition of Shakespeare's Plays (1774).

This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.

The First World War portal makes available invaluable primary sources for the study of the Great War, brought together in four thematic modules. From personal collections and rare printed material to military files, artwork and audio-visual files, content highlights the experiences of soldiers, civilians and governments on both sides of a conflict that shook the world.

The Grand Tour is a source of information about daily life in the eighteenth century. This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections. The collection includes letters; diaries and journals; account books; printed guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings and sketches; architectural drawings and maps.

Latino Literature: Poetry, Drama, and Fiction includes more than 100,000 pages of poetry, short fiction, novels, and more than 450 plays. Also part of ProQuest One Literature.

Literary Manuscripts is drawn from the nineteenth century holdings of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library. While the holdings of the Berg extend from 1480 to the present day, its most extensive holdings date from the nineteenth century.

The Stationers’ Company Archive covers 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.

Literary manuscripts, rare printed works, and personal papers of a range of leading literary figures, as well as unique access to a goldmine of rare and obscure literary texts and genres. This collection provides students and scholars of British and American literature invaluable access to a rich seam of resources to support in-depth study in this field.

Full-text e-books of classic works in philosophy, religion, and literature.

Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975: Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest focuses on collections of original archival material from key libraries in Britain and America using printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video clips. This digital resource provides primary sources to enable students and scholars to examine these issues in detail.

Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape offers unique access to rare and priceless literary sources that are indispensible for scholars and students studying William Wordsworth and the Romantic period. The collection offers an insight into the working methods of the poet and the wider social, political and natural environment that shaped much of his work and that of his contemporaries. In addition, this collection makes available the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth through her much celebrated Grasmere Journals, Alfoxden diary, and travel journals.

This resource brings together hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Sources cover a variety of topics including; architecture; art; the British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war.

The third module in Gale’s Women’s Studies Archive series, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922, gives researchers access to over one million pages of female-authored work across a diverse range of both fiction and non-fiction. Sourced from and curated by the American Antiquarian Society, the pre-eminent collector of pre-twentieth century Americana, this archive includes around 5,700 monographs published between 1820 and 1922 in the United States and authored by women.

Women Writers Online is a full-text collection of early women’s writing in English, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University. It includes full transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or inaccessible. The range of genres and topics covered makes it a truly remarkable resource for teaching and research, providing an unparalleled view of women’s literate culture in the early modern period.

Writing by women from the Renaissance through the first half of the 19th century.

Bringing together rare journals printed between c.1685 and 1835, this resource illuminates all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life in five modules. Topics covered are wide-ranging and include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion.

Coverage: 1816 - 1922
The African American Historical Serials Collection features 173 periodicals spanning from 1816 through 1922. The periodicals in this collection include newspapers and magazines, in addition to reports and annuals from various African American organizations, including churches and educational and service institutions.

Alternative Press Index is a bibliographic database of journal, newspaper and magazine articles from hundreds of international alternative, radical and left periodicals. Covering 1991 to the present, it provides access to emerging theories and practices of social change.

This database provides access to 5 consolidated collections containing thousands of American periodicals, published between 1684 and 1912. The individual collections, each covering a particular timeframe, can also be searched independently.

This database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.

The Flash Press covered the seamier aspects of urban life in the mid-19th century. This database provides access to a unique, rare, short-lived and often bawdy form of journalism. The publication dates of the papers run from 1826 to 1876.

Coverage: 1902 - 2016
Art Magazine Collection Archive is valuable to researchers of 20th-century art and architecture as well as those interested in the history of ancient art, interior design, decorative arts and art preservation.

Coverage: 1857 - 2014
The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.

This database provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture

Ebony Magazine Archive covers civil rights, education, entrepreneurship and other social topics with an African-American focus. It includes more than 800 issues providing a broad view of African-American culture from its first issue in 1945 through 2014.

An archival research resource containing the essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to the 21st century. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theater are included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles. Issues have been scanned in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of articles, covers, ads and reviews.

Coverage: 1933-2014
Esquire Magazine Archive delivers coverage of the award-winning American men’s magazine in the areas of politics, men’s fashion, entertainment, fiction and pop culture. It includes more than 900 issues providing a broad view of 20th-Century American thought through cultural and current events.

The backfiles of more than thirty 20th and 21st-century magazines, each aimed at ethnically specific audiences. Titles range from political publications to those concerned with lifestyle, fashion / beauty, culture, and identity. The collection reflects diverse voices and gives insight into cultural perspectives, societal shifts, and historical events. Titles are presented in color page-image format with article-level metadata and searchable text.

The backfile of GQ magazine, from its launch in 1931 (as Apparel Arts) to the present. One of the longest-running, most influential men's magazines, GQ expanded its initial focus on fashion to cover general men’s-interest subjects.

Independent Voices is a digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

Interwar Culture showcases popular and lesser-known periodicals published during the interwar period. With articles covering culture, entertainment, fashion, home and family life, world current affairs, class, social and welfare issues, these historically significant and highly visual magazines provide a rich insight into these dynamic yet turbulent decades, as well as allowing examination of a burgeoning media industry that both shaped and reflected society.
Access to Modules I and II.

Coverage: 1954 - 2015. Archival runs of 26 of the most influential, longest-running serial publications covering LGBT interests. Includes the pre-eminent US and UK titles –The Advocate and Gay Times, respectively. Chronicles more than six decades of the history and culture of the LGBT community.

Discover moods, attitudes, lifestyles, fads, and fortunes of middle-class America from 1924 through 1950.

The Life Magazine Archive consists of cover to cover processing dating back to issue number one in 1936 of the American variety magazine Life, published by Time Inc.

Find articles from over 300 international music periodicals from over 20 countries and view full text of articles from some 80 journals. Also indexes feature music articles, book reviews, and obituaries appearing in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Coverage: 1925 - present
The entire run of the New Yorker, in full text and full color. The New Yorker is a weekly magazine with a mix of reporting on national and international politics and culture, profiles of people, humor and cartoons, fiction and poetry, and reviews and criticism of books, movies, theatre, classical and popular music, television, art, and fashion.

Coverage: 1864 - current. Lists articles from scholarly and popular periodicals covering dance, film, television, theater, opera, stagecraft, broadcast arts, storytelling and more. Some journals include full text.

Search the full text of nearly 400 international humanities and social sciences journals published from 1770 to the 1990s.

The Picture Post Historical Archive comprises the complete run of the Picture Post from its first issue in 1938 to its last in 1957—all digitized from originals.

Continuously published since 1872, Publishers Weekly has consistently been the authoritative voice for US publishing industry news and book reviews, with ongoing coverage of the British book trade. The complete archive includes up to 400,000 book reviews, 5,000 author profiles/interviews, and bestseller lists from 1895 forward. This collection contains 7,860 issues comprising 684,372 pages.

From 1841 to 1992, Punch was the world's most celebrated magazine of wit and satire. From its early years as a campaigner for social justice to its transformation into national icon, Punch played a central role in the formation of British identity—and how the rest of the world saw the British nation.

With approximately 7,900 issues (200,000 pages) from all volumes of Punch from 1841 to 1992, including Almanacks and other special numbers (issues), as well as prefaces, epilogues, indexes, and other specially produced material from the bound volumes, the images in the archive appear as originally published.

Readers’ Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. This resource offers researchers access to information about history, culture, and seminal developments across nearly a century.

Coverage: 1967 - current
The backfile of Rolling Stone, from its launch in 1967 to the present. One of the most influential consumer magazines of the 20th-21st centuries, it initially sought to reflect the cultural, social, and political outlook of a generation of students and young adults. It has been a leading vehicle for rock and popular music journalism, as well as covering wider entertainment topics such as film and popular culture.

The Time Magazine Archive consists of cover to cover processing dating back to issue number one in 1923 of the American popular magazine Time, published by Time Inc.

Coverage: 1902-2014
The complete online fully-searchable edition of the TLS from the first edition in 1902 through 2014. Among over 300,000 reviews, letters, poems, and articles, users will find the contemporary criticism of scholars such as Christopher Ricks and George Steiner, the reviews of award-winning novels of A.S. Byatt and Joyce Carol Oates, and the philosophical works of Thomas Nagel, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. They can also track the discoveries of explorers Redmond O'Hanlon and Robin Hanbury-Tenison.

A searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. Pages, advertisements, covers and fold-outs have been included, with rich indexing enabling researchers to find images by garment type, designer and brand names.

Over 90,000 article records and 11,000 contributor records from 43 important British periodicals. Indexed by scholars with author attributions for articles that were originally published anonymously or pseudonomously.

The Wellesley Index is available within ProQuest’s C19: The Nineteenth Century Index, where it can be cross-searched alongside 17 million records from 10 other major indexes of nineteenth century content, including Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature, Periodicals Index Online, the Nineteenth Century Short-Title Catalogue, the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, and Palmer’s Index to The Times.

An archival research resource comprising the backfiles of leading women's interest consumer magazines. Issues are scanned in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005 and these key primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period. Among the research fields served by this material are gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.

The Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Also includes 19th Century Travel Literature; Travel Narratives and Personal Reminiscences; Travels and Travelers in the 19th Century: Selected Journals and Papers; and more.

Uncover the stories of American military personnel and civilians during the Second World War through their oral histories, correspondence, diaries, photographs, artifacts, and military records. This digital resource offers an insight into the personal experiences of those involved in the conflict, both on the United States home front and on deployment overseas in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, China, Burma, and India.

Letters, diaries and memoirs from the American Civil War, many still in manuscript form. Also includes selected biographies, a bibliography and a chronology of the War.

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.

Primary sources that document the cultural history of the American South from the Southern point of view. Includes diaries, autobiographies, travel accounts, titles about slavery, and regional literature. Emphasis is on the 19th century.

East India Company offers access to a unique collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London. Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types, this resource charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947.

Correspondence of the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas, and Asia from the early 17th century to the mid-19th century. The database contains over 80,000 letters and 10,000 correspondents. 

The Grand Tour is a source of information about daily life in the eighteenth century. This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections. The collection includes letters; diaries and journals; account books; printed guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings and sketches; architectural drawings and maps.

Around 150,000 stories are assembled here from life oral history interviews with 2,700 historically significant African Americans including politicians, religious leaders, athletes, musicians, civil rights activists, soldiers, and many more.

Explore the history of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947, through the wonderfully rich and diverse manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland.

This resource contains full color images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise these family letter collections along with full text searchable transcripts from the printed editions, where they are available. The original images and the transcriptions can be viewed side by side.

Searchable full text database of American and Canadian women's letters and diaries written from the Colonial period through 1950.

Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century is a compilation of rare and unique archival collections covering a wide range of fringe political movements. With an extensive scope of content focused on political extremism and radical thought, this archive is one of the first digital archives covering such a broad assortment of both far-right and left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, which allow researchers to explore unorthodox social and political movements in new and innovative ways and to understand what impact they have had on today’s society.

This collection is a unique resource for the study of the era of the American civil rights movement. Included here are transcriptions of close to 700 interviews with those who made history in the struggles for voting rights, against discrimination in housing, for the desegregation of the schools, to expose racism in hiring, in defiance of police brutality, and to address poverty in the African American communities.

Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape offers unique access to rare and priceless literary sources that are indispensible for scholars and students studying William Wordsworth and the Romantic period. The collection offers an insight into the working methods of the poet and the wider social, political and natural environment that shaped much of his work and that of his contemporaries. In addition, this collection makes available the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth through her much celebrated Grasmere Journals, Alfoxden diary, and travel journals.

Women’s Voices and Life Writing, 1600-1968 brings together diaries and oral histories for the study of the lives and experiences of less well-known women, told through their own words. Featuring content from both regional and national archives across the UK and Ireland, users can explore the life course of hundreds of individuals from a diverse range of backgrounds.

Women and Social Movements, International is a collection of primary materials. Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life.