To find a single work or a collection by an author, first try searching by TITLE or by KEYWORD. If that doesn't work, try searching by AUTHOR.
To find works about an author, such as general criticism, criticism of a specific work, or biographies, search the author's name as a SUBJECT.
Additionally, many authors have individual bibliographies devoted to their lives and work in which you'll find references to books and articles containing biography and criticism. This can save you some time in tracking down information.
The library has purchased many databases which include the full texts of books -- some reproduce early American and British imprints; some are recently published books in print, now available online. Some are primary sources -- the texts themselves -- some are secondary sources -- criticism of the texts. You can also search Google Book Search, though often the full text of the book is not available.
Early American Imprints 1639-1800 (Evans)
Books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the renowned bibliography by Charles Evans
Early American Imprints 1801-1819 (Shaw-Shoemaker)
Books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the distinguished bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker
Early English Books Online
Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
Ebook Central
Full text of thousands of books from hundreds of publishers, some of which we will have in print on the shelves as well.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
This collection is an ongoing project based on The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). Includes English-language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800 of every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
A collection of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages from the 19th century. See especially European Literature 1790-1840: the Corvey Collection .
Oxford Scholarship Online
Full text of hundreds of Oxford books in many disciplines. Choose the link for Literature on the left to search only books and literature Oxford describes its literature collection as follows: The Oxford University Press Literature list has enormous range, from Medieval (Blamires, Cooper, Gaunt, O'Donoghue) to Twentieth Century and all-but Contemporary (Corcoran, Gillis, Eaglestone, Robinson), with a powerful grouping in the Renaissance/Early Modern (Hughes, Lockwood, Pollard, Rhodes, Rosenblatt, Stevenson, Walker for example). The titles largely address the literary from the perspective of history, and in that contextual sense they are significantly interdisciplinary.
Women's Writers Project
The WWP provides the full text of works by pre-Victorian women writers.
