English and Literature Subject Guide
Electronic Databases | Free Internet Resources | Print Materials
Welcome! The purpose of this guide is to help you find books, journal articles, databases, websites, and other useful information relevant to the University of Mississippi English programs.
Electronic Databases
Subject Specific Databases
MLA Bibliography (Modern Language Association Bibliography)
The primary resource for scholarly journal articles on literature and language, many of which are full-text.
Literary Reference Center
A comprehensive literary reference database, which provides users with a broad spectrum of reference information from antiquity to the present day.
Literature Online
Full-text of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama, and prose up to 1900.
NovelList
A fiction database that provides subject heading access, reviews, annotations, and much more for over 135,000 fiction titles
Early English Books Online
Contains virtually every work printed in English from 1473-1700. These publications are presented as page images, giving users an idea of what the original looked like.
Women Writers Online
Collects works by women before 1850 works published in English, or in English translation.
Dictionary of Old English Corpus
Full-text searching of a nearly complete collection of surviving old English texts.
General Databases
JSTOR
Contains full-text journal articles in many fields from the 19th century up to about 3-5 years ago. This is an excellent resource for older articles.
Academic Search Premier
Includes full-text articles from scholarly journals across many fields of study as well as book reviews from popular magazines and newspapers.
Project Muse
Full-text articles from more than 200 scholarly journals in history, humanities, social sciences and science.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index
Multidisciplinary database covering citations in journal literature from the arts and humanities. No full-text articles, but an excellent tool for bibliographic research.
Humanities International Complete
Wide-ranging database with some full text covering all aspects of the humanities.
Free Internet Resources
Mississippi Writers Page
A page maintained by the English Department here at Ole Miss with an enormous amount of information on Mississippi literature and writers.
Project Gutenberg
The oldest digital library in existence, which includes the full texts of more than 25,000 public-domain works in electronic formats.
Shakespeare Quartos Archive
Provides free digital access to the early, rare quarto editions of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet with side-by-side text comparisons and full text searches.
NINES: Nineteenth-century Scholarship Online
NINES is a scholarly organization devoted to forging links between the material archive of the nineteenth century and the digital research environment of the twenty-first, and offers a searchable database of articles, many of which are free.
Voice of the Shuttle
A comprehensive list of high-quality English literature web sites. Maintained by Alan Liu, an English professor at UC Santa Barbara.
Women and Gender Studies: Literature and Culture Web Sites
Links to full-text criticism, bibliographies, and electronic magazines. Maintained by the Women's Studies Section of the Association of College and Research
Libraries.
ORB: The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies
ORB includes an encyclopedia, a textbook library, e-texts, and links, and is sponsored by medieval scholars and professors from the U.S., Canada, and England.
E-Server
The EServer is an arts and humanities e-publishing co-op based at Iowa State University where hundreds of writers, editors and scholars gather to publish over 35,000 works free of charge.
Print Materials
Subject Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
PN 81 .J54 2005
A collection of lengthy, detailed essays and analytical biographies of major literary criticism figures that assumes a solid groundwork in literary studies. Best for upper-level literature majors and graduate students.
The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms
PN 44.5 .M86 2003
A great place to find basic definitions of literary terms, each illustrated with an example from literature
Encyclopedia of the Novel
PN 41 .E487 1998
Entries on novelists, specific novels, types of novels, and critical/theoretical approaches to novels, with suggestions for further reading at the end of each entry.
Oxford Companion to African-American Literature
[Reference] PS 153 .N5 O96 1997
An invaluable resource for definitions and explanations of anything related to African-American literature. Also available as an ebook.
Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
PN 41 .M42 1995
Very brief definitions of terms, authors, and works of literature without analysis. Good for quick definitions of concrete terms.
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms
[Reference] PN 81 .E43 1993
Detailed, three-part work featuring detailed explanations of major termsas well as medium-length biographies and shorter definitions. Geared toward literature majors and graduate students.
Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and Theory
[Reference] PN 41 .H36 1992
Features medium-length definitions with excellent bibliographies, ideal for beginning literature majors.
Biography
American Women Writers
[Reference] PS147 .A42 2000
Short biographical entries with good bibliographies and lists of works by each author.
American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies
PS 129
Lengthy but accessible essays that discuss the lives of American authors and several of their works or common themes.
British Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies
[Reference] PR 85 .B688
The British counterpart to the American Writers volume, with the same format.
Literature and Literary Criticism
Literary Collections at Ole Miss Archives and Special Collections
A listing of rare and unique literary items and collections available through the Special Collections department of the J. D. Williams Library.
Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800
[Reference] PN 86 .L56
Profiles of the greatest writers and thinkers of the late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Restoration periods, providing full-text or excerpted criticism from books, magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals.
Contemporary Literary Criticism
[Reference] PN 771 .C59
Covers authors who are currently active or who died after December 31, 1959, providing profiles of creative and nonfiction writers with criticism from a variety of sources.
Black Literature Criticism
[Reference] PS 153 .N5 B556 1992
Similar to the other litarary criticism collections, with excerpts from criticism of the most significant works of black authors over the past 200 years.
Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism
[Reference] PN 761 .N5
A convenient source of commentary on the careers and works of acclaimed poets, novelists, short story writers, dramatists and philosophers who died between 1800 and 1899.
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism
[Reference] PN 771 .G27
Presents substantial excerpts from the best criticism on the major literary figures and nonfiction writers, including novelists, poets, playwrights and literary theorists from 1900 to 1999
Shakespearean Criticism
[Reference] PR 2965 .S43 1984
A detailed series that provides comprehensive coverage on critical interpretations of shakespeare's works.
Short Story Criticism
[Reference] PN 3373 .S56
This series of books presents critical views on the most widely studied writers of short fiction.
Masterplots II -- Poetry Series
[Reference] PN 1110.5 .M37
Describes poems and poets over the past 1300 years, with brief entries that summarize and analyze many important works. The appendixes include a bibliography of book-length studies on many of the authors included.
