Ellis Library Sourcepack for English 4240/7240
Restoration and 18th Century English Literature
Instructor: Devoney Looser
Librarian: Anne Barker

Background Information & Quick Reference Tools


Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment Ref. B802.E53 2003
A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain DA 480.C58 2002

Encyclopedia of Romanticism: Culture in Britain 1780s-1830s
DA529.E53 1992
Encyclopedia of the Novel Ref. PN41.E53 1998 (From LION: Literature Online.)
Feminism in Literature: A Gale Critical Companion (Part of the Gale Virtual Reference Library.)
Feminist Companion to Literature in English Ref. PN471.F45 1990
Oxford Companion to English Literature Ref. PR19.O94 2000
Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English  (Part of the Gale Virtual Reference Library.)
An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers Ref. PR111.E54 1998
Dictionary of Biblical Allusions in English Literature Ref. PR145.F8
Dictionary of Classical Reference in English Poetry Ref. PR508.C68 S63 1984
English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century, 1700-1740 (Oxford History of English Literature, vol. 7) PR445.D6
The Mid-Eighteenth Century (Oxford History of English Literature, vol. 8) PR 441.B83 1979
English Literature, 1789-1815 (Oxford History of English Literature, vol. 9) PR447.R4 1963
The English Novel 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles Ref. PR851.E52 2000
An Oxford companion to the Romantic Age : British culture, 1776-1832 PR447 .R64 1999

Biographical Sources
Basic biographical information can be found in the following sources.  For more detailed biographies, use the MERLIN catalog to do a subject search on your person's name, putting last name first.  Scroll down the resulting list of subject headings to find biographies.
LION: Literature Online  
Click on "Find Authors" and type in your author's name, last name first. 
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Ref. DA28 .O95 2004
Dictionary of Literary Biography
Ref. PN451.D43  
Use the Literary Index or check the index in the last volume of this series to see which volume contains information on your author. The DLB also gives nice lists of the authors' works.

Criticism
Criticism may be published in books or as articles in journals.

Use the MERLIN and MOBIUS catalogs to locate books of criticism about an author or topic. 
Do a subject search on the author's name and scroll to an appropriate subheading. 
For example: Austen, Jane--Criticism and Interpretation.

The keyword search searches for words in author, title, subject headings, tables of contents and notes all at once.  You can use various search options to make your search more precise and to sort the results in various ways. You may expand your search to include all MOBIUS libraries. Materials requested through MOBIUS are usually delivered in about 48 hours.
If you haven't found enough, use WorldCat to search libraries throughout North America. 

Finding criticism in journal articles is usually a two step process. 
1) Use the following databases and indexes to see what articles have been published and where.  If you're looking for articles from a specific time period, be sure to use an index or database that covers publications from that time. 
2) If the full text of the article is not provided in the database, follow the Find it @ MU link to get the article elsewhere.

 The major literary databases are: 
MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures
1963-present online.
ABELL: Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature

1920-2003 online.
You can search the MLA Bibliography and ABELL simultaneously through LION:Literature Online

Although the MLA  and ABELL specialize in literature, both suffer from a delay in publishing.  
Supplement these specialized indexes with searches in less specialized but more current databases:
Academic Search Premier
(Contains the full-text of selected journals.) 
Article1st
Web of Science

You may also want to try databases that focus on other disciplines or types of publications:
Historical Abstracts
Sociological Abstracts
Alternative Press Index
GenderWatch

Women Studies Abstracts (Ref. Z7962 .W65)

Print bibliographies provide an overview of scholarly work.
Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 3rd ed. Ref. PR83.N45 1999
New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature Ref. Z2011.N45
Year's Work in English Studies PE58.E6
Eighteenth-Century Studies PR441.E33 (1967-2001 in print; 1967- available electronically)
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture CB411.S8
Studies in English Literature PR1.S74 (1961-2000 in print; 1999- available electronically)
A Guide to Serial Bibliographies for Modern Literature (Ref. PN695.W67 1995) lists many additional specialized bibliographies.

To locate older critical materials, use the following databases and reference tools.
Index to English Literary Periodicals, 1681 to 1941 (Microfilm of these periodicals is available in Special Collections.)
Index to Book Reviews in England, 1749-1774 Ref. Z1035.A1 F67 1990
Index to Book Reviews in England, 1775-1800 Ref. Z1035.A1 F672 1997
Literary Reviews in British Periodicals, 1789-1797 Ref. Z2013.W36 1979
Literary Reviews in British Periodicals, 1798-1820 Ref. Z2013.W36
Literary Reviews in British Periodicals, 1821-1826 Z2013.W36 1977
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index
19th Century Masterfile (1802-1906)
The American Periodicals Series Online
(1740-1900)
The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature (1890-) (Ref. )
International Index to Periodicals (1907-1965) (Ref. AI3.R49)
Literary Index to American Magazines 1850-1900 Ref. PS 214.W38 1996
Literary Index to American Magazines, 1815-1865 Ref. Z6513.W44

The Literary Index indexes the many Gale literature criticism sets. These books excerpt literary criticism from all periods on individual authors.


Primary Sources and Guides to Primary Sources

LION: Literature Online provides online texts of many English and American literary works with a search mechanism to facilitate text analysis.
From the main LION menu, choose Search Texts to search for words and phrases within a specific work or group of works. The advanced search feature allows you to define a corpus by period, literary movement, author's gender or ethnicity, and other criteria.

ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online provides the full text of works published in England in the 18th century.

The American Periodicals Series Online (1740-1900) contains the full text of journals and magazines published in the American colonies and United States, 1740-1900.

C19: The Nineteenth Century Index 19th Century Masterfile (1802-1906)

Early American Imprints, Series I  contains the full text of books published in America 1639-1800.
Although this covers only American publications, these are often reprints of materials originally published in Britain.

The Google Books project indexes thousands of books and allows viewing of books that are in the public domain, including most books published prior to 1925.

Through MERLIN, using the advanced search option

limit by date

include in your search s: sources 

include in your search s: sources and nth cent* e.g., s: sources and 16th cent* and marriage

include in your search s: early works and nth cent* e.g., s: early works and 16th cent* and marriage

include in your search s: personal narratives

MERLIN lists not only printed books, but also links to electronic books, and many items contained in large microfilm collections. Microforms and the equipment needed to view, print, or scan the materials are found in Special Collections. See the guide to the Microform Collection for detailed information on the microfilm sets, including some that are not analyzed in the MERLIN Catalog.

The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) lists works of all sorts published prior to 1800 in English, many of which we have on microfilm. The MERLIN Catalog includes records for the titles held by MU and we can borrow others through ILL@MU.

The Index to English Literary Periodicals indexes articles published in early English journals and magazines contained in the microfilm set English Literary Periodicals 1681-1914
Note: This Index is a work in progress, so you may also want to use the guide Accessing English Literary Periodicals ( SPEC-R PN5124.P4 A25 1981). See also the Chronological Listing of Periodicals by Decade.

For visual resources, try the British Library Images Online. Use the advanced search option and put the century in the "production details" box. Google Images can also be useful, although not as precise.

Collections of Internet Resources
Literary Resources on the Net
Voice of the Shuttle
LION: Literature Online contains a database of literary web sites. From the main LION menu, choose Search Criticism and Reference, then WWW.

Guides to Research

James L. Harner. Literary Research Guide: An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies (Ref. PR83.H34 2000)

Michael J. Marcuse. A Reference Guide for English Studies. (Ref. PR56.M37 1990)
James K. Bracken. Reference Works in British and American Literature (Ref. Z2011.B74 1998)
This SOURCEPACK is a service of Ellis Library