Research Guides: English Language and Literature: Reference

General Reference

These tools will help you find out background information on authors, literary history, and more.

New Cambridge History of English Literature
Comprehensive overviews of periods of English Literature, beginning with Early Medieval and leading to the Twentieth-Century.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Detailed information on key figures in British history.
English Letters
Contains the works and letters of authors such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Alfred Tennyson.

Oxford Reference Online Search Box Example

Guides

The Literary Research Guide is a selective, annotated guide to reference sources essential to the study of British literature, literatures of the United States, other literatures in English, and related topics.

The MLA Directory of Periodicals will help you discover publishing information for journals in the field of literature, language, and folklore.

MLA Directory of Periodicals This link opens in a new window
- Find addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail addresses, frequency of publication, descriptions of scope, circulation figures, subscription prices, advertising information, links to online content, peer review, and submission guidelines for journals and book series that are included in the MLA International Bibliography.
- Permitted Uses

Literary Research Guide by James L. Harner
Call Number: 8th Floor PR 83 H34 2008
ISBN: 9780873528085
Publication Date: 2008

Dictionaries

The Oxford English Dictionary online is an important resource to consult to help you:

define words
discover the etymology (origins) of a word in the English language
understand how the meaning of words has changed over time

Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
- Includes meaning, history, etymology, and pronunciation of words
- English language words from 1150 to the present
- Permitted Uses

The Middle English Compendium
Offers access to three resources - the online Middle English Dictionary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English Prose, and a Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse.
A Handbook to Literature
(print book): provides an alphabetical listing of more than 2,000 important terms and facts in literature, linguistics, rhetoric, criticism, printing, bookselling, and information technology. Find it on the 8th Floor of the library, call # PN 41 H355 2009.
Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
provides clear, concise, and often witty definitions of the most troublesome literary terms from abjection to zeugma.