LibGuides: Literature: Getting Started

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Welcome to the Literature Guide. This guide contains information to help you with any of your Literature Classes, no matter the subject. If you have questions, please email us at library@rosemont.edu.

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Featured Resources

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (LOA #333) by Kevin Young (Editor)
Call Number: PS591 .N4 A37 2020
ISBN: 9781598536669
Publication Date: 2020-10-20
SummaryAcross a turbulent history, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. One of the great American art forms, African American poetry encompasses many kinds of verse: formal, experimental, vernacular, lyric, and protest. The anthology opens with moving testaments to the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, as enslaved people voice their passionate resistance to slavery. This volume captures the power and beauty of this diverse tradition and its challenge to American poetry and culture. Here are all the significant movements and currents: the nineteenth-century Francophone poets known as Les Cenelles, the Chicago Renaissance that flourished around Gwendolyn Brooks, the early 1960s Umbra group, and the more recent work of writers affiliated with Cave Canem and the Dark Noise Collective. Here too are poems of singular, hard-to-classify figures: the enslaved potter David Drake, the allusive modernist Melvin B. Tolson, the Cleveland-based experimentalist Russell Atkins. The volume also features biographies of each poet and notes that illuminate cultural references and allusions to historical events-- adapted from dust jacket.
The Anatomy of Influence by Harold Bloom
Call Number: Circulating Stacks PN81 .B5449 2011. Also an ebook
ISBN: 9780300167603
Publication Date: 2011-05-03
SummaryBloom leads readers through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years.For more than half a century, Bloom has shared his profound knowledge of the written word with students and readers. In this, his most comprehensive and accessible study of influence, Bloom leads us through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years. The result is "a critical self-portrait", a sustained meditation on a life lived with and through the great works of the Western canon: Why has influence been my lifelong obsessive concern? Why have certain writers found me and not others? What is the end of a literary life? Featuring extended analyses of Bloom's most cherished poets - Shakespeare, Whitman, and Crane - as well as inspired appreciations of Emerson, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Ashbery, and others, "The Anatomy of Influence" adapts Bloom's classic work "The Anxiety of Influence" to show us what great literature is, how it comes to be, and why it matters. -- Back cover.
A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature by Jacob Edmond
Call Number: EBOOK
ISBN: 9780823242610
Publication Date: 2012
Summary"Why is our world still understood through binary oppositions-East and West, local and global, common and strange-that ought to have crumbled with the Berlin Wall? What might literary responses to the events that ushered in our era of globalization tell us about the rhetorical and historical underpinnings of these dichotomies? In A Common Strangeness, Jacob Edmond exemplifies a new, multilingual and multilateral approach to literary and cultural studies. He begins with the entrance of China into multinational capitalism and the appearance of the Parisian flaneur in the writings of a Chinese poet exiled in Auckland, New Zealand. Moving among poetic examples in Russian, Chinese, and English, he then traces a series of encounters shaped by economic and geopolitical events from the Cultural Revolution, perestroika, and the June 4 massacre to the collapse of the Soviet Union, September 11, and the invasion of Iraq. In these encounters, Edmond tracks a shared concern with strangeness through which poets contested old binary oppositions as they reemerged in new, post-Cold War forms."--Project Muse
A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture by Herbert F. Tucker (Editor)
Call Number: PR461 .C597 1999
ISBN: 0631204636
Publication Date: 1999-02-05
Summary"Thirty leading Victorianists from around the world collaborate here in a multidimensional analysis of the breadth and sweep of modern Britain's longest, unruliest literary epoch." "Its topical spectrum, precision of focus, and accessible style keep the book available for ready consultation, while an index and network of cross-references encourage further study. At the same time, when read sequentially the book renders a textured and polyphonic image, by diverse hands exemplifying diverse standpoints, of the Victorian imagination: a manifold cultural force that notoriously eludes near summary, yet bequeathed to our own day a recognizable tradition with which we are destined to struggle - as scholars, as modern people - for some time to come."--Jacket.
The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages by Mary Carruthers
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9780191654565
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
This book articulates a new approach to medieval aesthetic values, emphasizing the sensory and emotional basis of all medieval arts, their love of play and fine craftsmanship, of puzzles, and of strong contrasts. Written for a general educated audience as well as students and scholars in the field, it offers an understanding of medieval literature and art that is rooted in the perceptions and feelings of ordinary life, made up of play and laughter as well as serious work. Medieval stylistic values of variety, sweetness, good taste, and ordinary beauty are grounded in classical and medieval biological theories of change and flux in the human body, not only in symbolism and theology. The book will appeal to all lovers of medieval arts, literature, architecture, music, and painting, as well as serious students of religion and the language of beauty.
How Fiction Works by James Wood
Call Number: Circulating Stacks PN3355 .W66 2008
ISBN: 9780312428471
Publication Date: 2009-07-21
SummaryWhat makes a story a story? What is style? What's the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works, the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely--from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings--Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step.--From publisher description.
Into the World's Great Heart by Edna St. Vincent Millay; Timothy F. Jackson (Editor); Holly Peppe (Foreword by)
Call Number: FAC PS 3525.I495 A6 2023
ISBN: 9780300245608
Publication Date: 2023-04-25
An annotated selection of the letters of the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay, from childhood through the last year of her life

Throughout her life, Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote hundreds of letters, which together create a colorful tapestry of her inner life. This selection, based on archival research, represents Millay’s correspondence from 1900, when she was eight, until 1950, the last year of her life. Through her letters, readers encounter the vast range of Millay’s interests, including world literature, music, and horse racing, as well as her commitment to gender equality and social justice.

This collection, edited by Timothy F. Jackson, includes previously unpublished correspondence, as well as letters containing early versions of poems, revealing new dimensions in Millay’s creative process and influences. It is enriched by Jackson’s thoughtful introduction and notes, plus a foreword by Millay’s literary executor, Holly Peppe.

Millay’s observations on her inner life and the world around her—which speak to contemporary concerns as well—add to our understanding of American literature in the first half of the twentieth century.
Literary Research Guide: An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies by James L. Harner
Call Number: Reference REF PR83 .H34 2008
ISBN: 9780873528085
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
"James L. Harner's Literary Research Guide evaluates important reference materials in English studies. In the new edition James L. Harner has added entries describing resources published since May 2001 and has revised nearly half the entries from the fourth edition. The fifth edition contains more than 1,000 entries, which discuss an additional 1,555 books, articles, and electronic resources and cite 723 reviews. This edition also features a new section on cultural studies."--Jacket.
Slow Reading in a Hurried Age by David Mikics
Call Number: Ebook
ISBN: 9780674728318
Publication Date: 2013-10-08
SummarySlow Reading in a Hurried Age is a practical guide for anyone who yearns for a more meaningful and satisfying reading experience, and who wants to sharpen reading skills and improve concentration. The author demonstrates exactly how the tried-and-true methods of slow reading can provide a more immersive, fulfilling experience. He begins with fourteen preliminary rules for slow reading and shows us how to apply them. The rules are followed by excursions into key genres, including short stories, novels, poems, plays, and essays. Reading, Mikics says, should not be drudgery, and not mere escape either, but a way to live life at a higher pitch.

Humanities E-Book Project This link opens in a new window
A digital collection of over 5000 full-text, cross-searchable titles in the humanities offered by the American Council of Learned Societies. Subjects include global histories, history of art and architecture, literature, dance, film and media studies, religion, gender, and sexuality.
Click here for support.
eBook Academic Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides access to thousands of ebooks in a wide variety of academic disciplines. Available through EBSCOhost.
Click here for support.

Reviews

These reviews contain some material that is freely available.

London Review of Books (https://www.lrb.co.uk/).

The London Review of Books is Europe’s leading magazine of culture and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from art and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy, not to mention fiction and poetry. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.

As well as book reviews, memoir and reportage, each issue also contains poems, reviews of exhibitions and movies, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to every piece we’ve ever published in our digital archive. Our new website also features a regular blog, an online store, podcasts and short documentaries, plus video highlights from our events programmes on both sides of the Atlantic, and at the London Review Bookshop.

Times Literary Supplement (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/).

The TLS was born in January 1902. Its first ever front page bashfully stated: “during the Parliamentary session Literary Supplements to ‘The Times’ will appear as often as may be necessary in order to keep abreast with the more important publications of the day”. Fortunately, that question of necessity was not left in the hands of literary journalists (who, we can imagine, might occasionally push for a holiday or two), and the title became a weekly one. A few years later, the TLS split entirely from The Times.

Since then, we have prided ourselves on being the world’s leading journal for literature and ideas. Every week, we publish book reviews, book extracts, essays and poems from leading writers from around the world. We cover far more than just literature, featuring major articles on subjects from anthropology to zoology, philosophy to politics, comedy to psychology. We are the only major English-language publication to review books published in other languages, including French, Spanish, German, Italian and Russian. Each week, we also review the latest in fiction, film, opera, theatre, dance, radio and television. Our guiding principle for the selection of pieces remains twofold: is it interesting; and is it beautifully written?

New York Review of Books (https://www.nybooks.com/).

The New York Review of Books has established itself, in Esquire’s words, as “the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.” The New York Review began during the New York publishing strike of 1963, when its founding editors, Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein, and their friends, decided to create a new kind of magazine—one in which the most interesting and qualified minds of our time would discuss current books and issues in depth. Just as importantly, it was determined that the Review should be an independent publication; it began life as an independent editorial voice and it remains independent today.

African American Review
As the official publication of the Division on Black American Literature and Culture of the Modern Language Association, the quarterly journal African American Review promotes a lively exchange among writers and scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences who hold diverse perspectives on African American literature and culture. Between 1967 and 1976, the journal appeared under the title Negro American Literature Forum and for the next fifteen years was titled Black American Literature Forum. In 1992, African American Review changed its name for a third time and expanded its mission to include the study of a broader array of cultural formations. Currently, the journal prints essays on African American literature, theatre, film, the visual arts, and culture generally; interviews; poetry; fiction; and book reviews. AAR has received three American Literary Magazine Awards for Editorial Content in the 1990s.
Arthuriana
Arthuriana is the quarterly for the International Arthurian Society-North American Branch. This peer-reviewed journal considers all aspects of Arthurian and chivalric cultures from the Middle Ages to the current moment. Arthuriana publishes work by the most respected and innovative scholars in these fields as well as book reviews, brief notices on a wide range of medieval and Arthurian subjects, and formal notices of the activities of the International Arthurian Society.
Christianity and Literature
Christianity & Literature is devoted to the scholarly exploration of how literature engages Christian thought, experience, and practice. The journal presupposes no particular theological orientation but respects an orthodox understanding of Christianity as a historically defined faith. Contributions appropriate for submission should demonstrate a keen awareness of the author's own critical assumptions in addressing significant issues of literary history, interpretation, and theory. For more than fifty years, Christianity & Literature has served as the primary public face of the Conference on Christianity and Literature; it is a member of CELJ, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. In the past two decades, under the leadership of, first, Robert Snyder and, then, Paul Contino and Maire Mullins, it has won awards for its scholarly excellence. In the summer of 2015, Mark Eaton began his first term as edtior. Each issue of the journal contains peer-reviewed scholarly articles, book reviews, poetry, and news and announcements of interest to CCL members.
Classical Philology
[Note: Scroll down resulting page to read issues.] Research articles, essays, book reviews and lists of books received on all aspects of the languages, literatures, history and life of classical antiquity.
College Literature
College Literature publishes original and innovative scholarly research across the various periods, intellectual fields, and geographical locations of Anglophone and comparative literary studies. The journal is committed to the renewal of critique as a historically determinate practice, and to questioning existing disciplinary frameworks and challenging new critical orthodoxies. It aims to investigate the involvement of literature and critical practice in the broader parameters of public debate organized by such enduring (though mutating) political demarcations as that between private and public, the national and the global, and the cultural and the political.
Comparative Literature
Comparative Literature welcomes articles that explore important issues of literary history not confined to a single national literature. We also encourage submissions that address significant problems in literary theory. Our editors and editorial board are sympathetic to a broad range of theoretical and critical approaches.
Comparative literature studies.
Comparative Literature Studies publishes comparative critical essays that range across the rich traditions of Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and that examine the literary relations between East and West, North and South. Articles may also explore movements, themes, forms, the history of ideas, relations between authors, the foundations of criticism and theory, and issues of language and translation. Each issue of CLS also contains numerous book reviews of the most important comparative literature monographs and essay collections.
ELH (English Literary History)
Since 1934 ELH has consistently published superior studies that interpret the conditions affecting major works in English and American literature. The importance of historical continuity in the discipline of letters remains a central concern for ELH, but the journal does not seek to sponsor particular methods or aims. Over the years, ELH has consistently maintained its high standards, publishing articles with an intelligent mix of historical, critical, and theoretical concerns.
L'Esprit Createur
L’Esprit Createur is devoted to the study of French and Francophone literature, film, and culture. Covering all periods from the medieval to the contemporary, L’Esprit Créateur represents the major fields of the discipline of French and Francophone Studies, including literature and literary history, postcolonial studies, gender studies, film and visual studies, ecocriticism, critical theory, and cultural studies.
Featuring articles in English and in French, L’Esprit Créateur publishes work from a broad diversity of critical approaches.
For more than 50 years, the scholarship appearing in the journal’s pages has shaped the field of French and Francophone Studies.
Essays in Criticism
[Note: Scroll down the resulting page to read issues.] Founded in 1951, by F. W. Bateson, Essays in Criticism soon achieved world-wide circulation, and is today regarded as one of Britain's most distinguished journals of literary criticism. Essays in Criticism covers the whole field of English Literature from the time of Chaucer to the present day. The journal maintains that originality in interpretation must be allied to the best scholarly standards. Moreover, whilst always pursuing new directions and responding to new developments, Essays in Criticism has kept a balance between the constructive and the sceptical, giving the journal particular value at a time when criticism has become so diversified. In addition to the articles, Essays in Criticism has lengthy and searching book reviews, and the 'Critical Opinion' section offers topical discussion on a wide range of literary issues.
Fairy Tale Review
Founded in 2005 by Kate Bernheimer, Fairy Tale Review is an annual literary journal dedicated to publishing new fairy tales and to helping raise public awareness of fairy tales as a diverse, innovative art form. Work from Fairy Tale Review has been selected for inclusion in The O. Henry Prize Stories Anthology, Best New American Voices, Best American Fantasy, and listed as “Notable” in Best American Short Stories, among other honors. Fairy Tale Review is edited by MFA students enrolled in the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The Hudson Review
Founded in 1948, The Hudson Review deals with the area where literature bears on the intellectual life of the time and on diverse aspects of American culture. The magazine serves as a major forum for new writers and for the exploration of new developments in literature and the arts. By consistently maintaining its critical standards and a commitment to excellent writing, The Hudson Review has made a significant impact on the international literary climate. It has a distinguished record of publishing little-known or undiscovered writers, many of whom have become major literary figures. Each issue contains a wide range of material including: poetry, fiction, essays on literary and cultural topics, book reviews, and chronicles covering film, theatre, dance, music and art. As well as covering the American cultural scene, the magazine seeks to explore arts internationally through its regular reports from abroad and translations of contemporary writers from other countries.
Journal of Modern Literature
More than three decades after its founding, the Journal of Modern Literature remains the most important and widely recognized scholarly serial in the field of modern literature. Each issue emphasizes scholarly studies of literature in all languages, as well as related arts and cultural artifacts, from 1900 to the present. International in its scope its contributors include scholars from Australia, England, France, Italy, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Spain.
Journal of the History of Ideas
Since its inception in 1940, the Journal of the History of Ideas (JHI) has served as a medium for the publication of research in intellectual history that is of common interest to scholars and students in a wide range of fields. It is committed to encouraging diversity in regional coverage, chronological range, and methodological approaches. JHI defines intellectual history expansively and ecumenically, including the histories of philosophy, of literature and the arts, of the natural and social sciences, of religion, and of political thought. It also encourages scholarship at the intersections of cultural and intellectual history -- for example, the history of the book and of visual culture.
Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal
Mosaic is a quarterly journal published by the University of Manitoba that brings insights from a wide variety of disciplines to bear on the theoretical, practical, and cultural dimensions of literary works. Some essays highlight the interrelationship between literature and other disciplines, cultural climates, topical issues, recent discoveries, or divergent art forms and modes of creative activity. Mosaic’s essays also explore emerging trends in theory and literary criticism and address the nature and scope of interdisciplinary study itself. Of the four issues the journal publishes each year, at least one is a special issue that addresses a topic of contemporary concern.
Renaissance Quarterly
Renaissance Quarterly welcomes essays of various lengths, up to a maximum of 15,000 words (including notes, bibliography, and any appendices). We publish articles in all the fields represented by the RSA. Geographically, the journal’s reach includes Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and beyond. Chronologically, the journal focuses on the period 1300-1700 as well as the afterlife of the Renaissance in later periods across cultural production. We seek essays that address an interdisciplinary readership and, ideally, offer theoretical and methodological insights across subfields. Articles should locate their arguments within both specific and broader historical contexts, and explicitly draw their larger implications.
The Sewanee Review
Having never missed an issue in more than a century, the Sewanee Review is the oldest continuously published literary quarterly in the country. Begun in 1892 at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, the Review is devoted to American and British fiction, poetry, and reviews – as well as essays in criticism and reminiscence. In this venerable journal you'll find the direct literary line to Flannery O'Connor, Robert Penn Warren, Hart Crane, Anne Sexton, Harry Crews, and Fred Chappell – not to mention Andre Dubus and Cormac McCarthy, whose first stories were published in the Sewanee Review. Each issue is a brilliant seminar, an unforgettable dinner party, an all-night swap of stories and passionate stances.
Texas Studies in Language and Literature
An established journal of literary criticism publishing substantial essays reflectinga variety of critical approaches and covering all periods of literary history.
Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature
Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of the relations between women and writing of every period and in all languages. Publishing articles, notes, archival research, and reviews, Tulsa Studies seeks path-breaking literary, historicist, and theoretical work by both established and emerging scholars.
Victorian studies
For more than half a century, Victorian Studies has been devoted to the study of British culture of the Victorian age. It regularly includes interdisciplinary articles on comparative literature, social and political history, and the histories of education, philosophy, fine arts, economics, law, and science, as well as review essays and an extensive book review section. Victorian Studies is the official publication of the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA).

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Academic Search contains a wealth of essential material for learning and detailed research in a single, easily searched database, with the full text of articles from over 3,700 publications, and indexing and abstracts from nearly 5,300 publications.
Click here for support.
CREDO Reference This link opens in a new window
Electronic collection of over 1,000 reference titles including encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks. Subjects cover all major fields including art, literature, history, social sciences, law, psychology, religion, philosophy, business, science, medicine and more.
Click here for support.
eBook Academic Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides access to thousands of ebooks in a wide variety of academic disciplines. Available through EBSCOhost.
Click here for support.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines. For most publications, full text coverage is provided from the first issue to within two to five years of the current date.
Click here for support.

HathiTrust
HathiTrust was founded in 2008 as a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries now preserving 18+ million digitized items in the HathiTrust Digital Library. We offer reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. and international copyright law, text and data mining tools for the entire corpus, and other emerging services based on the combined collection.

Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new window
Online version of the series: Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Short Story Criticism, and Shakespearean Criticism. Users can browse by author, work, or topic.
MLA Handbook Plus This link opens in a new window
An online edition of the MLA Handbook, Ninth Edition.
Click here for support.
Southern Literary Messenger: Literature of the Old South This link opens in a new window
From Archives Unbound, an archival collection of The Southern Literary Messenger, one of the most successful and influential literary magazines in the South, published from 1834-1864.
Catholic News Archives This link opens in a new window
The Archive is a project of the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA), a non-profit alliance of archives and libraries collaborating in support of the mission to provide enduring global access to Catholic research resources. The growing collection is fully text searchable and contains thousands of newspaper pages, from different cities, over multiple years.
Click here for support.

Electronic Journal Locator
Use this search function to find journals. You can enter words that start or appear later in the journal's title.

The Camelot Project, University of Rochester
The Camelot Project is designed to make available a database of Arthurian texts, images, bibliographies, and basic information. The project, begun in 1995, is sponsored by the University of Rochester and prepared in The Rossell Hope Robbins Library, located in Rush Rhees Library.
The Divine Comedy -- Digital Dante
"Digital Dante" offers original research and ideas on Dante: on his thought and work and on various aspects of his reception. Though our editorial structure is that of an academic journal, we do not publish prose essays, instead showcasing work that intersperses prose with visual components
The John Milton Reading Room
The John Milton Reading Room: the complete poetry and selected prose of John Milton, with introductions, research guides, and hyperlinked annotations. [From Dartmouth College]
Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives. We work to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry.
The Shakespeare First Folio
The First Folio of Shakespeare, published in 1623, is an extraordinary book. About half of Shakespeare’s plays had never previously appeared in print, including As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, The Tempest, and many more. Without the First Folio, 18 plays might have been lost forever. Learn more about this remarkable book—and the Folger’s collection of First Folios, the largest in the world.
The First Folio is the first published collection of Shakespeare’s plays, produced seven years after his death. Its title is Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, and it groups his plays into those categories—comedies, histories, and tragedies—for the first time. [The Folger Shakespeare Library site contains other pages that relate to Elizabethan literature.]
RPO (Representative Poetry Online)
Representative Poetry Online, version 3.0, includes 4,700 English poems by 723 poets from Caedmon, in the Old English period, to the work of living poets today. It is based on Representative Poetry, established by Professor W. J. Alexander of University College, University of Toronto, in 1912 (one of the first books published by the University of Toronto Press), and used in the English Department at the University until the late 1960s.
Walt Whitman Archive
The Walt Whitman Archive endeavors to make Whitman's vast work freely and conveniently accessible to scholars, students, and general readers. Whitman, America's most influential poet and a writer of global renown, is the most challenging of all American authors in terms of the textual difficulties his work presents. His major life work, Leaves of Grass, went through six very different editions, each of which was issued in a number of formats, creating a book that is probably best studied as numerous distinct creations rather than as a single revised work. His many other writings—varied and significant—include fiction, notebooks, manuscript fragments, prose essays, letters, marginalia, and voluminous journalistic articles. Drawing on the resources of libraries and collections from around the world, the Whitman Archive is the most comprehensive record of works by and about Whitman—and continues to grow.
Women Writers Online
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. NOTE: In recent years, this database has been free during March, in celebration of Women's History Month.

Jane Austen Society of North America
Free Student Membership! We're celebrating the anniversary of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday this year with a special offer for the next generation of Austen fans and scholars. Student Memberships are free through December 31, 2025!
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Our museum collection includes the largest variety of original Brontë items in the world, and is certified a Designated Collection by Arts Council England. This prestigious status recognises the importance of the items in our care to England’s literary history.
Pearl S. Buck House
The Pearl S. Buck House, a National Historic Landmark museum in Bucks County, PA, was the home of Pearl S. Buck and her family. The beautiful and iconic Bucks County stone farmhouse contains a rich, intact collection from the extraordinary (the typewriter on which she wrote The Good Earth) to the ordinary (a closet full of board games her family played).
Emily Dickinson Museum
The Emily Dickinson Museum comprises two historic houses in the center of Amherst, Massachusetts associated with the poet Emily Dickinson and members of her family during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Edna St. Vincent Millay Society at Steepletop
The principal goal of The Millay Society and the Friends of Millay supporter program is to foster and appreciate Millay's literary legacy and to restore and preserve this unique site, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark since 1972. Steepletop is a work-in-progress run by a small but committed group of trustees whose goal is to make Millay’s historic home and property a lasting gem in the beautiful Berkshires.
Robinson Jeffers' Tor House
The Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation is a nonprofit organization of volunteer members established in 1978 to acquire, maintain and provide for public access to Tor House, Hawk Tower and the surrounding gardens, which was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2024.
The Foundation sponsors events and publishes material designed to preserve and extend the cultural and literary legacy of Robinson Jeffers, poet of California.
Poe Baltimore
Poe Baltimore was created to fund, maintain and interpret The Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, and to celebrate the legacy of one of Baltimore’s most famous residents. We are dedicated to maintaining the museum as a vibrant experience for the thousands of visitors who come from around the world each year, and as part of a broader mission of city-wide events and educational opportunities.
Mark Twain House & Museum
September 2024 marked the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Clemens family in their newly built Hartford home and 50 years since the Mark Twain House formally opened as a Museum. We are celebrating these important milestones over the next year in a number of ways, including a special exhibition, a community history project, and an education initiative.
Wordsworth Grasmere
In 1799 William Wordsworth arrived in Grasmere aged 29, largely unknown and writing innovative poetry in a new style. Whilst living at Dove Cottage with his family, Wordsworth wrote many of his greatest poems and his sister Dorothy kept her Grasmere journal. Visit Wordsworth Grasmere and discover the story of this remarkable time in his life.

Agatha Christie
Stay up to date with the latest Agatha Christie news and articles.
Outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play – The Mousetrap.
Tony Hillerman Portal
An interactive guide to the life and work of Tony Hillerman.
(We read him in Detective Genre!)
Seamus Heaney Centre
This centre is more than just a building; it is a tribute to one of Ireland’s greatest poets, and a beacon for artistic exploration, celebrating our cultural heritage, drawing as many people as possible into a world of creativity, and inspiring a new generation of poets, writers, and artists

His words captured the essence of the human experience, bringing the landscapes and spirit of Ireland to readers across the globe. This landmark, state-of-the-art venue will provide an inspiring environment for our students, staff, writers, and the wider community to engage in the study and creation of writing.

North American Victorian Studies Association
The North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) was established in 2002 to provide a continental forum for the discussion of the Victorian period, to encourage a wide variety of theoretical and disciplinary approaches to the field, and to further the interests of scholars of the period within such larger bodies as the MLA, the AHA, and ACCUTE. Our goal will be to provide a more visible forum for Victorianists in the profession: encouraging press and journal editors to participate in our annual conferences; facilitating the networking of Victorianists across regional and national boundaries; forging contacts with other national Victorian groups, such as the British Association of Victorian Studies; and initiating web-based archival projects that make Victorian texts more easily accessible to members. We enthusiastically invite our fellow Victorianists in all fields to join us.
Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers
The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW) seeks to promote excellence in literary criticism and scholarship, and works to ensure that literature thrives in both scholarly and creative environments. We encourage the reading and writing of literature, criticism, and scholarship, as well as wide-ranging discussions among those committed to the reading and study of literary works.
Renaissance Society of America
The RSA brings together thousands of scholars from around the globe, welcoming the broad range of activity in Renaissance studies today. Focused on the advancement of learning through our publications, events, and programs, the RSA provides its members with a deeper and broader understanding of the period 1300–1700.
Medieval Academy of America
The Medieval Academy of America is the largest organization in the United States promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies. It was founded in 1925 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. The academy publishes the quarterly journal Speculum, and awards prizes, grants, and fellowships. The Medieval Academy supports research, publication, and teaching in medieval art, archaeology, history, law, literature, music, philosophy, religion, science, social and economic institutions, and all other aspects of the Middle Ages.

Library of Congress pages

Bibliomania: Rare Books and Special Collections
“Bibliomania” is a blog by and for book lovers. Written by the bibliophiles of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress, this blog features diverting anecdotes about collection items, offers information about the material process of book creation, and explores the social history of information through the scribal tradition and the medium of print.

Curiosities abound in a collection of more than a million works. Our team of bloggers provides a virtual peek into the vaults of the world’s largest library. Curators and rare book librarians share information and observations about ancient fragments of papyrus, medieval manuscripts, early printed books, illustrated books, fine bindings, early American, English, and Spanish imprints, broadsides and ephemera, pamphlet collections, radical literature, contemporary artist books, and much more.
4 Corners of the World: International Collections at the Library of Congress
Welcome to 4 Corners of the World, a joint project of the Library’s four Area Studies reading rooms: the African and Middle Eastern, Asian, European and Hispanic Reading Rooms.

Here you will learn first-hand from expert curators and reference specialists all about the Library’s international collections. They are the largest and finest in the world with millions of items, in hundreds of different languages and scripts, which focus on societies and cultures around the globe. These collections include books, manuscripts, newspapers, magazines, films, audio recordings, and much more. There are rarities, such as cuneiform tablets dating between 2124 and 824 BC, and there are contemporary newspapers and magazines.

On this blog, you will also get the latest about our new collection acquisitions, digital initiatives, and public programs and their recorded webcasts, including lectures, concerts, book talks, film screenings, symposia, and more. All our programs are free and open to the public.

Please join us on the journey to the 4 Corners of the World!
Picture This: Library of Congress Prints & Photos
The Picture This blog invites you to share our love of pictures and the stories they can tell. You’ll see special images that caught our eye and also learn about entire collections as we explore the vast holdings of the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress—more than 14.5 million photos, posters, cartoons, architectural designs, and historical and fine art prints.