English Graduate Student Resource Guide: Databases
This guide is intended to point graduate students within the English Department toward general and helpful resources for their studies
Helpful Databases
- Black Short Fiction and Folklore This link opens in a new window Black Short Fiction and Folklore brings together 82,000 pages and more than 11,000 works of short fiction produced by writers from Africa and the African Diaspora from the earliest times to the present. The materials have been compiled from early literary magazines, archives, and the personal collections of the authors. Some 30 percent of the collection is fugitive or ephemeral, or has never been published before.
- Caribbean Literature This link opens in a new window Starting with the literature produced in Spanish and French colonies in the 1800s, the collection offers an extensive selection of 19th- and 20th-century works from every Caribbean country. As the database grows, we will supplement the novels, short stories, and poems of these artists with author interviews and reference works, including dictionaries of various Creole languages.
- Children's Literature Comprehensive Database This link opens in a new window The CLCD Enterprise PreK-12 dB is the premier academic resource for courses needing to locate Children’s and Young Adult books and other media. The content includes millions of fiction/non-fiction titles, thousands of awards and quality reviews including author/title links, lesson plans and teaching guides. The search engine offers multiple options including 50 search filters to find materials for determining interest & reading levels; selecting trade books based on standards; creating thematic, annotated biographies; interpreting reviews; developing classroom collections and more.
- Dictionary of Literary Biography This link opens in a new window The award-winning Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online provides comprehensive access to the series dedicated to making literature and its creators better understood and more accessible to students and interested readers while simultaneously satisfying the standards of librarians, teachers, and scholars. The series provides reliable information on authors and their works in an easy to understand, engaging format, while placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history
- Early American Fiction Complete This link opens in a new window Early American Fiction 17891875 offers the full text of more than 700 first editions of American novels and short stories by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain, as well as a host of minor writers of the period.
- Essay and General Literature Index Retrospective (H. W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window Covering 1900 - 1984, this database indexes more than 249,000 essays included in this collection, it indexes single and multi-author collections, plus selected annuals and serials. It includes publications from the United States, Canada and Great Britain, covering eight decades of 20th Century literature.
- Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window Find up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on more than 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world. The optional MLA International Bibliography module adds citations for hundreds of thousands of books, articles and dissertations from 1926 to the present, linked to full text where available.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization and a shared digital library archive of critical scholarly journal literature. Louisiana State University currently participates in the following JSTOR Collection(s): Arts & Sciences Collections I-XV, Ireland Archive Collection, Life Sciences Collection, University of California Press Collection, University of Chicago Press Collection, Business IV Collection, Lives of Literature Collection, and the Sustainability Collection.
- Literary Reference Plus This link opens in a new window Literary Reference Plus is a full-text database that combines information from major respected reference works, books, and literary journals as well as original content from EBSCO Publishing. Literary Reference Plus includes thousands of plot summaries, synopses, and work overviews; articles of literary criticism; author biographies; full text of over 430 literary journals; book reviews; classic and contemporary poems and short stories; full text of over 7,000 classic novels; author interviews; and images of key literary figures.
- Gale Literature Criticism This link opens in a new window Gale takes literature, history and culture to the next level with the largest, most extensive compilation of literary commentary available: Gale Literature Criticism. Imagine centuries of analysis - the scholarly and popular commentary from broadsheets, pamphlets, encyclopedias, books and periodicals - delivered in an easy-to-use 24/7 online format that matches the exact look and feel of the print originals..
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window The MLA International Bibliography is a subject index for books, articles and websites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. It is produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), an organization dedicated to the study and teaching of language and literature.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new window Project MUSE is your trusted source for the highest quality books and journals in the humanities and social sciences from over 200 of the world’s most distinguished university presses and scholarly societies.
- Romantic Era Redefined This link opens in a new window The Romantic Era Redefined is a searchable collection of works focusing in the period between 1800 and 1830, that will bring academic research libraries a new, genre-redefining electronic collection of Romantic-era literature. In partnership with Pickering & Chatto Publishers, Alexander Street Press will publish in this collection canonical and previously unrecognized writers from Britain, the British Empire, and North America. It currently contains over 161,000 pages.
- Romanticism This link opens in a new window Discover the working methods of Romantic poets and trace the evolution of celebrated verse in this powerful digital resource. Presenting the manuscript collections of the Wordsworth Trust, this digital collection offers students and researchers of the Romantic period unique access to the working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers, including Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey and Robert Southey.
- Scribner Writers Series This link opens in a new window Scribner Writers Series provides original, scholar signed essays on the lives and works of authors from around the world from all time periods. Entries include concise essays, citations, and biographical information that places the author and their works in personal and historical context.
- Shakespeare in Performance This link opens in a new window Shakespeare in Performance showcases rare and unique prompt books from the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeare’s plays as they were performed in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
- Something About the Author Online This link opens in a new window Something About the Author Online provides comprehensive access to all volumes ever printed in Gale's acclaimed and long-standing Something About the Author series, which examines the lives and works of authors and illustrators for children and young adults and is the preeminent source on authors and literature for young people.
- Times Literary Supplement (TLS) Historical Archive 1902-2014 This link opens in a new window The complete online fully-searchable edition of the TLS from the first edition in 1902 onwards. This is the essential companion for studying and researching literary activity and critical opinion makers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since 1902, the TLS has scrutinized, applauded and dissected the work of leading writers and thinkers, offering comprehensive coverage of the most important publications, in every subject, in several languages, as well as reviewing current theatre, cinema, music, and exhibitions.
- Twayne's Authors This link opens in a new window Twayne's is devoted to in-depth critical introductions to the lives and works of major writers of the world within the context of the time period in which they lived. It provides insightful and original commentary on the history and influence of literary movements.
- Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels This link opens in a new window Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels is the first ever scholarly, primary-source database focused on adult comic books and graphic novels. Here are the works of artists both celebrated and overlooked, alongside interviews, criticism, and journal articles that document the continual growth and evolution of this artform.