Subject Guides
Guide Contents
Introduction
Use these databases to find the full text of fiction, poetry, and other primary source publications.
Note on the English Short Title Catalog (ESTC): In October 2023, the database went offline, along with the broader digital infrastructure of the British Library, due to a ransomware cyberattack. A temporary version of the pre-1700 ESTC, derived from data captured in 2014, is hosted at https://estc.printprobability.org/. As of January 2024, the Print Probability data also includes limited post-1700 ESTC entries. (from Wikipedia, January 2025)
Primary Source Databases
- Early American Imprints: Evans, 1639-1800
This digital collection contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America from 1639-1800.
- Early American Imprints: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819
This resource provides a comprehensive set of American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the early part of the 19th century.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO)Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
- Eighteenth-Century FictionA collection of 96 complete works of English prose from the period 1700–1780 by writers from the British Isles, including Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne and Jonathan Swift
- Eighteenth Century Collections OnlineOver 180,000 full-text books based on the English Short Title Catalogue.
- LitFinder
Covering world literature and authors throughout history, LitFinder contains a wealth of literary works including over 150,000 full-text poems and 800,000+ poetry citations, as well as short stories, speeches, and plays.
- Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 1782-1903Collection of 250 British and Irish novels from the period 1782 to 1903, stretching from the golden age of Gothic fiction to the Decadent and New Woman novels of the 1890s
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online
A digital collection of books, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, ephemera, and maps that cover politics and society, literature, spirituality, technology and more.
