Useful Titles from the Library
Listed in call number order; remember that you may want to browse the shelves in the call number ranges of interest to you.
On English Literature
The Oxford Companion to British History.
Ref. DA34 .O93 1997
Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia.
Ref. PN41 .B4 1996
A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory.
Ref. PN41 .C83 1998
A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory.
Ref. PN44.5 .H37 2000
The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms.
Ref. PN44.5 .M86 1997
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. 1978- .
Ref. PN94 .T83
Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. 1973- .
Ref. PN761 q.N5
Oxford Companion to English Literature.
Ref. PR 19 .D73 1985
The Oxford Chronology of English Literature.
Ref. [q.] Z2011 .O98 2002
On the Romantics
Encyclopedia of Romanticism: Culture in Britain, 1780-1830s.
Ref. DA 529 .E53 1992
Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850.
Ref. [q.] NX452.5.R64 E53 2004
On the Victorians
Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era. 4 vols.
Ref. [q.] DA550 .E527 2004
Victorian Britain : An Encyclopedia.
Ref. DA550 .V53 1988
Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction.
Ref. PR871 .S87 1989
Victorian Fiction: A Guide to Research.
Ref. PR873 .S8
On the Modernists
Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism.
Ref. PN56.M54 E53 2003
British Novelists, 1890-1929: Modernists.
Ref. [q.] PS221 .D5 v.36
Online:
Britannica Online
The electronic version of the classic reference work. You can either search for terms or browse the alphabetical list of entries. View the entries from the Encyclopaedia Britannica rather than the Britannica Student Encyclopedia, as the latter is written for elementary and high school students.
Literature Resource Center.
Use the Author search or the Advanced search. The title search doesn't always find everything you might want to see. In addition to biographical information, includes material from Contemporary Authors, the Dictionary of Literary Biography series, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, and more.
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Biographical Information
Dictionary of National Biography. Leslie Stephen and Sidney
Lee, eds. 22 vols. plus decennial supplements.
The essays in this dictionary are about deceased persons of
British or Irish origins who played major roles in British
history. Bibliographies are included in many of the entries. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the online version of the DNB, and provides multiple search options for nearly 50,000 biographies.
DA 28 .D4
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
To find biographical books about a certain person, search in LUCIA, for the person using Subject begins with. Browse through the subject headings to find the subheading which corresponds to your specific interests. Be alert when searching non-western names or names of rulers, as you may need to use varying forms of these names. Many times, LUCIA has cross-references for these.
For autobiographical books by and about a certain person, search in LUCIA for persons as Author. Be sure to consult the library's guide on Biographical Information for further ideas and information.
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Finding Books
To find items owned by the library, search LUCIA. To find secondary sources on your topic, try using the Subject begins with search, for example, english literature. LUCIA will list other subject headings (and subheadings) which may be of interest. For advanced research you should consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH, a guide to the terms commonly used in catalogs like ours. The LCSH can be found on top of the Ready Reference shelves behind the reference desk on the first floor of the library.
Some subject headings of interest include:
- English fiction
- English literature
- English poetry
- Great Britain -- History
- Modernism (Literature)
- Nature in literature
- Religion in literature
- Romanticism -- England
- Romanticism -- Great Britain
- Sex role
- Social classes
- Women and literature
To combine terms for a different kind of search, try a Keyword Anywhere search. In keyword searching, LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search for a phrase using quotation marks, like "english novel". You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH as keywords in combination with other words, for example, women and class* and (literature or fiction). The asterisk tells LUCIA to search for any catalog entries containing the word women, then any containing words starting with class, like class, classical, classes, etc. These results are combined with entries containing either the word literature or the word fiction, and the results are displayed.
Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system which organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd and the library floor maps to find out where a book might be on the shelves.
Search LUCIA for materials in our library; try WorldCat to find materials beyond the Mudd. Make sure you've thoroughly searched our library before going to WorldCat. See a reference librarian if you need help.
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Finding Articles
The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options, as only a few are listed below. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. In addition to the titles listed here, see also the list of databases for Humanities available from the library.
Literary Studies: include indexing and abstracts for books, chapters of books, articles and reviews. Some full text is included in the MLA.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature. 1939- .
Ref. Z 2011 .M69
MLA International Bibliography. 1963-
A leading source for the field of literary studies. Wide ranging index to just about anything of a scholarly nature related to literature and language.
General and Multidisciplinary Indexes: include citations and some full text of materials from a broad variety of fields including literature and history. Some include current reviews and news articles.
EBSCOhost.
Follow the link for EBSCOhost Web. EBSCOhost provides a single Web source for multiple databases; you might want to select the Academic Search Elite. Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals. Use the Go or Back button on your browser after exiting EBSCOhost to leave the system.
Academic OneFile
A one-stop source for news and periodical articles on a wide range of topics. Includes full-text articles, many with images. 1980 - present; updated daily.
Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, try the 
button to see if that particular article is available. If you don't find it, look in LUCIA for the title of the journal or newspaper to see if the library owns it. You can also search
BESS, an
automated search of the library's full text databases, for electronic copies of articles.
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Bibliographies and General Guides to Research
Literary Research Guide : An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies. James L. Harner.
Ref. Z2011 .H34 2002
A Research Guide for Undergraduate Students : English and American Literature. Nancy L. Baker and Nancy Huling.
Ref. PR56 .B34 2000
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Web Resources
Lawrence resources:
Internet Resources for English
Selected by the librarians here at Lawrence.
Web Wise Guide to Searching
From the library. In addition to advanced information about the workings of different search engines, provides links to tutorials and more.
Resources elsewhere:
Voice of the Shuttle
One of the leading web pages for research in the humanities.
Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:
It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.
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Style Manuals
Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.
Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to
other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
The guide for any academic papers written in the literatures and languages.
RRef. LB2369 .G53 2003
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About Research on English Literature
Your sources must be fully documented in any written work you produce. It may help to look at the information on style before you start your research, so that you will have all the required documentation at hand when you need it. Then as you write, go back to the resources on style for details on the exact format of your citations.
The sources listed in this guide were chosen for the broad coverage they provide. Direct links are provided to Internet resources and searchable databases, as well as links to LUCIA, the library's online catalog. Be sure to check the library's Electronic Resources page regularly to see new databases and indexes; some of these will only be available to users on the Lawrence campus. Also, you may want to take a look at guides on related topics from the Library Research Guides page.
Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.
As always, if you have any questions be sure to ask a Reference Librarian.
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Definitions of terms and abbreviations:
Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready Reference, shelved behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and M class scores; at end of classes in other collections
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