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English Subject Guide

Humanities Liaison Librarian

Getting Started

For research on individual authors, you can search them as an author or subject in TIGER. Critical books and essay collections on the author are shelved with the author’s own works.

If you are researching a literary critical approach or individual critic, try starting with The Johns Hopkins Guide To Literary Theory & Criticism and follow up with the works cited in the bibliography to any relevant entries you find there.

Finding Books

Searching

Search TIGER for

Searching TIGER by keyword or subject is often the fastest way to find books about your topic.

For books that we don’t own here at Colorado College, or books that are checked out or otherwise unavailable, use Prospector - Colorado Unified Catalog . You’ll find books (and CDs, DVDs, etc.) in libraries across Colorado that you can request and have sent to the Tutt Library circulation desk where you can check them out.

For books not available in TIGER or Prospector, you can request through Interlibrary Loan via WorldCat .

Please ask a librarian if you need help with TIGER, Prospector, or WorldCat.

Browsing

General works on literature are given call numbers beginning with PN. Works of English literature and works about English literature are in PR, while American literature and works about American literature are in PS. Here is how it breaks down:

Finding Articles

The MLA International Bibliography is most comprehensive database we have for finding articles on literature. You will also find citations for books and book chapters (called “book articles” in MLA); search TIGER on the title of the book to see if we own it.

Complete list of databases for English

American Film Scripts
Coverage: 1903 - current
265 American film scripts by 334 writers are available in full text and searchable by scene, character, director and more.
ARTFL Project, University Of Chicago
Coverage: Medieval to 20th Century
Consists of nearly 2000 French texts. Subjects include literary criticism, biology, history, economics, and philosophy. Genres include novels, verse, theater, journalism, essays, correspondence, and treatises. The 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of 17th century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts.
Asian American Drama
Coverage: 1891 - current
70 full text plays by 17 Asian American playwrights, searchable by title, author, character, scene, subject, theater, production company, and more. Includes biographies, photos, playbills, and other images.
Black Drama
Coverage: 1850 - current
Contains the full text of approximately 1,200 rare and hard-to-find plays written from the 1850's to the present by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African Diaspora countries. Search by author, title, subject, date, full-text, etc.
Black Thought And Culture
Coverage: 1700 - 1975
438 sources by 192 leading African Americans include monographs, essays, articles, speeches, interviews, letters and correspondence, and other fugitive material. Materials are searchable by author, source, year, historical event, subject, influences, geographic location and more.
Blackwell Journals
Coverage: varies; usually late 1990's to current
Searchable collection of full text periodicals. Scholarly sources.
Chicano Database
Coverage: 1960s - current
Interdisciplinary database, indexing all types of materials for Chicano studies (journal articles, books, chapters, and newspaper articles).
Children's Literature Review
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Criticism of classic to modern children's authors. Part of Literature Critcism Online
Classical And Medieval Literature Criticism
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Early to present-day criticism of early literature, philosophy, and other works. Part of Literature Criticism Online
The Columbia Granger's World Of Poetry
Coverage: 1500 - current
The definitive source in English for locating a poem in anthologies. Includes 13,000 poems in full text, and 250,000 poetry citations, in addition to commentaries, biographies, bibliographies, notes on form, and a glossary of prosodic terms.
Contemporary Authors
Coverage: current
A bio-bibliographical guide to current writers in Nonfictions, etc. Complete biographical and references for more than 90,000 authors in the U.S.
Contemporary Literary Criticism
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Criticism of living authors, or authors who died since 1960. Part of Literature Criticism Online
Drama Criticism
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. A full range of criticism on each playwright included. Part of Literature Criticism Online
Early American Imprints. Series I, Evans (1639-1800)
Coverage: 1639 - 1800
Full text of almost every book and pamphlet printed in North America from 1639 to 1800. Not yet complete.
Early American Imprints. Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819)
Coverage: 1801 - 1819
Full text of almost every book and pamphlet printed in North America from 1801 to 1819. Not yet complete.
Early English Books Online
Coverage: 1475 - 1700
Contains the full text of over 100,000 English books, pamphlets, and more, from the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare.
Grants And Awards Available To American Writers
With more than 1,000 listings of domestic and foreign grants, literary awards, fellowships and residencies, Grants & Awards is the most comprehensive online database available to writers of all income brackets, at work in all genres, and at various levels of achievement. See Reference Librarian for password.
Humanities International Complete
Coverage: 1929 - current
A comprehensive humanities database, with almost 500 full text titles and indexing and abstracting for more than 1,700 titles. Subject areas include (but are not limited to) literature, philosophy, the arts, history, culture-oriented and multi-disciplinary humanities titles with some coverage going back as far as 1929. This database replaces Humanities Abstracts.
International Bibliography Of Theatre & Dance With Full Text
Coverage: 1960s to current
Our major database for the performing arts. Journal indexing with full text, plus over 100 books in full text.
Iter
Coverage: 1943 - current
Covers all literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for journal articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies are included. Also included are citations for monographs, and material published in monographs and collections of essays.
The Johns Hopkins Guide To Literary Theory & Criticism
Coverage: N/A
Searchable, full-text online version of the well known reference to the intellectual traditions of literary theory.
JSTOR
Coverage: late 1800's - most recent 5 years
Archival access to many scholarly periodicals. Jstor does not cover the most recent three years of most journals.
Literary Index
Coverage: current
Master index to every literary series published by Gale Research Inc. Combines and cross-references author names, including pseudonyms and variant names, and titles into one source.
Literature Criticism From 1400 To 1800
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Criticism of works published from the late Middle Ages through the end of the seventeenth century. Part of Literature Criticism Online
Literature Criticism Online
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Covers literature from the classical era to today in all genres
LitFinder
Coverage: 1500 - current
The best source for contemporary and older poems in full text. Includes more than 100,000 full-text poems, 800,000 citations and excerpts, and hundreds of images, biographies, and critical essays, plus some short stories and essays.
Middle English Dictionary
Coverage: N/A
This electronic version of the MED preserves all the details of the print MED (available in Tutt Library ), but goes far beyond this, by converting its contents into an enormous database, searchable in ways impossible within any print dictionary.
MLA International Bibliography
Coverage: 1963 - current
Literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore from over journals and series published worldwide.
Nineteenth-century Literature Criticism
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Chronologically-arranged criticism of authors of the nineteenth century. Part of Literature Criticism Online
Oxford English Dictionary
Coverage: 1884 - current
Online version of the well-known historical dictionary of English, covering the language from the earliest times to the present day, showing not only the current meanings of words, but also tracing their development through time.
Oxford University Press Journals
Coverage: varies; usually late 1990's - current
A searchable collection of full text periodicals. Scholarly sources.
Periodicals Index Online
Coverage: 1665- 1995
Periodicals Index Online is an electronic index to the contents of thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social sciences, from their first issues. Every article is indexed. Mostly citations. Full image access to a select number of journal runs.
Poetry Criticism
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Biographical sketches and bibliographies of the poets, in addition to a wide selection of criticism. Part of Literature Criticism Online
Project Muse
Coverage: 1993 - current
Project Muse provides access to the full text of the Johns Hopkins University Press journals. Offers current and back issues.
Scottish Women Poets Of The Romantic Period
Coverage: 1781 - current
60 full text volumes of poetry representing the complete works of 47 poets are searchable by keyword, author, poem, work, critical essay, and more. Includes extensive contemporary critical reviews, as well as biographical essays written by leading scholars.
Shakespearean Criticism
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Includes critical interpretations of Shakespeare from the 17th century to the present. Part of Literature Criticism Online
Short Story Criticism
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Historical survey of the critical response to included authors. Part of Literature Criticism Online
Twentieth-century Literary Criticism
Online, full-text literary criticism, anthologized and excerpted from books and journal articles. Criticism on major literary and nonfiction writers of the twentieth century. Part of Literature Criticism Online
Women Writers Online
Coverage: 1400 - 1850
Contains fulltext of nearly 400 works of early modern women writers.
The World Shakespeare Bibliography
Coverage: 1962 - current
Provides annotated entries for all important books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare.

Online journal archives

Unlike the subject-specific article databases, these online journal archives don’t concentrate on any one academic subject. Instead, they take leading journals from many fields, or all the journals from one publisher, and provide extensive archives of the full text of those journals online, usually in the form of PDF files.

Blackwell Journals
Coverage: varies; usually late 1990's to current
Searchable collection of full text periodicals. Scholarly sources.
JSTOR
Coverage: late 1800's - most recent 5 years
Archival access to many scholarly periodicals. Jstor does not cover the most recent three years of most journals.
Oxford University Press Journals
Coverage: varies; usually late 1990's - current
A searchable collection of full text periodicals. Scholarly sources.
Periodicals Archive Online
Coverage: 1770-1995
Fulltext journal collection covering the humanities and social sciences. Includes 500 journal titles covering the first issue of the journal until 1995.
Project Muse
Coverage: 1993 - current
Project Muse provides access to the full text of the Johns Hopkins University Press journals. Offers current and back issues.

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