English Literature

Tools for Literature

  • CanLit Guides
    "CanLit Guides provides first- and second-year university students with information, resources, and exercises addressing literary theory, Canadian literary history, and works of Canadian fiction, non-fiction, and drama."  
  • Historical Thesaurus of English
    "Enables users to pinpoint the range of meanings of a word throughout its history, their synonyms, and their relationship to words of more general or more specific meaning."nt day. Records for recent titles have been enriched by the addition of summaries and age levels.
  • Internet Shakespeare Editions
    Play and poem texts, criticism, and production information.
  • Journal of Dracula Studies 
    The official site is currently offline, but the link above will take you to the PDF files stored on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
  • Literary Hub 
    A portal for all things literary
  • OpenSource Shakespeare
    Shakespeare's works plus searches for text, words and characters in Shakespeare's works.  In an opened play, click on a character name to get the text of everything the character said in the play.
  • Pika: Canadian Children's Literature Database
    The PIKA database (archived as of 2017 with no new additions) provides a unique window on Canadian children's literature. Contained in the database are records for all children's books held in the National Library's Canadian Children's Literature Service Collection -- over 35 000 titles. The collection contains Canadian children's books in English, French and other languages, dating from the 19th century to the present.
  • Research skills for literature
    Close reading, motivation, etc.
  • Shakespeare Online
    Essentially a portal site to all things Shakespeare.
  • The Victorian Web
    "Primary and secondary texts (including scholarly book reviews) in British Victorian economics, literature, philosophy, political and social history, science, technology, and visual arts (painting, architecture, sculpture, book design and illustration, photography, decorative arts, including ceramics, furniture, jewelry, metalwork, stained glass, and textiles, costume and various movements, such as Art Nouveau, Japonisme, and Arts and Crafts)."

Primary Sources

(Emily Dickinson Homestead)

Portrait of the Brontë Sisters, c.1834