Literatures in English: Reference
Reference Books in the Catalog
To find a reference book in OneSearch, enter a keyword for your topic along with one of the following keywords:
- dictionaries
- encyclopedias
- companions
- handbooks
- guides
- bibliographies
Here are some examples, all available online:
The Cambridge Companion to the Bloomsbury Group by Call Number: PR478 .B46 C36 2014ISBN: 9781107018242Publication Date: 2014-05-26
Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850 by Call Number: NX452.5 .R64 E53 2004ISBN: 157958361XPublication Date: 2003-12-08
Contents
General Resources
- Bloomsbury Cultural HistoryIncludes the full text of many volumes of Bloomsbury's "Cultural History" series (with such sets as Food, Memory, Emotions, Plants, Gardens, Race, the Sea, the Senses, etc.).
- Cambridge Companions Online This link opens in a new windowIntroductory ebooks to writers, artists, topics, philosophers, and literary and philosophical periods. Frequently updated with new information.
Rice University has access to all titles published through 2024. - Cambridge Core: Literature in Context This link opens in a new windowComplete online versions of the Cambridge UP "In Context" series, edited collections giving historical, cultural and personal background for major literary figures including Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, George Eliot, Blake, etc.
- Cambridge Histories: LiteratureSearch and read online dozens of volumes of literary history from Cambridge UP. Includes histories of numerous genres, periods and geographical areas in literature. Part of the larger Cambridge Histories collection.
- Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature This link opens in a new windowOver 330 cross-referenced entries that cover the most recent critical trends in Victorian scholarship. Topics include novels, plays, poetry, and global Victorian studies. Themes cover cosmopolitanism, journalism, race, sexuality, and reading.
- Firms Out of BusinessFirms Out of Business is a database with information about vanished publishing concerns, literary agencies, and similar firms. From the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin and the University of Reading Library.
- Gale Literature This link opens in a new windowCentralized search platform for all of Gale's literary databases, including authors, literary biographies, literary works, reference sources, literary criticism, and scholarly essays.
- ProQuest Study GuidesThese introductions and section-by-section explanations of important texts are a great head start for analyzing and discussing class readings. This link takes you to the complete set of 233; add a title or author name to the search bar to find a specific title. You can also retrieve them by searching for "ProQuest Study Guides" in the Literature Online (LION) database.
- Literary Reference Center This link opens in a new windowThis database features a collection of author biographies, plot summaries, articles, book reviews, poems, author interviews, and more.
- Literary Research GuideThis open-source text is the final (6th, 2014) edition of the standard guide to literary information sources by James Harner, updated by Angela Courtney. Learn about the contents, strengths and limitations of all kinds of literary research resources.
- Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new windowLiterature Online's reference works include biographies, bibliographies, Cambridge Companions to Literature, Penguin Introductions (from the Penguin Classics series), KnowledgeNotes Student Guides (which provide detailed but easy-to-understand notes on important texts), and numerous dictionaries and encyclopedias. Use the "Reference Works" tab on the main search page, or search for an author.
- American Literature - Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new windowRead overviews and annotated bibliographies for over 170 topics and major figures in American literature. These are very useful introductions to the significant literature in a wide variety of subject areas, and part of a larger collection covering many disciplines.
- British and Irish Literature - Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new windowRead overviews and annotated bibliographies for over 150 topics and major figures in British and Irish literature. These are very useful introductions to the significant literature in a wide variety of subject areas, and part of a larger collection covering many disciplines.
- Cinema and Media Studies - Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new windowBibliographies on film history, television studies, critical theory, digital and popular culture, and other disciplines related to film and media studies, with links to full-text resources where available at Fondren.
- Literary and Critical Theory - Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new windowLiterary theory has become the hegemonic methodology for the study of text and is often regarded both as a sub-discipline in itself and as a critical tool through which to liberate deeper and more complex meanings from texts. Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory offers clearly-signposted pathways through the different areas, and will make clear references to the other disciplines which feed in to, and are often transformed by, literary theory (Oxford University Press).
- Victorian Literature - Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new windowThe Victorian period, which encompasses the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901, is often regarded as a high point in literary history, generating a wealth of material that is still regarded as canonical as well as a diverse range of literary genres. Oxford Bibliographies in Victorian Literature offers a reliable, up-to-date, and authoritative guide to the best literature in the field (Oxford Univ. Press).
- Oxford Handbooks Online This link opens in a new windowSearch dozens of handbooks in the field of literature, each full of chapters giving scholarly overviews of important topics in the field. If results are too mixed with other subject areas, you can use the subject filters on the left-hand pane of the results page.
- Literature - Oxford Research Encyclopedia This link opens in a new windowOnline access to "a compendium of the finest critical thinking about the broad concept of literature available around the world (Oxford University Press).
- Oxford Reference This link opens in a new windowPremium Collection contains over 200 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. It is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of these books, giving subscribers unprecedented access to a comprehensive information resource. Includes added functionality and more detailed information across a broad subject range from titles in the world-renowned Oxford Companions Series.
- Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th ed."Provides the most comprehensive and authoritative reference for students, scholars, and poets on all aspects of its subject including history, movements, genres, prosody, rhetorical devices, and critical terms." This is the 2012 edition, edited by Roland Greene and Stephen Cushman, in a searchable online format. The entire book is downloadable as a PDF through De Gruyter UPL: https://onesearch.library.rice.edu/permalink/01RICE_INST/1ktd9v9/alma991033773391505251
- Reference Works in British and American Literature byISBN: 1563085186Publication Date: 1998Print book in LSC, also an ebook. Find the key print bibliographies for a given author.
- Research Methods Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowDesigned as a tool to support students of the humanities and social sciences, this database introduces the key approaches to working with source materials and historical evidence (Adam Matthew).
- Social Theory, 2nd edition This link opens in a new windowThis database contains the full text (in html format) of hundreds of books and and articles on social theory, ranging from Marx and Engels, Gilman, Mead, Durkheim and Addams to de Beauvoir, Adorno, Foucault, Baudrillard, Habermas and many more. Most sources are in their original languages but many have been translated. The database is especially useful for keyword searching in this subject area, and for having always-available access to major texts. Click Browse > Sources for the list of books; you can also browse “theories".
- WATCH: Writers Artists and Their Copyright HoldersWriters Artists and Their Copyright Holders is a database of copyright contacts for writers, artists, and prominent figures in other creative fields. From the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin and the University of Reading Library.
- Wiley E-Reference Books: Literature This link opens in a new windowFondren has access to the following titles:
● Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory
● Companion to World Literature
● Encyclopedia of British Literature, 1660-1789
● Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature
● Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain
● Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies
● Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature
● Encyclopedia of the Gothic
● Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction
● Encyclopedia of the Novel
● Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature
Dictionaries of English
- Anglo-Norman DictionaryContains Norman words illustrated with quotations.
- Australian Oxford Dictionary"An authoritative guide to contemporary Australian English, produced by the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the Australian National University and Oxford University Press."
- The Canadian Oxford Dictionary"The dictionary combines coverage of international English with information on English as it is particularly used in Canada."
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology"Based on The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the principal authority on the origin and development of English words, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Etymology contains a wealth of information about the English language and its history."
- Dictionary of Old English Corpus This link opens in a new windowComplete record of surviving Old English except for some variant manuscripts of individual texts.
- Green's Dictionary of Slang"An unprecedented 10.3 million-word collection of the impertinent, vile, censored, hip, witty, and fascinating slang words of the English language."
- Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction"This work-in-progress is a comprehensive quotation-based dictionary of the language of science fiction."
- Innsbruck EDD Online 3.0(based on Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905)A historical dictionary of British and American dialect of the 18th and 19th centuries. Must agree to terms of use to enter.
- Middle English DictionaryOffers "a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips, the largest collection of this kind available. This electronic version of the MED preserves all the details of the print MED"
- The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary"Compiled at the New Zealand Dictionary Centre in Wellington, it reflects research into New Zealand words and their use, including new words, and new uses of older words that have evolved in New Zealand."
- Oxford English Dictionary (OED) This link opens in a new windowThe OED: provides authoritative definitions of over 500,000 words, traces the usage of words from their first recorded occurrence to the modern period through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international language sources, and offers etymological analysis and detailed listings of variant spelling.
Presented by the Hobby Foundation Endowment Fund.
- Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English"This comprehensive reference includes detailed information on the spelling, history, and usage of thousands of foreign words and phrases used by English speakers."
- A Shakespeare GlossaryDefinitions of Shakespeare's words with references to his works. This is the 1986 revision by Robert Eagleson of the classic work by CT Onions. Available online in the LION database.
Biographical Sources
- American National Biography Online This link opens in a new windowBiographical treatments for significant American figures. An "American" is loosely defined as someone whose significant actions occurred during his or her residence within what is now the United States or whose life or career directly influenced the course of American history. The only invariant rule is that all subjects must have died prior to 1996. Online version updated quarterly with new articles and illustrations.
- Contemporary Authors"Provides biographical details on thousands of modern novelists, poets, playwrights, nonfiction writers, journalists and scriptwriters."
- Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series"Includes the most recent data on the world's most-popular authors. Profile sketches are entirely revised and completely replace the original Contemporary Authors entries. "
- Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window50,000 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to the year 2000.
- Gale Literature This link opens in a new windowCentralized search platform for all of Gale's literary databases, including authors, literary biographies, literary works, reference sources, literary criticism, and scholarly essays.
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