American Literature Subject Page

Subject librarian: Kristine Helbling
Office hours: please call or e-mail me for an appointment
E-mail: helbling@wustl.edu
Phone: (314) 935-7466
Fax: (314) 935-4919

Databases ♦ Full Text Sources ♦ Journals ♦ Discussion Lists ♦ Unique Library Collections ♦ American Literature at WUStL

Arts & Humanities Citation Index (OCLC)
Indexes citations from articles in arts and humanities periodicals, 1980-present.

Intute: Arts & Humanities
Provides links to many resources useful to literary research.

Library of Congress OPAC
The nearest thing to a national library catalog we have in the United States.

MLA International Bibliography
An index to literary, linguistic, and folkloric scholarship published throughout the world. Includes articles published from 1963-present. For articles published prior to 1963, consult the print version of the Bibliography in the Olin Reference index area. Also consult ABELL, the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, available online through Literature Online and in paper in Olin Reference.

National Archives (United States)
National Archives has some surprising holdings relevant to literary research and cultural studies. Also have a look at the Archival Research Catalog database (ARC), "...the online catalog of NARA's nationwide holdings in the Washington, DC area, Regional Archives and Presidential Libraries."

National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections
An extremely useful site that provides access to cataloging of manuscript collections in both RLIN and OCLC. Information from more than half a million records can be found through this site. Also contains a set of very useful links to archival resources on the internet. For a speedy though slightly dated guide to collections a researcher might check American Literary Manuscripts (in both Olin and Special collections reference) or, for collections cataloged prior to ca. 1991, the paper National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (Olin reference).

19th Century Masterfile (formerly Poole's Plus)
Journal index and other materials. Starting with Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, this database will eventually include information about books, newspapers, and government documents, primarily for the 19th century.

Voice of the Shuttle: Web Page for Humanities Research
Includes an extensive list of American literature sites.

WorldCat (OCLC)
Information about books, journal titles, videos, and materials in other formats owned by more than 15,000 U.S. and foreign libraries. You may make InterLibrary Loan requests directly from the database. Does not include journal articles.

American Memory Project at the Library of Congress
American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.

Electronic Poetry Center (SUNY Buffalo)
Searchable online presentations of text, sound, and image related to leading modern poets.

Electronic Text Center (University of Virginia)
Searchable, SGML/XML tagged versions of a variety of texts from English and American literature. Click on the “Collections” button to find tagged texts. Downloadable e-books are also now available.

Evans Digital Edition (1639-1800)
Early American Imprints, Series I, Evans (1639-1800) is in the process of being converted from microform to the web. "...the definitive resource for information about every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America, from agriculture and auctions through foreign affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War, temperance, witchcraft, and just about any other topic imaginable."

Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819
"Covering every aspect of American life during the early decades of the United States, Early American Imprints, Series II (1801-1819) provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the nineteenth century."

Literature Online (LION Complete) (600- )
Includes the online version of the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) from 1920-present, with links to the full text of more than one hundred journals. Additional biographies, bibliographies, and key criticism and reference sources complement ABELL. Be sure to select the "Search criticism and reference" link for this component.

The Humanities Text Initiative at the University of Michigan
Searchable SGML/XML tagged versions of texts from English and American literature. Click on the “Text Collections” button to access the American Verse Project.

The Making of America Project
Cornell University Libraries Making of America Project ♦ University of Michigan Making of America Project

Project Bartleby
Commercial site with advertising banners. Contains full-text editions of many classic literary, and some reference, works.

Project Gutenberg
"...the oldest producer of free e-books on the internet."

The Oxford English Dictionary
Currently the OED is the most authoritative scholarly dictionary that traces the history and development of the English language.

Wright American Fiction
This is a collection of 19th-century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. Includes approximately 1,900 texts.

The Vincent Voice Library - Michigan Writers Series
Online audio of poetry, short-stories, novels, and more.

CataList
L-Soft's list of e-mail lists. Tens of thousands of e-mail lists that use the ListServ program, many related to American literature subjects.

Google Groups
Comprehensive search tool for UseNet groups.

Selective list of AmLit journals available through WU Libraries
Selected journals (electronic and print) related to American literature held at Olin Library.

Comprehensive list of e-journals available through WU Libraries
All e-journals available through Olin Library.

The University of Chicago Press Journals Division
Access to many journals relevant to American literature, including Critical Inquiry, Ethics, and others.

Electronic Book Review
Promoting print/screen transformations and new modes of critical writing on the web.

HarpWeek
Harper's Weekly in HarpWeek: The Civil War Era, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age (1857-1912).

JSTOR
Access to African American Review, Callaloo, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Speculum as well as several history journals. Does not include access to the most recent issues of these journals, but coverage extends to volume one for each title.

Literature Online
Offers searchable access to ABELL linked to a set of over one hundred full-text journals, many related to American Literature. There is also browsable access to the same full-text journals.

Project Muse
Access to many literary journals, including: American Literary History, American Literary Scholarship, American Literature, Diacritics, ELH, Emily Dickenson Journal, Henry James Review, Modern Fiction Studies, MLN, and Resources for American Literary Study. Includes access to most current issues.

Hochschild Collection of Children's Literature

Modern Literature Collection
Collection of complementary print and manuscript materials documenting 20th- and 21st-century modern literature, including complete holdings of important American authors. The collection, one of the best and largest in the world with over 300,000 individual print and manuscript items, continues to grow and develop as a premier resource for scholars from Washington University and the world over.

Arnold Semeiology Collection

Mendle Collection

American Culture Studies
American Culture Studies is a multidisciplinary program within Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

English Department
The study of literatures in English at WU happens here.

The Humanities Center (formerly the International Writer's Center)
Serving the WU Campus as "a focal point for writing excellence in all cultures," the Humanities Center also maintains its own collection related to fiction, poetry, criticism, international authors, and faculty authors. In addition, they are seeking to build a collection of children's literature.