Research Guides: ENG : English Language & Literature: Literary Texts & Streaming Media

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Books and Book Reviews

Here you can find the full text for some books, as well as literary criticism.

Book Review Digest Plus [EBSCO] 1983+ This link opens in a new window Reviews of English-language fiction and nonfiction books from U. S., Canadian, and British periodicals.
Center for Research Libraries (CRL) Catalog This link opens in a new window Smith College is a member of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), which acquires and preserves "unique and little-known documents." The collections, which number about five million items, are international in scope and made available to researchers at member institutions through interlibrary loan, electronic delivery, and on-site use at CRL in Chicago. Read more....
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window Full text books & journals digitized by HathiTrust partner libraries, Google, the Internet Archive, etc. Includes searchable access to over 10 million volumes total; 3 million public domain volumes are fully viewable online and allow downloading one page at a time. Complements Google Books.

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg hosts thousands of ebooks/digitized works, largely from items that are in the public domain. It can be a great place to find "classics" published before 1929.

Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive [Gale] This link opens in a new window Full text searching of the TLS; book reviews, film reviews, play reviews and more.

University of California Press Open Access Books University of California Press has an Open Access program that provides readers with easy access to a select number of books. Here you can find Open Access books on Literary Studies.

Times Literary Supplement Subscriber Archive 1994+ This link opens in a new window Complete coverage of the TLS from 1994. (New issues added 1 week after publication). Username and password for this resource available at any Smith Libraries service point.

Literary Texts

Use these sources to find information on specific works of literature - and in some cases the actual online texts. For broader sources which also contain older literary texts, see the Primary Sources tab.

Asian American Drama [Alexander Street] This link opens in a new window 252 plays, with biographical, production, and theatrical information, from the late 19th century to present.
Columbia Granger's World of Poetry This link opens in a new window Index to 450,000 poems; 250,000 full text. With commentaries; biographies; a glossary; foreign language poetry; translations; and audio recordings.
Early American Imprints, 1639-1820 This link opens in a new window Books, pamphlets, and broadsides on every aspect of American life, based on Charles Evan's American Bibliography and the continuation by Shaw-Shoemaker.
Literature Online (LION) [ProQuest] This link opens in a new window Fully searchable library of 350,000+ works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies, criticism and reference sources.
North American Indian Drama This link opens in a new window Over 200 plays by 48 playwrights, more than half are previously unpublished or hard-to-find.
North American Women's Drama [Alexander Street] This link opens in a new window Full texts of 1,500 plays written from colonial times to the present by American and Canadian women playwrights; includes previously unpublished plays.
Short Story Index Retrospective [EBSCO] 1915-1983 This link opens in a new window Lists short stories published in magazines, journals, and books; search by author, title or subject.
Short Story Index [EBSCO] 1984+ This link opens in a new window Lists short stories published in magazines, journals, and books; search by author, title or subject.
Twentieth Century Drama This link opens in a new window Full text plays by dramatists such as Amiri Baraka, Noel Coward, Susan Glaspell, Langston Hughes, David Mamet, Eugene O'Neil, Harold Pinter, Bernard Shaw, Neil Simon, Gertrude Stein, Tom Stoppard, Derek Walcott, August Wilson & others.
Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels: Volumes I and II [Alexander Street] This link opens in a new window Full-text adult comic books & graphic novels, plus interviews, criticism & articles that document this genre.
Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window Full text of women's writing in English from the 16th through 19th centuries. With coverage of drama, fiction and non-fiction, and verse, provides an unparalleled view of women’s literate culture in the early modern period.

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Streaming Media

BBC Shakespeare Plays This link opens in a new window Streaming video; BBC production of every Shakespeare play.
Kanopy This link opens in a new window Streaming educational & feature films across all disciplines, with films from the BBC, California Newsreel, Criterion, PBS & many others. Create a free Kanopy account on campus, then connect to a Kanopy app and watch on your mobile device or smart TV. See Kanopy Help.
OntheBoards.tv This link opens in a new window Growing collection of high-quality videos of full-length performances by some of today's most provocative artists working in dance, theater, music, and other forms that defy categorization.
Theatre in Video Vol. I [Alexander Street] This link opens in a new window Streaming video of definitive performances of the world's leading plays, and film documentaries. Users can bookmark specific scenes, monologues and staging.

The PALABRA Archive Audio recordings of prominent writers from Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula, the Caribbean, and other regions with Luso-Hispanic heritage populations reading from their works at the Library of Congress.