LibGuides: English Literature: Resources for Undergraduates: Novels, Poems & Other Primary Texts

Find Primary Texts in Print

Are you looking for a primary text in English, such as a novel, poem, short story, or play? Use the JumboSearch box to locate print resources in the library. You can also find digitized primary texts in library databases and on the web on this page.

Primary Texts in Library Databases & Research Guides

The resources in this section include a wide variety of primary sources such as original novels, poems, plays, and short stories; historic newspaper databases; pamphlets and other ephemera; and much more.

Early English Books Online
Over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661), comprising all known English language books from the beginning of printing to 1700.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
A comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection
This collection contains over 2 million printed pages of English-language works, many of them comprising multiple volumes, and constitutes one of the most important collections of British Romantic-era writing in existence anywhere.

Nineteenth Century British Fiction Online
Created by Jennifer Ferguson, a librarian at Tisch Library, this resource includes links to digitized versions of important works by key authors during the Long Nineteenth Century. Along with the current canonical works, the resource includes additional titles by each author as well as bibliographies, contextual information, and much more.

Twentieth-Century American Poetry
Provides full-text access to approximately 50,000 poems by over 300 American poets. Search by author, keyword, title, first line, dates, publisher, gender, or literary movement.
Twentieth Century North American Drama
Full texts of 1,900 plays from the United States and Canada, of which 1,250 are in copyright and licensed from the authors or their estates.
Women Writers Online
A full-text collection of works written by women, in English or in English translation, before 1850.

Primary Texts on the Web

HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust is a large-scale collaborative repository with over 10 million volumes including content digitized via the Google Books project, Internet Archive, and by local libraries. Public domain content is full-text; non-public domain content (post-1923) is for full-text searching only. Since Tufts is a member, those with a Tufts login can download the pdf of pre-1923 materials and can build a personal collection. To login select Collections, then select login from the upper right; choose Tufts University and login using your Tufts username and password.

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
Digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-Century black women writers. This collection provides access to the thought, perspectives, and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920.
British Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832
The British Women Romantic Poets Project is a digital initiative of the UC Davis General Library.
Discovering Literature
Discovering Literature brings to life the social, political and cultural context in which key works of literature were written. Enjoy digitised treasures from the British Library's collection, newly commissioned articles, short documentary films, and more.
Representative Poetry Online
Hosted by the University of Toronto Libraries, Representative Poetry Online is a web anthology of 4,800 poems in English and French by over 700 poets spanning 1400 years.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg offers over 36,000 free ebook versions of titles in the public domain to download to your PC, Kindle, Android, iOS or other portable device. Choose between ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.
Westminster Detective Library
It is the mission of the Westminster Detective Library to catalog and make available online all the short fiction dealing with detectives and detection published in the United States before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891).
Reading Europe: European Culture through the book
The "Reading Europe: European culture through the book" exhibition offers a rare opportunity to view some of the hidden literary gems from the national libraries of Europe. Twenty-three countries have selected nearly a thousand works for the public to peruse. Visitors can discover everything from 18th century English bestsellers to the lost interiors of Russian palaces, all presented in an innovative and multilingual form.
LibriVox
LibriVox audiobooks are free for anyone to listen to on their computers, iPods or other mobile device, or to burn onto a CD. Titles on LibriVox are in the public domain and include a wide array of classic literature.