Guides: English Literatures: Poetry

Researching Poetry

Consult these sources to learn more about literary authors, periods, genres, texts, and their historical contexts.

Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics
Available Online
The Cambridge History of English Poetry
LAU Stacks PR502 .C36 2010
Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Twentieth Century
LAU Ref Stacks PS323.5 .E53 2001
Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Nineteenth Century
LAU Ref Stacks PS316 .E63 1998

Primary Sources - Poetry

19th Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new window
This database contains 1.2 million pages of periodicals published in Great Britain from 1800-1900. It includes publications on women, children, leisure and sport, humor, and material regarding the expansion of the British empire.
African American Newspapers, Series 1, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
Provides online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection features papers from more than 35 states—including many rare and historically significant 19th century titles.
American Periodicals Series Online (1740 to 1940) This link opens in a new window
Digital images of historically significant American periodicals from 1740 to 1900, including literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and popular magazines. All typography, drawings, graphic elements, and article layouts appear exactly as originally published. Allows searching by article type (e.g., letter, obituary, poetry, recipe, ad, editorial cartoon, review).
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Facsimile page images and searchable full text for nearly 500 British periodicals published from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts, archaeology, architecture, and the social sciences.
Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online This link opens in a new window
Presents a fully searchable version of Jonson's complete works, including all the original introductions, collations, and commentary. Includes a comprehensive body of essays and archives necessary for full study of Jonson’s life, performance history, and afterlife. Comprises around 90 old-spelling texts, 550 contextual documents, 80 essays, several hundred high-quality images, and 100 music scores; lists details of more than 1300 stage performances; and has a cross-linked bibliography of over 7000 items.
Early American Imprints (Series I): Evans, 1639-1800 This link opens in a new window
Based on the Evans American Bibliography, this collection contains the full text of all known existing books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in the United States or in the British American colonies from 1639 through 1800. It provides a foundation for research in early American history, literature, philosophy, religion, politics and nearly every aspect of life in early America.
When completed, the digital collection will include every item previously published in microform by Readex, plus more than 1,200 additional works located, catalogued and digitized since the microform effort was completed -- more than 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images.
Early American Imprints (Series II): Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819 This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to the 36,000 American books, pamphlets and broadsides published in the first nineteen years of the 19th century. In addition to books, pamphlets and broadsides, this collection features many state papers and government materials, including published reports; presidential letters and messages; congressional, state aand government materials, including published reports; presidential letters and messages; congressional, state and territorial resolutions.
Early American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Offers more than 700 historical American newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1876. Focusing largely on the 18th century, Series 1 is based on Clarence S. Brigham's "History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820" and other authoritative bibliographies.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
Features page images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700. From the first book printed in English through to the ages of Spenser, Shakespeare and of the English Civil War, EEBO's content draws on authoritative and respected short-title catalogues of the period and features a substantial number of text transcriptions.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) Text Creation Partnership (TCP) This link opens in a new window
A partner database to Early English Books Online. Provides a subset of fully searchable texts from the titles available in EEBO.
Any EEBO researcher can view the 250,000 page-image editions of EEBO titles, but only TCP partners can view these plus the corresponding full ASCII text.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Digital reproductions of every page of significant English- and foreign-language titles printed in Great Britain during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas and elsewhere. Searches the full text of books, pamphlets, essays, and other non-periodical materials including the complete works of major 18th-century writers.
Covers the fields of history, literature, language, religion, social sciences, philosophy, law, geography, fine arts, science, and medicine. Cross-searchable with Early English Books Online (EEBO).
HarpWeek: The Civil War Era, Reconstruction I & II and Gilded Age I (1857-1912) This link opens in a new window
Provides electronic access to all issues of Harper's Weekly (including all illustrations and advertisements) published between 1857 (first issue) and 1912, with the capacity to browse or search by date, by literary genre, and by a person's occupation. Provides four topical indexes: subject, illustrations, literature & publishing, and advertising.
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
Fully searchable library of more than 350,000 full-text works of English and American poetry, drama, and fiction with complementary criticism, reference resources, and websites. Includes over 800 clips of poets reading their own and other poets' work.
Allows you to:
--search both the MLA International Bibliography and the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, with links to full-text articles from over 200 literature journals.
--find a list of works by or about a particular author
--search simultaneously across primary works and secondary sources
--access 1,550 author biographies

Includes full-text databases such as African-American Poetry, Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Early English Prose Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, English Drama, English Poetry.

Includes reference sources such as The Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, Encyclopedia of the Novel, New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, the King James Bible, and Webster's Third New International Dictionary.
NINES: Nineteenth-Century Studies Online This link opens in a new window
A "scholarly organization devoted to forging links between the material archive of the nineteenth century and the digital research environment of the twenty-first."
Created as "a way for excellent work in digital scholarship to be produced, vetted, published, and recognized by the discipline," NINES serves as a peer-reviewing body for digital work in the long 19th century (1770-1920), both British and American; to support scholars’ priorities and best practices in the creation of digital research materials; and to develop software tools for new and traditional forms of research and critical analysis.

Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals. Series 1, 1800-1840
A microfilm collection of nineteenth-century periodicals, including titles such as The Monthly Literary Advertiser, The National Register, The Satirist; or, Censor of the Times, and The Christian Lady’s Magazine. Located in LAU Microforms.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) This link opens in a new window
A multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century, NCCO is comprised of numerous collections, including a variety of material types--monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more--in one cross-searchable location. Collections now available are:

Asia and the West
British Politics and Society
British Theatre, Music and Literature: High & Popular Culture
Children's Literature and Childhood
Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture
European Literature, the Corvey Collection, 1790-1840
Maps and Travel Literature
Photography
Religion, Reform, and Society
Science, Technology, and Medicine, Parts I & II
Women and Transnational Networks
Past Masters This link opens in a new window
Provides scholarly complete editions of classics (or selections from classics) in philosophy, literature, political science and economics. Examples of authors include Aristotle, Machiavelli, Shelley, Mill, Hume, Nietzsche, Bronte and Adam Smith. In English translation and/or the original language.

Poets.org
The website of the Academy of American Poets. Contains the full text of selected poems, poet biographies, audio and video, and interviews.

Times Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Searchable, electronic version of The Times, Britain's newspaper of record, essential for primary source research in British history, politics, and culture. Provides a complete full-text and full-image archive of The Times from 1785 to 1985.
Times Literary Supplement, 1902-2014 This link opens in a new window
First appearing in 1902 as a supplement to The Times, the venerable Times Literary Supplement (TLS) is a weekly literary review published in London. See TLS for literary culture and book reviews. TLS Historical Archive contains every page of every issue of the Times Literary Supplement published 1902-2014.
For more current issues see:
HoyaSearch TLS Entry

Poetry Indexes

Union First Line Index of English Verse: 13th - 19th Century (bulk 1500-1800)
A database of the first lines of manuscript verse based on freely-available first line indexes from various institutions and individuals, including the Bodleian, Beinecke, British Library, Folger Shakespeare Library, Harvard, Huntington, Leeds, Harold Love and Meredith Sherlock (Clandestine Satire), and Steve May’s Elizabethan Poetry.
Index of American Periodical Verse
An index to poems appearing in roughly 300 little magazines, university reviews, and scholarly journals. The 1971 through 2006 volumes are available by request from Off-Campus Shelving.

Browsing Areas

The following sections are good for browsing poetic works and books on poetry, which are shelved on the 5th floor of Lauinger Library.

PN 1010-1525 - Poetry

PN 6099-6110 - Collections of Poetry

PR 500-614 - English Poetry

PR 1170-1228 - Collections of English Poetry

PS 310-326 - American Poetry

PS 580-619 - Collections of American Poetry

Poetry can also be found scattered throughout the PR and PS sections; however, those titles are interspersed with other genres and non-fiction works.

Sample Subject Headings

Type

Form

Example

Author as Subject

Last name, First name

Rich, Adrienne

National/Regional Literature

Nationality/Region + Literature

English literature

Irish literature

African literature (English)

Caribbean literature (English)

Literary Genre

Genre

Poetry

Lyric Poetry

Odes

Nationality/Region + Genre

English poetry

American poetry

Caribbean poetry (English)