English Language and Literature Research Guide 

Literature in English in SML

The Sterling Memorial Library's collection of literature in English is extraordinary in both scope and depth. It includes not only literature of the United Kingdom and the United States, but also literary writings in English from Ireland, Canada, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean. Sterling's collections in these areas are augmented by the splendid resources of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and Sterling's Manuscripts and Archives Department, and further supported by rich holdings in English language studies and in American, British, and Commonwealth history. While the collection's strengths have usually been described as being in American literature and eighteenth- and nineteenth- century British literature, all periods are comprehensively represented. The only categories not historically collected at the research level (as defined by the Research Libraries Group) are folklore and folk literature, provincial and local literature, Native American literature, Mexican-American literature, and genre fiction. In recent years, collecting in some of these traditionally less well-represented categories (e.g., Irish literature, detective fiction) has reached the research level.

Types of Materials

Sterling holds relevant materials in monograph, serial, microform, and electronic formats. Literary manuscripts and archives are held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Significant microform collections, print collections, and online databases include:

• Wright American Fiction (Wright American Fiction also online)
• Early American Imprints (First and Second Series) [?]
• Early English Books 1475-1640 (Early English Books Online (EEBO) also online)
• Early English Books 1641-1700 (Early English Books Online (EEBO) also online)
• Three Centuries of English and American Plays
• The Virginia Woolf Manuscripts from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection
• Chadwyck-Healey's Nineteenth Century
• Adam Matthew's Nineteenth-Century Literary Manuscripts
• The Correspondence and Literary Manuscripts of Margaret Oliphant
• The Papers of Maria Edgeworth
• The Diaries of Anna Margaretta Larpent in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California
• Orinda: The Literary Manuscripts of Katherine Phillips

Poetry databases

• 18th Century Collections Online
• 18th Century Fiction
• 19th Century Fiction
• 20th Century American Poetry
• 20th Century Drama
• 20th Century English Poetry
• Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL)
• American Poetry Database
• Bible in English
• Black Drama
• British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries (BWLD)
• Cambridge History of English and American Literature
• Children's Literature Comprehensive Database
• Columbia Granger's World of Poetry
• Contemporary Authors
• Database of African-American Poetry
• Early American Fiction
• Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker
• Early English Books Online (EEBO)
• Early English Prose Fiction (1500-1700)
• Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare
• Eighteenth Century Fiction
• English Poetry Database
• English Poetry, Second Edition
• English Prose Drama
• English Short Title Catalog
• English Verse Drama
• Faber Poetry Library
• Gale Literary Databases
• Harper's Magazine and Cumulative Index
• Individual Literature Collections (LION)
• Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism
• King James Bible
• Literature Compass
• Lit Finder
• Middle English Compendium
• Motif-Index of Folk-Literature
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial-1950
• Oxford English Dictionary
• Old English Corpus
• Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
• Short Story Index
• Studies in Irish Literature
• Times Literary Supplement (TLS) Centenary Archive
• Victorian Database Online
• W. B. Yeats Collection (1885-1995)
• Women Writers Online
• Wright American Fiction

• Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library collections, especially:
  
  
  • Yale Collection of American Literature, including James W. Johnson Collection and the Pound Archive
  • Osborn Collection, including manuscript verse from the seventeenth through nineteenth century
  • Tinker Collection


• Arts of the Book
• Drama Library
• Elizabethan Club
• Franklin Collection
  (The Papers of Benjamin Franklin are located partially in the Beinecke and partially in room 230 of Sterling Memorial Library.)
• Manuscripts and Archives Department
• Yale Center for British Art