Skip to Main Content

Undergraduate Research Guide: Primary Texts Online

Subjects: English

Using Online Resources

For all these online resources, if you are not connected to the Oxford network you will need to login with your Oxford Single Sign On username and password to gain full access.

 

More Primary Texts Online

You will find more online primary texts on the subject specific LibGuides for the following time periods:

ProQuest One Literature Online

Literature Online provides access to the full text of more than 350,000 British and American original works (as well as links to useful background material) and critical works such as journal articles and citations.

Early English Books Online (EEBO)

Early English Books Online (EEBO) 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. Over 200 libraries worldwide have contributed to EEBO. 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.

Beginning with the very first book published in English, EEBO draws from four authoritative bibliographical resources – both Pollard & Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) in their revised versions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) and the Early English Books Tract Supplement – to present more than 146,000 titles and over 17 million scanned pages of content.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)

ECCO provides fully searchable full text access to over 180,000 English-language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800. it is fully text-searchable on over 33 million pages.

Past Masters

Past Masters is a collection of full-text humanities works in scholarly editions. It contains the works and/or correspondence of many major literary authors, philosophers and other intellectuals as well as collections of correspondence by period.

Women's Writing

Orlando provides a rich resource of women's writing from the British Isles, including author's lives, contextual materials and bibliographies.

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries is made up of over 100,000 pages of diary entries and letters documenting the experiences of over 500 women.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries brings together 150,000 pages of diaries and letters.

Defining Gender

 

Defining Gender explores the study and analysis of gender, leisure and consumer culture with original primary source material from British archives. It features a broad range of thematically organised documents and provides an excellent opportunity for comparative study and research. Manuscripts, printed works and illustrations combine to address the key issues from both masculine and feminine perspectives. They are indexed to provide ready accessibility.