James L. Harner

“ Records can be searched in three ways: Search, Advanced Search, and Browse. Search allows a keyword search of the citation or catalog entry to be limited by century. Advanced Search allows Boolean searches of fields (full citation or catalog entry, document author, title, document type, persons about, manuscript number, Gale document number, and previous search) to be limited by date, document type, source library, specific library collection, and source microfilm collection. Browse is limited to document authors. Users can search both modules simultaneously or select one. ”

“ Mastering indexing principles and changes in scope and organization amply rewards a user’s perseverance because Howard-Hill offers the fullest single guide to bibliographical scholarship on and bibliographies of English literature. ”

“ Guides to Scholarship and Criticism There is no adequate general bibliography of scholarship on Renaissance poetry; however, most poets, major and minor, are the subjects of author bibliographies, and studies of poetry are well covered in the guides to scholarship and criticism listed at the beginning of the Renaissance literature section. ”

“ Users should note that Nokes and Barron offers a highly selective guide to the most important or representative English-language scholarship; is marred by an organizational scheme that unnecessarily separates books, articles, and parts of books in the generally brief chronological lists under each author; omits Swift since he was to have been the subject of a separate volume in the series; and renders superfluous the needlessly complex entry number system by citing page numbers in the indexes of scholars and literary authors. ”

“ A commissioned survey by an established scholar of studies on nondramatic literature, with recent ones emphasizing full-length critical and historical works and typically offering only cursory attention to editions or reference works. (Drama is covered in the Spring issue [M2150] .) The essays vary considerably in soundness and rigor of assessment. Although it is the most current annual survey, the work is generally limited to books submitted for review and must be supplemented by the chapters in Year’s Work in English Studies (G330) on the nondramatic literature of the period. ”

“ A massive bibliography of English-language works through 1800 related to the history of the English language. Works are organized by publication date within various subject classifications; subsequent editions follow, in chronological order, the first. A typical entry provides author, short title, publication information, format, pagination, citations to standard bibliographies, locations, references to important scholarship and contemporary reviews, and occasional notes on content. Most volumes print several facsimiles of title pages and other printed material. ”

“ Searches can be restricted to separately published plays, plays in collections, or collections. Thus researchers could identify editions that included commendatory verses or lists of actors, claim a play was acted at court, identify a play’s genre, or name an author on the title page. (For other examples of how the database can be used, see Farmer and Lesser, “Early Modern Digital Scholarship and DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks,” Literature Compass 5.6 [2008] : 1139–53.) ”

“ Oxford Bibliographies Online are peer-reviewed, concisely annotated, expertly selected bibliographic citations. Each of the articles within a bibliography, written by scholars in the field, consists of an introduction that covers the history behind the field or subfield, followed by a categorized list of useful academic publications (e.g., introductions, textbooks, journals, handbooks and guides, reference works, primary texts or documents) and sections on debates and controversies, criticism, genres, and more. ”

“ Following an introduction that places modernist poetry in its historical context, the first grouping of essays explores the form and context of modernist poetry, covering such topics as race, gender, periodicals, and politics. The second grouping traces origins to the nineteenth-century movements such as decadence, imagism, vorticism, and the Irish revival. The final eleven essays in the third grouping explore British and American poetry after World War II, focusing on topics that range from Mina Loy to the Beats and from objectivism to the beginnings of postcolonialism. ”

“ Despite its flaws, London Stage is an indispensable source for research on theater and stage history, repertory, acting careers, theater personnel, trends in drama, reception history—in short, on nearly every aspect of the drama and stage of the period. Important advice on the use of the work is offered by Hume, “Theatre History, 1660–1800: Aims, Materials, Methodology” (M2385a) . Researchers must also consult Highfill, Burnim, and Langhans, Biographical Dictionary (M2400) , whose entries make numerous corrections and additions to London Stage. ”

“ Part of an eclectic series of dictionaries, the Historical Dictionary of Romanticism in Literature sets out to create an overview of the international Romantic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Over four hundred pages are devoted to the dictionary itself, with entries ranging from a few lines to four pages; covering people, works, schools, movements, and more ”

“ Selection seems to be based on the ability to secure rights for electronic publication.
Simple keyword, first line or title, and author searches can be limited by publication date, publisher, gender, date during a poet’s lifetime, and nationality and to notes. Searchers can also browse author and title, keyword, or first-line lists of the contents of the database. Results appear in ascending alphabetical order and cannot be re-sorted. Citations (but not the full text of poems) can be marked for e-mailing, downloading, or printing; each citation includes a durable URL to the full text. ”

“ Coverage is international, with signed entries on 540 plays, 640 authors, more than 60 countries, movements, forms, genres, concepts, theater companies, and theater practitioners. The entries, which conclude with selective bibliographies of primary and secondary works, emphasize “the cultural context of dramatic works and their authors,” with more attention to political, philosophical, artistic, and religious milieux than to plot summary. Concludes with a synoptic outline of contents and an index of subjects, names, and titles. A well-edited guide to the global scope of modern drama. ”

“ A few entries include a brief note on content or a list of later editions and reprints. Indexed by scholars. The lack of a subject index and cross-references means that users searching for studies of an author, an anonymous work, or a topic will find themselves skimming all entries. Although it is less accessible than it should be (with some entries not seen by the compiler) and although it excludes important studies published within critical editions, Tajima provides the fullest list of twentieth-century scholarship on Old and Middle English language. ”

“ The individual essays, which vary widely in quality, survey publishing history, characterize content, note important literary contributions, and provide publication details (title changes, volume and issue data, frequency of publication, publishers, and editors) and selective lists of studies, indexes, reprints, and locations. Indexed by persons and magazine titles. Although the lack of clear criteria governing selection leads to the inclusion of some magazines that can hardly qualify as literary, Sullivan is a serviceable compilation of basic information on a number of periodicals. ”

“ The omission of a subject index is inexplicable in a volume devoted to shifts and interdisciplinarity in literary studies; limiting the index to persons makes it impossible to use the collection to trace across periods or critical schools the effects of a methodology, concept, approach, ideology, or critical school. Despite this drawback, the volume does offer a convenient overview of the evolution of literary studies from the 1960s to the early 1990s.
Other Bibliographies M1385 The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL) . ”

“ Compiled from personal examination of many copies as well as standard reference works and offering a clear account of scope and editorial procedure, Jackson Bibliography is the best resource for identifying a volume of verse originally published within its chronological scope, for situating a volume in its literary context, and for differentiating editions (especially of minor works) ; however, because Jackson Bibliography cannot be searched by gender, Romantic Poetry by Women remains useful for identifying poetry by females and locating frequently elusive volumes. ”

“ Among the kinds of publications excluded are folktales, chapbooks, most temperance novels, and short fiction not collected in book form. Entries—which consist of author, title, and date of first publication—are generally listed under the county as it existed at the work’s composition (though there are headings for some broader topographical regions [e.g., the Scottish Highlands and the Welsh borders] , for cities that have inspired a large body of fiction, and for political categories [e.g., the northern Irish border] ) ; there are separate lists for England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. ”

“ Offers a guide to manuscripts and ephemera related to twentieth-century British and American theater held in 99 archives in Europe and North America. Organized by individuals (including performers, agents, designers, dramaturgs, directors, playwrights, and, occasionally, collectives) , an entry begins with an overview of the surviving papers and their potential uses and then describes, by institution, significant holdings (with many descriptions including a critical assessment of the significance of the materials and suggestions for their use by theater historians) . ”

“ Like History of English Drama, 1660–1900 (M1525) , which this work effectively continues, English Drama, 1900–1930 focuses on the history of the stage and dramatic forms of legitimate and popular theater in chapters on the theatrical world; influences, patterns, and forms; popular entertainment (musicals, revues, and melodramas) ; minority drama (e.g., regional and social drama) ; and “general” drama (essentially that by major playwrights) . Nicoll excludes operas, pantomimes, plays of unestablished authorship, and most revues and music hall sketches. ”

“ Entries, based on the Southeast Midland dialect, cite variant and grammatical forms, part of speech, etymology, meanings (grouped by semantic relationship) , and illustrative quotations. The electronic version can be searched by headword (and its forms) , by elements of an entry, and by quotation and provides links to the HyperBibliography (which includes all the Middle English materials cited in the Dictionary and supersedes the printed bibliographies [see below] ) and to texts in the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse; it offers far more versatile access than the print volumes. ”

“ Few annotations are adequately informative, and many entries are unannotated. Of the four indexes (authors, periodicals, persons, places) , only the first is necessary; the others merely repeat classified listings without incorporating cross-references. Because the lack of clarity in the selection policy and definition of the term literary periodical results in considerable unevenness of coverage (which is more thorough for eighteenth- than nineteenth-century periodicals) , White is little more than a place to begin research. ”

“ A database of biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on more than 1,000 dead and living British women writers, along with entries on literary and historical events and some males (c. 200) and non-British females of importance to women’s writing. People can be searched by name, occupation, genre, or place (the last three can be combined) ; tags (i.e., an extensive set of semantic or conceptual tags dealing with an author’s life and literary production and reception) can be searched in sections of entries (lives, writings, bibliographies, and full text) ”

“ Excludes dramatists except those who were also actors, managers, or otherwise connected with the theater. The informative, well-written entries, which vary from a single line to more than a hundred pages and include at least one portrait if any exists, are based on extensive research in primary sources. Although many biographies are the most authoritative available, entries lack full documentation—the only major flaw and one that will not be rectified by a bibliography volume. ”

“ The descriptively annotated entries are classified under sections for individual authors; bibliography; drama; and other topics (e.g., nondramatic literature; economics; history; gender and sexuality; race and ethnicity; print culture; philosophy; politics; religion; colonies; and sister arts) that vary from installment to installment. The criteria governing selection are unclear and the quality of annotations and coverage varies radically with the contributor (especially in recent installments) , but the work is sometimes a useful source for identifying current scholarship. ”

“ Following an admirably clear explanation of the basics of online searching are chapters on general literary reference sources (including some devoted to individual writers) ; library catalogs; print and electronic bibliographies, indexes, and annual reviews (again, with some devoted to individual writers) ; scholarly journals; seventeenth-century periodicals; resources for studying the contemporary reception of a writer or a work; manuscripts and archives; genres; translations and lexicons; microform and digital collections ”

“ Reviewers have, however, noted a number of omissions in some chapters; and following Wells’s organization while expanding his scope has led to some inconsistent groupings in chapters. Indexed by authors, titles, early printers, and subjects; a master index is planned upon completion. Although the early chapters are now dated and some works and authors are now more exhaustively treated in separate bibliographies, Severs, Hartung, and Beidler remains an indispensable starting point for most research in medieval literature. ”

“ Under individual authors are separate lists of primary works (limited to books) , editions, bibliographies, biographies, and critical studies. The brief annotations—essentially descriptive, with evaluative adjectives—are barely adequate to convey a sense of content. Two indexes: persons; titles. Although it is highly selective and partly superseded by author bibliographies, English Prose and Criticism does serve as a starting point for the study of nonfiction prose. ”

“ Entries are organized alphabetically in 11 variously classified divisions: reference works and collections of essays; primary sources and scholarship on them (including chronicles, biography and hagiography, and constitutional and administrative history) ; general and political history (including secular biography and Vikings) ; constitutional and administrative history; ecclesiastical history; social and economic history; science, technology, and agriculture; place and personal names; numismatics; archaeology; and fine arts, arts, and crafts (including manuscripts) . ”

“ The seventh edition offers enhanced coverage of science fiction, fantasy, postcolonial literature, travel writing, and (especially) children’s literature. There is a helpful index of new and extensively revised entries (most of which are for individuals) . Entries emphasize information rather than critical evaluation, although the latter is inevitably present. Discussions of authors are very inconsistent in directing readers to standard editions and critical works. ”

“ In the print versions entries are listed alphabetically by scholar in seven classified divisions: general and reference works, fine arts, philosophy and religion, history, social sciences, science and technology, and language and literature. The last has sections for general works, reference works, drama and theater, poetry, prose, fiction, children’s literature, and individual authors (with lists of general works, bibliographies, biography and correspondence, general criticism, and studies of individual works) . A few entries are accompanied by brief descriptive annotations. ”