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A Guide to English and American Literature

Resources and services

General Reference (online)

Cambridge Companions Online This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to books in the Cambridge Companions in Literature and Classics and Cambridge Companions in Philosophy, Religion, and Culture series. Essays which are intended to serve as reference works for an inter-disciplinary audience. NOTE: WU Libraries do not subscribe to Shakespeare Survey. Please ignore those references in your results; you will not be able to get to the full-text.
Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
A guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of many English words. Second edition, updated quarterly. Learn more about this resource.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature This link opens in a new window
The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature contains over 400 articles and aims to map, over time, the world’s entire landscape of literary expressions and criticism, weaving together the various fields and approaches that make up literature.

Period and Subject-specific Reference Sources

Brill's Medieval Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online This link opens in a new window
Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies This link opens in a new window
Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature This link opens in a new window
Oxford African American Studies Center (1 user) This link opens in a new window
Textual History of the Bible This link opens in a new window

Poetry Reference

Dissertation Sources

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global Full Text This link opens in a new window
Access to 5 million citations to dissertations and theses from around the world from 1637 to the present day together with over 2.7 million full text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Over 200,000 new dissertations and theses are added to the database each year. Learn more about this database.
Note: You cannot request full-text of dissertations or theses via ILLiad from within the database; you can only order them using your own credit card. To request via ILLiad, log in to ILLiad, click on Request a Thesis, and fill out the form.
Dissertations & Theses @ Washington University in St. Louis (1996-) This link opens in a new window
Full-text. Citations and abstracts of dissertations and theses submitted by Washington University and published in UMI's Dissertation Abstracts database. View 24-page previews of dissertations and theses, and download the full text. Learn more about this database
EThOS (British Dissertations & Theses) This link opens in a new window
EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) harvests e-theses from institutional repositories in UK institutions and digitizes paper theses on-demand. Many UK institutions support Open Access to their theses, so download of their digital and digitised theses is free. Create a free account to select and download the free theses.
American Doctoral Dissertations This link opens in a new window
American Doctoral Dissertations (1902-present) is a free database; it contains American Doctoral Dissertations, 1933-1955 (published by H.W. Wilson) plus additional dissertation metadata contributed by select American colleges and universities. This database will continue to grow through regular updates and new partnerships with graduate degree-granting institutions.