Alcove 9: An Annotated List of Reference Websites

Literature: Full-Text Sites

The Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)
Provides links to full-text of more than 20,000 English language titles which may be searched by author, title or Library of Congress classification (e.g., PS Literature: American). It searches both the Electronic Text Center and Project Gutenberg listed below. Special features include women writers, banned books, and prize winners online.

SearcheBooks.com
This simple keyword search engine indexes thousands of online books permitting author, title, and subject searches. It may also be used to find particular references within the books.

The Electronic Text Center
Established in 1992, the University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center makes available thousands of online texts, downloadable e-books and related images. A popular feature is its Ebooks for the Microsoft Reader and the Palm Pilot. Among the Center’s publications is “Electronic Theses and Dissertations in the Humanities: A Directory of On-Line References and Resources”. Some of the electronic texts are proprietary and available only to researchers at the University of Virginia.

Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest producer of free electronic books with a collection of more than 10,000. Most of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are older literary works in the public domain in the United States. It is not always clear which edition of a text was used for producing the electronic version.

Project Bartleby
A collection of public domain reference and literary works. Contains a literature-oriented reference collection; many of the classic writings of literature, history, philosophy and science drawn from the Harvard Classics and the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction; poetry anthologies; and, collections of the poems of individual American and English poets. All of the works on the site can be searched simultaneously; individual titles in the archive can also be browsed.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
A collection of 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are more than 2,800 volumes included by nearly 1,500 authors. It is browsable by author and the entire collection can be searched by keyword or phrase.

Labyrinth (Georgetown University)
Provides organized access to electronic resources in medieval studies. There are connections to databases, services, texts, and images.

Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Full text of Shakespeare's plays and other works, with a keyword search facility.