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General Literature Resources: Home

A subject guide for people interested in accessing information about literature, drama, and poetry.

Electronic Resources

Bloom's Literary Reference Online
Based on Facts On File's extensive print literature collection, Literary Reference Online examines the lives and works of great writers throughout history. Unlike many resources, this database not only contains information on thousands of authors and their major and minor works, but also an archive of 35,000 characters, as well as extensive glossary and subject entries featuring historical events and their impact on literature. As diverse as it is authoritative, Literary Reference Online includes hyperlinked entries on world writers, literary criticism, minor and major characters, and literary genres and movements.

Contemporary Authors
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Provides complete biographical and bibliographical information and references on more than 120,000 U.S. and international authors. (Provided by the New Jersey State Library).

Lit Finder
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Essay Finder is a unique database of full-text essays and discursive writing based on books published in the 20th century which have been analyzed in standard library indexes. The essays focus on the humanities and social sciences, and include biographies and literary criticism. Subjects include literature, history, economics, sociology, art and architecture, philosophy, psychology, science and drama. The controlled vocabulary subject access provides for precise searching. Full bibliographic information and Library of Congress subject classifications are provided for source books.

 Literature Resource Center
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Access biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of more than 120,000 authors from every age and literary discipline. Scribner Writer's Series includes 15-20 page signed essays on more than 1,600 authors and literary genres drawn from 13 acclaimed Scribner print series. Twayne World, US, and English Authors each contains the full text of 200 frequently used Twayne Literary Masters books on individual World, US, or English authors, for a total of 600 full-text titles. (This service was partially funded by the South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative.) Including Scriber, Twayne's U.S. and World Authors.

Literary Reference Center
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Literary Reference Center (LRC) is a comprehensive literary reference database, which provides users with a broad spectrum of reference information from antiquity to the present day. LRC is a completely full-text database that combines information from over 1,000 books and monographs, major literary encyclopedias and reference works, hundreds of literary journals, and unique sources not available anywhere else. LRC contains detailed information on the most studied authors and their works and is an essential resource for public, academic and high school libraries.

Novelist
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Electronic reader's advisory resource which assists fiction readers in finding new authors and titles. Novelist allows readers to use a favorite author or title as a template to locate other authors and titles of interest. Contains materials for all ages. Provided by the New Jersey State Library.

Reader's Guide- Full Text
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Readers’ Guide Full Text, Select Edition is a 100% full-text database containing comprehensive indexing, abstracting, and full text of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and Canada.

E-books

Web Resources

Classic Reader
Read, search, and annotate great works of literature by authors such as Dickens, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and many others.