LibGuides: ENGL 1310A: Firing the Canon: Early Modern Women's Writing: Primary Sources

Exploring primary sources online

These databases will help you discover texts, authors, and other key content for your research. Some may have transcriptions of novels, poems, plays, and other publications, while others might have scans of original books and manuscripts. If you have trouble navigating a particular resource, or finding material related to your topic, please don't hesitate to contact me!

Open access resources

The Stainforth Library of Women's Writing
Francis John Stainforth (1797-1866), an Anglican clergyman, owned the largest private library of Anglophone women’s writing collected during the mid-nineteenth century. His library catalog lists 7,122 editions (over 8,000 volumes) authored and edited by more than 2,800 writers, nearly all of whom are women who have been left out of literary and book histories. The Stainforth DH project recovers this activist library and simultaneously draws attention to the near disappearance of a richly diverse and populous women’s book history and literary history.
The Rise of the Novel
British Library resources on 18th century novels and print culture.
The Old Bailey Online
A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court, 1674-1913.
Black Cultural Archives
Subject guides to key themes held in the collections of only national heritage centre dedicated to collecting, preserving and celebrating the histories of African and Caribbean people in Britain.
Lewis Walpole Library digital collections
British prints, drawings, ephemera, and material from this Yale library specializing in 18th century culture.
The Grub Street Mapping Project
A digital edition of eighteenth-century London. By mapping its print culture, literature, and trades, it aims to create both a historically accurate visualization of the city's commerce and communications, and a record of how its authors and artists portrayed it.

Resources requiring a Brown login

Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to full transcriptions of texts, with a focus on materials that are rare or inaccessible, 1400-1850.
1400-1850; full text collection of writing by women in English with currently about 200 texts and growing. Includes a wide range of subjects and genres, and all texts are transcribed in full, including front and back matter.
Perdita Manuscripts, 1500-1700 This link opens in a new window
Contains manuscripts that were written or compiled by women in the British Isles, 16th-17th centuries.
1500-1700; the manuscripts in this site were written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and they have been sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA. One of the key attractions of the Perdita Manuscripts is that it brings together little-known material from widely scattered locations.
Defining Gender 1450-1910 This link opens in a new window
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A collection of British primary source material for research and teaching, 1450-1910
Defining Gender provides access to a vast body of original British source material that will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective.
HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
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Discover millions of books, journals, images and maps digitized from libraries around the world, current.
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of book and ejournal titles digitized from libraries around the world. As members of HathiTrust, Brown users get PDF download access to nearly 3 million public domain or permissioned works that were a part of the Google Books digitization projects, or were contributed to the trust by other member institutions.

To login, click the LOGIN BUTTON and select Brown University from the list of institutions. If you have not already authenticated with your Brown username and password, you will then be asked to do so. While you can read articles without logging in, you will NOT be able to download articles.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides, and more in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800
Based on the English Short Title Catalogue, Eighteenth Century Collections Online includes books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides and more. It contains works published in the UK during the 18th century plus thousands from elsewhere. ECCO is primarily in English, but does include other languages.
Eighteenth Century Fiction This link opens in a new window
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A collection of works by writers from the British Isles from the period 1700-1780
A collection of works from the period 1500-1700, exploring the rich diversity of prose fiction in English in the period preceding the emergence of the realist novel as its dominant form.
Eighteenth Century Journals: A Portal to Newspapers and Periodicals, c1685-1835 This link opens in a new window
Provides access to rare journals about eighteenth-century social, political and literary life, 1685-1835
c.1685-1835; bringing together rare journals, this resource illuminates all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics covered are wide-ranging and include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion.

Eighteenth Century Drama
A unique archive of almost every play submitted for licence between 1737 and 1824, and hundreds of documents that provide social context for the plays.

Literary Print Culture: The Stationers' Company Archive This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the history of bookbinding, 1554-21st century.
1554-21st century; the Stationers Company Archive is an important resource for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions and the history of bookbinding.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to page images of printed work from the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700.
From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this collection now contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Subjects include English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.
Early English Prose Fiction This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to rare texts inaccessible in print form together with early editions of all the best-known works of fictional prose from the period 1500-1700
A collection of more than 200 works from the period 1500-1700, exploring the rich diversity of prose fiction in English in the period preceding the emergence of the realist novel as its dominant form.
Literary manuscripts. 17th and 18th century poetry from the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds This link opens in a new window
A database for first lines, last lines, attribution, author, title, date, length, verse form, content and bibliographic references for over 6,600 poems
The database includes first lines, last lines, attribution, author, title, date, length, verse form, content and bibliographic references for over 6,600 poems within the collection. Alongside original compositions are painstakingly copied verses, translations, songs and riddles. The whole collection is situated within an assortment of manuscripts, some entirely dedicated to poetry, while others contain medicinal recipes, household accounts, draft letters, musical scores and plays. There are also several printed works, with handwritten verse additions.