Bibliographies and General Guides To Research
Sources are listed here in call number order. Some are in the reference area; others are part of the main collection and can be checked out of the library.
A Research Guide for Undergraduate Students: English and American Literature. Nancy L. Baker.
Ref. PR56 .B34 2000
A Reference Guide for English Studies. Michael J. Marcuse.
Ref. [q.] PR56 .M37 1990
The Present Age from 1914. Edwin Muir.
The Present Age after 1920. David Daiches.
PR471 .M8
PR471 .D3 1958
Literary Research Guide: A Guide to Reference Sources in English Literary Studies. James L. Harner.
Ref. Z2011 .H34 2002
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature.
1939- .
Ref. Z 2011 .M69
The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. George
Watson, ed. 5 vols.
Ref. Z 2011 .N45
The Transitional Age; British Literature, 1880-1920. Edward S.
Lauterbach and W. Eugene Davis.
Z2013 .L38
Twentieth Century British Literature; A Reference Guide and Bibliography.
Compiled and edited by Ruth Z. Temple, with the assistance for the author
bibliographies of Martin Tucker.
Ref. Z2013.3 .T4
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Introductory and Background Information
Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2002. 32 vols.
Provides a general introduction for many subjects.
Ref. [q.] AE5 .E363 2002 and on the Web.
Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia. Bruce Murphy, ed.
Ref. PN41 .B4 1996
The Harper Handbook to Literature. Northrop Frye, Sheridan
Baker, George Perkins ; with a chronology of literature and world events by
Barbara M. Perkins.
Ref. PN41 .F75 1985
Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism.
Ref. PN56.M54 E53 2003
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory : Approaches, Scholars, Terms.
Irene R. Makaryk, general editor and compiler.
PN81 .E63 1993
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Michael
Groden and Martin Kreiswirth, eds.
Ref. PN81 .J554 1994
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. 1978- .
Ref. PN94 .T83
The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature. Clare Buck, ed.
Ref. PN471 .B57 1992
Contemporary Literary Criticism. 1973- .
Ref. PN771 .C59
Also available online from the Mudd Library.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Margaret Drabble, ed.
Ref. PR19 .D73 1985
British Novelists, 1890-1929: Modernists.
Ref. [q.] PS221 .D5 v.36
The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. 2 vols.
Ref. [q.] Z2011 .O98 2002
Online
Credo Reference
Contains the full text of hundereds of reference works covering a wide range of subjects. Includes images, sound files, maps and more.
Literature Resource Center
Select the Person Search option from the bar above the search options, or make use of the Advanced search features beyond simple keywords. Provides personal data, career highlights, lists of writings, and works in progress on many authors. Provides profiles of literary artists, newspaper and television reporters, editors, columnists, screenwriters, and more. Includes material from the Dictionary of Literary Biography series and many other publications.
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Biographical Information
Biography and Genealogy Master Index.
An electronic version of the printed index, containing citations to useful information
in standard biographical sources. It is a great place to begin
searching for biographical information about anyone.
Biography Index. 1946-1994.
This index contains citations for biographical articles in books and periodicals. Arranged alphabetically by the last names of individuals.
Reference Indexes
Dictionary of National Biography. 22 vols. with supplements.
The essays in this dictionary are about deceased persons of British or Irish origins who played major roles in British history. Bibliographies are included in many of the entries.
DA28 .D4
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the revised online version of the DNB, and includes 56,000 biographies.
In addition to these sources, see the library guide for Biographical Information for more ideas.
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Historical Context
Many more sources are available in the library area beyond those that are listed here. For example, the reference collection includes a number of encyclopedias that contain information related to World War I.
The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events.
Bernard Grun.
Ref. D11 .G78 2005
Chronology of World History. 4 vols. H.E.L. Mellersh.
Ref. D11 .M39 1999
An Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval and Modern,
Chronologically Arranged. William L. Langer, compiler and ed.
Ref. D21 .L27 1980
The Oxford Companion to British History. John Cannon, ed.
Ref. DA34 .O93 1997
The London Encyclopedia. Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert,
eds.
Ref. DA679 .L78 1986
Primary material from books:
One way to locate primary source materials is to use the Guided Search. For example, try a search for world war 1914 and include any of the following terms using the Subject Keywords option. Try some of these:
- sources
- diaries
- documents
- memoirs
Primary material from articles:
Essay and General Literature Index. 1900 - 1994.
Indexes essays and articles in collections, anthologies, etc.
Reference Indexes
International Index. 1907-1965.
Indexes articles from scholarly journals. Title changed to Social
Sciences and Humanities Index.
Reference Indexes
Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1907) and
Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. 1900-1994.
Indexes articles from popular magazines.
Reference Indexes
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Finding Books
To find items owned by the library, search LUCIA. Try a Subject begins with search, for example, english literature--20th century or modernism. LUCIA will list other subject headings (and subheadings) which may be of interest. LUCIA will also suggest related terms which can also be searched. For advanced research you should consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH, a multi-volume guide to the terms commonly used in catalogs like ours. The LCSH can be found on top of the Ready Reference shelves behind the reference desk on the first floor of the library.
To combine terms for a different kind of search, try Keyword Anywhere. LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search for a phrase, like bloomsbury group, by searching with quotation marks around the phrase, as in "bloomsbury group". You can search for individual terms connected by logical operators like AND or OR. You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH. You can also search for multiple forms of words by using an asterisk; try a search like this one for english and modernis*. The asterisk acts as a truncation symbol and tells LUCIA to search for all words starting with modernis; modernist, modernism, and so on; the connecting operator and then tells LUCIA to display all the records containing both the term english and all the variations of the terms that start with modernis. You can target your search even more effectively by telling LUCIA to look for the terms in the subject area of the records; compare the Keyword Anywhere search with the Subject Keyword search.
Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system that organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd to find out where a book might be on the shelves.
Search LUCIA for materials in our library; try WorldCat to find materials beyond the Mudd. Make sure you've thoroughly searched our library before going to WorldCat. See a reference librarian if you need help.
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Finding Articles
The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options, as only a few are listed below. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. In addition to the titles listed here, see also the list of databases for Humanities available from the library.
Essential: these should be among your starting points for finding advanced materials.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature. 1939- .
Ref. Z 2011 .M69
MLA International Bibliography. 1963-
A leading source for the field of literary studies. Wide ranging index to just about anything of a scholarly nature related to literature and language.
General and Multidisciplinary Indexes: include citations and some full text of materials from a broad variety of fields including literature and history. Some include current reviews and news articles.
Academic OneFile
Broad coverage of academic periodicals going back to 1980. Includes full text of many articles.
Academic Search Elite.
Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals. Includes full text.
Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, try the 
button to see if that particular article is available. If you don't find it, you can submit a request for interlibrary loan (ILL) of a copy of the article: ILL takes about 7-10 days, so plan ahead. See the library's Interlibrary Loan page for more information.
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Web Resources
FirstWorldWar.Com
Includes some very interesting material on prose and poetry of the war, as well as extensive historical material.
World War I Document Archive
An archive of primary documents, including memoirs and personal narratives.
Modernist Journals Project
A collaborative project from Brown University and the University of Tulsa. The ultimate goal of the project is "to provide fully-searchable online editions of the English-language journals and magazines that were important in shaping those modes of literature and art that came to be called modernist." The initial, and ongoing, project is to provide access to The New Age, an influential journal of the period, from the years 1907 to 1922.
Voice of the Shuttle.
One of the most widely used sources for information on the humanities and literatures.
INFOMINE
Scholarly Internet Resource Collections: Social Sciences and Humanities
From librarians at all nine of the University of California campuses and
Stanford University. INFOMINE provides "organized access to important
university level research and educational tools on the Internet."
Internet Resources for English
From librarians of the Mudd.
Web Wise Guide to Searching
From the library. In addition to advanced information about the workings of different search engines, provides links to tutorials and more.
It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.
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Style Manuals
Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.
Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to
other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
The guide for any academic papers written in the literatures and languages.
RRef. LB2369 .G53 2003
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About Research in Modernist British Fiction
While you will find material on your topic in resources for English literary studies, you may also want to consider searching for material from other fields, like history, gender studies, history of philosophy, and more. In addition to consulting catalogs and indexes, be sure to look at bibliographies supplied at the end of relevant articles, chapters, and books, and to search library catalogs for book-length bibliographies.
Remember that in any written work you produce your sources must be fully documented. It may help to look at the information on style before you start your research, so that you will have all the details required for documentation at hand when you need them. Then as you write, go back to the resources on style for details on the exact format of your citations.
The sources listed in this guide were chosen for the broad coverage they provide. Along with direct links to Internet resources and searchable databases, there are links to LUCIA, the library's online catalog. Be sure to check the library's Electronic Resources page regularly to see new databases and indexes; some of these will only be available to users on the Lawrence campus. Also, you may want to take a look at the following guides:
- Biographies
- History 650: The Practice of History - Primary Sources
- History 650: The Practice of History - Secondary Sources
Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.
As always, if you have any questions be sure to ask a Reference Librarian.
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Definitions of terms and abbreviations:
Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready reference, shelves behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and scores; at end of classes in other collections
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