Once you have decided on your dissertation topic and read some books and articles, you will need to ensure you have read in detail the relevant primary source material, whether this is by a specific author, or relates to a particular genre, literary period or some other topic related to the discipline.
Use some of the links below, or see our more in depth guides on finding Primary Sources and finding historical newspapers and magazines
Enterprise provides information on rare book and archive collections held at Special Collections
A huge number of nineteenth and twentieth century newspaper articles, contemporary reviews, literary magazines and manuscripts are available in Gale Primary Sources, including the Times, Times Literary Supplement, British Library Newspaper collection and more. Search across all that content in one interface;
Use this resource to search across Gale's archival primary source content from a range of newspapers and journals. Click on Additional info to see a full list of the archives available to us.
In addition to EEBO (Early English Books Online) and ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online), which are available only to members of the University, the following sites provide free access to texts online:
Recorded author interviews
As well as printed material, sound recordings of interviews may also prove useful. The following are a few of the archives available which relate to English and American Literature.
Video material including documentaries, interviews, performances, news programmes and newsreels covering a variety of events and themes.
Contains facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works in the Medieval and Renaissance periods.
This platform is fully available for use but is currently a beta version, so you may notice changes and updates over the next few months.
Descriptions of early books printed in Great Britain or any of its dependencies in any language, as well as materials printed in English anywhere else in the world.
Gives references to journal articles, conference proceedings, essay collections or Festschriften covering all aspects of medieval studies.
Choose the International Medieval Bibliography database when you reach the homepage.
Bibliography covering the European Middle Ages and Renaissance.
E-books published by Manchester University Press. Includes the following collections: Manchester History of Medicine; Manchester Medieval Sources; Manchester Shakespeare.
Covering women’s writing in the British Isles from its beginnings to the present day, Orlando provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies.
Compiled by Betty S. Travitsky, BEWW is a growing list of scholarship of over 700 recovered writers and texts. As well as more familiar figures, it also identifies many previously unknown writers, such as women refugees, women translators, and English women writers in French, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh.
Contains facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works in the Medieval and Renaissance periods.
Full-text early English books (1473-1700).
Online collection of correspondence of the early modern period, from across Europe, the Americas and Asia.
This platform is fully available for use but is currently a beta version, so you may notice changes and updates over the next few months.
Descriptions of early books printed in Great Britain or any of its dependencies in any language, as well as materials printed in English anywhere else in the world.
Bibliography covering the European Middle Ages and Renaissance.
E-books published by Manchester University Press. Includes the following collections: Manchester History of Medicine; Manchester Medieval Sources; Manchester Shakespeare.
Covering women’s writing in the British Isles from its beginnings to the present day, Orlando provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies.
Provides full-text access to hundreds of Oxford's scholarly editions with their authoritative editorial notes directly alongside the text, enabling advanced search within and between editions.
Contains facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works in the Medieval and Renaissance periods.
Exact reproductions of over 150,000 significant English language and foreign language titles printed in the UK in the Eighteenth Century and many titles from the Americas.
This platform is fully available for use but is currently a beta version, so you may notice changes and updates over the next few months.
Descriptions of early books printed in Great Britain or any of its dependencies in any language, as well as materials printed in English anywhere else in the world.
Covering women’s writing in the British Isles from its beginnings to the present day, Orlando provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies.
Provides full-text access to hundreds of Oxford's scholarly editions with their authoritative editorial notes directly alongside the text, enabling advanced search within and between editions.
This collection includes more than 1000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the 17th and 18th Century. It covers the years 1600-1800 and includes material from England, Ireland, Scotland and some papers from British colonies in the Americas and Asia.
Contains facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works in the Medieval and Renaissance periods.
Nearly 100 full-text searchable 19th century periodicals covering women's writing, the rapid rise of children's entertainment and education, among other topics.
Covering women’s writing in the British Isles from its beginnings to the present day, Orlando provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies.
Past Masters, from InteLex, provides full-text access to the works of philosophers and writers. We have access to the following works on this platform:
British Philosophy: 1600-1900
The Letters of Charles Dickens: 1820-1870
Wittgenstein: Gesamtbriefwechsel / complete correspondence
Online access to articles published in the TLS from 1902 to 2019.
Video material including documentaries, interviews, performances, news programmes and newsreels covering a variety of events and themes.
Book History Online (BHO) is an international bibliography in the field of book and library history.
Box of Broadcasts (BoB) is a collection of TV and radio programmes from free-to-air channels. Set new recordings and playback programmes already recorded. Content back to 1990s.
An open access, digital collection of American independent and alternative press sources from various library special collections.
Covering women’s writing in the British Isles from its beginnings to the present day, Orlando provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies.
Online access to articles published in the TLS from 1902 to 2019.
Special Collections provides access to a great deal of primary source materials including rare books, authors' papers and archive collections such as the Archive of British Publishing and Printing
Examples of these include:
You can search the collections by category or keyword, or browse an A-Z list.
If you would like to make use of the University's Special Collections for your dissertation research, a good place to start would be the English and American Literature Subject Explorer. This guide has been created to help you make use of the University of Reading Special Collections in your dissertation.
English DissertationSubject Explorer
The Location Register includes information about the manuscript holdings of British and Irish repositories of all sizes, from the British Library to small-town museums, and about literary authors of all genres, from major poets to minor science fiction writers and romantic novelists.
Further information about the Register, and how to search it.
