The British Columbia Digital Library

Digital Library Collections By Subject: British Texts

See also Collections by Title

Includes medieval illuminated manuscripts.

See also under Literature: General Works literature time periods and Women.

• Act of Union Virtual Library. Belfast: Library and Informatervices Council (Northern Ireland). Hosted by the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis, School of Sociology and Social Policy, Queen's University of Belfast, this collection consists of digital facsimiles of pamphlets, parliamentary papers, and statutes relating to the 1801 Act of Union between Britain and Ireland. Full-text searches or bibliographic searches are possible, or you can browse through the collection by original format. Date accessed: 2003-03-10. Date added: 2003-03-10.
• Arctic Blue Books Online. Winnipeg: Archives and Special Collections, University of Manitoba Libraries. Summary: " ... a searchable, World-Wide Web version of Andrew Taylor's unique index to the 19th Century British Parliamentary Papers concerned with the Canadian Arctic." As of April 2003, the Blue Books themselves are digitized and linked to the index. Date accessed: 2003-08-06. Date added: 2003-08-06.
• The Auchinleck Manuscript. Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland. Summary: " The Auchinleck Manuscript (NLS Adv MS 19.2.1) is one of the National Library of Scotland’s greatest treasures. Produced in London in the 1330s, it provides a unique insight into the English language and literature that Chaucer and his generation grew up with and were influenced by. It acquired its name from its first known owner, Lord Auchinleck, who discovered the manuscript in 1740 and donated it to the precursor of the National Library in 1744." Date accessed: 2003-08-04. Date added: 2003-08-04.
• BOPCRIS (British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service). Southampton, UK: University of Southampton et al. This site contains a bibliographical database of British government publications from 1688 to1995, with selected full-text digital facsimiles (1688-1800 only) viewable as TIFF or GIF images. The bibliographic data  can be browsed by broad subject categories, by Library of Congress subject headings, or by date ranges. The search utility includes an optional interface to query just the full-text documents.    Date accessed: 2003-03-10. Date added: 2003-03-10.
• British Poetry 1780-1910: a Hypertext Archive of Scholarly Editions (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library). Listed by author or title, this archive contains SGML-encoded works or a combination of digital facsimile and text markup.
• The Canon of John Lydgate Project (Stephen R. Reimer, Department of English, University of Alberta, Edmonton, and others). This collection highlights the Professor Reimer's research and publications, including hypertext versions of his subject's writings, on the medieval English poet John Lydgate (1370?-1449?).
• Caxton's Canterbury Tales: The British Library Copies. Edited by Barbara Bordalejo, Canterbury Tales Project, De Montfort University. Online edition. Also available on CD-ROM from Scholarly Digital Editions. Digital facsimiles of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales published in 1476 and 1483. For the British Library site, see Treasures in Full: Caxton's Chaucer.  Date accessed: 2004-08-22. Date added: 2004-08-22.
• Celt Digital: The Celtic World on the Web. Also known as: The Celtic Digital Library. Created in October 1999 as a student project, the author is a librarian. Date added: 2002-01-02.
• CERES (Cambridge English Renaissance Electronic Service, University of Cambridge). A variety of full-text scholarly resources relating to English Renaissance literature are found here. Date added: 2002-09-07.
• Charles Booth Online Archive: Charles Booth and the Survey into Life and Labour in London (1886-1903). London: London School of Economics & Political Science and University of London Library. Date accessed: 2003-03-21. Date added: 2003-03-21.
• Collage. By the Corporation of London and Ibase Image Systems. " An image database containing 20,000 works from the Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery London." Individual image types include a few  text-based formats such as almanacs,  invitation cards, and tickets. While the JPEG images can be freely downloaded, the resolution is insufficient to read some of the small print.  All items can be purchased online as paper-based reproductions in a variety of sizes. Date accessed: 2002-02-06. Date added: 2002-02-06. Date updated: 2003-12-15.
• The Complete Works of Charles Dickens. Listed by The Dickens Project at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Date added: 2010-12-06.
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Created by Jeremy Hylton hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Public-domain HTML version of Complete Moby™ Shakespeare. The plays can be viewed as a single document or as individual acts and scenes.
• The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Research Archive (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia).
• Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse (Humanities Text Initiative, University of Michigan). Searchable/browsable full-text SGML-encoded collection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry with supporting research materials, some of which is restricted access. Many of the texts are electronic editions of hardcopy books from throughout the 20th century made available by the original publishers for personal, scholarly use.
• De Casu Cizaris Dutis Regis Iabin: An episode from John Lydgate's Fall of Princes (Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria, BC). Site requires an XML-capable browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape 6.x. Because this is an XML-transcription of the manuscript displayed side-by-side with a digital facsimile of the manuscript, the character " z" substitutes for the actual medieval English character. For a complete digital facsimile of this manuscript preserved by Special Collections Division, University of Victoria, see University of Victoria Lydate MS Fall of Princes.
• The Dickens Project (University of California, Santa Cruz). Established in 1981, includes The Dickens Electronic Archive of resource material for the study of Charles Dickens' writings and Dickens SearchWorks. Updated 2010-12-06.
• Digital Facsimiles and Other Electronic Resources Available through HAMNET. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library. Partial and complete digital facsimiles of works by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and Thomas Trevelyon in the 16th and 17th centuries. Date accessed: 2004-08-24. Date added: 2004-08-24.
• Durham Liber Vitae Project. London, Eng.: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College. Summary: " A joint project of the AHRB Centre for North-East England History and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College, London," to create a digital facsimile of " ...a complex manuscript which originated in the mid-ninth-century as a list of several hundred names of persons associated with a Northumbrian church, probably Lindisfarne, but possibly Monkwearmouth/Jarrow. Around 1100 addition of a list principally of monks of Durham Cathedral Priory, continued until 16th century. Several thousand names of lay persons were added throughout the middle ages." As of 2003-12-15, two sample images from the manuscript can be viewed. Date accessed: 2003-12-15. Date added: 2003-12-15.
• The Edmund Spenser Home Page. Cambridge, UK: Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Includes links to online texts. Date added: 2002-09-07.
• Electronic Resources for Early Modern History. United Kingdom: OTDS. As of September 2002, contains works by and about  Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and resources relating to Gloucestershire. Date added: 2002-09-07.
• The English Emblem Book Project. University Park, PA: Electronic Text Center, Penn State University Libraries. Selected digital facsimiles (JPG images in an HTML navigable page) of selected emblem books published between 1569 and 1881. The books are full-text searchable or they can be browsed individually by author and title. Date added: 2002-09-07.
• English Renaissance in Context (ERIC). Philadelphia PA: Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image, University of Pennsylvania Library. Designed as an educational resource, there are multimedia tutorials and high-resolution digital facsimiles from selected works preserved in the Furness Shakespeare Library (Horace Howard Furness Collection)  which help place the English Renaissance in context. See also: Schoenberg Online Collection. Date added: 2002-01-04.
• EPPI: Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland, 1801-1922. Southampton, UK: University of Southampton. Launched on February 19, 2003 and making use of the Ford Collection of Official Publications, " Phase 1 of the EPPI project. ... features a comprehensive searchable database of Parliamentary Papers relating to Ireland 1801-1922, with bibliographic information, Library of Congress subject descriptors and, for a significant selection of items, abstracts of contents. Phase 2, the full text digitisation of the records identified in Phase 1, will be complete by 2005." Date accessed: 2003-03-10.   Date added: 2003-03-10
• Estece: The Samuel Taylor Coleridge Archive (Created by Marjorie A. Tiefert hosted by the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library). Note: first word of site title is a graphic of Greek alphabet characters. Browsable collection, with indexes, of Coleridge's poetry and prose, along with supporting research materials.
• The Geoffrey Chaucer Website (Harvard University). Electronic resources in support of Chaucer's Middle English writings, especially The Canterbury Tales. As of July 2001, the full text of most of the tales does not appear to be available.
• The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive (Curated by Jim Farron). Includes full-text electronic (text and music) versions of the popular light operas by this British duo, along with links to supporting research materials.
• Historical Directories Searchable Digital Library: A University of Leicester Project. Leicester, England: University of Leicester. Summary: " ... digital library of local and trade directories for England and Wales, from 1750 to 1919. It contains high quality reproductions of comparatively rare books, essential tools for research into local and genealogical history." Search features include by location, decade or keyword. Date accessed: 2005-07-04. Date added: 2005-07-04.
• Internet Shakespeare Editions (University of Victoria, British Columbia). Established in March 1996, the Library section includes digital facsimiles and schoarly, textual transcriptions of Shakespeare's writing. The site also contains supporting research materials into his life and times.
• Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford: The Collaborative Texts (Edited by Marc Demarest). Electronic editions of three books (The Inheritors, Romance, and The Nature of A Crime) known to have been co-authored by Conrad and Ford, along with supporting research materials into their literary relationship, including Ford's memoir Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance.
• Lady Mary Wroth. Cambridge, UK: Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Includes links to online texts by and about Lady Mary Wroth (1586 or 1587-1651 or 1653), " the first English woman writer to have published an original work of prose fiction." Date added: 2002-09-07.
• Lewis Carroll Home Page (Edited by Joel M. Birenbaum). Contains links to online texts of the author best known for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• The Lewis Carroll Scrapbook Collection. Washington, D.C.: Global Gateway, Library of Congress, 2004. A digital facsimile (excluding blank pages and with some reformatting for this online presentation) of a scrapbook kept by Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), a mathematics professor at Oxford University, England, preserved by the Library of Congress' Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Date accessed: 2004-07-20. Date added: 2004-07-20.
• The Middle English Collection (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library). Searchable/browsable collection of SGML-encoded works chiefly associated with Great Britain. Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400) is the author best represented in the free portion of this collection.
• The Milton Home Page: Devoted to the Life, Times and Literature of John Milton. Compiled by Kevin J.T. Creamer. Hosted by University of Richmond, Virginia, USA. Contains links to Milton's (1608-1674) prose and poetry, as well as scholarly resources about him. Milton is best known as the author of the epic poem Paradise Lost.   The Milton Transcription Project is maintained by Kevin J.T. Creamer and under the editorship of Hugh Wilson. Date added: 2002-09-07.
• Montpellier Early Modern English Documents. Montpellier, France: Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur la Renaissance Anglaise. Selected English documents transcribed to HTML. Date added: 2002-09-07.
• Monuments and Dust: The Culture of Victorian London (Directed by Michael Levenson, University of Virginia, David Trotter, University College, London, and Anthony Wohl, Vassar College hosted by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia).
• The Pamphlet Collection (British Library of Political & Economic Science, London School of Economics and Political Science). Digital facsimiles viewable or downloadable as Adobe PDF files of pamphlets relating to social policy and transporation history, many dating back to the 18th century. Access is via hyperlinks from the online catalogue or through narrative bibliographies highlighting aspects of these pamphlets.
• The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive (Edited by Hoyt N. Duggan and others hosted by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia). Digital facsimles and transcriptions of the three 14th century manuscript versions of William Langland's Piers Plowman, along with supporting research material.
• The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London, 1674  to  1834. Variant title: The Old Bailey Proceedings Online Project. " A fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court." The full collection of online texts will not be available until at least June 2004. The site includes extensive background resources, including information for teachers, on the Old Bailey and the British criminal court system. Date accessed: 2003-03-10. Date added: 2003-03-10.
• Records of Early English Drama (REED) (Centre for Research in Early English Drama, University of Toronto). A few 16th century Latin plays in English translation are available in HTML format. The centre also maintains a Web guide, " All the World's a Stage" : WWW Links for Theatre History and Early Music, with extensive links to electronic versions of plays.
• Renaissance Electronic Texts (University of Toronto English Library). ASCII (plain text) and SGML-encoded books from and about the English Renaissance period.
• Renascence Editions: An Online Repository of Works Printed in English Between the Years 1477 and 1799 (Published by Richard Bear, University of Oregon). As of August 2002, 162 titles in HTML form. Site includes a long set of links to " Early Modern Humanities Sites" . Date updated: 2002-09-07.
• Representative Poetry Online (University of Toronto, 1912-1967 1994-). Online poetry texts from Old English authors to the present day edited by Department of English faculty.
• Robert Graves' Diary, 1936-39 (Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria, BC). Site requires an XML-capable browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape 6.x. XML-transcription of the diary displayed side-by-side with a digital facsimile of the diary. The diary is preserved in the Special Collections Division, University of Victoria, BC.
• Robert Louis Stevenson (Eldritch Press). Links to electronic texts of Stevenson's writings, along with supporting research materials.
• The Salisbury Project. Marion E. Roberts. Charlottesville, Virginia: Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia. A contemporary history  about the construction of England's medieval Salisbury Cathedral and its environs, this site includes historic and modern texts. Date added: 2002-09-08.
• Shakespeare in Quarto. London: British Library. Part of: Treasures in Full. Digital facsimiles of the British Library’s 93 copies of the 21 plays in Shakespeare quartos. You can compare up to two different texts side by side. The site includes background resources on the plays and their performance at the Globe Theatre and other venues. Date accessed: 2004-10-31. Date added: 2004-10-31.
• Shakespeare Resources (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library). Includes many public access searchable/browsable full-text SGML-encoded electronic editions and digital facsimiles of works related to Shakespeare. Some of the works are also downloadable for ebook readers (Microsoft and Palm operating systems).
• Sherlockian.Net (Edited by Chris Redmond). Includes links to electronic versions of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
• The Sidney Home Page. Cambridge, UK: Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Includes links to online resources about this literary family among whose most important members are Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) and his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621). Date added: 2002-09-07.
• Sir Thomas Browne. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Collection of HTML transcriptions and Adobe PDF digital facsimiles of the writings of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) prepared by James Eason. Date accessed: 2004-01-12. Date added: 2004-01-12.
• The Spectator Project: A Hypermedia Research Archive of Eighteenth-Century Periodicals (Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities, Rutgers University). This collaborative project focuses on The Tatler (1709-1711) by Joseph Addison and The Spectator (1711-14) by Richard Steele.
• The Swinburne Project: A searchable electronic edition of the works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). John Walsh, editor. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, c1999-2002. Summary: " The goal of the Swinburne Project is to produce highly accurate transcriptions of the works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, encoded using the Extensible Markup Language (XML). The project will eventually include Swinburne's complete works, barring any copyright restrictions. Considerable attention will be given to the accuracy and completeness of the texts, and to accurate bibliographical descriptions of them. Texts are encoded according to the XML-compatible Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines and document type definition (DTD) (known also as " P4" ). We include with each text a header describing the source text, the editorial decisions, and the resulting computer file. The texts are freely available through the World Wide Web." Date accessed: 2004-04-17. Date added: 2004-04-17.
• TEAMS Middle English Texts (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages hosted by the University of Rochester). Full-text medieval English works in HTML format along with detailed introductions to each text.
• Thomas Hardy Resource Library (Compiled by Mark Simons). Includes links to electronic versions of his writings.
• Caxton's Chaucer. London: British Library. Part of: Treasures in Full. This site contains digital facsimiles of the 1476 and 1483 editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and lets you compare them side by side. For another version, see Caxton's Canterbury Tales: The British Library Copies. Date accessed: 2004-08-22. Date added: 2004-10-31.
• The Union Makes Us Strong: TUC History Online. London, UK: London Metropolitan University and the Trades Union Congress. Online exhibit that includes digital facsimiles of archival records, including the manuscript of Robert Tressell's novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (scheduled for availability June 2003), and annual reports of the Congress from 1868 to 1968 (scheduled for availability September  2003). Date accessed: 2003-03-21. Date added: 2003-03-21.
• University of Toronto English Library (UTEL). Browse by author or title, or search for English language literary (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) texts. Some works are restricted to the University of Toronto.
• University of Victoria Lydate MS Fall of Princes. Digital facsimile prepared by students Nicole Green and David Badke of John Lyndate's manuscript preserved at Special Collections Division, University of Victoria, BC. For an experimental XML transcription and side-by-side digital facsimile of a portion of this manuscript, see De Casu Cizaris Dutis Regis Iabin: An episode from John Lydgate's Fall of Princes.
• Victorian Times. A partnership of the Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde the Library of the London School of Economics the Stationery Office, Ltd. and Tim Coates (affiliated to the Stationery Office). " An examination of the social, political, and economic development of Great Britain in the Victorian era." Topic or themes to be covered through the digitization of Parliamentary Papers, pamphlets and photographs are health care, education, housing, transport, industry, and labour and trade unions. Date accessed: 2002-03-21. Date added: 2003-03-21.
• The Web Concordances and Workbooks (University of Dundee). Electronic versions and concordances to several British poets. Research workbooks are available for the poetry of William Blake, Samuel Coleridge and John Keats.
• The Wilkie Collins Etext Page (Compiled and edited by James Rusk). Electronic texts in HTML format based on the public domain Collier (New York) edition of Collins' collected works, 1900.
• The William Blake Archive (Edited by Morris Eaves, University of Rochester, Robert Essick, University of California, Riverside, and Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsored by the Library of Congress). Multimedia site devoted to the writings and art of William Blake. Includes an electronic (SGML) edition of The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake by David V. Erdman (1988).
• The William Morris Society Web Site. Includes links to electronic versions of Morris' writings (poetry and prose).

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