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University Library

LibGuides

British Literature: 18th and 19th Centuries

A guide to British Literature tools and resources.

Subject Headings

Use the following subject headings to search for books, periodicals, and electronic resources in the Primo Library Catalog. For more, consult LCSH online.

Late 19th century LC Subject Headings

Literature 

English literature--18th century

English literature--18th century--Criticism, textual

English literature--18th century--History and criticism

English literature--18th century--Themes, motives

English literature--18th century--Women authors

English literature--19th century

English literature--19th century--Criticism, textual

English literature--19th century--History and criticism

English literature--19th century--Themes, motives

English literature--19th century--Women authors

Romanticism--Great Britain

Politics and literature--Great Britain--History--18th century

Politics and literature--Great Britain--History--19th century

Poetry

English poetry--18th century

English poetry--18th century--History and criticism

English poetry--19th century

English poetry--19th century--History and criticism

Drama

English drama--18th century

English drama--18th century--History and criticism

English drama--19th century

English drama--19th century--History and criticism

Research Databases

Newspaper Indexes and Collections

Finding Period Reviews

To find contemporary book reviews of Victorian novels, you have three options.

1. Search one of the databases to the right, such as British Periodicals, Wellesley Index of Victorian Periodicals or Ninteenth Century UK Periodicals.

2. Consider search the online archives Hathi Trust and Internet Archive. UIUC Library belongs to Hathi Trust. To login, you just need to use your Active Directory login.

3. Consult a research companion on an individual author, which might list all reviews, for instance, Ashgate's Thomas Hardy Research Companion. To find companions on a specific author, search the Library Online Catalog and use search terms such as the author's name and "companion" or "encyclopedia."

Book History and Collections

UIUC's RBML holds the Lloyd Francis Nickell Eighteenth-Century English Literature Collection with 2000+ volumes. The collection contains rare editions by great writers such as Defoe, Swift, Fielding, Pope, Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Addison, and Smollett.

Book History and Early Printed Works

The Library of Congress provides an overview of England's Early English printing. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds fifteenth and sixteenth-century English printing materials including English imprints or incunabula.

The bibliography is a database of secondary sources on women's writing and labor in the Early Modern period.

In the Worldcat Collection or OCLC, it's possible to find alternate editions and formats of titles held by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and other libraries worldwide. Using this search feature, rare or obscure books can be located. To do so, search for a title and your search results will yield items that will have "other editions and formats" available. "View all" to trace the history of book formats and editions for that specific item.

Stationers' Company Archive

Stationers' Company Archive

This resource provides an overview of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions and the history of bookbinding. The company was founded in 1403 and received a royal charter in 1557. In the beginning, stationers held occupations such as text writers, booksellers, bookbinders and Illuminators. By 1557, printing displaced manuscript production. The company's monopoly on book production allowed only them to publish books once they were approved. No one else had the right to copy these books.

Stationers' Company Archive holds the administrative records of the company since 1557. Reports include: The Stationers' Company Registers 1554-1842, Court Books (from 1602 to the present day), membership records (1555 to the present day), financial and legal documents, and photographs and ephemera.

The History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library holds the microfilm collection of the Stationers' Company Archives.