Oberon Books Collection – newly expanded coverage
As a result of heavy usage of the material housed in the initial release of the Oberon ebook collection launched in 2021, the Library has now expanded its coverage to incorporate a second release of some 400 further (individually indexed) titles from this key publisher of plays and books on theatre practice and theory. In additional to canonical texts, the portfolio incorporates an unparalleled range of new writing from the contemporary era, including many significant works and writers that have been excluded from major collections to date. Particularly noteworthy in this release are some 39 plays by Howard Barker, whilst new works by Ontroerend Goed, Deborah Pearson, and Hannah Nicklin are also particularly welcome. Further evidence of the Library’s ongoing collaboration with the drama department to support performance-based arts in the challenging post-COVID environment, the material will also enhance efforts to rebalance our holdings and offer an opportunity to readily study and research a broader range of plays by contemporary Black and Global Majority artists.
Archives of Sexuality and Gender
This database, currently the largest portfolio of digital primary source material to address this complex area of cultural studies, encompasses social history, social and political science, psychology, health, and policy studies.
The Library offers access to three diversely sourced collections. The broad expanse of LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 and sex and sexuality from the sixteenth century to the twentieth allow scholars to trace how sexual norms have changed over time, the evolution of public health, changing gender roles, and the ebb and flow of social movements and activism. Researchers can also draw upon a wider pool of material to uncover hidden histories, such as the full text of the landmark Wolfenden report (1957), and the testimonies that underpinned its findings.
The newly acquired, “Community and Identity in North America” archive comprises over a million pages of mainly unique or unpublished material, detailing how identities developed in different social conditions across the Americas. This collection also widens our offer to interdisciplinary groupings such as the Morgan Centre, CIDRAL and CSSC, whose work informs the University’s pioneering MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture.
These collections have been selected to complement our growing reserves in the area – both digital (Gender: identity and social change and Defining Gender) and physical (LGBQT+ holdings in our Special Collections) - with the latter recently boosted by the acquisition of the archive which will feature prominently in the forthcoming ‘Secret Public’ exhibition at the Rylands.
The database incorporates multiple filtering options, including a term frequency tool, which enables mapping of the usage of a word or phrase by content type or popularity over a period of years. Researchers can also cross-search the entirety of the Library’s content hosted on the Gale Primary Sources platform.
The Harper’s Bazaar Archive significantly enhances the University’s existing holdings of one of the world’s most influential fashion and lifestyle magazines. Providing access to over 500,000 pages of content, coverage extends back to the first issues of both the US (1867-present, with subsequent issues added on an ongoing basis), and UK (1930-2015) editions, both of which are seamlessly cross-searchable.
The resource is fully indexed, and content is discoverable to either article level or, in the case of advertisements, by brand or company name. The highly visual content is presented in the original magazine layout, providing both context and opportunity for comparative studies of both the US and UK editions. The database also complements the University’s recent acquisitions in general interest magazines, notably those available on EBSCOhost Reseach Databases.
This powerful lens into American, British and International fashion is essential to students and researchers in Fashion, Business and Technology, with cross-searching facilitated between both Women's Wear Daily and The Vogue Archive by their shared ProQuest platform. However, whilst synonymous with designers and illustrators, Harper’s also showcased the work of acclaimed authors such as John Steinbeck and Virginia Woolf and photographers including Diane Arbus and Man Ray. Its diverse cultural range offers rich primary source material for the Departments of American Studies, English Literature and Creative Writing, Film Studies, History, and Sociology, as well as interdisciplinary research groupings across the Humanities including CIDRAL and the Institute for Cultural Practices.
The Library has recently secured online access to a significant archival collection of American-based general magazines.
Renowned for their high-quality photography, impeccable production, and trend-setting design and editorial styles, these collections will hold significant historical value to social and cultural historians, as well as interdisciplinary research groupings across the Humanities. The Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture and the Centre for the Cultural History of War will also benefit.
Accessible on Library Search, the archives are hosted by EBSCO, through which researchers already have access to the Time magazine archives.
The seven new collections comprise:
National Theatre Collections and a Peake Performance!
The latest addition to the Library’s Drama Online portfolio which completes a collection sourced from over a decade of ‘NT Live’ broadcasts. Now comprising 70 productions, the National Theatre Collections offer a compendium of high quality full-length staged performances stretching from Sophocles to Shakespeare and beyond. In line with previous releases NT3 is of course readily available to all members of the University of Manchester. The new additions incorporate: “marquee” productions from renowned directors of the calibre of Nicholas Hytner and Lyndsey Turner; literary adaptations from the poet, Carol Ann Duffy and the novelist, Zadie Smith, and acclaimed performances from the likes of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ralph Fiennes, Sophie Okonedo, Catherine Parkinson, and Michael Sheen. To further discovery all new titles - which include ‘Antony & Cleopatra,’ ‘The Book of Dust,’ ‘The Crucible’ and ‘Under Milk Wood’ - are individually indexed on Library Search.
In conjunction with Collection 1 (30 plays) and 2 (20 plays), our NT portfolio complements the Library’s extensive reserves of streamed performances from other major UK theatre houses – including the Royal Shakespeare Company’s RSC Live Collection and Shakespeare’s Globe On Screen.
The Library has also recently acquired a small collection of additional streamed productions of Shakespeare and early modern drama housed on the Drama Online platform, which includes the Royal Exchange’s acclaimed 2014 production of Hamlet with Maxine Peake.
Collectively these resources form part of the Library’s ongoing collaboration with the Drama and English, American Studies and Creative Writing departments to support the study of performance-based arts in the challenging post-COVID environment.
One of the great treasures of The Rylands, our copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, has long been available online and open access through the Library Digitised Collections, but we’re delighted to announce it now features in the recently launched First Folios Compared project which brings together over 50 first folios (just over 20% of all known surviving copies) for researchers to examine and explore. It also of course provides another example of the Library’s active commitment to Open Access scholarship.
This project opens up a host of exciting opportunities for close textual examination and work in the digital humanities on an incontrovertibly seminal work, stretching beyond the 36 plays to encompass the physical journeys undergone by the books themselves through the course of 4 centuries - from the amendments of printers to the annotations of owners. Copies from Skipton to Sydney, together with all their extant metadata, are now readily and freely available for viewing and direct comparison.
For more on the Project see the ‘Summary’ in the Details section on the database entry on Library Search.
Orlando : women's writing in the British Isles from the beginnings to the present
Emerging out of the Orlando Project, the pioneering self-described ‘textbase’ initiated in the mid-1990s in Canada, Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present now constitutes an extensive archive of over 8 million words about women writers, principally British, which seeks to establish a broad literary history centred in women’s production and, through its distinctive infrastructure, resist monolithic or hegemonic readings. In line with the gender fluidity of its Virginia Woolf-derived title, the pool of material offered goes beyond conventional literary genres of poetry, fiction, and drama to encompass writers of science, household advice, or popular genres, travel writing, and cultural critique. The enterprise has been acknowledged as “a watershed project for feminist recovery in digital humanities in general and in digital literary studies in particular” and it continues to generate critical attention in itself.
Entries incorporate contextual timelines for over 1400 authors and their biographies, together with contemporary historical, scientific, medical and legal events, sets of internal links, and bibliographies. Orlando’s digitally-encoded and collaboratively-authored model is very much in line with ongoing developments in the digital humanities and similar collaborative practices and thinking can be readily found in the Library’s own approach to Manchester Digital Collections and its use of TEI coding and tagging systems to ensure a plethora of pathways and similar dynamism, as exemplified in ongoing work on the Mary Hamilton Papers. The database also complements the Library’s other evolving electronic reference collections in this area of study, most notably The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing.
Recent additions to the Orlando platform include Teaching with Orlando tips and resources, and a collectively sourced ‘Exhibit’ of project images, as it seeks to further opportunities for ‘remixing’ work on women’s writing through linked data and evolving collaborative systems of text and technology.
Oberon Books Collection – newly expanded coverage
As a result of heavy usage of the material housed in the initial release of the Oberon ebook collection launched in 2021, the Library has now expanded its coverage to incorporate a second release of some 400 further (individually indexed) titles from this key publisher of plays and books on theatre practice and theory. In additional to canonical texts, the portfolio incorporates an unparalleled range of new writing from the contemporary era, including many significant works and writers that have been excluded from major collections to date. Particularly noteworthy in this release are some 39 plays by Howard Barker, whilst new works by Ontroerend Goed, Deborah Pearson, and Hannah Nicklin are also particularly welcome. Further evidence of the Library’s ongoing collaboration with the drama department to support performance-based arts in the challenging post-COVID environment, the material will also enhance efforts to rebalance our holdings and offer an opportunity to readily study and research a broader range of plays by contemporary Black and Global Majority artists.
Archives of Sexuality and Gender
This database, currently the largest portfolio of digital primary source material to address this complex area of cultural studies, encompasses social history, social and political science, psychology, health, and policy studies.
The Library offers access to three diversely sourced collections. The broad expanse of LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 and sex and sexuality from the sixteenth century to the twentieth allow scholars to trace how sexual norms have changed over time, the evolution of public health, changing gender roles, and the ebb and flow of social movements and activism. Researchers can also draw upon a wider pool of material to uncover hidden histories, such as the full text of the landmark Wolfenden report (1957), and the testimonies that underpinned its findings.
The newly acquired, “Community and Identity in North America” archive comprises over a million pages of mainly unique or unpublished material, detailing how identities developed in different social conditions across the Americas. This collection also widens our offer to interdisciplinary groupings such as the Morgan Centre, CIDRAL and CSSC, whose work informs the University’s pioneering MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture.
These collections have been selected to complement our growing reserves in the area – both digital (Gender: identity and social change and Defining Gender) and physical (LGBQT+ holdings in our Special Collections) - with the latter recently boosted by the acquisition of the archive which will feature prominently in the forthcoming ‘Secret Public’ exhibition at the Rylands.
The database incorporates multiple filtering options, including a term frequency tool, which enables mapping of the usage of a word or phrase by content type or popularity over a period of years. Researchers can also cross-search the entirety of the Library’s content hosted on the Gale Primary Sources platform.
The Harper’s Bazaar Archive significantly enhances the University’s existing holdings of one of the world’s most influential fashion and lifestyle magazines. Providing access to over 500,000 pages of content, coverage extends back to the first issues of both the US (1867-present, with subsequent issues added on an ongoing basis), and UK (1930-2015) editions, both of which are seamlessly cross-searchable.
The resource is fully indexed, and content is discoverable to either article level or, in the case of advertisements, by brand or company name. The highly visual content is presented in the original magazine layout, providing both context and opportunity for comparative studies of both the US and UK editions. The database also complements the University’s recent acquisitions in general interest magazines, notably those available on EBSCOhost Reseach Databases.
This powerful lens into American, British and International fashion is essential to students and researchers in Fashion, Business and Technology, with cross-searching facilitated between both Women's Wear Daily and The Vogue Archive by their shared ProQuest platform. However, whilst synonymous with designers and illustrators, Harper’s also showcased the work of acclaimed authors such as John Steinbeck and Virginia Woolf and photographers including Diane Arbus and Man Ray. Its diverse cultural range offers rich primary source material for the Departments of American Studies, English Literature and Creative Writing, Film Studies, History, and Sociology, as well as interdisciplinary research groupings across the Humanities including CIDRAL and the Institute for Cultural Practices.
The Library has recently secured online access to a significant archival collection of American-based general magazines.
Renowned for their high-quality photography, impeccable production, and trend-setting design and editorial styles, these collections will hold significant historical value to social and cultural historians, as well as interdisciplinary research groupings across the Humanities. The Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture and the Centre for the Cultural History of War will also benefit.
Accessible on Library Search, the archives are hosted by EBSCO, through which researchers already have access to the Time magazine archives.
The seven new collections comprise:
National Theatre Collections and a Peake Performance!
The latest addition to the Library’s Drama Online portfolio which completes a collection sourced from over a decade of ‘NT Live’ broadcasts. Now comprising 70 productions, the National Theatre Collections offer a compendium of high quality full-length staged performances stretching from Sophocles to Shakespeare and beyond. In line with previous releases NT3 is of course readily available to all members of the University of Manchester. The new additions incorporate: “marquee” productions from renowned directors of the calibre of Nicholas Hytner and Lyndsey Turner; literary adaptations from the poet, Carol Ann Duffy and the novelist, Zadie Smith, and acclaimed performances from the likes of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ralph Fiennes, Sophie Okonedo, Catherine Parkinson, and Michael Sheen. To further discovery all new titles - which include ‘Antony & Cleopatra,’ ‘The Book of Dust,’ ‘The Crucible’ and ‘Under Milk Wood’ - are individually indexed on Library Search.
In conjunction with Collection 1 (30 plays) and 2 (20 plays), our NT portfolio complements the Library’s extensive reserves of streamed performances from other major UK theatre houses – including the Royal Shakespeare Company’s RSC Live Collection and Shakespeare’s Globe On Screen.
The Library has also recently acquired a small collection of additional streamed productions of Shakespeare and early modern drama housed on the Drama Online platform, which includes the Royal Exchange’s acclaimed 2014 production of Hamlet with Maxine Peake.
Collectively these resources form part of the Library’s ongoing collaboration with the Drama and English, American Studies and Creative Writing departments to support the study of performance-based arts in the challenging post-COVID environment.
One of the great treasures of The Rylands, our copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, has long been available online and open access through the Library Digitised Collections, but we’re delighted to announce it now features in the recently launched First Folios Compared project which brings together over 50 first folios (just over 20% of all known surviving copies) for researchers to examine and explore. It also of course provides another example of the Library’s active commitment to Open Access scholarship.
This project opens up a host of exciting opportunities for close textual examination and work in the digital humanities on an incontrovertibly seminal work, stretching beyond the 36 plays to encompass the physical journeys undergone by the books themselves through the course of 4 centuries - from the amendments of printers to the annotations of owners. Copies from Skipton to Sydney, together with all their extant metadata, are now readily and freely available for viewing and direct comparison.
For more on the Project see the ‘Summary’ in the Details section on the database entry on Library Search.
Orlando : women's writing in the British Isles from the beginnings to the present
Emerging out of the Orlando Project, the pioneering self-described ‘textbase’ initiated in the mid-1990s in Canada, Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present now constitutes an extensive archive of over 8 million words about women writers, principally British, which seeks to establish a broad literary history centred in women’s production and, through its distinctive infrastructure, resist monolithic or hegemonic readings. In line with the gender fluidity of its Virginia Woolf-derived title, the pool of material offered goes beyond conventional literary genres of poetry, fiction, and drama to encompass writers of science, household advice, or popular genres, travel writing, and cultural critique. The enterprise has been acknowledged as “a watershed project for feminist recovery in digital humanities in general and in digital literary studies in particular” and it continues to generate critical attention in itself.
Entries incorporate contextual timelines for over 1400 authors and their biographies, together with contemporary historical, scientific, medical and legal events, sets of internal links, and bibliographies. Orlando’s digitally-encoded and collaboratively-authored model is very much in line with ongoing developments in the digital humanities and similar collaborative practices and thinking can be readily found in the Library’s own approach to Manchester Digital Collections and its use of TEI coding and tagging systems to ensure a plethora of pathways and similar dynamism, as exemplified in ongoing work on the Mary Hamilton Papers. The database also complements the Library’s other evolving electronic reference collections in this area of study, most notably The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing.
Recent additions to the Orlando platform include Teaching with Orlando tips and resources, and a collectively sourced ‘Exhibit’ of project images, as it seeks to further opportunities for ‘remixing’ work on women’s writing through linked data and evolving collaborative systems of text and technology.
Oberon Books Collection – newly expanded coverage
As a result of heavy usage of the material housed in the initial release of the Oberon ebook collection launched in 2021, the Library has now expanded its coverage to incorporate a second release of some 400 further (individually indexed) titles from this key publisher of plays and books on theatre practice and theory. In additional to canonical texts, the portfolio incorporates an unparalleled range of new writing from the contemporary era, including many significant works and writers that have been excluded from major collections to date. Particularly noteworthy in this release are some 39 plays by Howard Barker, whilst new works by Ontroerend Goed, Deborah Pearson, and Hannah Nicklin are also particularly welcome. Further evidence of the Library’s ongoing collaboration with the drama department to support performance-based arts in the challenging post-COVID environment, the material will also enhance efforts to rebalance our holdings and offer an opportunity to readily study and research a broader range of plays by contemporary Black and Global Majority artists.
The following are important databases for this subject area, however if you don't see what you're looking for, please go to the Database Directory for English Literature and Creative Writing to browse a wider selection.
Follow the links below to browse databases for specific types of resources.
You can use our Database Directory to browse a broader range of databases that are relevant to English Literature and Creative Writing as well as other subjects. The directory also allows you to identify databases that provide access to specific types of resources (e.g. Full Text Articles, Streaming Video, Patents, Theses and Dissertations, and much more).
The University of Manchester's research is internationally recognised. Go to Research Explorer, Manchester's research database, to discover the breadth of research produced by staff across the University.
Browse research publications from the Department of English, American Studies and Creative Writing (please note: whilst many of the publications listed are available to access/Open Access, some records are for forthcoming titles awaiting publication).
