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Research Areas

America

Archival Resources

Germany

See separate page

History of the Book

Please see also the page on studying the History of the Book at Oxford.

History, Genealogy and Local History

Journals

See separate page

Online Texts

  • EEBO: from within Oxford, Early English Books Online includes access to searchable versions and original printed texts created by the Text Creation Partnership. Please note the following caveats: individual copies of early modern printed books often vary more than general classifications of editions always recognize, so make sure you note which copy you are actually using and where possible double-check against modern editions and against the Bodleian's holdings - often the Bodleian has multiple copies which may contain useful notes and annotaions, so do not deny yourself a resource that online users of EEBO lack. The searchable versions provide a wonderful corpus for word-searching but bear in mind that the transcriptions are sometimes inaccurate, especially where the microfilm is hard to read, so never trust them as sources for quotations.
  • Oxford Text Archive: includes a very large number of early modern texts
  • From within the Oxford network, OXLIP has access to the Arden editions of every Shakespeare play plus poems and sonnets, with hitherto scattered reference material of prime importance. It also has 21 different versions of the Bible in English, Eighteenth-century Collections Online, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, serarchable lists of theses at UK, Irish, US, Canadian, Australian and African universities, the OED, and much else besides.
  • Renascence Editions: modern transcriptions of literary texts.
  • Luminarium: Renaissance and 17c texts and criticism
  • Bodleian Library, John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera: online versions of many texts including ballads, some of them very hard to find elsewhere, though search engine is hard to use.
  • Internet Shakespeare Editions: transcriptions of Folio and quarto texts
  • Colour images of Shakespeare First Folio and many contemporary historical works from the University of Pennsylvania Library
  • The Enfolded Hamlet: Q2 and Folio texts
  • Hamlet on the Ramparts
  • John Foxe, Actes and Monuments online
  • InteLex: Past Masters
  • The Abraham Cowley Text and Image Archive: excellent selection
  • John Bunyan Archive
  • Renaissance Ovid Early modern translations, editions and illustrations of Ovid, a wonderful resource for the history of the book, iconography and cultural history
  • Bibliothèque Nationale: good range of Continental online texts
  • Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim An outstanding site for reproductions and searchable texts of early modern scholarly works
  • The Philological Museum including a library of humanistic texts and An Analytic Bibliography of On-Line Neo-Latin Texts
  • Internet Modern History Sourcebook links to many online texts
  • Early Stuart Libels: Stuart satirical verse, much of it unavailable in print form and hence a valuable insight into early modern manuscript culture.
  • The Archimedes Project: The Archimedes Project: includes digitized early modern editions of scientific, literary and philosophical texts and also dictionaries such as those of Thomas Cooper (Latin) and John Florio (Italian).
  • Early Modern Online Bibliography: EEBO, ECCO, and Burney Collection Online
  • Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts

Manuscripts

For a detailed analysis of manuscript research, please see the Exploring Literary Manuscripts pages.

Music

The standard reference work is on OXLIP: Grove Dictionary of Music.

If you wish to hear early modern music online you can try:

Neo-Latin

See also the website of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies.

Poland

See separate page

Religion

Rhetoric

Scotland


William Hole's 1607 map of Scotland.
> More Scottish maps

  • The National Library of Scotland has some excellent resources, including an online and updated version of Aldis'sList of Books Printed in Scotland up to 1700, and the Scottish Book Trade index, which summarises the careers and outputs of printers, booksellers etc.
  • The website of the National Archives of Scotland provides material on genealogy, legal and public records.
  • The Scottish Archive Network has digitised and indexed all testaments produced in Scotland between 1500 and 1901.
  • The Dictionary of the Scottish Language website combines the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue and the Scottish National Dictionary and is an invaluable lexicographical resource.

Shakespeare and Drama

Before turning to online resources, a reminder that the Bankside Globe offers winter seasons of readings of rarely-performed Elizabethan and Jacobean plays - and of course there is always the Royal Shakespeare Company. For those within the Oxford network, OxLip has the complete Arden edition of Shakespeare's works online, along with a collection of English verse drama from 1585.

Visual Arts

Women's Writing

Ros Ballaster and Diane Purkiss took the lead in a pioneering series of seminars on early modern women’s writing at Oxford, and continue in their work to explore questions of writing, gender and politics in the period. Margaret Kean co-organized with Dr Elizabeth Clarke of Warwick University a series of seminars and conferences on early modern women’s writing in manuscript. David Norbrook co-organized a conference on 'Women and the Book' which brought in colleagues from the Faculties of History, Modern Languages and Philosophy. Other English Faculty scholars who have worked in this field include Sharon Achinstein (Dissenting women writers), Anna Beer (biography of Lady Raleigh), David Norbrook (edition of Lucy Hutchinson). Resources include the papers of George Ballard, one of the first historians of women’s writing, and a host of rare printed and manuscript material in the Bodleian and other libraries. The M.St. in English Literature 1550-1780 regularly offers courses on women’s writing, including one jointly taught with the M.St. in Women’s Studies. Work from these courses and from doctoral students regularly produces new discoveries.