Research Guides: Primary Sources: Finding Primary Sources in Literature

Primary Resources for Literature in the Jerry Falwell Library

America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Historic American newspapers providing primary sources for exploring American history, culture, and daily life from 1690 to the early 20th century
Black Short Fiction and Folklore: African, African American, and Diaspora This link opens in a new window
Full-text articles, poems, and short fiction from African authors

For more information, view this brief tutorial on using Black Short Fiction and Folklore.
British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Full-text historical periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth on a variety of topics from a British perspective

For more information, view this brief tutorial on using British Periodicals.
Complete Prose of T.S. Eliot: The Critical Edition This link opens in a new window
Collected, uncollected, and unpublished essays, reviews, lectures, and commentaries by T. S. Eliot with textual edits, annotations, and cross-references
EEBO (Early English Books Online) This link opens in a new window
Extensive full-text collection of early English books, including titles by John Locke, Captain John Smith, William Shakespeare, and others

For more information, view this brief tutorial on using EEBO.
Emily Dickinson’s Correspondences This link opens in a new window
Full-text primary source documents including digital scans of Dickinson’s poems and letters from her correspondence with her sister-in-law Susan Dickinson

For more information, view this brief tutorial on using Emily Dickinson’s Correspondences.
Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period This link opens in a new window
Full-text poems, e-books, and prose from Irish female authors from 1768 to 1842

For more information, view this brief tutorial on using Irish Women Poets.
Romantic Era Redefined This link opens in a new window
Full-text poetry, dramas, and fiction from Britain and North America from 1800 to 1830

For more information, view this brief tutorial on using Romantic Era Redefined.

Online Primary Sources for Literature

British Library Texts in Context
Curated collections of historical materials providing useful contexts for literary works. An excellent starting point for literary research.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.
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Texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.
Europeana
Search, save and share art, books, films and music from thousands of cultural institutions
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Search, save and share art, books, films and music from thousands of cultural institutions
Google Books
Google Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database
Hathi Trust
At HathiTrust, we are stewards of the largest digitized collection of knowledge allowable by copyright law.

Primary Sources: Finding Primary Sources in Literature

Primary Source Material in Literature

Primary Resources for Literature in the Jerry Falwell Library

Online Primary Sources for Literature