LibGuides: E 327: The British Novel in the 18th Century, Janine Barchas: Primary Sources

Research in this Class

This guide provides links to databases, digitized collections, and other information sources useful for this course. Your librarian is Gina Bastone, and you can contact her for help using these resources, as well as one-on-one research consultations covering your specific essay topics.

Many of these databases are tricky to search effectively, so please do not hesitate to ask for help!

Primary Sources

Below are the important primary resources and reference works that allow you to build a historical context for your own essays. The first set in the list are subscription-based and behind a paywall. You have access through the UT Libraries and will need to login with your EID and password. The others are open and freely available, and we have provided the links.

If you need more clarity on the differences between primary sources, secondary sources, and reference works, refer to the "About Primary & Reference Sources" page.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) This link opens in a new window
Over time, words accumulate new meanings and alter in their use. Modern dictionaries (like Webster’s etc.) cannot give you the meaning of a word as Behn or Defoe knew it. The dates alongside OED definitions will allow you to pinpoint the meanings possible in their day. This will help avoid anachronistic readings (where a modern application of a word or expression misses the mark aimed at in the 1700s). Historically accurate interpretation therefore starts with the OED.
Updated quarterly. Covers words from across the English-speaking world and offers etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and phonetic pronunciation. Corresponds to the print Oxford English Dictionary published in 1989 and the three Additions volumes published 1993-1997.
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
Use the "Primary Texts" tab for text-mining and searching inside a work. This database allows you to data-mine and search authoritative editions of our novels (in first editions!). In other words, these are not random copies that happen to be out-of-copyright (like Google Books). LION not only gives you a number count (for the word or phrase you’ve searched) but snippet views of the hits in context.

Try searching by author first, then enter word/phrase + title. You’ll want to limit your search to original editions, so you’ll need the year of publication. LION’s texts are typed in (using ORC software) and not photographed/scanned to make for an accurate typescript of the words inside a book but not a view of the actual first-edition pages. (For scans of the original books, see ECCO below.)
Updated regularly. Literature Online is a fully searchable library of over 350,000 full-text works of English and American literature. Includes several literary databases of poetry, plays and fiction as well as general reference works and links to other Internet sites. Coverage of literary criticism includes access to the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, 1920-present (from the Modern Humanities Research Association) and 383 Full-Text Journals (from Literature Online/ProQuest).
ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Searchable full-image database of thousands of eighteenth-century books published in England between 1700 and 1800. Early English Books Online, or EEBO, will give you the century earlier.

You can search via keywords for fictions, plays, history books, or travel guides to offer context for our reading, or you can look at the original editions of our own novels without leaving your desk. You cannot search by genre, only by keywords, title, or author (novel, for example, is not going to get you many early hits, because that word was rarely used on a title page). This is a professional literature database and tricky to use. Be patient and try a variety of 18th Century spellings and combinations.
Users may need to refresh cache and cookies or use a private browsing window for this resource. Updated regularly. An online collection of English and foreign language books, pamphlets, broadsides and other ephemera published in the U.K. and the Americas between 1701 and 1800. Content is presented as full text page images which can be viewed online or downloaded as PDF documents. When complete, more than 33 million pages of material will support full text searching. The collection is an ongoing project based on The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), a machine-readable union list of the holdings of the British Library, as well as those from more than 1,500 university, private, and public libraries worldwide.
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new window
This collection allows you to search old newspapers from the period should you need context for a topic. You can even search advertisements, to see how some objects that appear in our stories were priced and advertised (houses, candles, watches, etc.). The search engine is unforgiving, so you will have to set date parameters and try a great variety of archaic spellings and combinations.
If users encounter an error when connecting please clear your browser cache and cookies and try again OR use a private (incognito) browsing window. The newspapers and pamphlets gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) represent the largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media available anywhere. The 1,270-title collection includes a wide range of pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period, covering more than 200 years of accounts from newspapers from England, Ireland, Scotland and a handful of papers from British colonies in the Americas and Asia.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
Professional reference site for famous British people in history, including all our authors. If you need a biographical reference, this is far more authoritative than Wikipedia.
Updated three times per year. Biographical dictionary of people of distinction in the British Isles and its colonies who died before December 31, 2000. Provides signed articles, each with a bibliography of resource materials, written by specialists. Content includes the complete text of the new sixty-volume Oxford DNB with 50,000 biographies and 10,000 portrait illustrations as well as the complete text of the original thirty-three volume of the DNB.
We have a limited number of users for this database. Please select the logout option before you leave your session. When the limit is reached, a message to this effect will be displayed. If this happens, simply wait 15 minutes and then try the link again.

Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
Searchable texts of 200K trials at London’s central criminal court. Crime impinges upon a number of our texts, especially Moll Flanders and Hogarth, and the names, locations, dates, and stolen objects mentioned in the proceedings might provide you with factual context for fictional details.
British Museum Collections Online
Vast collection of prints, drawings, trade cards, satires, portraits, etc. Best source for material on paper (prints & engravings), although they do have other objects too. A search will pull up anything that has your key terms in the catalogue description.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Not just traditional works of art, but objects from watches to weapons and shoes to ceramics can be found here in a few clicks, along with accurate historical information about their function or construction.
Royal Museums Greenwich
This is a maritime museum for researching people, ships, or objects associated with the navy. They also specialize in time-keeping technology, maps, and watches.
Locating London's Past
Users can toggle between a central London map of 1746, a Victorian map of about 1880, and modern Google or Satellite views. These maps connect to databases about crime (including the Old Bailey), insurance, and real estate statistics. Pick your desired data and, presto, it visualizes it on the maps. Not as useful as Google Maps until you have a specific set of questions/addresses you want to ask it to map in central London.
Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts
The novels published in Austen’s lifetime do not survive in manuscript. But her juvenilia, two unfinished novels, a completed early epistolary novelette (Lady Susan) and one cancelled chapter of Persuasion do, and they are made searchable on this site. You can leaf through pages by Austen written in her own hand! This is seriously cool, if you consider how these manuscripts have not been physically together since her sister Cassandra had them on the kitchen table after Jane’s death.

Humanities Librarian

Gina Bastone

she/they

Contact:

g.bastone@austin.utexas.edu

Subjects: Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, Disability Studies, English Literature, LGBTQ Studies, Rhetoric, Women's and Gender Studies

Ask a Librarian

Chat With Us

EID login required