Eighteenth-Century Reference and Research

Compiled by Laura L. Runge

University of South Florida

Biographical References:

Austin and Allibone: A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors . . . 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1871), repr. Gale Research, 1965.

Reference Annex Z1224.A4317 1965

Dictionary of British and American Women Writers, 1660-1800. Ed. Janet Todd (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985).

Ref. PR113.D5

Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB), multivolume, multi-editor series, each volume devoted to a thematic organization of authors, e.g. Eighteenth-Century Poets, or British Reform Writers 1789-1832 (vol. 158). Gale Research.

Reference Annex. PS 221.D5

Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). 22 volumes. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1908, reprinted, 1921-22, 1937-8. Valuable late nineteenth, early twentieth-century resource. Now being re-written to include many more women, among others. See website.

Ref. CT 773.D5

The Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 4^th edition. Ed. Phyllis Hartnoll (Oxford UP, 1983).

Ref. PN2035.O93

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. The updated DNB. An illustrated collection of more than 50,000 specially written biographies of the men and women from around the world who shaped all aspects of Britain's past. Available through USF Library databases.

A Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland. Comprising literary memoirs and anecdotes of their lives; and a chronological register of their publications. (London, 1816), repr. Gale Research 1966.

Ref. Z2010.B26

Biography and Genealogy Master Index A comprehensive index to more than 11 million biographical sketches in over 3000 volumes and editions of current and retrospective reference books, covering both contemporary and historical figures throughout the world.

- Available through USF Library, databases

Major Indexes and Catalogues

English Short-title Catalogue (ESTC) Descriptions and holdings information for letterpress materials printed in England or its dependencies (in any language) or in English (anywhere in the world) from 1473 to 1800.

-- Available through USF Library databases

See also the website http://www.cbsr.ucr.edu/estcmain.html for valuable information on publications in the eighteenth century. In particular, see "Statistics on the ESTC and printing in the UK and North America before 1800."

Modern Language Association International Bibliography Provides over one million citations for items from journals and series published worldwide. Indexes books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. Contains in each record a bibliographic citation for a journal article, book, or other item including information about the libraries that own the library resources.

– Available through USF Library, databases

Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature: Britain’s version of the MLAIB. There is some crossover but many works appear here but not in MLAIB. Also, this includes reviews of works, which will be helpful for annotated bibliographies.

– Available through USF Library, databases: through LION.

The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. 5 vols. Ed. George Watson (Cambridge UP, 1969-77), index in vol. 5. Ref. PR 83.N48

English literature, 1660-1800; a bibliography of modern studies, compiled for Philological Quarterly by Ronald S. Crane, 6 vols. Princeton UP, 1950

Ref. Z2011.E6

The Eighteenth-Century: A Current Bibliography. This continues the bibliography from Philological Quarterly (above). At one time an invaluable resource on the year’s production of critical and editorial work in eighteenth-century studies, including reviews and lists of reviews. Unfortunately the heavy workload caused the series to fall behind. Produced by the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, it is recovering now. A very useful resource dedicated specifically to this field. REF Z6204 .E35

The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. 8 vols. Ed. Charles Wells Moulton. (Buffalo: Moulton, 1901-1905) repr. NY: P. Smith, 1935. Valuable guide to 18^th and 19^th century criticism of a work; contains bios., criticism and articles. Ref. PR83 .M68

Indexes to Early Reviews / Reception

Ward, William S. Literary Reviews in British Periodicals 1789-1797 a bibliography : with a supplementary list of general (non-review) articles on literary subjects (New York: Garland, 1979)

Ref. PR442 .W28 1979

Ward, William S. Literary reviews in British periodicals, 1798-1820; a bibliography with a supplementary list of general (non- review) articles on literary subjects (New York: Garland, 1972)

Ref. Z2013 .W36

Forster, Antonia. Index to Book Reviews in England, 1749-1774 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990)

Ref. Z1035.A1 F67 1990

Forster, Antonia. Index to Book Reviews in England, 1775-1800 (London: British Library, 1997)

Ref. Z1035.A1 F675 1997

The Critical Heritage series, published by Routledge since the 1970s with a variety of editors. Each volume is dedicated to a single major author, such as Pope, Swift, Johnson, Congreve, Goldsmith. Not too many women represented. This is an excellent resource for critical reception of the author and individual works, with excerpts from actual criticism from the eighteenth century forward.

Authoritative and critical editions of major works are also excellent resources for critical reception, bibliography and basic information on the author and work. See “Note on Texts” in your classroom editions. Pay particular attention to why a particular text was selected as authoritative and why.

Statistical Profiles and Checklists

Adburgham, Alison. Women in Print: Writing Women and Women's Magazines from the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972)

PN5124.W6A3

Crawford, Patricia. "Women's Published Writings 1600-1700," M. Prior, ed. Women in English Society 1500-1800 (London: Methuen, 1985) 211-282.

HQ1599.E5 W64 1985

Stanton, Judith. "Statistical Profile of Women Writing in English from 1660-1800." Eighteenth-century Women and the Arts. Ed. Frederick Keener and Susan Lorsch (New York: Greenwood, 1988).

NX452 .E56 1988

Raven, James. British Fiction 1750-1770: A Chronological Check-list of prose fiction printed in Britain and Ireland (Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 1987).

PR851 .R38 1987

The English novel, 1770-1829 : a bibliographical survey of prose fiction published in the British Isles. Eds. Raven, James, Peter Garside and Rainer Schowerling, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000).

PR851 .E64 2000

Orr, Leonard. A catalogue checklist of English prose fiction, 1750-1800 (Troy, NY: Whitson, 1979). An older list with many errors; corrected and supplemented by the work of James Raven, see above.

Ref. PR851 .O77

Also, see "Statistics on the ESTC and printing in the UK and North America before 1800," cited above.

Secondary Bibliographies

Search for authoritative and annotated bibliographies on major figures; e.g.

Mary Ann O'Donnell. Aphra Behn: an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources 2^nd edition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

(circulating) Z8086.75. O36 2004

There are also some good bibliographies on websites; e.g.

Frances Burney http://is.dal.ca/~bdarby/burney.html

The Gothic Novel http://members.aol.com/iamudolpho/basic.html

Resources for Publishing History

National Union Catalogue – Reserve Annex

Nineteenth century short-title catalogue "Extracted from the catalogues of the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, The National Library of Scotland, and the University Libraries of Cambridge and Newcastle."

Ref. Z2001 .N65 1984

British Library Catalogue, available on 5 CDs, see Reference Desk Librarian.

See also ESTC, RLIN and WorldCat databases, available through USF Library databases.

General Resources

Harner, James L. Literary Research Guide: An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies 4^th edition (New York: MLA, 2002). This annotated bibliography surveys the whole field of literary research. It will be especially helpful for the section on eighteenth-century British literature, but it includes much valuable general reference information as well.

Special Databases

Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO), a comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century, the world’s largest library of the printed book on microfilm, available through its imprint Primary Source Microfilm™. In the most ambitious single digitization project ever undertaken, nearly 150,000 English-language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800 will be made available online over the course of the next two years. When complete, the product will allow full-text searching of more than 33 million pages of material, in essence, every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Chadwyck-Healy database. Available through USF Library databases.

Early English Prose Fiction. A collection of more than 200 works from the period 1500–1700, exploring the rich diversity of prose fiction in English in the period preceding the emergence of the realist novel as its dominant form. This database offers the full text of works by key writers such as John Bunyan, Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Nashe and Aphra Behn, and has been produced in association with the Salzburg Centre for Research on the Early English Novel (SCREEN). Available through USF Library databases.

Eighteenth-century Fiction. A collection of 96 complete works of English prose from the period 1700–1780 by writers from the British Isles. Key figures covered include Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne and Jonathan Swift. In addition to a scanned version of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, the collection also contains two different editions of Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela, and of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Chadwyck-Healy database. Available through USF Library databases.

Rev. January 10, 2007