English Literature
On this page you'll find key resources, as well as guides to help you develop your academic, study, and digital skills.
This subject guide is designed to assist English Literature students in finding the best information, whether you’re a new student starting your first assignment or delving into a research project.
Popular pages on the Library website
Three key actions for getting started
Finding information for your assessments
Developing strong information searching skills saves time and yields relevant results.Finding Information Skills covers everything you need for academic searching. Take the Finding Information Skills assessment for a personalised action plan.
- Reading Lists
These are set up by your tutors to guide you to good quality, relevant and useful materials to help you with your studies. They are a great starting point before doing your own research - find out more about your Reading Lists.
- Library Search
Library Search can make your academic life easier by helping you find a range of reliable and trustworthy sources for your work. It contains a wealth of information to help you make the most of your studies, including books/eBooks, journals/eJournals, articles, databases, and more.
Using Library Search may feel daunting at first, but don't worry, we have a range of guides on how to find relevant resources.
Databases
Databases are searchable collections of good quality, academic material, particularly journal articles. They can be small subject specific or large collections covering a wide range of subject areas. Most databases provide access to full-text items.
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A series of guides, written by experts, providing introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods. |
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This is an easy-to-search database with over 46,000 books covering all academic subjects. |
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Drama Online provides scripts for many modern and classic plays from a huge range of authors. It also includes books providing analysis and criticism of plays and playwrights, as well as a small collection videos of specific productions |
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Gale Literary Sources brings together the different Gale literary databases in one easy place to search. |
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A great place to start a search on most subjects, providing access to both books and journal articles. |
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A collection of ProQuest databases relating to literature to language studies. |
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A full text database of more than 500,000 works of poetry, drama, and prose from the eighth century to the present day. Plus, scholarly articles, reviews and books, and a collection of key reference works. |
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Over 60,000 biographies and 11,000 images of significant, influential or notorious figures who have shaped British history. |
Digital Archives
Digital Archives predominantly contain digitised primary sources. These are original documents and objects that give first-hand accounts of a topic or event and are created by people who had a direct connection with the topic or event. These can be government, company or personal papers, newspapers, books or magazines, or films or works of art.
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Access to over 250 archive collections, providing digital copies of original documents and other materials. |
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Within the Black Plays Archive (BPA), users can search for productions, listen to audio extracts of plays, watch interviews with playwrights and browse the teaching resources. |
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A rich source of original material on many aspects of society, culture and politics from the 17th to the 20th Century. |
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Contains digitized copies of nearly half a million books published from the late 15th century through to the 19th century. |
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| Archive of the Times Literary Supplement - a weekly review of the literature of the day. |
Video
Videos offer a dynamic way to absorb information. They often present complex ideas in an easily digestible format.
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An archive of over 2.2 million radio and TV programmes that have been broadcast in the UK. You can search for, and watch, anything already in the archive, as well as making use of the TV scheduling service. This allows you to record TV and radio programmes that are scheduled to be broadcast over the next seven days. |
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This collection provides videos of more than 300 classic, contemporary and international theatre productions. There are over 230 interviews exploring the theatre-making process as well as essays, documentaries, lectures, and study guides relating to all aspects of theatre. |
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| Provides access to a large, curated catalogue of over 30,000 educational documentaries and classic films from leading producers. | |
| Drawing on 10 years of NT Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality archive recordings never previously seen outside of the NT's Archive, the National Theatre Collections provide over 60 filmed performances. |
Newspapers & Magazines
Newspapers are a great source for reviews and comment on art, film, television, theatre, and performances.
The Library gives students and researchers access to wide-range of different newspapers which can be found on our newspapers webpage here: Newspapers
You can also find a wide range of magazines in the library and some digital magazines via library search, such as:
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Access to an archive of reviews, interviews, and features on popular music artists by writers from the most influential music magazines. Content goes back to 1960. |
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A selection of articles from digital archives of over 50 different publications, each addressing the issues of Black Lives Matter with one section dedicated to music. |
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| Creative Review is a bimonthly print magazine and website. The magazine focuses on commercial creativity, covering design, advertising, photography, branding, digital products, film, and gaming. | |
| Dazed is a bi-monthly British lifestyle magazine founded in 1991. It covers music, fashion, film, art, and literature. | |
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The Wire is a British music magazine publishing out of London, which has been issued monthly in print since 1982. |
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning offers over 9,000 professionally produced online courses covering a wide range of technical, creative and professional skills.
Always use our institutional link to log in – you will need your University email address and password. The first time that you log in, you will be taken through a setup process to discover courses tailored to your interests.
Discover more in our video: Using LinkedIn Learning at Salford.
Print Books
You can borrow print books from the Library. The location details below are a guide, it is best to search Library Search for exact location of items:
| Classmark | Subject Area |
| 800 | Writing and literature |
| 821 | Poetry |
| 823 | Novels |
| 830 | European Literature |
Study better
- University Assessments
Whilst studying at Salford you will need to complete a range of assessments. We provide a range of guidance on how to approach the different assessment types you may come across.
- Referencing
We provide eLearning, written guides, and an extensive list of referencing examples.
- Skills A-Z
We have developed eLearning over a wide range of subjects for you to develop your academic skills at home and in your own time.
Workshops
We offer online and face-to-face workshops to help you develop your academic skills. These engaging, interactive sessions cover a wide range of topics which take place throughout the year, so check up on the list regularly.
Click on a workshop title to book onto the session via Advantage. If a session has no remaining spaces, sign up to the waiting list in case a space becomes free!
One to one appointments
You can book a one to one appointment with your Academic Support Team to discuss finding information, academic and writing skills, or digital support.
Follow the link below, choose your school and what you'd like support with, then select your chosen time slot and book on through Advantage.
Can't find what you need?
Contact the Academic Support Team using this form. You can also see who's who in the Team.
Key resources for English Literature students
Databases
Whilst Library Search is your starting point when researching a topic, sometimes it’s helpful to restrict your search to one of our specialist sources.
- Literature & Language Database (ProQuest) - A collection of literature and language databases.
- Literature Online - Is a fully integrated service that combines the texts of over 355,000 literary works with a vast library of key criticism and reference resources.
- Gale Literary Sources - Allows you to search across Gale's premier literary databases to discover and analyse content.
- MLA International Bibliography - Offers a detailed bibliography of journal articles, books and dissertations. Subjects consist of literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory and criticism, and dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing.
- JSTOR - a great range of books and articles on all kind of topics including English Language.
- BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource - Contains programmes and photographs from the BBC's Shakespeare archive. It includes Shakespeare’s plays, poems and sonnets, documentaries, interviews and over a thousand stills of classic Shakespeare productions, as well as entertainment programmes referencing Shakespeare.
- Digital Theatre Plus - a great resource for video of theatre productions as well as interviews with performers, directors and others.
- Drama Online - Includes the scripts of some of the most studied modern and classic plays from a huge range of authors. Also included on the platform are almost 60 books providing analysis and criticism of some of these plays and playwrights.
- JISC Historical texts - Brings together four historically significant collections, with over 400,000 books published from the late 15th century through to the long 19th century.
- The Listener Historical Archive - Developed as the medium for reproducing broadcasts, The Listener (1929-1991) was the weekly newspaper published by the BBC.
- Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive - A research and teaching tool which covers literary controversies and debates, and the views of influential opinion makers.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - Includes over 60,000 biographies, 72 million words, 11,000 portraits of significant, influential or notorious figures from British history.
- Oxford Reference Online - A reference database which includes English and bilingual dictionaries, as well as subject dictionaries and reference books published by Oxford University Press.
- Box of Broadcasts - a huge collection of TV and radio programmes broadcast in the UK. Worth exploring for English literature. In addition, a number of programmes regularly discuss literature and the arts, so this can be an important source for reviews and critical opinion. Also a great source for films that have been broadcast on TV.
- Kanopy - another good source for films. Search or browse by topic amongst thousands of videos specifically curated for an academic audience
Books and Journals
The first place you should look is your reading list – you will find a link to this in your Blackboard modules. It lists all the core texts for your subject as recommended by your lecturers. All our other books and journals can be found in Library Search
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning offers over 9,000 professionally produced online courses covering a wide range of technical, creative and professional skills.
Always use our institutional link to log in – you will need your University email address and password. The first time that you log in, you will be taken through a setup process to discover courses tailored to your interests.
Discover more in our video: Using LinkedIn Learning at Salford.
Newspapers
These are a great source for book reviews and comment on film, television and theatre productions.
Sources to try include Gale OneFile News and Newsstream. Check our Newspapers web page to see which papers we have access to.