- Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new windowThe OED2 corresponds to the 20 volume set published in 1989. This resource can be searched by the full-text of the entire dictionary, etymologies, definitions, and quotations.
- Dictionary of Literary Biography This link opens in a new window
Biographical and critical essays on the lives, works, and careers of the world's most influential literary figures from all eras and genres.
- Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new window
Literary commentary, analysis, and criticism on a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works.
The Oxford Dictionary of PlaysISBN: 9780191760082Publication Date: 2015Essential information on some of the best-known, best-loved, and most important plays in world theatre
The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance by ISBN: 9780199574193Publication Date: 2010-09-17Based on the celebrated Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, covers styles and movements, buildings, organizations, regions and traditions; it has a particularly strong focus on biographies of actors, playwrights, directors, and designers.
Historical Dictionary of Postmodernist Literature and Theater by ISBN: 9781442276208Publication Date: 2016-12-01Includes writers, movements, forms of writing and textual strategies, critical ideas, and texts that are significant in relation to postmodernist literature.
A Dictionary of Shakespeare by ISBN: 0192800647Publication Date: 1999-02-18This concise, illustrated dictionary of Shakespeariana,
Encyclopedia of Latin American Theater by ISBN: 0313290415Publication Date: 2003-12-30The volume begins with an overview of the development of theater in Latin America. Each of the country sections begins with an introductory survey and concludes with copious bibliographical information. The entries for playwrights provide factual information about the dramatist's life and works and place the author within the larger context of international literature.
Full Text Drama Databases
- American Drama This link opens in a new windowContains more than 700 plays from over 300 dramatists. When finished, American Drama will feature the complete texts of more than 2,000 plays written by American dramatists.
- Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare This link opens in a new windowComplete text of eleven major editions of Shakespeare's works from the First Folio to the Cambridge edition of 1863-6, twenty-four separate contemporary printings of individual plays, selected apocrypha and related works and more than 100 adaptations, sequels and burlesques from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- English Prose Drama 1280-1915 This link opens in a new windowBased on plays listed in the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature that were written or intended for the stage and wholly or primarily in prose; English Prose Drama complements English Verse Drama.
- Women Writers Online This link opens in a new windowPublished by the Women Writers Project at Brown University, this database offers full-text access to early modern writings by women (1400-1850) that includes plays, medical texts, natural history, and domestic manuals. Authors are primarily English and American.
- William Butler Yeats Collection (via American & English Literature) This link opens in a new window22 printed volumes and including critical and fictional prose, poetry, plays, and autobiographical works.
- Listener Historical Archive (BBC) This link opens in a new window
Archive of weekly BBC publication "The Listener" from 1929-1991. The Listener reproduced radio broadcasts and television programs in print and also discussed major literary and musical programs.
- Biography Reference Bank This link opens in a new window
Biographical information on approximately half a million people, from antiquity to the present.
African American Dramatists by ISBN: 0313322333Publication Date: 2004-10-30This reference offers thorough critical assessments of the lives and works of African American playwrights thru the 19th century.
Asian American Playwrights by ISBN: 0313314551Publication Date: 2002-05-30This reference book serves as a versatile vehicle for exploring the field of Asian American drama from its recorded conception to 2000.
Women and Victorian Theatre by ISBN: 0521471672Publication Date: 1997-12-11Kerry Powell chronicles the development of women's participation in the theatre as playwrights, actresses and managers and explores the making of the Victorian actress, gender and playwriting of the period, and the contributions these made to developments in the following century.
Women Pulitzer Playwrights by Call Number: PS338.W6 C73 2004ISBN: 0786418818Publication Date: 2004-11-05In the first century of the coveted Pulitzer Prizes, only 11 women have won the prize for drama: Zona Gale (1921), Susan Glaspell (1931), Zoe Akins (1935), Mary Coyle Chase (1945), Ketti Frings (1958), Beth Henley (1981), Marsha Norma (1983), Wendy Wasserstein (1989), Paula Vogel (1998), Margaret Edson (1999), and Suzan-Lori Parks (2002). This book is about them and their landmark plays, beginning with Gale's Miss Lulu Bett, which championed the unmarried woman forced to work in the home of a married relative, and closing with Parks' controversial Topdog/Underdog, which made her the first black woman to win the prize. Find this print copy in the stacks!
