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American Literature

This is a guide to select print and online resources in American Literature

General Resources

 

  • American Literature Sites
    Comprehensive annotated sites by Donna Campbell of Washington State University including literary movements.
  • American Studies Links
    A site containing excellent resources maintained by Prof. Richard Horwitz at the University of Iowa.
  • American Writers Museum
    The Museum strives to educate the general public about American writers, past and present, and exploring their influence on American history, identity, culture and daily life.
  • Books That Shaped America
    Contains full text of works by Frank Baum, Henry James, Herman Melville, Jack London, James Cooper, Kate Chopin, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Includes biographical and critical information on Emily Dickinson and other women writers.
  • C-SPAN's American Writers Series
    Writers who have influenced the course of American History are featured in this series. Every program features selected writers' novels, speeches, diaries, essays, and life stories creating a snapshot of American History.
  • Documenting the American South
    Provides documents, images, audio files and other primary sources relating to Southern history, literature and culture.
  • Hypertexts - An Electronic Literature Site
    This site from the University of Virginia contains information on Henry Adams, Charles Brown, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dressier, Stowe, Wilson, and others, including the text of their works.
  • Jack Lynch's American Literature Page 
    A very useful source of literary links including links to mailing lists, Voice of the Shuttle American Literature page, American Verse Project, Native American Literature, University of Virginia literary pages, and extensive information on individual authors and poets.
  • Nines - Nineteenth Century Scholarship Online
    "NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship) is a scholarly organization devoted to forging links between the material archive of the nineteenth century and the digital research environment of the twenty-first."
  • Online American Literature Resources 
    This site from Georgetown University contains websites from Heath Guide to American Literature, Volume I focusing on general resources, the colonial period, the literature of slavery, literature of the eighteenth century, early nineteenth century, and much more.
  • PAL - Perspectives in American Literature
    This is a research guide to various literary periods and authors in American Literature by Professor Paul Reuben of Stanislaus State University.
  • Society for the Study of American Women Writers
    This site was established to promote the study of American women writers through research, teaching and publication. Contains links to archives, newsletters, conferences, announcements, listservs and other information.
  • Voice of the Shuttle - American Literature
    This site was started by Alan Liu in 1994 and has expanded to a huge database of excellent resources in American Literature, online search tools, wrting and documetnation, a library of literary and cultural studies, and much more.
  • Voices from the Gaps
    VG is the internet's most comprehensivd and academic resource for and about women artists of color.
  • Web of American Transcendentalism
    This site is one of the best for information on American Transcendetalism and contains links for authors and texts, roots and influences, ideas and thoughts, criticism, and much more.
  • Wright American Fiction
    This is a collection of 19th century American Fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875.

Drama and Theater

 

Native American Literature

 
  • Languages of the Americas: American Indian Literature
    This website provides biographical information on Native American authors and bibliographies of their published works. There are also links to online resources including interviews, online texts, and tribal websites.
  • The Native American Literature Symposium
    This site was started in 2001 by an independent group of Indigenous scholars committed to making a place where Native voices can be heard.
  • Native American Authors from the Internet Public Library
    This website provides information on Native North American authors with bibliographies of their published works, biographical information, and links to online resources including interviews, online texts and tribal websites.
  • NativeWeb Home Page
    The purpose of this page is to provide a link to Earth's indigenous people. Here you can find links to Native American literature, newsletters and journals, organizations, bibliographies and historic materials.
  • Storytellers: Native American Authors Online
    Here can be found a listing of native American authors in alphabetical order, by tribal listing, book reviews and awards, traditional storytelling and links to other sites on native American authors.

Poetry

  • Academy of American Poets
    Founded in 1934 to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry— the producer of Poets.org, Poem-a-Day, National Poetry Month, and more
  • American Poetry in Literature Online
    Here you can find complete poetical works of over 200 poets from the earliest American poets of the seventeenth century to the beginnings of modernism. In addition to the complete works of the poets, all accompanying text, introductions and prefaces are also included.
  • American Verse Project
    The American Verse Project from the University of Michigan is an archive of volumes of American poetry before 1920. The full text of each volume of poetry has been digitized.
  • The Electronic Poetry Center
    The EPC contains links to electronic resources in poetry produced in Buffalo and elsewhere around the world. Also contains links to electronic poetry journals.
  • The Internet Poetry Archive
    Made available by the University of North Carolina, this site is an archive of selected poems from a number of contemporary poets. The goal of the project is to give teachers and students of poetry new ways of presenting and studying these poets and their texts.
  • Modern and Contemporary American Poetry
    This page is maintained by Al Fireis, a specialist in Modern American Literature and Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania. Contains excellent links to other poetry sites.
  • Poet's Corner
    This site from Gale Cengage Learning contains biographies of poets.
  • Poet's House
    Poet's House is a literary center and poetry archive which contains a 40,000 volume poetry collection. The library is free and open to the public and includes books, journals, chapbooks, audios, video tapes, and electronic media. It is the most comprehensive open house collection of poetry books in the United States.

Teaching Resources

  • American Literature.com
    Contains short stories for high school and middle school students, books for young readers, and teacher resources.
  • Electronic Archives for Teaching American Literature
    The Electronic Archives Page contains essays, syllabi, bibliographies, and other resources related to American Literature and Culture Studies for teaching the literatures of the United States. The archives are sponsored and maintained by Georgetown University's American Studies Program.
  • Modern American Poetry
    The Modern American Poetry Site is a comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry.
  • Nineteenth Century American Literary, Historical and Cultural Studies
    This site contains the best teaching and studying resources for nineteenth century American literature, history and culture.