Learning Resources: English: Recommended Websites

Evaluating websites

Finding information on the internet is easy, but finding good quality and reliable information is trickier than you think. Take a look at the tips in this section on how to get the most out of searching online. Before using any web resource in your assignment ask yourself “Is the web page as good as the information you would find in a book or academic journal?”

Webpages can be set up by anyone, therefore before referencing a site check that the information is reliable and accurate.
Check:

Who is the author? Do they have qualifications/a reputation in the relevant area?
Is the web site affiliated with an organisation? If so, what is the mission of that organisation?
Has the information been properly referenced? Are the references authoritative?
When was the site last updated?
Is there any reason for bias on this web site?
Has the website been well presented in an appropriately academic style?
Has anyone recommended this web site to you?
Does the information match what you have learned from other sources?

Look for the clues in the URL

.com – a commercial company
.co.uk – a commercial UK company
.edu – a US academic institution
.ac.uk – a UK academic institution
.org – a non-profit organisation
.gov or .gov.uk – a US or UK government site

Are you struggling to find what you need on Google?

Here are some tips to improve your results!

Try using Google Advanced Search
If you are looking for an exact phrase try using quotation marks "Obsessive compulsive disorder"
Try a Google site search "Obsessive compulsive disorder" site:ac.uk This returns results from only academic institutions in the UK.

Still not finding enough academic resources in Google?

Try using Google Scholar which only searches scholarly literature.

Government & Professional Bodies

There are many websites which you will find useful for your studies, I have listed some of the most popular ones below. Please let me know if there are other websites which you feel others may wish to know about and I will include them on this page.

Archives Hub Use the Archives Hub to find unique sources for your research. Search across descriptions of archives from over 1,000 years of history, held at over 300 institutions across the UK
British Council Literature Contemporary writers: UK and Commonwealth
Discovering Literature from the British Library Discovering Literature brings to life the social, political and cultural context in which key works of literature were written. Enjoy digitised treasures from our collection, newly commissioned articles, short documentary films and teachers’ notes.

Podcasts

Looking for a way to learn more about your subject area without reading? Consider listening to podcasts that may help to increase your knowledge.

Podcasts vary in quality, frequency and reliability, so make sure you evaluate them before using the information for an assignment.

English Literature Podcasts
English Literature Podcasts for Player FM – Podcasts include Chaucer, Milton, Dickens, Woolf, Wilde and many more.
A Spoken History of the English Language
A chronological spoken history of the English language examined through the lens of historical events that shaped the development and spread of the language from the Eurasian steppe to the entire world.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is Google's academic search engine. It allows you to search for information published in journals and books, for example. It includes an increasing amount on open access material as well content that you would have to pay to access.

Use Google Scholar alongside the many databases that the College subscribes to so you get relevant and accurate content.

Useful websites

BBC Arts: Poetry Site Archived materials which includes recordings of poets reading their own works.
BBC GCSE bite size
The Camelot Project The Camelot Project is designed to make available a database of Arthurian texts, images, bibliographies, and basic information. The project, begun in 1995, is sponsored by the University of Rochester and prepared in The Rossell Hope Robbins Library, located in Rush Rhees Library. The Camelot Project has been created by Alan Lupack, Emeritus Director of the Robbins Library, and Barbara Tepa Lupack.
Celebration of Women Writers Website containing bibliographic material, analysis and commentary on female writers. The site can be searched alphabetically by author or by country of origin
Charles Dickens Brooklyn College website for Charles Dickens
Classics at the Online Literature Library Contains the full texts to a range of Classics such as Frankenstein and Great Expectations. This is not an exhaustive list, but may be useful; for background reading
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Contains full texts of plays and poetry, as well as links to other resources on Shakespeare on the Internet
The Crusades Project The last twenty years have witnessed an exponential rise in interest in the crusades and their influences on Western and Eastern cultures. One recently emerging area of interest is the profound influence the crusades have had on European and Middle-Eastern literature. This bibliography (a partner site to the Camelot Project) will provide annotations of narratives that take their influence and inspiration from the historical crusades. The project is currently focused on English and American literature, but our long-term goal is to provide substantial annotated bibliographies and essay-based entries for other European (and eventually Middle-Eastern and Asian) countries as well.
Digital Scriptorium Digital Scriptorium is a growing consortium of libraries and museums committed to free online access to their collections of pre-modern manuscripts. It is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts
Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians Put together by The British Library and is a fantastic collection of material from the Romantic and Victorian periods. Resources in the collection include William Blake's notebook, childhood writings of the Bronte sisters, the manuscript of the Preface to Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, and an early draft of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. These sit alongside contemporary research articles on Victorian and Romantic literature written by more than 60 leading experts, as well as 25 short documentary films on a variety of topics to enhance the study and enjoyment of English literature
Emily Bronte A good website from Brooklyn College useful for Wuthering Heights resources.
English Association Based at the University of Leicester, the aim of the Association is to further knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of the English language and its literature ; and to foster good practice in its teaching and learning at all levels.
Etymology Dictionary Etymological dictionary giving all the various morphemes and their origins, and dates of first usage. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago. The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). This should be taken as approximate, especially before about 1700, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript that has had the good fortune to survive the centuries.
First World War Poetry Digital Archive An online repository of over 7,000 items of text, images, audio and video for teaching, learning and research.
GCSE Revision - STUDYWISE GCSE revision resources organised for ease of use. As well as general subject resources, we’ve also put together resources for exams from the three big beasts of the examining world: Edexcel, AQA and OCR. We recommend GCSE students bookmark/save this page. Hope it helps.
GCSE Revision REVISION WORLD Welcome to the GCSE revision section of Revision World where we provide free GCSE revision resources for a range of subjects including Applied Science, Biology, Chemistry, English, French, Geography, German, History, ICT, Maths, PE, Physics and RS.
The Globe Theatre Hundreds of free learning Resources, exam revision guides and exclusive content
Internet Library of Early Journals a joint project by the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford, conducted under the auspices of the eLib (Electronic Libraries) Programme. It aimed to digitise substantial runs of 18th and 19th century journals, and make these images available on the Internet, together with their associated bibliographic data
Internet Shakespeare Editions Offers a range of resources, including fully annotated texts of Shakespeare's plays and poems, multimedia materials and records of his plays in performance
Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts - Digital Edition Digital reproductions of some 1100 pages of fiction written in Jane Austen’s own hand
Jane Austin A good website from Brooklyn College, contains some useful links also.
Literature Magazines and Books on Issuu.com Issuu is a free electronic publishing platform for magazines, catalogues, and newspapers
Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature Medieval, Renaissance and 17th century English literature
Middle English Compendium Offers easy access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies, and a Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, as well as links to an associated network of electronic resources
The old Bailey on-Line The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. A fully searchable, digitised collection of all surviving editions of the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674 to 1913. It allows access to over 197,000 trials and includes biographical details of 2500 of the convicts
The Poetry Archive "The Poetry Archive is the world's premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work."
The Poetry Foundation (USA) The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.
The Poetry Society The Poetry Society was founded in 1909 to promote “a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry”. Since then, it has grown into one of Britain’s most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally
Project Gutenberg Begun in 1971, this Project totals over 30,000 downloadable public domain electronic books. Over 100,000 e-books are available through its partners
Speaking Volumes – Celebrating British Writers of Colour Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions takes international writers from the page to the stage.
Thackeray’s Vanity Fair A useful website from Brooklyn College on William Makepeace Thackery’s vanity Fair.
Touchstone Maintained by the Shakespeare Institute Library, this a research tool which maps the holdings of some of the UK's most significant Shakespeare collections
Twentieth-century Poetry in English Website from Professor Eiichi Hishikawa. Information and other internet links on over 150 poets. Includes bibliographic information and some full texts.
Victorian Web Scholarly resources on a wide range of Victorian topics: political and social history, philosophy, literature, individual authors, visual arts, science, technology and more
Visualizing Chaucer This Robbins Library Digital Project seeks to capture postmedieval illustrated versions of Chaucer’s work. The project provides annotations for books containing illustrated versions of Chaucer’s writings and organizes these images by character/work for easy accessibility. “Our intention is to make these images readily accessible, where copyright allows, for teachers, students, and scholars interested in the afterlife of Chaucer’s works.”
Writers room Provides guidelines for writing for radio and television, also provides access to scripts and transcripts and information on how to submit scripts to the BBC