LibGuides: Arts & Creative Industries Subject Guide: English & Acting

Finding Journal Articles

The best way to find journal articles is to try keyword searching in LibrarySearch using the All items option. However, you may also want to try searching directly in some of the databases that contribute to LibrarySearch. Here's a list of the best ones for the subject area.

Literature Online
With over a third of a million full-text works of poetry, prose and drama in English, together with the definitive online criticism and reference library, Literature Online is the world's largest cross-searchable database of literature and criticism.
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Gale Academic OneFile Select
This database covers research in all academic disciplines, combining indexing, abstracts, full text and images.
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Historical materials

British Periodicals
This database provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
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Periodicals Archive Online
Periodicals Archive Online makes the backfiles of scholarly periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences available online. The database spans more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages.
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Migration to New Worlds
From the century of immigration, through to the modern era, Migration to New Worlds charts the emigration experience of millions across 200 years of turbulent history. Explore the rise and fall of the New Zealand Company, discover British, European and Asian migration and investigate unique primary source personal accounts, shipping logs, printed literature and organisational papers supplemented by carefully compiled teaching and research aids. There is an option to register for a personal account in order to save favourites.
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Vision of Britain through Time
A Vision of Britain Through Time website gives access to over two centuries worth of facts, figures, surveys, maps, election results and travel writing showing how 15,000 UK places have changed.
Freely available.
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JSTOR 19th Century Pamphlets
The digitized collection of more than 26,000 pamphlets from seven UK research libraries provides researchers, students, and teachers with an immensely rich and coherent corpus of primary sources with which to study the socio-political and economic landscape of 19th-century Britain.
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John Johnson Collection
The John Johnson Collection is a unique collection of printed ephemera scanned in color by ProQuest in partnership with the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The ProQuest digitized version is a selection from the full collection, drawn from five subject areas: crimes, murders, and executions; advertising; book trade; nineteenth-century entertainment; and popular prints. The John Johnson Collection is a great source for studying Britain's cultural, social, industrial, and technological heritage.
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Vogue Archive
The complete searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been included, with rich indexing enabling the location of images by garment type, designer and brand names.
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Early European Books
Early European Books draws together a diverse array of printed sources from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. It opens the door to some of the world's most significant collections of early printed books.
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Key Resources in Merchiston Library

Key reference books

These can all be found in Merchiston Library: search for them in LibrarySearch to find the shelfmarks.

Encyclopedia of post-colonial literatures in English
The Oxford companion to English literature
The Oxford companion to theatre and performance
The Longman companion to Victorian fiction
A companion to Victorian literature & culture
Encyclopedia of literature and criticism
The Norton anthology of theory and criticism
The Penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory

Drama Online

Film, Images and Sound

Box of Broadcasts
BoB (Box of Broadcasts) National is an innovative shared online off-air TV and radio recording service for UK higher and further education institutions. It contains over a million items, including an archive of all BBC TV and radio content dating from 2007.
BoB enables all staff and students in subscribing institutions to choose and record any scheduled broadcast programme from 60+ TV and radio channels. You can also edit programmes into clips, create playlists, embed clips into Moodle, share items via social media and generate reference citations.
Please note that our BoB licence is for educational purposes only, and only for use within the UK.
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BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource
An online archive of television and radio broadcasts of Shakespeare’s works, featuring over 900 programmes from the BBC’s archive. Includes plays, poems and sonnets, renowned stage and screen productions, documentaries, critical analyses, and comedies. Freely available to students and staff as part of the University's ERA licence.
Please register using your university email address and a unique password.
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BFI Screenonline
The definitive guide to Britain's film and TV history.
Please note that BFI Screenonline is only for educational purposes and for use within the UK.
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British Library Sounds
The British Library's Archival Sound Recordings website gives UK Higher and Further Education staff and students free access to over 12,000 recordings in a variety of subjects.
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SCRAN
Scran is a charitable online learning service with over 370,000 images and media from museums, galleries, and archives. Its charitable purpose is "the advancement of education by enabling public access to Scottish cultural resources and related material.
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Internet Resources: a selection to explore

Project Gutenberg - over 20,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. A grand total of over 100,000 titles is available at Project Gutenberg Partners, Affiliates and Resources. You are advised to check that books are out of copyright in the UK (or your home country) before downloading.
Discovering literature: Romantics and Victorians - A British Library project bringing together a wealth of the British Library’s greatest literary treasures, including numerous original manuscripts, first editions and rare illustrations. 1,200 Romantic and Victorian literary treasures, new insights by 60 experts, 25 documentary films, 30 inspirational teachers’ notes and more.
The Victorian web - A British Library project bringing together a wealth of the British Library’s greatest literary treasures, including numerous original manuscripts, first editions and rare illustrations. 1,200 Romantic and Victorian literary treasures, new insights by 60 experts, 25 documentary films, 30 inspirational teachers’ notes and more.
The Poetry Archive - "The Poetry Archive is the world's premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work"

Period images, historical background and a bit of fun. Danger - seriously fascinating! Do check any facts for accuracy. As is the way with blogs, they are not all currently being updated. Suggestions for additions welcomed.

•   The Victorian Peeper - Nineteenth-century Britain through the looking glass (not currently updated)
•   Pre-Raphaelite Art (not currently updated)
•   Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood - celebrating Pre-Raphaelite women
•   British Art including many from Victorian times. Older postings at British Paintings
•   The Virtual Victorian - Essie Fox's facts, fancies and fabrications
•   Georgian London (not currently updated)
•   Victorian History - an idiosyncratic selection of short bits about elements of Victorian history
•   Victorian Calendar
•   Edwardian Promenade - La Belle Epoque in our modern world
•   Victorian London - a website, and blog, The Cat's Meat Shop
•   Victorian Gothic - much of madness, and more of sin (not currently updated)

Backstage - US site " For more than 50 years, Backstage has been the most trusted place for actors to find career advice and casting information"
Spotlight - "Spotlight was founded in 1927 and is the UK's leading casting resource with unrivalled knowledge and contacts at the heart of the industry."
ActorTips - "ActorTips is a free site that provides advice to beginning actors. It was founded in the late 1990s as the informational newsletter of New York-based Inverse Theater"
AceYourAudition: the actor's resource - tips, techniques, free monologues
The Stage - news, reviews, castings etc.

Quick guides to print out

English & Acting resources