Research Guides: ENG 407 Victorian Ecologies (Fall 2025): Home

About this guide

This guide is designed to assist you in locating sources and exploring collections for your work in Professor Klaver's ENG 407 Advanced Critical Writing Seminar: Victorian Ecologies. Locate primary and secondary sources via the resources listed in the boxes to the right; some more general resources are listed below. For questions or help, contact subject specialist librarian Patrick Williams at jpwill03@syr.edu.

Getting Started with background information & generating ideas

Oxford Bibliographies Online
Includes a deep Victorian Literature bibliography with articles on people, issues, literary forms, and related themes with citations and links to materials in the Libraries' collection.
Gale Literature: Dictionary of Literary Biography
Essays about authors of many genres; includes biographical information and critical commentary.
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
Articles about critics and criticism, covering theorists, schools and movements.

Special Collections

For primary source material in our physical collections, remember:

Printed material like books, magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals are represented in Libraries Search. Set location filter to Special Collections to browse.
Manuscript material, business and personal records, objects, ephemera, and everything else can be located via the finding aids.

Please note that some material is held off-campus and may take additional time to arrive once requested.

Databases for Secondary Sources

Full Text Access to Articles, Chapters, Books, and more

MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO)
Modern Language Association bibliography of publications related to language, literature, folklore, and linguistics. Specialized subject headings for literary studies.

Use advanced search to include "Victorian Period" as a a subject or time period (or use query TM "Victorian Period" in any search box); you can also limit results to particular authors, approaches, or techniques. Explore details on relevant articles for more search facets.
ProQuest One Literature
A huge volume of criticism, primary sources, and reference works in Global literature. Not as well-curated and -described as MLA, but will help you identify themes in search results. One way to limit to articles from the period is to add "Victorian" as a publication term in Advanced search to limit to relevant journals.
JSTOR
Full-text archive of scholarly publications, including ebooks, in mathematics, science, the arts and humanities, and the social sciences.
Essay and General Literature Index
Index to essays covering a wide range of subjects, with coverage from 1985.
Project Muse
Journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Humanities Index
Index and abstracts to humanities journals and weekly magazines published in the United Kingdom (UK) and English speaking countries, as well as newspapers published in the UK.
Humanities International Index
Index to journals, books and other sources in the humanities, produced by Whitson Publishing.
Gale Literature Criticism
Critical essays and commentary on literary works in many genres and time periods.

Digital Collections of Historical Materials

Digital Collections focused on documents & ephemera from the period

Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Primary sources from the nineteenth century including monographs, newspapers, and pamphlets.
Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain
Explore the government policy, social reform movements and philanthropic efforts of charitable institutions that sought to alleviate poverty in Victorian Britain.
London Low Life
Victorian London documents, including maps, sketches, street views, scrapbooks, broadsides, and more from the Lilly Library, Indiana University.
Victorian Popular Culture
Archival Victorian popular culture collections including content from the Senate House Library, University of London; The Harry Price Library of Magical Literature; Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; The British Library; the British Film Institute National Archive and more.
Victorians on Film: Entertainment, Innovation and Everyday Life
Film content that provides insight into the experimental work of early filmmakers in creating news, animation, drama, and special effects, as well as providing an invaluable exploration into how Victorians went about their day-to-day activities from their work to their leisure time
Literary Manuscripts: Berg
19th century manuscripts, including early editions, annotations, correspondence, sketches and more by Victorian authors. From the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.
Nineteenth Century Literary Society
Discover the work of one of the world’s most important publishing dynasties through this collection from the historic John Murray Archive. From book history to travel writing, politics to poetry, this newly digitised resource introduces an unparalleled repository for nineteenth century culture and the literary luminaries who shaped it.

Historical Publications covering the period

Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003
Page image Illustrated London News from its first publication on 14 May 1842 to its last in 2003.
Times Digital Archive
The Times Digital Archive provides convenient access to an extraordinary library of back issues of this renowned newspaper online. By taking the microfilm collection of The Times (London) and producing a high-resolution digital format with searchable images, The Times Digital Archive represents unprecedented access to one of the most highly regarded resources for the study of 18th century history and onward.
Godey's Lady's Book (1830-1885)

Publication published from 1830-1885 covering fashion, health, recipes, and as well as literary works, essays, and reviews.
British Periodicals
British journal and magazine page image content from the 1600s to the 20th century.
Periodicals Archive Online
Archive of journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences.