Content and Editorial Policy - Literature Collections

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Literature Online offers the full text of more than 350,000 works of poetry, drama and prose in English from the eighth century to the present day, drawing together in one fully cross-searchable database the complete contents of fourteen Chadwyck-Healey literature collections. British, Irish and American poetry in English are covered from their beginnings to the present day; British and American drama are covered up to around 1915, British prose up to 1900 and American prose fiction to 1875.

Each individual literature collection has been developed with its own specialist editorial board to advise on the selection of texts and editions. Editorial policies may therefore vary from collection to collection; however, the overall guiding criteria are of authority, comprehensiveness and inclusion. Our general policy has always been to include either an authoritative collected edition for each author or first editions of individual works as appropriate. All texts are reproduced faithfully from the original printed sources without silent emendation. Follow the links below to read more about editorial policies specific to each collection, or visit the text conversion page to find out more about how our texts are digitised.

Poetry:

English Poetry, Second Edition (2001; first published 1992–95)
African American Poetry (1995)
American Poetry (1996)
Canadian Poetry (2001–)
Twentieth-Century English Poetry incorporating the Faber Poetry Library (1997–2000)
Twentieth-Century African American Poetry (1998–2000)
Twentieth-Century American Poetry (1998–2000)

Drama:

English Verse Drama (1995)
English Prose Drama (1996-7)
American Drama 1711–1915 (2000-)

Prose:

Eighteenth-Century Fiction (1996)
Early English Prose Fiction (1997)
Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1998-2000)
Early American Fiction 1789–1875 (2002-) incorporating Early American Fiction 1789–1850 (1999–2000)

In addition, Literature Online contains more than 800 classic literary essays, from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth, selected from the Chadwyck-Healey collection Literary Theory (1999–2000), the King James Bible of 1611, and supplementary Editions of Shakespeare.

Depending on your institution's subscription, you may also have access to the following collections:

Twentieth-Century Drama (2003–)

African Writers Series (2005–)

Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Second Edition (2008–)

Other Searchable Full Text

More than 8,000 additional electronic texts from third-party internet sites are fully indexed in Literature Online, allowing users to cross-search the Chadwyck-Healey literature collections with the best literature e-texts freely available to internet users.

Multimedia Resources

Poets on Screen is a unique video archive featuring leading poets reading and interpreting classic and contemporary poems.

Please note that Poets on Screen, like some other multimedia resources, is not available within all libraries. If Poets on Screen is available within your institution, you will see a link to the index page in the left-hand toolbar on the Literature Online home page and from the Author Pages of poets represented in the collection.

Editorial Policy - Poetry to 1900

General Policy: the pre-1900 poetry collections are as inclusive as possible within the scope laid out below. The contents are based on standard comprehensive bibliographies, and we have aimed to include all volumes listed for all authors, without discriminating between 'major' and 'minor' authors. Our general policy has been to include a single copy of each poem, the main exceptions being where significant variant texts have been published, or where a poem is included in an anthology as well as in an author's collected works.

English Poetry, Second Edition

The main bibliographic source for English Poetry, Second Edition is the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1969–72). The collection aims to encompass the complete published corpus of all of the poets listed in NCBEL active between 1100 and 1900. English Poetry, Second Edition also includes poetry written in English during the same period by authors from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the world, together with the work of additional English poets missing from NCBEL.

Certain categories of material have not generally been included:

Translations into English verse after 1800
Hymns published after 1800
Works in languages other than English
Unpublished manuscript poems or those only published in contemporary newspapers, journals, or miscellanies
Verse dramas intended for the stage (these are included in English Verse Drama).

Exceptions have been made in the case of works from the above categories considered too important to be omitted.

Editions and Texts

In general, the collection reproduces the text of editions published during the author's lifetime or shortly afterwards. Where the early editions of a poet's work are unreliable or incomplete, later editions have been used.

In most cases, English Poetry, Second Edition contains only a single version of each work. Where more than one version of a poem exists, the collection attempts to reflect the final intentions of the author, though exceptions have been made for early versions of major works, such as Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey'. Where the source volume contains variant texts deriving from different manuscripts or oral sources, as is the case with Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–98), these alternatives have usually been included.

Landmark anthologies such as The Golden Treasury are available in their entirety.

The entire text of each poem has been included. Any accompanying text written by the poet and forming an integral part of the poem, such as dedications, notes, arguments and epigraphs, is also generally included. Images forming an essential part of the text have been scanned.

Front and back matter from the source volume, such as advertisements, prefaces, introductions, editorial apparatus, dedicatory epistles, biographies, glossaries and indexes, is usually excluded, as are some lengthy authorial notes considered inessential to the understanding of a particular poem.

Editorial Board

Professor John Barnard School of English, University of Leeds
Professor Derek Brewer Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge
Lou Burnard Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford
Dr Howard Erskine-Hill Pembroke College, University of Cambridge
Professor Daniel Karlin Department of English, University College London

American Poetry and African American Poetry

The bibliographic basis of American Poetry is the Bibliography of American Literature (Yale University Press, 1955–1991), which has been extensively supplemented with additional poets recommended by the Editorial Board to provide a more thorough representation. The contents of African American Poetry are based upon the bibliography in William French et al., Afro-American Poetry and Drama, 1760–1975: A Guide to Information Sources (Gale Research, 1979). African American Poetry and American Poetry principally cover the period to 1900, although a few poets active after 1900 are also included. The aim has been to include the complete works of all major poets and a substantial number of secondary figures.

Editions and Texts – American Poetry

Only a single version of each poem usually appears. Exceptions to this rule have been made for significant revisions to major works. Five editions of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass have been included, for example.

Four major anthologies published before 1840 appear in their entirety.

Poems published only in journals, gazettes or periodicals have generally been excluded, as have translations. The editorial board nevertheless recommended exceptions to these criteria when works that did not meet them were considered too important to be excluded.

Editions and Texts – African American Poetry

Where poems appeared in their original dialect in an earlier edition and standardised in a later edition, both forms have been included for comparison purposes. Poems originally published in periodicals have also been included. Textual apparatus and front matter to the poems are generally omitted, except the poet's own notes, which have been included in the database.

Editorial Board

Matthew J. Bruccoli Jefferies Professor of English, University of South Carolina (Chairman)
Joel Myerson Carolina Research Professor of American Literature, University of South Carolina
Richard Layman Vice President, Bruccoli Clark Layman
Harrison Meserole Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University
William Cagle Director, Lilly Library, Indiana University
Laurence Buell Professor of English, Harvard University

Canadian Poetry

Canadian Poetry has been created and published in collaboration with the Electronic Text Centre at the University of New Brunswick Libraries. The aim has been to provide a comprehensive database of the poetry of Canadian authors whose works were published up to and including 1900 and who died before 1950. All poems published in book form have been included, as have uncollected broadsheet and serial publications before 1850; post-1850 broadsheet and serial publications have been included at the discretion of the editorial board. Translations have not been included unless they assumed a wider importance and became part of the fabric of contemporary cultural life.

Editions and Texts

Reliable modern critical editions have been used as copy text where these are available. Where no suitable modern edition exists, the policy has been to use reliable collected works editions or editions published during the author's lifetime reflecting his or her final intentions.

In all cases, the electronic text is a diplomatic transcription of its printed source, free of silent emendation. The entire text of each poem has been included. Any accompanying text written by the poet and forming an integral part of the poem, such as dedications, notes, arguments and epigraphs, is also generally included.

Front and back matter from the source volume, such as advertisements, prefaces, introductions, editorial apparatus, biographies, glossaries and indexes, is usually excluded.

Editorial Board

Sandra Alston University of Toronto Library
Jennifer Andrews Assistant Professor of Canadian Literature, University of New Brunswick
Gwendolyn Davies Acadia University
Mary Jane Edwards English Department, Carleton University
Carole Gerson Professor of English, Simon Fraser University
Ross Leckie Director of Creative Writing, University of New Brunswick
Victor J. Ramraj Professor of English, University of Calgary
Kathleen Scherf Dean of the Faculty of General Studies and Professor of Canadian Studies, University of Calgary
Thomas B. Vincent Professor of English, Royal Military College of Canada

Editorial Policy – Poetry 1900 to the Present

General Policy: the volume of poetry published in the twentieth century means that we have had to be more selective in our coverage than with the pre-1900 collections. Since most material in this period is copyright, there are inevitably omissions in cases where permission was not granted to include a poet's works. Despite these two points, Literature Online contains more than 100,000 twentieth-century poems, covering British, Irish, American and Commonwealth poetry in English. For each author, we have aimed to include the complete published works where possible.

Twentieth-Century Poetry (incorporating the Faber Poetry Library)

Poets have been selected for inclusion in Twentieth-Century English Poetry following recommendations by the editorial board. Works by selected poets appear in the database where ProQuest LLC has secured the necessary permission from publishers and other rights holders to distribute them. The collection features poets from the lists of Carcanet, Enitharmon, Anvil Press, Bloodaxe Books and other poetry publishers, together with works by poets from the Faber Poetry Library.

Twentieth-Century English Poetry includes works in English by poets from outside the British Isles, as well as significant translations of non-English poetry.

Twentieth-Century English Poetry enjoys the active support of the poets involved, their estates, literary agents and publishers. ProQuest LLC protects the rights of the poets and the integrity of their work on the Internet.

Editions and Texts

Twentieth-Century English Poetry aims to include as full a collection of the published works of each poet as possible. When available, a poet's collected edition has been keyed. Exceptions are for poets whose collected editions are not yet in print or complete. In general, only a single version of each poem has been included, and when available, the most recent and complete version of each poem has been keyed.

The entire text of each poem has been included. Indexes of titles and first lines, prefatory material and some notes have been excluded. In the case of Faber and Faber editions, front and back matter have also been excluded. Integral images are scanned.

Editorial Board

Richard Caddel Co-Director, Basil Bunting Poetry Centre, Durham University Library
Dr Mark Ford University College, London
Dr Ian Patterson Queens' College, Cambridge
Peter Riley

Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Database of Twentieth-Century African American Poetry

Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Twentieth-Century African American Poetry offer the work of the most important and influential American poets of the twentieth century. Many writers of the 1990s, who have gained recognition through national poetry awards or inclusion within leading print anthologies, are also represented. The works of selected poets have been included where the publisher of the printed work has granted ProQuest LLC electronic rights.

Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Twentieth-Century African American Poetry enjoy the active support of the poets involved, their estates, literary agents and publishers. ProQuest LLC protects the rights and integrity of the poets and their work on the Internet.

Editions and Texts

Each database aims to include as full a collection of the published works of each poet as possible. When available, a poet's collected edition has been keyed. In most cases, the source editions have been provided by publishers. In general, only a single version of each poem has been included; where multiple versions of a particular work exist, the most recent and complete has been keyed.

The complete text of each poem has been included, and any integral images and illustrations have been scanned. Any accompanying text relating directly to the poetry, such as dedications, notes, acknowledgments, prefaces, introductions and epigraphs, has been included where ProQuest LLC has secured the necessary electronic rights. Indexes of titles and first lines have been excluded.

Editorial Board

Matthew J. Bruccoli Jefferies Professor of English, University of South Carolina (Chairman)
Joel Myerson Carolina Research Professor of American Literature, University of South Carolina
Richard Layman Vice President, Bruccoli Clark Layman
Harrison Meserole Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University
William Cagle Director, Lilly Library, Indiana University
Laurence Buell Professor of English, Harvard University

Editorial Policy – Drama to 1900

General Policy: these collections are as inclusive as possible. The contents are based on standard bibliographies, and we have aimed to include all volumes listed for all authors, without discriminating between 'major' and 'minor' authors. Our general policy has been to include a single copy of each play: the notable exception has been Shakespeare, for whom we have included the complete contents of the First Folio, individual quarto editions of all plays that were published separately, and a complete modern-spelling edition.

English Verse Drama and English Prose Drama

The bibliographic basis of both English Prose Drama and English Verse Drama is the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1969–72). Annals of English Drama 975–1700, by Alfred Harbage, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 1989), was used to confirm genre classification and dates for all pre-1700 plays. The database contains works acted on or intended for the stage. It includes masques, interludes, short dramatic pieces, translations and adaptations, closet dramas, and works written for children. Unpublished manuscript works and works in languages other than English have been excluded.

Editions and Texts

A single edition of each play has been included. Generally, this is the first authorised edition. If a contemporary edition was considered unreliable, a later edition may have been used; authorial revision or enlargement may also, in the opinion of the editorial board, render a later edition preferable. Where the majority of plays by an author have been taken from a later collection, the collected edition may be used for all works. It has been a general principle not to use modernised editions. In the case of every work, the edition selected is stated and full bibliographic details are given. Each text is reproduced in full, as is accompanying text written by the playwright and forming an integral part of the play, such as epigraphs, cast lists and notes. Commendatory and prefatory poems by the playwright and others have also been included.

Editorial Board

Professor John Barnard School of English, University of Leeds
Professor Anne Barton Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Professor Derek Brewer Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge
Lou Burnard Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford
Dr Howard Erskine-Hill Pembroke College, University of Cambridge
Professor Daniel Karlin Department of English, University College London

American Drama 1714–1915

American Drama 1714–1915 contains plays selected by the editorial board from the following bibliographic sources:

Frank Pierce Hill, American Plays Printed, 1714–1830 (Stanford University Press, 1900)
The Bibliography of American Literature (9 vols, Yale University Press, 1955–1991)
The Cambridge History of American Theatre, ed. Don Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (3 vols, Cambridge University Press, 1998–2000)
Don L. Hixon and Don A. Hennessee, Nineteenth-Century American Drama: A Finding Guide (Scarecrow Press, 1977)
Arthur Hobson Quinn, A History of the American Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War (Harper & Brothers, 1927)
Amelia H. Kritzer, Plays by Early American Women, 1775–1850 (University of Michigan Press, 1995)
Gwenn Davis, Drama by Women to 1900: A Bibliography of American and British Writers (Mansell, 1992)
Esther Spring Arata, Black American Playwrights: 1800 to the Present: A Bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1976)

American Drama 1714–1915 contains translations and adaptations, as well as works by selected non-American dramatists, such as Dion Boucicault, whose careers are associated with the American stage. Plays available exclusively in manuscript form have been omitted; plays available in privately printed editions only have been included at the discretion of the editorial board.

Editions and Texts

In most cases a single edition of each play has been included, generally the first. Authorial revision or enlargement may also, in the opinion of the editorial board, render a later edition preferable. Where the majority of plays by an author have been taken from a later collection, the collected edition may be used for all works. In all cases the edition selected is stated and full bibliographic details are given.

Each text is reproduced in full, as is accompanying text written by the playwright and forming an integral part of the play, such as epigraphs, cast lists, and notes. Commendatory and prefatory poems by the playwright and others have also been included. Editorial matter has usually been included.

Editorial Board

Don Wilmeth Asa Messer Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Brown University
Gary Richardson Professor of English, Mercer University
Ronald Wainscott Professor of History, Theory and Literature and Interim Chair, Indiana University

Editions of Shakespeare

Thanks to the English Verse Drama and English Poetry, Literature Online has always included single historic editions of the complete works of William Shakespeare. This consists of first editions of all poetry volumes (including the Sonnets, 1609, and Venus and Adonis, 1594), and the entirety of the First Folio (36 plays, published 1623), supplemented by individual editions of plays not included in the First Folio: quarto editions of Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1609) and Edward III (1596) and the collaborative works The Two Noble Kinsmen (with John Fletcher, taken from the 1679 edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's works) and The Book of Thomas More (with Anthony Munday and others, 1911 edition).

In June 2006, two further editions were added, allowing users to search and study the whole Shakespearean canon using modern spellings, and also to compare variant texts of single plays. The Cambridge Shakespeare, edited by William George Clark with W. Aldis Wright and John Glover (9 vols.; Macmillan, printed at the Cambridge University Press, 1863–66) is an annotated, modern-spelling edition which was of considerable historical importance for its advanced approach to textual editing, and which, in its one-volume version (The Globe Shakespeare, 1864), remained the standard compact edition for much of the twentieth century. Prefaces and textual footnotes are included, and the Cambridge Shakespeare also includes modern-spelling versions of Shakespeare's complete poetic works.

In addition, 24 quarto editions of individual plays were added. This includes Shakespeare's earliest dramatic publications – The most lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus (Q1, 1594), The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster (2 Henry VI, Q1, 1594) and The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke (3 Henry VI, octavo, 1595) – covers all plays for which quartos survived, and includes multiple editions of Hamlet (the 'good' and 'bad' quartos of 1603 and 1605), Richard the Second (Q1, 1597 and Q2, 1608), and Romeo and Juliet (Q1, 1597 and Q2, 1599). No other resource contains such a richness of primary sources for the historical, textual and contextual study of Shakespeare's works.

These electronic texts were originally created as part of the Chadwyck-Healey collection Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare (1997). This is a much larger collection, comprising eleven major Shakespeare editions and more than one hundred adaptations, sequels and burlesques, which is not included in Literature Online in its entirety. The editorial board for Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare comprised:

Executive Editors:

Professor Anne Barton Trinity College, Cambridge
John Kerrigan St John's College, Cambridge

Advisory Editors:

Professor Michael Dobson Roehampton Institute
Professor MacDonald P. Jackson University of Auckland
Professor Stephen Orgel Stanford University
Professor Annabel Patterson Yale University
Professor Yasunari Takahashi Showa Women's University, Tokyo
Professor Brian Vickers ETH Zentrum, Zurich

Editorial Policy – Prose

General Policy: because of the size of the data, the contents of our prose databases are inevitably more selective than for other collections. The general aim of the English prose fiction databases is to include complete works for major authors, together with a representative sample of authors and significant texts of the periods. The other two prose collections have very specific selection criteria, as explained below: Early American Fiction, 1789–1875 is based on the holdings of the University of Virginia library, and the prose works from Literary Theory were selected for their importance in the history of literary criticism.

Early English Prose Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Early English Prose Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Nineteenth-Century Fiction contain works in English prose by writers from the British Isles from the period 1500–1903. Authors and works were selected under the guidance of panels of editorial advisors to meet the needs of academic teaching and research, and provide a representative view of the prose fiction of each period. Early English Prose Fiction is the result of a collaboration between Chadwyck-Healey and the Salzburg Centre for Research on the Early English Novel (SCREEN) which made the choice of texts and editions.

Editions and Texts

In general a single edition of each work, usually the first, has been included. Prior magazine serialisations and corrected second editions have occasionally been preferred. Major works subject to extensive authorial revision, such as Gulliver's Travels and Frankenstein, are represented in more than one edition on the guidance of the editorial board.

The entire text of each individual work has been included, with all prefatory matter and annotation by the original author. All accompanying material, such as illustrations, contents pages, appendices, lists of subscribers, dedications, errata lists, etc., also appears. Publisher's advertisements for other texts have been excluded.

Editorial Board

Early English Prose Fiction

Professor Holger Klein Universität Salzburg
Dr David Margolies Goldsmiths College, University of London
Professor Janet Todd University of East Anglia

Advisory Panel:

Professor Don Beecher Carleton University
Professor Helmut Bonheim Universität zu Köln
Professor Jim Harner Texas A&M University
Professor James Hogg Universität Salzburg
Professor Werner von Koppenfels Universität München
Dr Robert Letellier associate of SCREEN, London
Professor Robert Rehder Université de Fribourg
Professor Paul Salzman La Trobe University
Professor Goran Stanivukuvic University of Calgary
Professor György Szönyi Jozsef Attila Tudományegyetem, Szeged
Professor Ioann Williams University College Wales, Aberystwyth

Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Dr Judith Hawley Royal Holloway, University of London
Dr Tom Keymer St Anne's College, University of Oxford
Dr John Mullan University College London

Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Professor Danny Karlin University College, London
Dr Tom Keymer St Anne's College, Oxford

Early American Fiction 1789–1875

Early American Fiction 1789–1875 has been produced in collaboration with the University of Virginia Library. UVa is fortunate to have two of the world's major collections of rare first editions of American fiction in its Barrett and Taylor collections. In these collections most of the first editions listed in Wright's American Fiction 1774–1850 and the Bibliography of American Literature are available, and these are contained in Early American Fiction 1789–1875.

Texts

Each title in Early American Fiction 1789–1875 is available in its entirety as a series of facsimile page images in full colour, including text, illustrations, spine, endpapers, covers and edges.

The entire text of each individual work, with all prefatory matter and annotation, is also included as keyed full text synchronised with the page image set. All accompanying material, such as contents pages, appendices, dedications, errata lists, etc., also appears in keyed form, along with publisher's advertisements for other texts.

Editorial Advisor

Dr David Seaman founding director of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia

Literary Theory

Literature Online contains a selection of material, mostly pre-1900, from the Literary Theory database. The criteria for the inclusion of works in Literary Theory seek to reflect the diverse material and interests encompassed by the history of literary theory and criticism. In addition to works written in English, the database includes works originally written in other languages that have had a significant bearing on English and American traditions of theory and criticism, or which have influenced contemporary theoretical debate in the English-speaking world. All works in the database appear in English. Among its contents, the database includes:

formal treatises on criticism and aesthetics
discourses on the character or practice of specific genres
theories of imagination, genius and taste
literary biography, criticism and literary history that express important general arguments and precepts
literary prefaces and dedications
rhetorical treatises
poetry which expresses or implies rules of composition or standards of judgement
theoretical works in disciplines other than English literature which have had a major influence on literary theory

Editions and Texts

The database includes a single edition of each work, usually the first. Where texts have been revised by their author after their first appearance in print, the last revised edition is generally used.

Items such as prefaces and dedications have been extracted from the source volume. Some essays have been drawn selectively from printed collections and anthologies. Volume-length works of criticism and theory are usually included in their entirety, although front and back matter from the printed source, such as advertisements, tables of contents and other preliminaries, is usually omitted.

Editorial Board

Dr Simon Jarvis University of Cambridge (Editor-in-Chief)
Professor Derek Attridge University of York
Professor Jonathan Culler Cornell University
Dr Vicky Lebeau University of Sussex
Professor Tilottama Rajan Director, Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario

Advisory Panel:

Dr Neil Croally Dulwich College, London
Dr Tom Keymer University of Oxford
Dr Robert Maslen University of Glasgow
Dr Guy Reynolds University of Kent

King James Bible

The King James or 'Authorised' edition of the Bible (1611) was the standard edition of the Bible for nearly three centuries, drawing heavily on previous editions and providing the principal influence for many subsequent versions. It is arguably the most influential single document for English literary studies in general.

The text (of the 'He' version) is given in full, with all introductory matter, annotation, calendars, genealogies and tables included.

Editorial Policy - Drama 1900 to the Present

Twentieth-Century Drama

When complete, Twentieth-Century Drama will contain 2,600 published plays from throughout the English-speaking world, covering the history of modern drama from the 1890s to the present day. The collection's contents range from canonical authors to off-Broadway experimentation and South African township theatre. This breadth of coverage allow users to open up connections between classic plays such as Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan (1923), Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938) or August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and less well-known texts drawn from the full range of modern theatrical traditions. Areas such as postcolonial writing, women's theatre, and community theatre are given full representation, and Naturalist, Expressionist and absurdist works appear alongside popular comedies, melodramas, farces and thrillers.

Release Seven, released in June 2007, contains 1,250 play texts by 165 principal authors from Britain and Ireland, North America, India, Africa, Australia and the Caribbean, including Ama Ata Aidoo, John Arden, Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins, Noël Coward, Horton Foote, Maria Irene Fornes, Susan Glaspell, John Godber, Lady Augusta Gregory, John Guare, Beth Henley, Tony Harrison, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Eduardo Machado, Eugene O'Neill, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Sean O’Casey, Tess Onwueme, John Osborne, Sharon Pollock, Terence Rattigan, Bernard Shaw, Megan Terry, Luis Valdez, Derek Walcott, Wendy Wasserstein, Thornton Wilder and August Wilson.

Authors and plays have been selected by an academic advisory board, largely according to their current profile in both teaching and research at universities, colleges and schools. For major authors, we have aimed to include each writer's complete dramatic works; for less prominent authors, a representative sample has been selected; in some cases, a single play by a given author has been included owing to its particular significance. While the emphasis has been on selecting authors who feature prominently in both the academic canon and the current theatrical repertoire, we have also aimed to include plays that have suffered neglect owing to lack of availability in print, and plays by authors of historical importance.

Selection has largely been limited to works originally written in English; the exceptions to this are:

Translations of non-English-language works have been included where these form part of a playwright's main oeuvre: examples include W.B. Yeats's Sophocles' King Oedipus (1928) and John Osborne's translation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1989).
For multilingual countries that fall within the scope of the collection we have included works written in indigenous languages that have also been performed and published in English: for example, the works of Indian writers Maha'sveta Debi, Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar and others, and Lady Augusta Gregory's translation of Douglas Hyde's Gaelic drama Casadh an tSúgáin (The Twisting of the Rope, 1902).
The original French language version of Oscar Wilde's Salomé has been included alongside Lord Alfred Douglas's translation.

Editions and Texts

A single edition of each play has been included, except in instances where variant versions of the same play have been selected on the advice of our editorial board (an example is the plays of Paul Green). We have limited the source texts to published play texts in book form. Authoritative collected editions of an author's dramatic works have been selected where available; where no such edition exists, we have selected either the first reliable edition of each play, or, as in the case of Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, a later edition incorporating revisions by the author (in this case, the 1927 limited edition that contained Hardy's final revisions).

The text of Errol Hill's Man Better Man is based on the published version, but incorporates corrections made by the author and links to musical scores of the songs from the play; both were kindly provided by the author's widow, Grace Hope Hill. In the case of Harley Granville Barker, the 1909 texts of Waste and The Voysey Inheritance have been preferred to the later texts used in collected editions, owing to their historical interest.

Each text is reproduced in full, including any accompanying text by the author, together with relevant supplementary matter such as dramatis personae and any illustrations that are integral to the text. Other front and back matter may have been omitted. In all cases, the edition used is stated in full in the bibliographic details, along with details of what has been included or omitted from the printed volume.

Editorial Board

Trevor R. Griffiths Visiting Professor in Humanities, University of Hertfordshire
Christopher Bigsby Professor of American Studies and Director of the Arthur Miller Centre, University of East Anglia
Ian Clarke former Senior Lecturer and Director of Drama, Loughborough University
David Krasner Yale University
Margaret Llewellyn-Jones former Principal Lecturer, London Metropolitan University
Mary Luckhurst Lecturer in Modern Drama, University of York
Brenda Murphy Professor of English, University of Connecticut
Gary Richardson Professor of English, Mercer University
Don Wilmeth Asa Messer Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Brown University
Ralph Yarrow Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature, University of East Anglia

African Writers Series

This addition to the Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections is a digital edition of a historic print series: Heinemann's African Writers Series (AWS). Founded in 1962 with the publication of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and with Achebe himself as Founding Editor, the series went on to have a unique and central importance in African literature for the next 40 years. The founders' aim was to produce a paperback series featuring writing by African authors that would be affordable for a general African readership. As African nations won independence, writers like Achebe began to forge distinctive national literatures throughout the continent; the African Writers Series published work by all the major authors of this period, together with classic earlier texts and new writing, giving it a unique importance in African cultural history.

Release Five of the electronic edition, published in June 2007, contains a total of almost 200 volumes, and covers the whole historical range of modern African fiction, from early pioneering novels by black African authors such as Sol Plaatje's Mhudi (1930; published in the AWS in 1978), Peter Abrahams's Mine Boy (1946; AWS 1963), and Achebe's own Things Fall Apart (1958; published as AWS No. 1 in 1962), to later masterpieces such as Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North (1969), Bessie Head's A Question of Power (1974), and Dambudzo Marechera's The House of Hunger (1978), right up to the last two volumes published in the print series: Ama Ata Aidoo's Changes and Daniel Mengara's Mema (both October 2003). Major authors covered include Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Kofi Anyidoho, Kofi Awoonor, Steve Biko, Dennis Brutus, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Chenjerai Hove, Taban Lo Liyong, Doris Lessing, Jack Mapanje, Charles Mungoshi, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, Okot p'Bitek, Lenrie Peters, Mongane Wally Serote and Véronique Tadjo.

Editions and Texts

The editorial policy is to include only texts that were published under the Heinemann African Writers Series imprint. The only exception to this has been Kofi Awoonor's Until the Morning After: Collected Poems; this volume was advertised as AWS No. 260, but seems not to have been published by Heinemann, and no other volume was assigned this number. We therefore took the unique decision of including the 1987 Greenfield Review Press of this important volume. In all other cases, the first AWS edition has been used where possible, except in cases where later editions are preferred in order to include authorial corrections.

Each volume is reproduced in full, including accompanying text by the author, introductions, notes, glossaries and other editorial matter, and illustrations. Other front and back matter may have been omitted. Each complete volume, including anthologies and collections, can be browsed in its entirety via a Table of Contents. Bibliographic information relating to both the details of first publication and, where different, first publication within the AWS, has been recorded.

Original pagination is preserved, and the page layout of poems is reproduced as accurately as possible. Scanned images are used as a supplement to the keyed text for illustrations, figures and unusual page layouts. Typographic characters that cannot be displayed using a web-safe extended Latin character set have been mapped to standard-character equivalents, and scanned images have been provided for cross-referencing.

Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Second Edition

Launched in 2008, Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Second Edition combines two existing Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections (Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Twentieth-Century African American Poetry) with over 500 volumes of newly-licensed poetry from established and emergent poets. It is an essential collection of poetry which allows readers an unparalleled survey of the movements, schools and distinctive voices of modern and contemporary American poetry.

When complete the collection will contain over 100,000 poems representing the full range of American poetry of the last century, from the major Modernist works of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Djuna Barnes to the contemporary works of Robinson Jeffers, Elinor Wylie and Peter Gizzi.

Release One, launched in May 2008, contains over 65,000 poems by more than 450 poets including Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Robert Bly, James Wright, Allen Ginsberg, Clark Coolidge, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Georgia Douglas Camp Johnson, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Lorna Dee Cervantes, W.S. Merwin, Susan Howe, Ai, Rita Dove, Tomas Rivera and Li-Young Lee.

In selecting poets for inclusion, the aim has been to include a broad representative collection that reflects the diversity of modern American literary traditions, including, subject to the granting of electronic rights by the print publishers, major figures alongside historically important writers and younger emergent poets. The complete text of each poem has been included, and any integral textual images and illustrations have been scanned. Additional information relating directly to the poetry, such as prefaces or introductions, has been keyed. Any prose sections of the volumes that are significant to the works have also been included.

Editions and Texts

Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Second Edition aims to include as full a collection of the published works of each poet as possible. When available, a poet's collected edition has been keyed. Exceptions are for poets whose collected editions are not yet in print or complete. In most cases, the editions have been provided by the publishers. Every poem has been indexed within its edition's table of contents. Where ProQuest has not secured electronic rights to publish the full text of an individual poem or series of poems within its respective edition, we have provided a statement to this effect where the full text of these poems would normally be displayed.

The entire text of each poem has been included. Any accompanying text forming an integral part of the poetry, such as dedications, notes, acknowledgements, prefaces, introductions, and epigraphs, is generally included, provided ProQuest has secured electronic rights for the material. Indexes of titles and first lines have been excluded.

Advisory Board

Matthew J. Bruccoli, Jefferies Professor of English, University of South Carolina
Laurence Buell, Professor of English, Harvard University
William Cagle, Director, Lilly Library, Indiana University
John Goodby, University of Wales, Swansea
Nancy Kuehl, Associate Curator, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Library, Yale University
Richard Layman, Vice President, Bruccoli Clark Layman
Harrison Meserole, Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University
Joel Myerson, Carolina Research Professor of American Literature, University of South Carolina
Peter Riley

Electronic Texts at Third-Party Sites

Literature Online also includes links to electronic texts on third-party sites that are freely available on the internet. Although the texts themselves are not part of Literature Online, they are searchable using keyword, title keyword, author and advanced searches from the Texts search screen. These third-party texts appear under the Selected Web Texts tab in the summary of results. They have been selected by a designated team of researchers, who assess each text for its quality, accuracy and relevance to literary studies. Though great care has been taken to select materials of the highest quality, links to third-party web sites are provided solely for informational purposes and as a convenience to our authorised users.

ProQuest as publishers of Literature Online are not responsible for the content of the third-party web sites to which links have been provided. The links included in Literature Online do not constitute a referral or endorsement of any product or service advertised or distributed through the linked web sites, nor do they reflect any affiliation between ProQuest and the publishers of the third-party web site. Your use of the third-party web sites may be subject to the terms and conditions specified on the particular web sites you choose to visit.

ProQuest has taken reasonable steps to ensure that the electronic texts to which Literature Online links are not protected by copyright or equivalent rights but is not responsible for the conduct of all providers of these texts and does not warrant that accessing, downloading or printing out these texts will not infringe the rights of any third party.

Users are solely responsible for the use which they make of Literature Online and ProQuest shall not in any event be liable to users in contract, tort, negligence, breach of statutory duty or otherwise for any loss, damage, cost or expense incurred or suffered by a user arising in connection with this service.

Users of this data should refer to ProQuest LLC if they have any questions or concerns about possible copyright infringements.

Poets on Screen

Poets on Screen is a groundbreaking multimedia collection specially commissioned for inclusion in Literature Online and produced in collaboration with some of the foremost poets living and working in the English-speaking world today.

The collection contains more than 800 filmed readings by contemporary poets of both contemporary and classic poems, and provides a unique opportunity to hear and see major authors interpreting their own works and the works of their contemporaries and predecessors. The recordings have been made at a variety of public readings or directly to camera; together they capture and preserve the full diversity of the contemporary poetic scene. Many readings are accompanied by introductory passages in which the poet discusses his or her own work or the work of an admired predecessor.

Highlights of the Poets on Screen library include Jayne Cortez's performance of 'I See Chano Pozo', Blake Morrison discussing his poem 'Pendle Witches', Imtiaz Dharker reading Browning's 'My Last Duchess', Jerome Rothenberg reading and discussing eleven of his own poems, including 'At Tsukiji Market, Tokyo', and Fleur Adcock reading from her own verse and from a selection of works by Donne, Marvell, Coleridge and Edward Thomas.

Poets on Screen readings are accessible using either RealPlayer® or Windows Media® Player .