General:

Mostly about  Webmastering:

 Cultural Connections to Literature

General:

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature .  The 18 volume on-line edition, plus other useful texts

Andrew Moore's "A Brief History of English Literature."   Investigate this site AFTER you complete your literary period worksheets.  See if you agree with his choices.  There are other links to sites about literary history, too.

Letters About Literature. Use this Library of Congress site for models for your letters to authors.

Literary Timeline. The Literary Timeline presents a broad overview of the concurrent lifetimes of major authors during the two hundred year period between 1800 and 2000. The Timeline is really three timelines, individually selectable, which organize authors according to nationality. As you scroll through the Timeline, click on a name for more information about that author and his or her major works.

Literature for ITunes. University of Pennsylvania's site for free downloadable audio recordings of poetry, literature, and other texts.  They also have an RSS feed.

Six Traits Writing Links.  Need to know more about idea development, voice, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions?  This site has a tutorial on all of these characteristics of good writing.

The Writing Process. Clearly written introduction to the writing process!

 

British Literature

Anglo-Saxon Period:

Adventures of Beowulf.  An on-line adaptation from the Old English, by Dr. David Breeden.

Beowulf Resources  Good bibliography plus Beowulf in the original Old English.

Electronic Beowulf  A beautiful site that features an image-based version of the manuscript, plus other medieval texts. Each text has an easy to use glossary feature.

Medieval Period:

Anthology of Middle English Literature (1350-1485).  Primary texts, information about specific authors, titles, and genres; critical essays and articles; extensive list of additional sources.

Renaissance Period:

Consuming Splendor: Luxury Goods in England, 1580-1680. See how shopping transformed social practices, gender roles, royal policies and the economy in seventeenth century England. A 2005 exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Folger Shakespeare Library.  Extensive archive of primary sources (things like the books on witches King James read) and a good list of sites for further research.

Macbeth Plugged.  A 1996 Thinkquest entry, this site bills itself as an annotated, on-line version of the Shakespearean tragedy.  Much better than Cliff's Notes.

MIT Complete Works of Shakespeare. As the name implies, this MIT sponsored site contains all of Shakespeare's works, available for download.

Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet.  One of my favorite Shakespeare sites. You'll find literary criticism, historical timelines, and other interesting information here.

Shakespeare: Subject to Change  A wonderful multimedia site about how Shakespeare's words were changed.  Especially good is the examination of Hamlet.

Shakespeare High.Com.  Subtitled "your Shakespeare classroom on the Internet," this site contains much good background information about Shakespeare and some very active message boards that discuss specific plays.

Sixteenth Century  Renaissance English Literature (1425-1603).  Part of the Luminarium website, an extraordinary amount of information about authors, their works, critical essays and articles, and a wonderful group of additional sources perfect for research about the culture, politics and historical background of the time.

Trading Places: The East India Company. Find out more about the origins of one of the most influential companies in the history of Great Britain.

17th Century:

Early 17th Century Website, The .  Opulent website featuring much information about individual authors, essays and articles about same, plus additional sources for cultural, historical, and political background about the period.  In addition to the early 17th century poets, there are additional web pages for the metaphysical and cavalier poets. A must see.

John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and 19th century American culture.  If you've ever wondered about the impact of a text on a later time period, investigate this site.  The author notes that Pilgrim's Progress held a special place in Victorian libraries second only to the Bible.

Milton-L Home Page, The.  Very thorough site that gives a chronology of Milton's life and works, audio readings of texts, graphics from his published works, criticism, and a great list of sites for further Milton research.

Norton Topics Online.   Great overview of cultural, political, and literary doings in the 17th century.

Seventeenth Century Timeline.   Good starting point for the major events of the 17th century.

Romantic Period:

William Blake Archive. Wonderful group of Blake's primary texts AND watercolors. Great site for research and study.

Victorian Period:

Trading Places: The East India Company. Find out more about one of the most influential companies in the history of Great Britain.

Victorian Web. Organized by George Landow (my hero and champion of hypertext), this is the most extensive, well-researched site for Victorian literature.

Victorian Women Writers' Project E-texts of a huge number of 19th century women's texts, literary analysis, and interesting trivia.

General:

American Authors on the Web  All sorts of American writers, both famous and esoteric, are listed here, along with links to other web sites about them.

 

Legacy: American Women Writers An organization promoting American women writers, their links page is very useful for feminist viewpoints of major American women writers.

Literary Map of Manhattan, A Part of The New York Times book section, this is a really cool interactive graphic depiction of different parts of Manhattan as described in a plethora of texts.  We should make one for El Paso, west Texas, and southwestern New Mexico.

Colonial:

Arthur Miller's The Crucible: Fact and Fiction.   An historian's view of The Crucible. Excellent bibliography of on-line resources.

Colonial and Revolutionary Literature.  Bartleby.com's e-book of The Cambridge History of English and American Literature features an entire volume on the American Colonial period.

Colonial Williamsburg.  Meet the people, see the environment, share in the culture of Southern Colonial America.

Comparative Chronology of Money from 1600-1699 A.D.  A useful timeline of what happened in England and the New World, moneywise, during the referenced period

Jamestown History.  Lists of the first Jamestown settlers, plus much information about the culture of the period.

MayflowerHistory.com by Caleb Johnson.  The complete Mayflower passenger list, with biographies and geneologies.  Learn about the original Pilgrims and the ship's crew.

MEL's Bibliography of The Crucible.  A California high school librarian's exhaustive list of sources, both print and on-line, about The Crucible.  Go here first!

Prices charged for goods in 1625 and Prices Charged to Emigrants to the New World.  An interesting list of costs for useful items.

Purchasing Power of Money in Great Britain from 1264 to 2003.  If you know what something cost in 1620, see what it would cost in current pounds, shillings, and pence!

Virtual Jamestown.  See what one of the first permanent settlements in what is now the USA looks like.  Some great ideas for your First Settlers Project can be found here, juniors.

Witchcraft in Salem Village  An amazing site that features many of the primary documents that record the real witchcraft trials in Salem, maps from the period, and books written by the Puritans about witchcraft.  This is a wonderful resource for research.

Early Nineteenth Century:

Annotated Version of "The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe.  Explore Poe's most famous poem with definitions of obscure words and commentary, plus you can listen to the poem read aloud.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive.  Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel outsold Hawthorne and Melville and stirred up much controversy--and generated lots of marketing "spin-offs."  In this multi-media site, you can hear songs composed about various characters in the novel, see pictures of theatre handbills, and read reviews of the book when it was a best seller.

Late Nineteenth Century:

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn: Texts, Illustrations, and Early Reviews : Excellent source of information from the University of Virginia,

Mark Twain in His Times : Interpretive archive of Twain's major texts, including reviews, articles, graphics, and interactive exhibits.  The best is the Mark Twain "Memory Builder" game, which tests your knowledge of things Twainian.

Victorian Culture in America  Online version of the PBS show where contemporary folk live in a Victorian house.  See what it was like to live during this time period.

Whitman Works Index The Walt Whitman archive, containing much information about Walt Whitman.

www.civilwar.com  An amazing compendium of information about the Civil War.

 
Twentieth Century:

Modern American Poetry : This University of Illinois site gives biographical information on most American poets, literary criticism of specific poems, photos and other interesting data.

New Yorker, The.  The magazine of trendy short stories and essays is now on the web.  There are added features in the online version, including interviews with authors and companion articles.

Online Poetry Classroom An online journal and multimedia companion to Anthology of American Poetry.

Your Place in Time: 20th Century America    Great source for cultural, historical, and political changes in the United States during the 20th century.

Zora Neale Hurston View a timeline of her life and literary accomplishments, watch  film footage, and read a letter she wrote to Countee Cullen on this PBS website.

Zora Neale Hurston, the Official Site Most complete set of resources about this Harlem Renaissance writer and her contributions to 20th century African American literature (and American literature in general).  Listen to her read from her own works.

World Literature

General Reference

Aesop's Fables  Both traditional and modern fables are represented, enlivened by the use of Flash programming.

Greek Myths  Mythweb is an animated site providing summaries of Greek myths, gods, and heroes.  A fun general reference.

Online Books Page Searchable database of links to over 18,000 public-domain texts.

Online Etymology Dictionary.  Type in a word and this dictionary will tell you its origin(s).

Online Originals  The original e-book site,  many online texts are available for both desktop and PDA use.

Project Gutenberg.  The granddaddy of all e-book sites, Project Gutenberg started it all and continues to produce prodigious amounts of public domain texts.

African and Cultural Information about Africa

Africa: 54 countries. Over 1,000 languages. 797 million people. Need some background for Heart of Darkness or Things Fall Apart? Look here.

German

The Kafka Project: Essays about Kafka's works and original manuscripts, all in German, English and Spanish.  Of note is Vladimir Nabokov's lecture on "The Metamorphosis."

Rhetoric

American Rhetoric.  Over 5000 full text, audio and streaming video speeches, audio clips of over 200 rhetorical figures, the top 100 American speeches, and movie speeches of a persuasive nature, PLUS an exhaustive news and information index.  

Do You Speak American? Extraordinary PBS site that explores changes in American vocabulary, varieties of American English, and the debate to make English America's official language.

Museums, Artwork and Music

The Art of Ansel Adams.   An interactive program that focuses on seven key works and provides insights into the history and world of ideas behind Adams' photography.  The program requires Flash 5 and Quicktime 4 plugins to run, so you need a computer with some oomph to view it online.

El Paso Art Museum.   Lots of information about our impressive art museum, including a calendar of events and virtual tours of the different galleries.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco  82,000 images, all from the museums' extensive collections, are available to see, enjoy, and store in your very own online gallery.

Louvre   Access European masters, see the Mona Lisa  and the famous pyramid, take a virtual tour of the museum.

 

Metropolitan Museum of Art  One of the most famous museums in the world, the MET site features virtual tours,  images of 3,200 works  from its collection, and an personalized online gallery feature.

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music.   This site  contains over 62,500 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright between 1820 and 1885.  The author of the site notes:   "Included are popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. The collection documents the attitudes and tastes of a bygone era with music of many varieties and sources, all of it published in the United States."

Virtual Library of Museums Use this directory of museums to find a specific collection, work, or museum.

 

WebMuseum Network  This site features Medieval art, an extensive Cezanne collection, and an index to art from every conceivable time period.

On-line News

CNN/Time When you need the up to the minute report, use this site.

 

Cyber Newseum  Awesome site that collects primary journalist sources about the major stories of the 20th century. The media and the space race, editorial cartoons of World War II, the children of Kosovo, are just three examples.  There is a really amazing page on this site that gives access to over 300 of today's front pages in newspapers across the country.  Front pages of dates where important events occurred (9/11/01, the Red Socks winning the World series, the ongoing war in Iraq, for example) are also accessible.  You can even play the Newsmania game. 
 

New York Times The closest thing America has to a national newspaper, The New York Times consistently provides in-depth coverage of national and international issues and events.  Many argue The Times presents a liberal bias.  Decide for yourself.

USA Today This newspaper redefined how to show the news in print when it was first introduced.  The premier paper for business travelers, use USA Today sources when you need information about cultural trends and fads, among other topics. 

 

Washington Post My favorite newspaper, The Post is required reading when you need sources for in-depth political analysis, particularly at the national level.

References, All Disciplines

Bartlett's Quotations  An online version of the 10th edition, published in 1919. 
 
CIA -- The World Factbook Need information about a country?  Want to know the history of the world?  Access a wealth of information collected by the CIA.

Dictionary.com.  Need a definition for a hard-to-find word? Look here.

El Paso City Government Official Web Site.   Local census data, budgets, agenda, and much more.  Check here for local ordinances, mayoral proclamations, and most bureaucratic items about El Paso.

Farmers' Almanac: The same information you access in the book can be found on this site.  The most common information requests are posted on the front page; use the site map for less popular (but just as valuable) information.

USA.Gov:   Believe their slogan--Your first click to the U.S. government.  If you need census data, click here.  If you want the text of a new law, click here.  Economic indicators?  Click here.  And lots, lots, more.

One Look Dictionaries Indexes 6,189,689 words in 993 dictionaries. There is now no excuse for either misspelled words or misinterpretations.

Project Gutenberg.  The granddaddy of all e-book sites, Project Gutenberg started it all and continues to produce prodigious amounts of public domain texts.
 
Refdesk.com  Best source for facts on the Net, according to their ad.

Time Magazine Archives.  Free to all, Time's 81 years of weekly news is now online.  Search more than 266,000 articles

US Census: Go to the source for primary research. Ever wonder how many books are read by the average American?  You'll find the answer here. 

Internet Searching

On-Line Card Catalogs:

El Paso Public Library Want to see the books available at  the main library or any of its branches (like the close Irving Schwartz branch)?  Click here.

Library of Congress Every text published in the United States is part of the Library of Congress collection.  When you need to research an esoteric topic or need full source information, go to this site.

New York Public Library Digital Collection Prints, photographs, maps, and text pages on a huge variety of subjects.

UTEP Library Check out their holdings before you visit!

How to:

How to Choose the Search Tools or Databases You Need for Web Searching. Read this webpage first.

 Recommended search engines. Just what the name implies!

Search Engine Comparison Chart - Kansas City Public Library  See what web sites are best for your research.

Search Engine Watch: Tips About Internet Search Engines & Search Engine More words of wisdom about search engines.

Search Engines

Please read "What Makes a Search Engine Good?" before you use any search engine

Google Has the largest database of any search engine (that's over 8 billion web sites).  However, use other resources as well, since Google allows you to fully search only one half of the World Wide Web and is not fully indexed. 

Yahoo! Allows for a huge number of searches, since there are over 3 billion fully indexed, searchable pages.

 

Teoma Database of 1 billion fully indexed and another billion partially indexed pages.  Its outstanding feature is its trademarked Subject-Specific Popularity™ ranking.

About.com Good annotations, but somewhat uneven.

Academic Info. Developed for college research, there are about 25,000 pages in this specialized directory.

Google Directory.  Contains 1.5 million web pages.  Add the words web directory to your keyword term to find even more specific directories (for example,  Beowulf web directories). 

Infomine. Developed by the academic librarians of the University of California campuses, this is a wonderful annotated resource of over 120,000 pages.

Librarians' Index.  Developed by public librarians, this directory contains only the best quality sites and very reliable annotations.

Yahoo!. Contains 2 million web pages, but very few annotations. Add the words web directory to your keyword term to find even more specific directories (for example,  Beowulf web directories).

The Invisible Web Directory.  Companion site to a great book by Chris Sherman and Gary Price entitled The Invisible Web: Finding Hidden Internet Resources Search Engines Can't See. This is a directory of searchable databases by subject.