This guide has been designed as a starting point for research involving the Restoration and Eighteenth century time period.

If you need help, please contact Ivana Niseteo, Liaison Librarian for English, French, French Programs (FASS), Global Humanities, Linguistics, and World Languages & Literatures at 778.782.6838 or iniseteo@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian

Reference sources

• The Routledge companion to Britain in the eighteenth century, 1688-1820
• The Longman companion to Britain in the eighteenth century, 1688-1820 [print]
• The eighteenth century: the intellectual and cultural context of English literature, 1700-1789 [print]
• Oxford Reference Online. General reference works, plus material in language, science and medicine, humanities and social sciences, business, and professional areas.
• Encyclopedia Britannica. An all-purpose online encyclopedia, including an online atlas, dictionary, and select journal articles.

For additional reference sources, take a look at SFU Library’s Background reference sources guide.

Encyclopedias and companions

• Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment.
• A concise companion to the Restoration and eighteenth century [print]
• The Alexander Pope encyclopedia [print]
• The Cambridge companion to Wordsworth [print or online]
• Encyclopedia of literary romanticism
• Literary Encyclopedia. Provides authoritative profiles of authors, works and literary and historical topics.

Dictionaries and literary terms

• Meaning in the history of English: words and texts in content
• A companion to the history of the English language [print or online]
• Oxford English Dictionary. Covers words from across the English speaking world. It also gives etymological analysis, variant spellings, and pronunciation using IPA.
• Dictionary of Old English: A to I. Defines Old English vocabulary from 600 - 1150 CE
• The Oxford dictionary of literary terms
• Concise Oxford dictionary of literary terms [print  and online]
• The Penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory [print]
• The Bedford glossary of critical and literary terms [print]
• A glossary of contemporary literary theory [print]

Biographical information

• Nonconformist women writers, 1720-1840 [print]

Literary criticism

• MLA International Bibliography. Contains scholarly articles on English literature, linguistics, language and folklore.
• Literature Online. Contains works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources.
• Oxford Bibliographies Online. Online index to bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation with a bibliographical essay on sources.
• Literature Criticism Online. Full text access to six major Gale literary criticism series, covering literature from 1400 to the present.
• Project MUSE Search. Full text access to the back files of Humanities and Social Science Journals; Good English Literature content.
• JSTOR. Full text access to the back files of Humanities and Social Science Journals; Good English Literature content. Note the most recent 2-5 years are excluded.

Primary sources

• Gale Primary Sources. Monographs, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, maps.
• Electronic Enlightenment. Correspondence between the greatest writers, scientists, philosophers, politicians and political thinkers of the 18th century and their families and friends, bankers and booksellers, patrons and publishers.
• 17th - 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Early English news media - newspapers, pamphlets, and books
• Eighteenth Century Journals I & II. Journals, periodicals and newspapers published between 1693 and 1799 across the British Empire, including the colonies, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life.
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). Books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides, and other works published between 1701 and 1800 in the United Kingdom.

Images & film

SFU Library has a comprehensive guide for finding images within SFU subscribed databases and online, including how to properly cite images in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats.

• ARTstor, now available on JSTOR. 
• Oxford Art Online. Reference resources on all aspects of visual arts. Sources include Grove Art Online, Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics & Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms.
• Films on Demand. Streaming videos

Related topics

History

• British History Online. Contains some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
• Historical Abstracts. Journal articles, book reviews, dissertations on the history of the world outside of Canada & the United States.
• 1700: scenes from London life [print]
• Down and out in eighteenth-century London [print]
• London in the eighteenth century: a great and monstrous thing [print]
• Bibliography of British & Irish History. An authoritative guide to what has been written from the Roman period to the present day.
• The beau monde: fashionable society in Georgian London [print]

Religion

• ATLA Religion Database. Indexes journal articles on all aspects of religion and theology, including church and religious history.
• Christianity and revolutionary Europe, 1750-1830 [print]
• A companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe [print]
• The religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna [print]
• Religion and politics in enlightenment Europe [print]

Theatre

• Playing to the crowd: London popular theatre, 1780-1830
• Getting into the act: women playwrights in London, 1776-1829 [print or online]
• Illegitimate theatre in London, 1770-1840 [print]
• Female playwrights and eighteenth century comedy: negotiation marriage on the London stage [print]
• The English stage : a history of drama and performance [print]
• Database of Early English Playbooks (DEEP). Contains early modern plays and playwrights with additional information such as genre, dates of first publication and production.
• Records of Early English Drama (REED): Patrons and Performances. Designed to include a wide range of data about professional performers on tour in the provinces – their patrons, the performance venues they used and the routes they took across the kingdom.

Additional sources

• Project Gutenberg. Provides access to free eBooks
• Oxford Text Archive. A repository of full-text literary and linguistic resources
• Representative Poetry Online. Includes English poems from the Old English period to the work of living poets today. Professor W. J. Alexander of University College, University of Toronto.
• Voice of the Shuttle: Literature – Restoration and 18^th Century