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British Literary Manuscripts Online c.1660-1900

British Literary Manuscripts Online c.1660-1900 provides an intimate look into the lives and works of Britain’s major writers across two hundred years. From the rise of Charles II to the death of Queen Victoria British Literary Manuscripts Online c.1660-1900 contains complete facsimile copies of author manuscripts including poems,plays, and novels, diaries and letters as well as drawings and handwritten drafts. The collection traces the development of literary movements from the classicism of Pope and Johnson to the Romanticism of Wordsworth and the gothic novels of the Brontës. Users can search across 400,000 pages by metadata which includes author, named person and title of the work.  

A sample list of manuscripts in BLMO c.1660-1900 :

• William Blake -'The Rosetti Manuscript,' with early drafts of the Songs of Experience,The Everlasting Gospel, The Vision of the Last Judgement and The Public Address,
• Samuel Johnson’s journals from travels in Wales and France
• 156 poems of Robert Burns, including the autograph draft of Tam O'Shanter
• A first edition of Gulliver’s Travels with Jonathan Swift's alterations
• Complete manuscript drafts of 12 of the major novels of Charles Dickens, including A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Little Dorrit and Oliver Twist.
• Complete autograph manuscripts of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and the first press reviews of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
• Oscar Wilde - his letters to Lord Alfred Douglas and original typescripts of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Mrs Arbuthnot (A Woman of No Importance)

British Literary Manuscripts Online, c.1660-1900 will be followed by British Literary Manuscripts Online: Renaissance and Medieval mid 2010. Both collections will be cross-searchable on the one intuitive and user-friendly interface. Purchase the collections separately or together and access 700 years of British literary manuscripts online.

British Literary Manuscripts Online: Renaissance and Medieval

British Literary Manuscripts Online: Renaissance and Medieval includes more than 375,000 pages of manuscripts from the Medieval and Early modern periods, c.1100 to 1660. The collection provides researchers and students with a rich tapestry of letters, poems, stories, plays, chronicles, religious writings, commonplace books and other materials, accessible via searchable catalogue records. The collection consists primarily of works in Middle & Early Modern English, with some Old English materials.

Medieval writings include:
• Great works of Medieval English literature eg. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Pearl, The Vision of Piers the Plowman, and The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
• Religious writings like The Prick of Conscience, the Coventry Mystery Plays, the writings of John Wycliffe, and the writings of Julian of Norwich
• Important cultural and historical sources like the letters of Alcuin and Lanfranc and the Chronicles of Waverly, Glastonbury, St Martin’s, and Lichfield

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