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- Dictionary of Literary Biography This link opens in a new windowProfiles of past and present authors, historians, journalists, screenwriters, publishers, and playwrights discussing their lives and careers and critical response to their works. Includes the Documentary Series, Main Series, and Yearbook.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
Deceased people who have shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century. Concise, up-to-date biographies written by named, specialist authors.
- Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new windowLiterary guide to significant sources on a variety of subjects. Works as an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia.
- Oxford Research Encyclopedias This link opens in a new windowLong-form overview articles written, peer-reviewed, and edited by leading scholars. Both foundational and cutting-edge topics are covered in order to develop, over time, an anchoring knowledge base for major areas of research.
Access to selected content only. Some articles may not be available.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)The SEP was designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they are made public. Consequently, our dynamic reference work maintains academic standards while evolving and adapting in response to new research.
The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 3, Early Modern Science by Call Number: Available OnlineISBN: 1139054015Publication Date: 2008-03-28
The Devil and Dr. Faustus Meet
Attribution: The Devil and Dr. Faustus meet. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift
The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift is a specially commissioned collection of essays. Arranged thematically across a range of topics, this 2003 volume will deepen and extend the enjoyment and understanding of Jonathan Swift for students and scholars. The thirteen essays explore crucial dimensions of Swift's life and works. As well as ensuring a broad coverage of Swift's writing - including early and later works as well as the better known and the lesser known - the Companion also offers a way into current critical and theoretical issues surrounding the author. Special emphasis is placed on Swift's vexed relationship with the land of his birth, Ireland; and on his place as a political writer in a highly politicised age. The Companion offers a lucid introduction to these and other issues, and raises questions about Swift and his world. The volume features a detailed chronology and a guide to further reading.
Portrait of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle by Louis Galloche, 1723
Attribution: Louis Galloche, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Literary Invention of Margaret Cavendish
As a reader of her literary predecessors, and as a writer who herself contributed to the emerging literary tradition, Margaret Cavendish is an extraordinary figure whose role in early modern literary history has yet to be fully acknowledged. In this study, Lara Dodds reassesses the literary invention of Cavendish--the use she makes of other writers, her own various forms of writing, and the ways in which she creates her own literary persona--to transform our understanding of Cavendish's considerable accomplishments and influence. In spite of Cavendish's claims that she did little reading whatsoever, Dodds demonstrates that the duchess was an agile, avid reader (and misreader) of other writers, all of them male, all of them now considered canonical--Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Milton, Bacon. In each chapter, Dodds discusses Cavendish's moments of reading of these authors, revealing their influence on Cavendish while also providing a lens to investigate more broadly the many literary forms--poetry, letters, fiction, drama--that Cavendish employed. Seeking a fruitful exchange between literary history and the history of reading, Dodds examines both the material and social circumstances of reading and the characteristic formal features and thematic preoccupations of Cavendish's writing in each of the major genres.
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle by Peter Lely, 1665
Attribution: Peter Lely, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Galileo's Thinking Hand
Contemporary biographies of Galilei emphasize, in several places, that he was a masterful draughtsman. In fact, Galilei studied at the art academy, which is where his friendship with Ludovico Cigoli developed, who later became the official court artist. The book focuses on this formative effect - it tracks Galilei's trust in the epistemological strength of drawings. It also looks at Galilei's activities in the world of art and his reflections on art theory, ending with an appreciation of his fame; after all, he was revered as a rebirth of Michelangelo. For the first time, this publication collects all aspects of the appreciation of Galilei as an artist, contemplating his art not only as another facet of his activities, but as an essential element of his research.
Galileo shows the Medicean planets (Galilean moons) to the Allegories of Optics, Astronomy and Mathematics, 1656
Attribution: Opere by Galileo Galilei, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ebook: Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History
In her view, these early modern utopian constructions of history relate very closely to and impinge upon the narrative structures of history assumed by critical theory today.
Copernican astronomical chart from Andreas Cellarius' Planisphaerium Copernicanum Sive Systema Universi Totius Creati Ex Hypothesi Copernicana In Plano Exhibitum
Attribution: Andreas Cellarius, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Microscope manufactured by Christopher Cock of London for Robert Hooke. Hooke is believed to have used this microscope for the observations that formed the basis of his book Micrographia
Attribution: Courtesy Billings Microscope Collection, National Museum, Wikimedia Commons
