Literary Studies: Accessing full text Novels, Plays, Short stories

We have a large collection of fiction held online, and across Matheson and Caulfield Libraries, in English and many European and Asian languages.

To find fiction works we hold physically, use the Search catalogue and refine your results to Physical Resources only. You can further limit results by Author, or by Resource Type.

To locate fiction works held online, you can search within databases, or more broadly on archives.

Databases

• ProQuest One Literature - Includes poetry, plays, novels and criticism
• Oxford Scholarly Editions - Full-text scholarly editions of plays and literary works
• Gale Literature: LitFinder - : Access to literary works including poems, short stories, speeches, and plays

Online Archives

• HathiTrust Digital Library - Digitised books from partner libraries
• Project Gutenberg - Texts in the public domain (mostly older works)
• Perseus Digital Library - Classical texts, primarily Greek and Roman literature
• Google Books - Many full-text books, especially older or public domain works

Specialised databases

• Drama Online (Bloomsbury) - Full-text plays and performance videos
• Early English Books Online (EEBO) - Books printed in English from 1473-1900, including plays
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) - 18th century books, pamphlets and plays

We have many more specialised full-text databases, see a list in the Databases tab.

Alongside our general collections, we also hold a large number of materials in our Rare Books Collections, within Special Collections.

These books comprise materials that reflect the history of printing, literature and book collecting. With particular strengths in early modern English and French literature and history (Swift Collection), Australian literature and history, popular fiction and the exceptional children’s literature collection (Lindsay Shaw Collection). Find more about the Rare Books Collections strengths, and how to access here.