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English

Criticism and resources for all types of literature in English..

Finding Works

Use the techniques described on this page to find specific works of literature by using our general search bar or subject databases.

Or, use one of our excellent Print Indexes to track down a hard-to-find work.

Warning: Works Found Online

If you've found the text of a poem or a short story online, be careful — you never know when words might be changed or verses omitted, whether accidentally or maliciously.

Using online texts is usually okay for quick skims, but always use trustworthy, authoritative sources when doing a close reading and analysis — especially when you need to cite them.

Searching the Catalog and Databases

By Title

If you know the exact title of a work,

  • Search for it with quotes around it.
  • Add the author's name to avoid irrelevant hits.
  • "the awakening" chopin
  • "the american dream" albee
  • "song of myself" whitman
  • "nobody said anything" carver

By Title of Larger Work

If the play, poem, or story you want is in an anthology or a collection by a single author, search for the title of the larger work in quote marks and include the author's name, especially for generic titles.

  • "collected plays" albee
  • "leaves of grass" whitman
  • "collected stories" carver
Finding a Larger Work

To find out if the work you're looking for is in a larger work, you can do the same search in Google to find the title of the larger work — this is fast and usually works. Once you have it, search our collection using that title. If Google's no help, try one of the print indexes, Academic Search Premier, or ask a librarian.

By Author

If you don't know the title or want to see what's available from a particular writer,

  • Search for the author's name
  • Then click to limit to Author on the left-hand side of the search results.

This eliminates books about the author or criticism, leaving only the books the author has written.

  • kate chopin
  • edward albee
  • walt whitman
  • raymond carver

By Keyword

Start with basic terms like:

  • fiction
  • poem
  • play
  • playwrights
  • drama
  • dramatists
  • theater OR theatre
  • short stories

These searches alone will find thousands of books.

Then add words to narrow your search closer to what you want:

  • gothic fiction
  • Minneapolis fiction
  • fiction bildungsromans
  • feminist theater
  • experimental drama
  • one-act plays
  • Minnesota poetry
  • Hmong poetry
  • performance poetry
  • "short stories" Cuban
  • "short stories" Minnesota
  • "short stories" war
Anthologies

Keyword searches are a great way to find anthologies. Searching for: "short stories" carver will find books that title or author searches won't — anthologies that probably include only one of his stories, but also other potentially interesting, similar writers and themes.

Print Indexes

Play Index

Look here to find out how to locate specific plays or to browse by subject or author.

  1. Choose the volume that includes the year the play was published, or the year or two after. Just browsing? Choose whatever you want.
  2. In Part I, the Index, look for plays by subject, author, or title.
  3. If you find a play under a subject or by title, also look up the author. Here you can see a short description of the play and publication information. The title might be the actual play title or a larger work title (a collection or anthology).
  4. Search for the book title in our catalog. If we don't have it, we can order it for you.

Short Story Index

Look here for where to find specific short stories or to browse by author or subject.

  1. Choose the volume that includes the year the short story was published, or the year or two after. Just browsing? Choose whatever you want.
  2. In Part I, the Index, look for short stories by subject, author, or title. The author entries are most important: they list the stories the author wrote that are indexed in that particular volume (in other words, not everything he or she has ever written). They also list the titles of the larger works in which the stories appear.
  3. If you find a short story of interest randomly or under a subject, next look up the author to find the title of the larger work.
  4. If you need more information about it (especially important if the story is in a journal), look up the author again in Part II, the List of Collections Indexed. This has full publication and citation information for the larger works.
  5. Search for the book title in our catalog. If we don't have it, we can order it for you.

Index to Poetry

Look here for where to find specific poems or to browse by author or subject.

Choose the volume that includes the year the poem was published, or the year or two after. Older but popular poems that are reprinted often (by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, etc.) will also be included in recent volumes. Just browsing? Choose whatever you want.

You can search in three ways:

By title, first line, or last line (the Title Index)
These entries include the author name and an abbreviated code. Look up the code at the beginning of the book for the anthology in which the poem appears, and search for this title using the General Search.
By author
See a list of poem titles under each author name. This is not everything he or she has ever written, but only what’s being indexed in a particular volume. Look up a poem title of interest in the Title Index to find what book it’s in.
By subject
Find authors and poem titles by subject. Once again, look up the poem title in the Title Index to see the abbreviated code, then look up the code at the beginning to find the actual book title that you can use in a General Search.