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Literature

Literature is literally "acquaintance with letters" as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning "an individual written character (letter)"). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts or work of art, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction, drama and poetry. In much, if not all of the world, texts can be oral as well, and include such genres as epic, legend, myth, ballad, plus other forms of oral poetry, and the folktale.

Literature Links:

  • The Library of Congress:  The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 130 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 58 million manuscripts.
  • ClassicAuthors.net: View a wonderful collection of biographies and works of classic authors at this site.
  • Access The Great Books: sponsored by the Access Foundation and Britannica Online is a resource of over 235 authors and their greatest works; it is referenced by thousands of colleges, universities, public, and private schools online. It is part of the Great Books Web Ring, and is the most extensive site for finding original online texts.
  • The Literature Network: This site has a collection of online literature consisting of more than 300 full books and over 1000 short stories and poems by over 90 authors. The site also has a quotations database with over 8500 quotes.
  • New York Times Best-Sellers List: View current hardcover and paperback fiction, nonfiction, and advice best-seller lists. Also view  the children best seller list.
  • African American Literature:  Maintained at the University of Southern California, provides links to resources on African-American literature, literary criticism, articles, dissertations, and general reference materials, as well as links to specific genres of literature -- poetry, drama, novels, and short fiction.
  • African American Writers: Online E-texts: Includes biographical information on as well as the writings of a host of African-American writers, ranging over time from Jupiter Hammon in the 1700s to contemporary writers.
  • American Authors on the Web: A very comprehensive site from Nagoya University that presents a chronological listing of almost 800 American authors and includes biographical authors and/or writing samples for the majority of them.
  • A Celebration of Women Writers: A comprehensive site that lists upwards of 900 American women writers from the country's beginning until the present time and includes links to information on and the works of many of them. Also includes links to women writers in some 90 other countries. A product of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University.
  • Index of Native American Book Resources: Includes extensive links to organizations, online and printed journals, and presses specializing in Native American literature, as well as links to books with Native American content, home pages for Native American authors, and much more.