For a current version of this page, please

go to: http://www.ksu.edu/english/westmank/literary/britlit_resources.html

---

Web Resources for ENGL 202:

Major British Authors II

Under construction -- please visit again.

Below you'll find web links for British history and culture, literary movements, and for the authors we're reading this semester. Some sites are better than others; as always when using the web, evaluate not only the quantity of the information presented, but its quality (the source of that information or its sponsor, date uploaded, etc.).

British History and Culture | General Literary Resources | Authors

British History and Culture

Historical Background

• Peter Williams' Narrative History of England (from Britannia).
• Wilfred Owen Multimedia Archive: an on-line archive with material on Wilfred Owen and WWI which offers an incredibly deep resource, including digital facsimiles of all of his war poetry, a selection of his letters and photographs, and his personal records. In addition, the archive has c.50 Video Clips from the 1916 films 'The Battle of the Somme' and 'The Battle of the Ancre: The Advance of the Tanks' (QuickTime and MPEG); 100 Audio Clips from interviews with veterans from the Great War [needs a RealAudio Player]; 250 Photographs of the Western Front (1914-1918); 250 Modern Photographs of the Western Front; and c.30 Modern Video Clips of the Western Front. (Most of the photos were taken from the collections of the Imperial War Museum.)
• The Partition of India provides maps before and after partition, a timeline of British presence in India (1600-1971), a discussion of the reasons for partition, and further resources.
• Also see the General Literary Resources below for more information on post-imperialism and post-colonialism.
• History of paperback book publishing in the U.K.

Cultural Contexts

Art

• From Realism to Post-Impressionism: Take a look at a series of paintings that trace the developments in art from the mid-19th century to c.1920.
• A glossary of painting styles, including descriptions of impressionism and cubism.
• The Art of Bloomsbury, a special exibit at the Tate Gallery (from 4 November to 20 January 2000).
• View Picasso's famous Les Demoiselles D'Avignon.

Fashion and Costume

• The Costumer's Manifesto has links to many images of 19th century dress, for men, women, and children.

Current Media

• The Times and The Sunday Times.
• The Independent.
• The Guardian and the Observer.
• The Irish Times.
• The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).

The Booker Prize

• The Booker Prize, as described by the founding company, Booker plc, Britain’s leading national food wholesaler. The site includes short-listed authors, winners, and panel judges for each year the prize has been awarded.
• Recent changes to rules and requirements.
• Short-listed authors and winners with some links.
• Amazon's list of short-listed authors and winners.
• Winner for 1999: J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Read about it in a Reuters's news article in the NYT.

General Literary Resources

• Alan Lui's Voice of the Shuttle webpage for the Romantics, the Victorians, English Literature -- Modern, and English Literature -- Contemporary.
• Norton Topics Online provides some cultural context to accompany readings in their Norton Anthology of English Literature.

Nineteenth-Century Resources

• The Victorian Web offers a comprehensive overview of Victorian history and culture.

Modernism Resources

• A comparison of Victorian and Modernist ideas and some characteristics of modernism.

Colonial and Postcolonial Literary Resources

• George Landow's Contemporary Postcolonial and Postimperial Literature in English site is uneven, but can provide some helpful historical context and critical commentary. (The Postimperial Literature in English part of this larger site links to information on UK authors.)
• The Imperial Archive, a "site dedicated to the study of Literature, Imperialism, Postcolonialism" and authored by students working on the MA degree in Modern Literary Studies in the School of English at the Queen's University of Belfast.
• An Introduction to Postcolonial Studies at the site for Postcolonial Studies at Emory.
• The Norton Topics Online pages on "Imperialism to Postcolonialism: Perspectives on the British Empire" provides a clear discussion of the terms imperialism and colonialism.

Postmodernism

• Detailed discussion of metafiction and historiographic metafiction.

Popular Literature Resources

• Stanford University's Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls provides information on its Dime Novel and Story Paper Collection, stories which were popular from the middle to the close of the 19th century in England and America.

Authors

Pat Barker

• Web resources: Reviews published in the NYT; summary of reviews and reader comments at Amazon.com. For a complete list of web resources, click here.
• Recommended reading: Regeneration (1993).

T. S. Eliot

• The Academy of American Poets page on T.S. Eliot and a page devoted to T.S.Eliot and modernism in an exhibit titled "The Modernist Revolution".
• A hyperlinked annotated version of "The Waste Land" (in progress).

Wilfred Owen

• Wilfred Owen Multimedia Archive is the best resource for information on Owen and WWI. Its pages provide an incredibly deep resource, including digital facsimiles of all of his war poetry, a selection of his letters and photographs, and his personal records.

Mary Shelley

• The Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Chronology and Resource Site has a complete and detailed chronology of Mary Shelley's life as well as a bibliography and selected links to other web resources. Of special note: Sir Walter Scott's review of Frankenstein (1818) in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (2 [20 March/1 April 1818]: 613-6) and the chronology of Mary Shelley's life for 1797-1816 and for 1817-1824.
• View Henry Fuseli's painting "The Nightmare" (1781) which may serve as a source for the scene of Elizabeth Lavenza's death. An alternate version of "The Nightmare" (1781-1782) exists as well.

Tom Stoppard

• The Stagecraft of Tom Stoppard offers biographical and bibliographical, as well as stage histories for some of his work.
• Professor Robert L. Devaney (Boston University) offers "an animated description of some of the mathematical ideas lurking in the background of Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia."
• A review of Stoppard's Arcadia published in Scientific American.

Return to English 202 (Spring 2000)