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Verlagsinformation :: Publisher's information
From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this incomparable collection now contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Libraries possessing this collection find they are able to fulfill the most exhaustive research requirements of graduate scholars - from their desktop! - in many subject areas, including: English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.
Among the thousands of titles featured in EEBO are works by Malory, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, Galileo; musical exercises by Henry Purcell and novels by Aphra Behn; prayer books, pamphlets, and proclamations; almanacs, calendars, and many other primary sources.
Now available in electronic format, this vast body of material can be searched quickly and efficiently by a broad range of users, from undergraduates to seasoned scholars. Searchable fields include Author, Title, Printer, Publication date, Type of illustration, and Library of Congress subject heading. Records are linked to the corresponding page images, downloadable in Adobe PDF.
EEBO makes this enormous collection immeasurably easier to use, and opens new avenues for research and scholarship in a variety of academic disciplines.
Content
Early English Books Online Topical Collection:
Biblical Studies--The Literature of English Christianity
With complete online images of pages from more than 10,000 religious works published during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, this special collection of Early English Books Online (EEBO) material opens new paths for research in the fields of history and religious studies.
Subject Area: Religious studies, literature, history
Formats: Full image
Overall dates of coverage: 1475-1700
Total titles covered: 10,000+
Offering unprecedented access to early English Christian literature, the EEBO Biblical Studies collection includes works by Martin Luther, Cotton Mather, John Bunyan and many others. The database also covers the original religious literature that shaped the English Civil War.
The works fall under the categories of sermons, commentaries, Bible, hermeneutics and interpretation in the The Short-Title Catalogue (Pollard & Redgrave, 1475-1640) and The Short-Title Catalogue II (Wing, 1641-1700).
Students and scholars can search the EEBO Biblical Studies collection by keyword, author, or title, or they can browse by subjects. EEBO also includes an advanced interface that makes it easy to build Boolean queries, review search histories and combine previous sets of results.
Initial results include brief bibliographic citations. After receiving them, researchers can view more detailed records, mark specific documents for printing or downloading, and sort results alphabetically, by relevance or by date.
Researchers can view complete, digitized images of original pages from all the documents in the database and even manipulate them by, for example, zooming in and out or printing pages one at a time.
Early English Books Online Topical Collection:
Travel & Exploration--The Literature of Exploration and Discovery
This special collection of Early English Books Online (EEBO) material offers unparalleled access to primary resources focusing on geographical discoveries, cultures, cities and towns, and nautical and navigation topics. The database contains not only images of works by and about explorers but also maps, atlases and guidebooks.
Subject Area: History, literature
Formats: Full image
Overall dates of coverage: 1475-1700
Total titles covered: 3,500+
This database includes a collection of English travel and exploration literature unavailable anywhere else or on any other medium except microform. Among the thousands of topics covered, users can find stories of pirate attacks and "newfound" people as well as formal reports on royally subsidized expeditions. The database also contains such material as detailed coastal navigation charts, road maps and mileage charts.
Students and scholars can search the EEBO Travel and Exploration collection by keyword, author or title, or they can browse by subjects. EEBO also includes an advanced interface that makes it easy to build Boolean queries, review search histories and combine previous sets of results.
Initial results include brief bibliographic citations. After receiving them, researchers can view more detailed records, mark specific documents for printing or downloading and sort results alphabetically, by relevance or by date.
Researchers can view complete, digitized images of original pages from all the documents in the database and even manipulate them by, for example, zooming in and out or printing pages one at a time.
Early English Books Online Topical Collection:
Women's Studies Works by and about Women
Containing digitized images of every page from more than 6,500 publications, this special collection of Early English Books Online (EEBO) material is a unique resource for researchers who need information on topics within the fields of history and women's studies.
Subject Area: History, literature, women's studies
Formats: Full image
Overall dates of coverage: 1475-1700
Total titles covered: 6,500+
This special collection contains not only historical information about women but also more than 200 publications written by them. Among the authors are Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Queen Elizabeth I and lesser-known women writers whose works are waiting to be discovered.
The database contains information on hundreds of topics. Here are a few of them:
- obstetrics, gynecology and midwifery;
- marriage, motherhood and widows;
- gentlewomen;
- etiquette;
- prostitution; and
- witches and witchcraft.
Students and scholars can search the EEBO Women's Studies collection by keyword, author or title, or they can browse by subject. EEBO also includes an advanced interface that makes it easy to build Boolean queries, review search histories and combine previous sets of results.
Initial results include brief bibliographic citations. After receiving them, researchers can view more detailed records, mark specific documents for printing or downloading and sort results alphabetically, by relevance or by date.
Researchers can view complete, digitized images of original pages from all the documents in the database and even manipulate them by, for example, zooming in and out or printing pages one at a time.
Early English Books Online:
Pollard and Redgrave, STC I, 1475-1640
From the first book published in English through the titles printed during the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this incomparable collection -- a subset of the Early English Books Online database -- contains nearly all 26,500 titles listed in A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue and its revised edition.
Subject Area: Interdisciplinary
Formats: Citation, full image
Overall dates of coverage: 1475-1640
Total titles covered: 26,500+
Early English Books I comprehensively documents the magnificent English Renaissance—an era that witnessed the rebirth of classical humanism, the broadening of the known world, and the rapid spread of printing and education.
Students and scholars of literature can use the database to examine the earliest editions of such classics as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Textual scholars will be able to compare variations in the early quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays with the renowned First Folio edition of 1623, and the great Renaissance authors can be studied in light of lesser-known literature from the era.
Students and scholars of history will be interested in the original, printed versions of royal statutes and proclamations. Military, religious, legal, Parliamentary, and many other public documents are reproduced in the collection.
Social historians will be able to gain insight into the lives of the common people through almanacs and calendars, broadsides and romances, and popular pamphlets such as The Trail of Witchcraft, showing the true and righte method of discovery (1616).
Researchers interested in religious studies will find a host of sermons, homilies, saints' lives, liturgies, and the Book of Common Prayer (1549). The King James translation of the Bible (1611) can be studied in relation to earlier English translations, and Latin, Greek, and Welsh translations invite comparison with the English version.
A large amount of material also is available for
- Science historians, who can research the beginnings of modern science
- Political scientists interested in debates on the divine right of kings
- Classicists who want to study Greek and Latin authors through influential Renaissance translations such as Chapman's Homer
- Linguists, who can compile definitive data for the study of Early Modern English
- Musicologists who want to research numerous early English ballads and carols
- Art historians and bibliophiles who will appreciate a unique opportunity to analyze early typefaces and book illustrations
Early English Books Online:
Thomason Tracts
This collection complements Early English Books Online: STC II database and, when used in conjunction with it, provides the research scholar with the most comprehensive resources available on British history in the mid-seventeenth century.
Subject Area: Interdisciplinary
Formats: Citation, full image
Overall dates of coverage: 1640-1661
Total titles covered: 22,000+
The year 1640 in England marked the beginning of a period of tumult and change. The practical and the philosophical bases of the British monarchy were both being challenged by determined and powerful enemies. Those who defended the king shared an absolute conviction in his Divine Right to rule. The differences between these factions led to a bitter civil war and a series of experimental governments that kept England in turmoil until 1660.
This database, which includes digitized images of the original Thomason Tracts microfilm collection, brings together for scholars of English history, politics, and religion nearly everything that was published in England and on the Continent during this critical period.
Students and researchers today owe a debt to London publisher and bookseller George Thomason for this material. Thomason knew he was living through historical times and set about methodically collecting copies of virtually everything that was being published - from single broadsides to substantial dissertations.
Thomason Tracts includes more than 22,000 individual items representing about 80 percent of what was published during these two decades. Inevitably, the collection contains a great deal of political material and features:
- Speeches made in Parliament
- Tracts on the religious issues that reinforced political divisions
- Gossip from or about the court
- Sermons and political diatribes
- News reports that provide detailed accounts of battles, negotiations, and political machinations
Thomason took precise care to record the date of each paper on the same day it came out, and his neat notations still appear clearly on the title pages of many documents. In addition, he often made marginal notes disputing or ridiculing the opinions of writers he thought in error.
Especially valuable are 97 previously unpublished manuscripts, most written in Thomason's own hand, which were considered too dangerous to be circulated in their own time. In fact, Thomason was required to move the growing collection several times to keep it safe, hiding these important records in the homes of friends or concealing them under false tops in library tables.
The collection Thomason left remained intact for a century, largely through luck. In 1761, King George III bought it from Thomason's descendants and presented it to the new British Museum. Thomason tracts have been used by scholars of mid-17th-century England for generations and represent an almost inexhaustible supply of material for studying military, constitutional, political, literary, and social life in England during this volatile period in world history.
What's online now?
Currently, works from the following collections and units are available online:
- Early English Books I (Pollard & Redgrave, STC I), 1475-1640, Units 1-69
- Early English Books II (Wing, STC II), 1641-1700, Units 1-120. Scanning remaining STCI and STCII titles will take place from 2005-2007.
- Thomason Tracts.
- The Tract Supplement collection is not currently available in EEBO. Scanning of this collection is scheduled to begin in 2006/7.
EEBO and the Text Creation Partnership: Searchable full text
To accompany the citations and page images, a separate initiative, the Text Creation Partnership (TCP), is in the process of creating SGML coding for the full text of 25,000 EEBO works, so users can search the full ASCII text of the documents and view both the text and the corresponding original page images. Through their funding, research libraries can help to support - and eventually own - a richly encoded archive that's equally valuable to undergraduates writing papers on witchcraft and faculty members tracing the course of a word or concept across three centuries of English literature.
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