Digital Collections at Trinity College Dublin provides visitors the opportunity to turn the pages of illuminated manuscripts from afar. For example, readers can view the Book of Kells, comprised of 680 pages hand written in Latin on vellum (calfskin), in a style called "insular majuscule." The book's dimensions are now approximately 12 x 10 inches - the pages were severely trimmed, and the edges...

Thanks to Digital Dante, scholars of The Divine Comedy need not abandon all hope for their research. This rich and extensive multimedia project out of Columbia University began as the brainchild of Jennifer Hogan when she was a graduate student there in the early 1990s, and it was relaunched in 2014 after some years of dormancy. Digital Dante offers numerous avenues for exploring the poet's work,...

Launched in 2012 and headed by English professor Paul Schacht, Digital Thoreau is a digital humanities project from SUNY Geneseo that allows English scholars and others to read and discuss texts by Henry David Thoreau. As of this write-up, Digital Thoreau includes three major projects. The first is Walden: A Fluid Text Edition, which allows readers to examine how Thoreau revised and rewrote Walden...

Back in the days of the dime novel, these tawdry tomes would be passed around to be shared with friends and those who enjoyed light fare. This digital collection from Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library brings together eight remarkable collections of items that include non-fiction titles, scholarship on dime novels, and beautiful covers and illustrations. One rather curious and colorful...

Authored and edited by an international team of writers, Disability in Kidlit offers a valuable resource for librarians, youth workers, educators, parents, writers, and of course, young readers. This blog is "dedicated to discussing the portrayal of disability in middle grade and young adult literature" through book reviews, essays, interviews, and more. In addition, this blog aims to provide...

What inspired the poetry of the Romantic period? Why was crime such a popular subject in nineteenth century literature? How were gender roles embedded in Victorian era popular fiction? These questions are just a few of many themes explored in Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians. The British Library has created this collection of artifacts from the Romantic and Victorian periods in...

Fans of the Scout Report will be unsurprised to learn that this resource from the Digital Public Library of America, which we featured in June 2018, proved a crowd favorite. Open Bookshelf makes it possible for readers of all stripes to download public domain e-books on their mobile devices with no need for a library card or account login, including books in languages other than English. On June...

From stories told by his wife to their young son came the fanciful world of Babar the Elephant, and seven decades later they remain popular tales. After the death of Jean de Brunhoff, the mantle was taken up by his son Laurent de Brunhoff, who continued illustrating tales of Babar's many journeys and adventures. Recently, The Morgan Library & Museum decided to offer an exhibit of early drafts and...

Designed and maintained by the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library Collection at the University of Pennsylvania, the DreiserWebSource website brings together a host of written ephemera, original essays, and electronic texts related to the life and writings of Theodore Dreiser, the prominent American author. While the site doesn't have a formal search engine, the material is divided into...

NPR: E.L. Doctorow on Sherman and ‘The March’ [Real Player] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4964601 2006 PEN/Faulkner Winners http://penfaulkner.org/winners.htm Wired for Books: Audio Interview with E.L. Doctorow [Real Player] http://wiredforbooks.org/eldoctorow/ A Cloud of Dust: John Updike Reviews “The...