English Literature

It's one of those simple-but-effective sites which design guru David Siegel calls 'first generation'. That is, composed of plain text with hyperlinks and no trimmings or pointless graphics. The structure is simple too. Access is via a huge entry page full of listings which are divided on chronological principles. After sections on General Resources and Electronic Text Archives, there follow Medieval and Anglo-Saxon literature; Seventeenth Century and Renaissance; Eighteenth Century and Restoration [all these seem as if they should be the other way round]; then Nineteenth Century (Romantic and Victorian) and Twentieth Century.

There's also a supplementary panel with links to what are obviously Matsuoka's special interests - his own sites on Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, the Brontes, and (I was amazed to find) two topographical sites with Eng. Lit. associations near to me - Manchester and Knutsford - which are more comprehensive than anything locally produced.

To take one section alone, the General Resources listing comprises one hundred and twenty URLs - ranging from literary journals and magazines, specialist publications and children's literature, to critical theory; theses and dissertations available in electronic form; indexes of poetry; lists of critical terms and definitions; mailing lists; and further well-known jumpstations such as The Voice of the Shuttle.

When using a huge and eclectic compilation of this kind, you have to be reasonably tolerant. Sites are often being moved - especially at universities - and not always with full notifications or instructions for redirection being posted. The other inherent weakness is that search facilities are not always available, so users have to be imaginative in following leads or jumping to a different bibliographic starting-point.

But Mister Matsuoka is kind to his visitors. He provides login and passwords where these are necessary. As a bonus he also includes some very high quality sites maintained by specialists whose names are household names in their field - for instance, John Richetti's Pope and Swift pages at the University of Pennsylvania and Jerome McGann's on the pre-Raphaelite Movement at the University of Virginia.

If you are a teacher or a student of English Literature, this is definitely a site to add to your bookmarks. It will help if you have the luxury of free academic Net access to explore all its possibilities. If not, I would recommend saving a copy of the main entry page and studying at your off-line leisure. You're sure to find something of interest. And if all else fails, you can always go to the section on 'Fonts' for a long page of freebies. Click on the link which follows to be taken to --