Quality Content to Support Students and Educators

Combining information from major respected reference works, books, literary journals and original content from EBSCO, Literary Reference Source features an expansive collection of classic and contemporary full-text poems, short stories, and novels. Other content includes:

  • More than 26,000 plot summaries, synopses and work overviews
  • More than 210,000 author biographies
  • More than 12,000 author interviews
  • More than 360 full-text literary journals
  • More than 1.1 million book reviews

Additional Content Highlights

  • Reference texts including Beacham’s Research Guide to Biography and Criticism (six volumes), The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, and all of MagillOnLiterature Plus
  • Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
  • Informational texts on numerous literary genres, themes and forms, as well as critical essays on specific works and authors
  • Research Guide to Literary Research, Writing and Critical Reading
  • Literary glossary featuring more than 1,700 terms
  • Lesson plans to support classroom instruction
  • Rich multimedia content to enhance curriculum delivery

Features and Functionality 

Literary Reference Source offers students and educators the following functionality:

  • Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Google Classroom integration for easy saving and sharing of content
  • Easy-to-browse categories of most studied authors and works, plus the ability to sort search results by content type, publication date, subject or publication
  • Text-to-speech for HTML and PDF articles to assist auditory learners, struggling readers or those learning English
  • Citation tool to help students format bibliographic references, as well as the ability to save, print and e-mail citations directly from the interface

Literary Reference eBook Collection

The Literary Reference eBook Collection is offered as a companion to Literary Reference Source databases, containing reference books from top educational publishers and presses, as well as several classic fiction titles. This encompasses a broad range of literary-related subject coverage, with selections including literary criticism, study guides, and classics such as Emma, Dracula and Frankenstein.

School Curriculum Support

Literary Reference Source contains a collection of informational texts on numerous literary genres, themes and forms, as well as critical essays on specific works and authors.

Literary Reference Source also features dozens of lesson plans and a link to EBSCO's Curriculum Standards Module, a tool that can help teachers in U.S. and Canada correlate EBSCO content quickly and easily to Common Core, state- or province-specific curriculum standards. The module provides browsing of specific benchmarks, many which have recommended search strings for successful content retrieval.