Literature

Alexander Street Drama brings together thousands of plays from Alexander Street’s 6 individual full-text drama collections and makes them accessible and cross-searchable in a single, specially priced package. Included is all the content in these individual full-text collections: Black Drama, Asian American Drama, Latino Drama, Twentieth Century North American Drama, North American Indian Drama, and North American Women's Drama—nearly 6,000 works.

Asian American Drama brings together more than 250 plays, along with related biographical, production, and theatrical information. The collection begins with the works of Sadakichi Hartmann in the late nineteenth century and progresses to the writings of contemporary playwrights, such as Philip Kan Gotanda, Elizabeth Wong, and Jeannie Barroga.

Black Drama, now in its expanded second edition, contains the full text of more than 1,460 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 250 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print.

Black Thought and Culture is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history.
 

British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries spans more than 400 years of personal writings, bringing together the voices of women from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The database lets researchers view history in the context of women’s thoughts – their struggles, achievements, passions, pursuits, and desires.

This collection comprises more than eighty volumes of poetry by Irish women writing between 1768 and 1842, a significant, but largely underappreciated body of work.  Most of the texts are rare, existing in print in fewer than five libraries in the world. Along with the poetic texts are biographical and critical essays contributed by the world’s foremost poetry scholars and other supporting resources.

Discover more than 200 novels, many hundreds of short stories, 20,000 pages of poetry, and more than 400 plays. The majority of the works are in English, with selected works of particular importance in Spanish. The collection begins with the works of Chicano writers in the Southwest in the early 19th century and follows through to include contemporary works. Scholars in social history, literature, and Latino studies will find value in Latino Literature.

North American Theatre Online will be the largest, most comprehensive reference work in North American drama. It will provide detailed bibliographic information on more than 10,000 plays – including references to works that have never been published. It will contain thousands of facts about theaters, authors, theatrical companies, and individuals, as well as some 1,000 playbills, posters, photographs, and related theatrical ephemera. Part of the Alexander Street Drama package.

Our flagship collection, North American Women's Letters and Diares, is a massive project, cataloging and indexing American and Canadian women's diaries and correspondence over centuries. Researchers will have access to 150,000 pages of materials, including more than 5,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts as facsimile images. Drawn from more than 1,000 sources and representing 1,500 women from all walks of life, the writings are extensively indexed. Databases of women, sources, personal events, historical events, a geographical table, and other features make the writings useful to researchers in history, sociology, literature, genealogy, women’s studies, and related fields. Part of the Letters and Diaries Online package.

"Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period is recommended for larger libraries, both academic and public, supporting humanities research, and is another example of the positive collaborative efforts between librarians, scholars, and Alexander Street Press. Although the content may not have the broad appeal of some of the other ASP products, the quality of the data and the access it provides to this niche of English literature is invaluable."
 

 -- Helene Williams, Collection Development, Widener Library, Harvard University (Library Journal, 7/18/02)
 

Theatre in Video contains more than 250 of the world’s most important plays, together with more than 100 video documentaries, online in streaming video—more than 500 hours in all*.

From Maxwell Anderson to Marsha Norman, the complete works of major North American playwrights. Alongside the works of the most successful writers of the century are the lesser-known but important works of African Americans, Asian Americans, gay and lesbian writers, and others. Hundreds of unpublished plays, production information, playbills, and theatre details round out the collection.