An Overview of Digital Resources for the Study of Victorian Fiction

Abstract

Utilizing open-access, institutional, and subscription-only digital databases for research can advance studies in Victorian literature. Despite occasional issues with sample size, barriers to access, or bad OCR, these databases hold unprecedented quantities of nineteenth-century literature awaiting scrutiny, as indicated by research examples provided. Several long-standing or recent projects on the novel, literary culture, or race in the Victorian era are discussed in terms of their application for personal research and classroom instruction. Among these are the recently unveiled databases One More Voice and Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom, which bring non-European perspectives to the forefront of discourse in answer to the recent call to center and engage with marginalized nineteenth-century voices previously buried in archives due to racial difference. Primary sources, by offering new perspectives on life in the nineteenth century, can now enrich both scholarship and academic syllabi. Digital scans, if defined as free access or fair use, can be requisitioned for groundbreaking projects centered around literary writing, publication, and culture, or historical inquiry.