This online resource provides access to 40 volumes of correspondence previously published by Oxford University Press. The collection includes a variety of writers, scholars, and other important figures who lived in England during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is a companion database to The English Letters Collection. The Eighteenth Century (RR 2005/53). In this Modern Era collection, users will find letters from Matthew Arnold, Robert Bridges, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, James George Frazer, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone, Katherine Mansfield, Wilfred Owen, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson and Anthony Trollope, among others
The resource is presented in a split screen, frames approach. The left frame allows for navigation through the contents, while the right frame provides the content. Small icons in the top right corner of each frame allow users to switch from the split screen format to a full screen view. Other icons in the top right corner provide navigation assistance and context specific help. Print and e‐mail icons are also made available. To print, users must agree with a copyright statement; using the collection as course material or to distribute to a class is specifically verboten. The e‐mail option allows users to send the URL to themselves or others, but no content is mailed.
At the bottom of the screen, a search box is provided allowing users to search all the correspondence included for a word, phrase or name. There is also a power search option that allows proximity and Boolean searching. After searching, the left frame shows links to the letters that include the search term(s), and when the user clicks to view the letter in the right hand frame, the searched word or phrase is bracketed in red for easy perusal. A tools section provides links to free online tools, including an online dictionary, a free translation tool, a map tool, and an online encyclopedia.
This resource has a very straightforward design, and will not be difficult for patrons to use efficiently. Many libraries may already own the materials included here in print, but being able to search across all of the content certainly makes it valuable. Libraries supporting high‐level research in these eras of British literature and history, particularly those with strong interest in some of the particular writers included, may want to consider subscribing.
