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Our Medieval literature collections are a mix of primary texts and manuscripts, facsimile editions, and secondary works which combine to form a particularly strong and extensive resource for the study of the period. 

The library’s oldest works include books and fragments printed prior to 1500 and two copies of Langland’s Piers Plowman. Late 19th and early 20th century reinterpretations of Medieval texts are represented by books printed by the Private Press Movement, including William Morris’s Kelmscott Press Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 

Beautiful facsimile editions of illuminated manuscripts can be viewed as can a run of the texts published since the 19th century by The Early English Text Society. The period’s literature can also be explored virtually via online resources subscribed to by the library.   

Selected links: 

• c 134 books and fragments which were printed or formerly thought to have been printed before 31 December 1500 
• Sterling Library particularly ‘Section I: Authors Before 1900’, which includes two Piers Plowman manuscripts, and ‘Section III: Private Press Books’ 
• including the International Bibliography of Medieval Literature 
• Manuscript and Print Studies collection page

The library’s Early Modern literature collections contain drama and early editions alongside facsimiles and secondary works. 

The library’s Shakespeare holdings are particularly strong, containing the first four folios and other early editions, alongside later reinterpretations from the Private Press Movement, such as the Cranach Press’s Hamlet. 

Shakespearean authorship debates are represented by our collections, primarily the Durning-Lawrence Library, while early modern drama is presented in numerous editions, including facsimiles from the Malone Society. 

The library subscribes to a range of electronic resources for the study of the period’s literature. 

Selected links: 

• Sterling Library particularly ‘Section I: Authors Before 1900’, which includes the first four Shakespeare folios and three early quartos, and ‘Section III: Private Press Books’ 
• Durning-Lawrence Library emphasis on the Bacon-Shakespeare authorship controversy, and early Elizabethan and Jacobean texts 
• including the Shakespeare Survey 
• 2016 Senate House Library exhibition site including a useful ‘Resources’ section 
• Manuscript and Print Studies collection page

Senate House Library’s foundational collections date from the 19th century and are therefore strong in original texts from the period, which have been purchased alongside numerous secondary works. The range of authors represented from this period is broad. Canonical authors are well represented, for example the works of George Eliot and Charles Dickens are held in first editions and some serial parts, whilst Dickens scholarship is represented in the archives. Popular literature features heavily via authors such as Mary Elizabeth Braddon, play texts including Dick’s Standard Plays, and extensive runs of periodicals. Travel writing features across our collections including many works written by women travellers. The collection also includes 19th century texts from the United States, many of them in early editions. Online access is provided to a wide range of resources, many of which provide digitised primary texts. 

• particularly ‘Section I: Authors Before 1900’ for first editions and parts, ‘Section III: Private Press Books’ and ‘Section IV: Illustrated and Extra-Illustrated Works’ 
• many hundreds of play texts dating from the late 19th to early 20th centuries 
• books, periodicals and pamphlets on all aspects of magic, from conjuring to the occult, and including related literary works. Some of the collection is available online at  
• including London Low Life which provides examples of street literature and cheap fiction; Nineteenth-Century Fiction; and Victorian Popular Culture 
• 2020 Senate House Library exhibition site 

The 20th century English literature at Senate House Library is particularly strong in works from the first half of the century, with emphasis on both modernism and the ‘middlebrow’. 

First editions of key modernist texts feature strongly while archival items include manuscripts by W. H. Auden and James Hanley, a Nancy Cunard poetry typescript, and letters from Virginia Woolf. 

The modernist links between literature and publishing and book design are well represented including works printed at the Hours and Hogarth Presses, and illustrations by Sturge Moore. Thanks to a donation from literary scholar Elizabeth Maslen, the library holds a strong selection of novels by Storm Jameson. 

Literature from the latter decades of the 20th century and into the 21st predominantly consists of an extensive collection of secondary works although short story collections are actively purchased, and the fantasy genre is represented in the Terry Pratchett Collection. Online access is provided to a wide range of resources which support the study of 20th (and 21st) century literature. 

Selected links: 

• particularly ‘Section II: Twentieth-Century Literature’ for first editions and ‘Section III: Private Press Books’ for presses such as the Golden Cockerel. 
• particularly strong in early 20th century writers 
• Literary and History of the Book Archives including Gerald Duckworth & Co, and Charles Lahr (bookseller) 
• a comprehensive collection of Pratchett’s works, donated by his agent Colin Smythe 
• including Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present; the African Writers Series; and Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive 

This collection is part of the wider U.S. Studies Collection, containing literature, history, and social sciences.

US literature is reflected with good coverage of collected editions, both classics and modern texts, featuring canonical and non-canonical writers. The collection is ordered chronologically and has a particular strength in 19th century works.  Alongside literary works, literary criticism covering all periods is a feature of the collection.   

Printed reference works and bibliographies remain a feature of this collection, covering a range of specialist subjects including individual authors and African American literature.   

Selected links:  

• online resources including African American Poetry; American Drama 1714-1915; Asian American Drama; Early American Fiction 1789-1895; and North American Women’s Drama.

The Anglophone Caribbean literature collection is part of the wider Latin American Studies Collection, containing history, social sciences, and literature.  

The collection features English language literature from the region, including Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. Works include secondary critical texts and a wide range of novels and poetry. The books represent many sources including independent publishers such as Bogle L’Ouverture, printeries in the Caribbean, and mainstream Anglo-American publishers. The collection is particularly strong in mid- to late- twentieth-century literature.  

Selected links: 

• online resources including the Caribbean Literature collection within One Literature.  
• a guide to the collection, and a project to develop it. Includes information on the collection strengths, featured authors, and links to relevant material.  
• an overview guide to the humanities and arts collections on the region held at Senate House Library. Includes literature, for example in the ‘Key Thinkers: Caribbean Thought and Letters: Key Thinkers and Writers’ and ‘British Subjects’, Diasporic Caribbeans and ‘Black Britons’ sections 
• Locating Samuel Selvon in Senate House Library blog  

A range of literary periodicals are held in the library’s collections, with a strong focus on 19th and early 20th century titles. Examples include Charles Dickens’s Household Words and All the Year Round; Belgravia (edited for a time by Mary Elizabeth Braddon); Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine; The Yellow Book; and The Savoy. 

The periodicals are for reference use only and are held in the closed areas of the library. To read a periodical, you must first request it via the catalogue. Search the periodical title on and use the ‘request this item’ option to order required issues.  

Selected links: 

• The library also provides access to online including many relevant to the study of literature. For example: British Periodicals; London Review of Books; and New York Review of Books 
• The archives of are also available online

Since 1941 Senate House Library has been actively purchasing English language short story collections, thanks to an ongoing donation by G.F. Troup Horne. The nucleus and beginnings of the collection are approximately 700 volumes of short stories from Troup Horne’s own collection. Works are continually added to the collection and while the initial bequest and older volumes are reference only the newer works are loanable.

The older volumes can be requested via the catalogue for reading in the library (find them by searching Troup Horne ), while the newer volumes can be borrowed from the open literature shelves.  

LGBTQ+ literature is distributed throughout our literature collections, spanning a wide geographical scope and broad timeline. One of the earliest literary representations of a gay club is found in the 1710 work Satyrical Reflections on Clubs, while the identity of Shakespeare’s “master mistress” in his Sonnet 20 is still discussed. These are just two of the earliest examples of LGBTQ+ literature in our collections which includes books, journals, pamphlets and e-resources. The resources span decades and perspectives, often reflecting shifting social attitudes. 

Selected links: 

• Seized Books! LGBTQ+ Books and Censorship in 1980s Britain online exhibition featuring the Haud Nominandum special collection 
• 2018 (Senate House Library exhibition site) 
• including LGBT Magazine Archive; and LGBT Thought and Culture

The literature collections contain a wealth of pamphlet and small press works, many of them self-published or privately printed. There are around 2000 pamphlets in the English collection alone, predominantly poetry and drama, with many critical texts also included. The works cover the same range of periods and topics as the main book collection, from Old English to date.  

Literature pamphlets also feature across the collections in our Pamphlet Store and our special collections. There are examples of publications from university presses, literary societies, local history groups, religious societies and churches, political groups, community presses and writing workshops, individual private printers, and libraries. The pamphlets and small press works reflect an alternative to the mainstream of academic writing, reflecting a wide range of voices and experiences, and show the hobbyist side of printing and private press work. 

Selected links: 

• The London Estates & Neighbourhoods that Became Publishing Houses blog concerning community publishing works at Senate House Library 
• special collection of radical left works including many literature pamphlets