Searching for Bill and Jane: Electronic full-text literature

There is much to be said for electronic access to literature. For the present, it seems to be primarily of interest to those studying the classics. One problem with full-text literary resources is finding them, or at least finding the ones you want. There are some gateway sites devoted to literary resources. Two of the better known are Jack Lynch's Literary Resources on the Web, housed at the University of Pennsylvania, and Voice of the Shuttle, emanating from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Locating CD-ROMs can be just as tricky. There is probably more material on the Internet about William Shakespeare than any other author. Both the Oxford and Virginia text archives have versions of Shakespeare available, some for free, some for a fee. Chadwyck-Healey's Literature Online is a subscription-based Web site containing the full text of many poems, plays, novels, and literary texts from America and England.