Creative Writing

Search Discovery for resources relating to the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries.

Search across all subject areas.

Explore Credo for trusted reference sources like dictionaries - a great alternative to Wikipedia! 

Watch these short videos to get started:

1. Search tips
2. Using the automated mind map

The national record of over 60,000 biographies, 72 million words, 11,000 portraits of significant, influential or notorious figures who shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century - extremely useful for detailed biographies about literary figures.

The most trusted source about words in English, containing definitions, plus very detailed word histories.

No other resource for early modern scholarship is as comprehensive as Early English Books Online (EEBO) with over 146,600 titles and associated bibliographic records. Users can explore complete, digitized images of all the works listed in the key bibliographic records of English literature: The Short-Title Catalogue (Pollard & Redgrave, 1475-1640); The Short-Title Catalogue II (Wing, 1641-1700); The Thomason Tracts; and the Early English Books Tract Supplements, as well as original almanacs, pamphlets, musical scores, prayer books and other primary sources.

Access around 200,000 ebooks across all subject areas.

ECCO is a searchable corpus of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800. It currently contains over 180,000 titles with over 32 million fully-searchable pages. It is a digitization of the 18th century section of the works catalogued in the English Short-title Catalogue (ESTC). The ESTC project has been recording all works published or printed in Britain, Ireland, territories under British colonial rule, and the United States. It also catalogues material printed elsewhere which contains significant text in English, Welsh, Irish or Gaelic, as well as any book falsely claiming to have been printed in Britain or its territories.

A useful research resource for anyone studying the moving image; this platform contains ebooks, screenplays and a history of cinema timeline.

A full text database which includes classic and contemporary short stories and poems, classic novels, author biographies, criticism and reviews, synopses and journal articles.

The world's leading source of articles and chapters on literature, language, folklore and related culture.

Watch this video for a quick overview and this video provides tips on searching more effectively

A collection covering the growth of readership, including magazines for women, children and leisure interests.

The text of 460 journals published between the 1680s and the 1930s. This archive includes millions of facsimile pages from a wide range of publications from scholarly and professional titles through to art periodicals, penny weeklies and illustrated family magazines.

Provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, reports and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
Watch this video for great tips.

Full text articles from many news sources and trade journals both UK and international. Archives sometimes stretching back to the mid 1980s. For use in the UK only.

PressReader lets you access UK and international newspapers, plus a wide range of magazine content. Everything is full colour with archives varying in length depending on the publication.

Login guidance

Search and read a wide range of national and regional newspapers from 1741-1950.

Watch this short video to get a quick overview (we have parts 1 - 5).

Use with care as this tabloid is known for its strong views but it can help with some assignments and certain dissertation topics. Search for stories or use the browse feature to flick through the paper on particular days, including special editions published in connection with Queen Victoria, George V, Elizabeth II's coronation and Winston Churchill. Use Nexis if you want to go beyond 2016.

Access stories and photos from The Guardian (1821-2003) and The Observer (1791-2003). Use Nexis if you want to search up to the current day.

The world's first illustrated weekly newspaper containing useful background for Victorian topics in particular.

Founded in 1903, the Mirror plays a pivotal role in the history of journalism. Peaking in 1967, with a daily circulation of 5.25 million, the newspaper has had a history full of highs and lows. Today, it is the only mainstream left-wing tabloid remaining in the UK. Gale's Mirror Historical Archive, 1903-2000 features more than 800,000 pages of brand-new, full text searchable, scans of the complete run of the Mirror from 1903-2000, including the Sunday Mirror.

1271 London and provincial newsbooks, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and single-sheet ephemera, 1600 to 1800.

Launched in 1855 as an affordable newspaper, by 1876 The Telegraph was the largest-selling newspaper in the world. The newspaper was directed at a wealthy, educated readership and is commonly associated with traditional Toryism, despite its more "liberal" beginnings. The Telegraph Historical Archive has over 1 million pages of content and includes the Sunday edition from its inception in 1961. The archive offers a fundamental insight into UK domestic and international affairs and culture.

During the twentieth century, The Telegraph cemented its reputation as a pioneering yet reliable source of news reporting. There was the infamous uncensored interview with Kaiser Wilhelm of 1908, in which he successfully alienated Britain, France, Russia, and Japan. In 1942, the newspaper published the cryptic crossword puzzle responsible for recruiting Allied codebreakers during the Second World War.

Search over 200 years of articles. Articles are full facsimiles of what was published on the day and you can view the article in its original page location if you want.

Watch this video showing you how to make the most of the features available.

Explore 20 collections of documents, including minutes of meetings and conferences, press releases, fliers, brochures, press clippings, US government memoranda and reports, private correspondence, surveys and photos.

Watch this quick introduction to the archive - please note we only subscribe to Part 1 which contains British material as well as coverage from North America.

If you want to trace details about a specific person or place, or perhaps need inspiration for creative writing, this could be just what you need! Connected Histories provides an all-in-one search across electronic content available on various sites such as 19^th Century British Pamphlets, the Clergy of the Church of England, Charles Booth Archive, Convict Transportation Registers, Proceedings of the Old Bailey, British Newspapers 1600-1900 etc. If you find something useful on a resource we pay for e.g. British Newspapers, you may need to follow the link to that resource from the Finding Articles page within these Subject Pages.

Disability in the Modern World: History of a Social Movement encompasses an international set of resources to enrich study in a wide range of disciplines from media studies to philosophy.

This resource covers the fascinating subject of feminism over the long nineteenth century (1776-1928). It contains an extensive range of primary and secondary resources, including photographs and illustrations.

Bringing together unique primary sources drawn from world-class maritime archives and heritage collections, Life at Sea takes a socio-cultural approach, focusing on the individual experiences and personal narratives of seafarers. Through a broad range of sources, from journals and memoirs to ships’ logs and court records, the lives of ordinary seamen, merchants, whalers and pirates can be explored. This resource offers exciting new insights into three centuries of the Anglo-American maritime world, 1600-1900.

For a quick overview, watch this.

Access a range of primary and secondary sources covering London from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. As well as documents, you will find interactive maps, illustrations and photographs to really bring the streets to life.

Explore documents, fanzines, photos and newsreel footage to help understand these key decades when consumer culture and pop music took off and protest movements were big news.

An essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries containing everything from full-text books, to posters and performance tickets.

Watch this 90 second video about how to store items for later use.

A database of almost 3 million images related to visual arts and culture. You can create, save and share groups of images and make presentations too. If you want to search for academic articles and images simultaneously, follow the link via the "J" JSTOR icon to the top left of the page.

An archive of UK television and radio programmes from free to air channels (1998 onwards). For use in the UK only. Find some great tips about how to use BoB in these short videos.

Sound recordings from all over the world, covering the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds.

Watch high quality films of leading theatre productions. Discover how plays are brought to the stage in interviews with the creative teams. Learn about interpretive choice through detailed analysis of play texts.

Watch this 5 minute video for an overview of the content and how to navigate it.

This resource is restricted to members of the University of Portsmouth

You have two ways to access the login instructions:

1. Contact the Library from any Library enquiry desk or by contacting us:

• Email: library@port.ac.uk
• Tel: 023 9284 3228

2. Connect to the University VPN and use the link below:

View restricted access information for resources

To verify you are a University member, please use your university email account or include your student/staff number in your message. If calling, please have your student/staff card ready.

A unique collections of films including award-winning documentaries, training films and theatrical releases on every topic imaginable. Content can be searched or browsed.

This third National Theatre collection offers 20 performances, from Greek tragedy, a medieval morality play, and Shakespeare, to plays about Generation Z.

National Theatre Collection: Volumes I & II bring the stage to life through access to high-definition streaming video of world-class productions and unique archival material offering significant insight into theatre and performance studies. Through a collaboration with the U.K.'s National Theatre, the collections offer a range of digital performance resources never previously seen outside of the National Theatre’s archive.