Early English Books Online provides searchable digital access to more than one hundred thousand books on all subjects published in England between 1475 and 1700. Page images accurately reflect the way the works appeared in their original printed editions.
Included are works by such authors as Malory, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, and Galileo. The database also includes musical exercises by Henry Purcell, novels by Aphra Behn, prayer books, pamphlets, proclamations, almanacs, calendars, and many other primary resources.
This is the online equivalent of the Early English Books microform series, which is based on 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.
Search tips:
Early modern typographical conventions mean that in pre-1700 texts in particular certain characters are often used interchangeably: the character u often appears as a v, and vice versa, such that the word love often appears as loue, and usurper sometimes appears as vsurper. Similarly, the characters j and i are often exchanged, with the word juniper occasionally appearing as iuniper, and Ireland as Jreland. (All variant forms appear in the alphabetical word index on the browse list pages, which are accessible by clicking the Select from a list > link alongside the relevant field). EEBO allows you to include typographical variants in your results automatically using the relevant checkbox on the Search page. If you check this box and submit your search, EEBO will find variant forms of your search term in which the following characters have been substituted:
v for u
u for v
j for i or y
i for j or y
y for i or j
w for vv or uu
s for f
As well as variant characters you may run into variant spellings in EEBO. When you check the box to search using variant spellings and type a search term in the Keyword(s) search box, you will automatically retrieve all variations of your search term. For instance, a search for Keyword(s): murder with the Variant spellings checkbox ticked will retrieve all occurrences of the word murder, as well as its variations murther, murdre, murdir, and mvrder. A page listing all the variants will be displayed so you can choose which variants you want to include in your search:
EEBO allows you to list documents containing variations on a search term by using the * (asterisk) truncation operator. The * operator can represent zero or more terminal characters in a search term. For example creat* will retrieve creature, creation, create, creating, creator, etc. To replace one character in a word use the ? symbol. This will replace one character anywhere you place it in a word. For example, wom?n will find women or woman.
Where is it:
- Go to the UNLV Libraries' home page.
- Select the Articles and Databases tab.
- Click on the A-Z List of Databases and then on the letter E.
- Select Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Quick Link: http://ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/login?url=http://eebo.chadwyck.com
