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The Literatures Collection

Collection strengths

From the foundation of the school in 1916, the study of languages and literatures of Asia and Africa has occupied a central role in the research and teaching carried on at SOAS.

The Library has built up a national collection of Asian, African and Middle Eastern Literatures, including critical studies.
The Centre for Asian and African Literature has been set up jointly between SOAS and UCL to act as an umbrella for projects in comparative literary studies, and the Library is growing in new subject areas like postcolonial literatures, gender studies and critical theory, and in materials on comparative literature.

Please note that the immense wealth of material in Grammars and dictionaries of Oriental and African languages greatly outweighs the amount of material on the web for these languages.

Special Collections

  • American Indian languages
  • Basque
  • Minor Finno-Ugrian languages (excluding Finnish and Hungarian)

Bibliographies & Indexes/ Key reference material in literatures

Reference works from Oxford Reference Online.
These are all available from any computer in SOAS, and are available off-site for SOAS staff and students with a SOAS id and password

Selection of key journals in literature

Freely available journals

Relevant Departments & Centres in the School