French and Francophone Studies: Websites

Recommended resources for your research in French language and literature, and other related topics.

Digital Texts and Archives

ABU: la Bibliothèque Universelle  A site of hundreds of texts that allows searching across an entire work.

ARTFL FRANTEXT  Consists of nearly 2000 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts.

Athena  Literature is one section on this huge site. "Textes d'auteurs d'expression française" links to full-text French works. "Books" has other European writers.

Balzac: La comedie humaine  La Comédie humaine (dite édition Furne, 1842-1855), paginée et encodée, est le fruit d’un partenariat entre le Groupe International de Recherches Balzaciennes, la Maison de Balzac (musée de la Ville de Paris) et le groupe ARTFL de l’Université de Chicago.

Hathi Trust digital library  A digital repository of collections (books and journals) of some of the major research libraries in the United States. More than 30% of the content is in the public domain or Creative Commons licensed and is freely available to view, download and print. Items designated with "Full view" are available for download. 

Réseau francophone des bibliothèques nationales numériques  Consulter des journaux, des revues, des livres, des cartes et des plans, des archives numérisés issus des collections d'une dizaine d'institutions documentaires de l'espace francophone.

Voltaire electronique Voltaire électronique is based upon the Voltaire Foundation Oxford edition of the Complete works of Voltaire. It includes all of Voltaire's literary works. Texts which have not yet been published in the Complete works are drawn either from the original sources or from the ninteenth-century Moland edition of Voltaire's works.

Useful Websites

Bibliothèque Nationale de France  Available in French & English, this website provides the searchable catalog for the French National Library.  Internal links include Cultural Events, the Library, Collections, the Digital Library, Practical Information, the BnF Catalogues Services and Virtual Exhibitions. 

Union Catalog of France Catalogue collectif de la France

The European Library  The European Library is a free service that offers access to the resources of the 48 national libraries of Europe in 20 languages.

French Studies  Broad coverage of various types of sources, including literature, linguistics & culture put together by the European Studies Section (ESS) of Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).

Cairn  Created in September 2005 by four Belgian and French publishers, today Cairn offers the most comprehensive collection of publications in the French language in the humanities and social sciences available online.

Archives Nationales sont réparties sur trois sites: 

  • site de Paris : archives publiques de l'Ancien Régime, minutier des notaires de Paris
  • site de Pierrefitte-sur-Seine: archives publiques de la Révolution à nos jours, fonds privés (toutes périodes)
  • site de Fontainebleau : fonds publics spécifiques (dossiers de naturalisation après 1930, dossiers de carrière de fonctionnaires, dossiers de titualires de la Légion d'honneur, dossiers d'homologation des véhicules en particulier) ; archives audiovisuelles et électroniques, archives privées d'architectes.