Materials from the English tradition are strongest, but considerable holdings reflective of the literary traditions of France, Spain, Italy, and Germany also distinguish Departmental holdings. In addition, the Department contains some resources for the study of many other national traditions. In English literature, the Department's foremost collection is the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library . This collection is devoted to the study of Shakespeare and his contemporary Tudor and Stuart dramatists. The Furness Library also supports study of world and British theater history.
Theater history is also well documented in the department's manuscript holdings.
Earlier American literature is distinguished by a number of high spots. Colonial poetry and fiction are also collected in some strength. More than 1,000 imprints, with many variant editions, record French drama of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Penn's collection of Spanish literature of the Golden Age, strong in poetry, also contains early prose texts, including early editions of Cervantes and Montemayor. The Department's 2,600 volumes of Italian Renaissance literature are dominated by editions of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto.