Reaching across borders

At Crossref-it.info we tend to focus on supporting you as you prepare for your exams and essays. However, once in a while it is ok to celebrate how far one has come and today we want to do just that.

When we launched Crossref-it.info in its current form, back in October 2008, the site got 3000 visits during the whole month.

In just two years, the site has grown to reach a global audience which numbers in their multiple hundreds of thousands. Despite or perhaps because of our focus on quality of content and academic credibility, rather than churning out as many shallow text guides as possible, thousands of you have turned to Crossref-it.info to deliver for free what you could usually only get by buying an expensive text guide in a shop.

Crossref-it.info is visited by people from almost every country in the world. We have launched 13 text guides, a vast array of contextual material and articles, timelines, author sections, blog posts, texts.crossref-it.info for reading e-books, a mobile website and the list goes on...

Going forward, we need your help!

You can do two things to massively help and to ensure that Crossref-it.info keeps going strong as a free, high-quality, English Lit resource:

1. Please recommend the website to as many people as possible. Connect with us on Facebook. Tweet about us. Tell people about us. Digg our pages. If you have a website or a blog, write about us, link to us. Spread the word!

2. Please click on the Amazon links on the website before buying things on Amazon. That way, we get a commission, which will help to keep the site going.

Thank you for your continued support!

5 tips: Crossref-it.info on your mobile

Following last weeks news about our new mobile version of Crossref-it.info we thought we would delve a bit more deeply into the new site, to showcase some of the ways you can make use of this exciting new development!

Before we start, a reminder: the mobile site is built for devices running iOS (iPhone, iPad, etc.), Android and WebOS. You can access it by simply visiting Crossref-it.info from your device's browser.

1. Navigate with ease

On the home page, everything is neatly organised into a selection of green boxes. This provides you with direct access to whatever content you're looking for. Text guides, for instance, can be found in the "Texts in detail" box.

Once you have navigated away from the home page, those green boxes become green icons which are always at the top of the screen. So wherever in the site you are, you can jump to another part of the website with

just two taps of the finger. There is also the search box, of course...

2. Use the drop-down box

The drop-down box enables you to quickly see all the content that is available within a section, for instance in a text guide, and navigate around really quickly. It is always fairly near the top of the page.

3. Take a look at the timeline

It offers a great overview of what was happening in the world during the period which you are reading about.

4. Recently viewed pages

To always have a list of the ten most recently viewed pages at your disposal, simply sign in to your free Crossref-it.info account. That way, when you tap the "My Account" button in the top right-hand corner of your screen, it will show you what you have been reading. A potential life-saver (in a manner of speaking).

5. Tooltips

Don't understand a word? Want more of an explanation? If it is orange, then there could be no simpler solution to your predicament: tap to open tooltip, read explanation, tap to close tooltip. Simples.

There is more. Lots more* actually. We think thanks to the excellent navigation you should have no trouble finding it. In fact, it should be fun! So go to www.crossref-it.info on your mobile device and check it out...

* For instance, open the Songs of Innocence and Experience text guide on your mobile device and navigate to "Pictures".

Crossref-it.info for mobiles

New: Crossref-it.info for mobiles

We are pleased to announce the launch of m.crossref-it.info - Crossref-it.info optimised* for iPhone, Google Android and WebOS. If you have such a device then simply go to Crossref-it.info on your device and you will be automatically taken to the new website.

What's the difference?

For a start, the new site is fast. Really fast. It'll load quickly even when you're far away from a Wifi hotspot. We've made sure you'll be able to quickly access all the info you want, whenever you want, wherever you are.

Also, it is optimised for touch input. Not having a mouse makes it difficult to "hover" over an A-Z Tooltip, for instance, so we have thought through the entire design of the website to make sure everything works well without using a mouse.

And, finally, we've made sure it plays well with small screens. We've worked to make sure that you get the full Crossref-it.info experience using an interface that works really well with small screen form factors. In fact, it actually works rather well on large touch-screens as well. So whether you have a Sony Ericsson X10 Mini or an Apple iPad, or anything in between, we have worked hard to make sure you will enjoy using Crossref-it.info.

As always, feedback is welcome in the comments!

* This will work on devices running the following three operating systems: iOS, Android, WebOS. Examples of supported devices: Acer - Liquid, Liquid E, Stream; Apple - iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad; Google - Nexus One; Dell - Streak; HTC - Desire, Evo 4G, T-Mobile G1 (Dream), Hero, Incredible, Magic (MyTouch 3G), Wildfire; LG - Ally, Etna, Eve, GT540, GW620, GW880, LU2300, Optimus; Motorola - Cliq, Dext, Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Milestone, Palm (HP) - Pixi, Pixi+, Pre, Pre+; Samsung - Galaxy i7500, Galaxy i5700, Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab; Sony Ericsson - Xperia X10, Xperia X10 Mini, Xperia X10 Mini Pro

Poetry – a male preserve?

Poetry – a male preserve?

Up to around fifty years ago, most people would have struggled when asked to name a famous female poet. The poetry canon was dominated by figures like the Romantics, (blogged about last week), Shakespeare, Donne and Herbert, Pope, Tennyson and Eliot. Unlike today, only a few women poets ever made it into print or continued to be read after their lifetime.

The achievement of the few that did is therefore all the more remarkable. The work of the Brontë sisters (see August blog), Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti has continued to speak to new generations of readers. The latter is perhaps less familiar than her contemporaries. She does not have the romance of illicit relationships, or dramatic landscapes attached to her name.

Quietly powerful

Instead, Rossetti lived quietly in London for most of her life, single and dogged by ill health. Yet her poetry is powerful and direct, illuminating friendship and fear, faith and death. Through her individual perspective she touches on a universal experience.

Allusions explained

Many readers today will not be familiar with the social and religious world that Rossetti inhabited, and feel somewhat daunted at approaching her poetry because of this. One of the reasons that Crossref-it.info came into existence was to provide just the kind of help that allows readers to access works of literature peppered with allusions – in this case biblical ones.

Through her poetry Rossetti was opening up many issues close to her heart; it helps to see what she meant when she referred to paths and ladders, blood and brokenness. The brand new guide to The poems of Christina Rossetti will give students and teachers all the information they need in order to fully enjoy her work.

The Romantic poets

The Romantic poets

The lonely poet

Much of today’s view of what a poem should like is down to the influence of a loose affiliation of poets who were composing in the final quarter of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth. The (charicatured) image of a spiritual wanderer profoundly affected by daffodils and nightingales marked a distinct change from the witty epigrams and clever arguments of the Augustan and Metaphysical poets.

Simple words

Using simple daily vocabulary the Romantic poets drew their reader’s attention to vivid natural images and fleeting emotional states, to the experiences of ordinary lives which spoke to them of awesome Nature.

Blake (pictured), Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Keats were the most famous of the movement. Their odes and lyrics are in many people’s top ten favourite poems today.

Radicals and revolutionaries

However, the Romantic poets weren’t just inspired by the natural world. Blake and Wordsworth started out as revolutionaries who supported the common people’s bid for freedom in France. Byron later fought for the Greeks in their war of independence. Shelley was a political radical who eschewed conventional social structures like marriage. He lived with the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the first notable feminist. Their poems reflect their ideals.

A window on their world

The Romantics were not ‘apart’ from their society, but fully engaged with it. Which is why it helps to get a window on their world to make better sense of what inspired them. As usual, Crossref-it.info can guide you to what you need to know in a helpful and accessible way. Whether you are reading Wordsworth, Keats or their associates, Context links: The Romantic poets will show you where relevant information is, whilst the complete guide on Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience fills out the picture of that London based poet.

Next week another complete guide to an English poet will arrive on your screens. Watch this space!