Background Information
It's useful when you are first reading a new author to take a look at relevant background information. The online sources listed below will give you reliable and authoritative information on specific authors, genres, or terms and movements in literature.
- Cambridge companions to literature and classics This link opens in a new window
Provides access to e-books in the Cambridge Companion series for literature and classical authors. The essays are written by scholars in that field and provide background information and an analysis of the topic selected, offering a good starting point for research.
- British and Irish literature - Oxford bibliographies This link opens in a new window
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on British and Irish Literature. Very useful for introductions to the scholarship of a field and key critical works.
- Gale Literature This link opens in a new window
Provides a single search site for several different and very useful full-text resources in literature covering biography and criticism of major authors and literary works from classical Greek and Roman literature to contemporary works, all languages and most countries are represented. Among the individual titles included are: Gale Literature Criticism (title list), Gale Literature Resource Center, Dictionary of Literary Biography (title list), and Something about the Author (title list). Gale.
- Johns Hopkins guide to literary theory & criticism This link opens in a new windowPresents a comprehensive historical survey of the field's most important figures, schools, and movements. Includes almost 300 alphabetically arranged entries and subentries on critics and theorists, critical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. Updated annually.
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics by Call Number: e-book link providedISBN: 9780691154916Publication Date: 2012-08-26Through three editions over more than four decades, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has built an unrivaled reputation as the most comprehensive and authoritative reference for students, scholars, and poets on all aspects of its subject: history, movements, genres, prosody, rhetorical devices, critical terms, and more. Entries range in length from brief paragraphs to major essays of 15,000 words, offering a more thorough treatment--including expert synthesis and indispensable bibliographies--than conventional handbooks or dictionaries. International coverage includes articles on the poetries of more than 110 nations, regions, and languages Expanded coverage of poetries of the non-Western and developing worlds
Encyclopedia of British Writers by Call Number: Print only: Jones Ref. PR19 .E528 2003ISBN: 0816051321Publication Date: 2005-04-30The two-volume Encyclopedia of British Writers: 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries provides essential, curriculum-based information on approximately 600 major British writers - from William Shakespeare and John Milton to Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope - who flourished in Britain between the 16th and the 18th centuries. All accessible entries include important details about the author's life, a synopsis of the writer's major works, and suggestions for further reading. 16th- and 17th-Century British Writers; This volume covers Aphra Behn, John Bunyan, Robert Burton, Thomas Campion, Margaret Cavendish, Richard Crashaw, Samuel Daniel, John Dryden, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Suckling, Henry Vaughan, Izaak Walton, Mary Wroth, Thomas Wyatt, and many more. 18th-Century British Writers; This volume covers George Berkeley, James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Robert Burns, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, John Gay, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray, David Hume, Samuel Johnson, Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexander Pope, Matthew Prior, Ann Radcliffe, Christopher Smart, Laurence Sterne, Jonathan Swift, Horace Walpole, Mary Wollstonecraft, and many more.
