Individual authors in English literature

There are several resources you can use to find information about an individual author:

Contents
Web sources Search engines Electronic databases	Library Catalogue Newsgroups

World Wide Web/Internet sources

There is a wealth of information about individual authors on the web. You'll find that the quality (and even the existence) of the information you may find will vary enormously; some authors have had the full treatment: others might as well not exist.
For an example of what is available, have a look at the Jane Austen Information Page, David Taylor's comprehensive Richard Brinsley Sheridan website, or the superb William Blake Archive.

Here are some web-based guides to sites for finding information on individual authors that I have found to be very useful:

Online literary criticism collection: Maintained by the Internet Public Library, this is a very useful site for finding websites on individual authors. There are nearly four thousand critical and biographical websites that can be browsed by author, by title, or by nationality and literary period. Enjoy!
Voice of the Shuttle: English Literature: This site concentrates on "works written in English taught in departments of English and American literature" and is a very rich resource. You can search for a particular author with their built-in search engine.
Author Webliography: This directory is an index of indexes. It contains pointers to individual author guides that deal with specific writers.
LiteraryHistory.com: LiteraryHistory.com is an index to free internet articles on authors in English and American literature. There are separate sections for 20th Century British and American authors and 19th Century British authors.
It's been going since 1998 and is regularly updated by Jan Pridmore.

Search engines

To find specific information on the web you need to use a search engine. Choose one from my separate Search engines page* to find suitable sites and sources of information on your author.

* Please note: the Search engines page will open in a new window.

One of the original search engines, Yahoo, maintains a very useful Literature category which can produce excellent results if you type in the name of your author [use the format Surname, First name; for example, Beckett, Samuel, and make sure that the Search only in Literature button is selected].

If you would like to try it out, you can do so right here:-- go ahead, see what you can find!

Electronic databases

There are several indexes to articles in journals and books that you can use to find information about an individual author. To find out which one is best to use for your purposes, visit my separate page on Electronic databases for English literature research.

Library Catalogue

One of the first places to look for information on an author should be the Library Catalogue which will guide you to books on your author that are held in the University of Adelaide Library system. Use the Subject heading option and type in the name of your author.
As an example, click on Bronte, Charlotte to open a page of relevant subject headings in the Library Catalogue. Look for useful subdivisions such as Criticism and interpretation, Biography, Characters, and so on, to explore further.

Newsgroups

If you have used search engines for information about a particular author but have found nothing, a worthwhile alternative is to check the resources of an appropriate Newsgroup or discussion group. Keep an eye out for a FAQ (=Frequently Asked Questions) archive where answers to previous queries to the newsgroup are stored.
If the information you want isn't in the newsgroup archives, you can post a question about your author directly to the newsgroup; you may be pleasantly surprised at the speed with which your question is answered.

I have a separate page of News and discussion groups for English literature topics.

If you need help with an individual
author, click the button
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