LibAnswers

Start your search for sources by going to the Literary Criticism tab on the English Composition and Literature Research Guide. Search Bloom's first and work your way down through all five of the databases.

• Bloom's Literary Reference Online 

  Blooms Literature offers a comprehensive resource for the study of literature. Edited and curated by Yale University professor Harold Bloom, one of the worlds leading literary scholars, this database includes thousands of critical essays; author biographies, interviews, and profiles; character analyses; the full content of hundreds of books from our extensive reference collection and more than 1,000 classic works of literature; thousands of questions for discussion and writing; thousands of full-length poems; essays providing guidance on writing papers; full-length videos of classic stage performances and film adaptations of literary works; and a Shakespeare Center housing in one convenient location the databases treasure trove of content on all things Shakespeare.

• Literary Reference Center 

  Literary Reference Center includes thousands of plot summaries, synopses, and work overviews; articles of literary criticism; author biographies; full text of over 430 literary journals; book reviews; classic and contemporary poems and short stories; full text of over 7,000 classic novels; author interviews; and images of key literary figures.

• Literature Online 

  Literature Online is a full-text library of over 330,000 works of British and American poetry, drama and prose. In addition to literary texts, LION includes biographical sketches of major writers, selected author bibliographies, and critical and reference works.

• Literature Resource Center 

  Literature Resource Center provides biographies on thousands of authors, as well as literary criticism, historical context, and social implications of literature.

• Salem Literature 

  Salem Literature is a robust online database providing access to the Critical Insights series. Critical Insights is a comprehensive series that distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world's most-studied literature. Each volume in the series focuses on an individual author's entire body of work or on a single work of literature.

Most of the databases have author searches and works searches. Sometimes an author's lesser-known work may not have a criticism written about it. You will need to then use your critical thinking skills to read some of their other works and those criticisms and then draw your own conclusions about the work you have chosen. Look at other authors who wrote during the same time period as your chosen author.  What was going on in the world during the author's life to influence their writing? These incites can help with your analysis.