Oxford Reference Online
Offers simultaneous searching of a number of reference books, including:

• Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary terms
• The Oxford Companion to American Literature
• The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature
• The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English
• The Oxford Companion to American Theatre

American short-story writers since World War II
Central Library, Level 4, PS 374 .S5 .A512

Encyclopedia of American literature
In Storage, PS 21 .E56

Encyclopedia of American poetry. The nineteenth century
In Storage, PS 316 .E56

Encyclopedia of frontier literature
In Storage, PS 169 .F7 .S673 1999

The Greenwood encyclopedia of African American literature
Central Library, Level 4, PS 153 .N5 .G816 2005

The Oxford companion to African American literature
In Storage, PS 153 .N5 .O98

The Oxford companion to women's writing in the United States
In Storage, PS 147 .O98

A Bibliography lists all the known books, book chapters and journal articles about a writer and his/her works.

Use a Subject Keyword in the Library Catalogue search to find bibliographies of major authors:

[name of author] bibliography  
eg Ernest Hemingway bibliography

Browse the shelves at PS on Level 4 of the Central Lbrary, or search online with Multisearch

To find books about an author and his/her work, use the author's name as a subject term in Multisearch Advanced search.

eg:

•  Toni Morrison
•  Kate Chopin
•  Don DeLillo

Use these databases to locate journal articles on your topic

Read the latest articles in these journals

• Literature and culture of the American 1950s
• Walt Whitman Archive
• Walt Whitman online resources at the Library of Congress
• Melville Electronic Library