LibGuides: Literature-Based Research: Helpful Books

Reference Books

In Reference to. . .

Here are some series of books in our Reference section where you can find literary criticisms, author biographies, and other information. You cannot check out reference books, but remember that scanning is free in the library! You can scan any pages you need and save them to your flash drive, or email them to your BRCC webmail account.

Contemporary Literary Criticism
Call Number: PN 771 .C5
Comprehensive surveys of an author’s career and individual works include novelists, short story writers, poets, dramatists worldwide now living or died after December 31, 1959. Volumes published beginning in 2000 include authors who died after December 31, 1999. Each entry has a brief author sketch, critical excerpts of contemporary criticism in the order published with source information. Cumulative author index, cumulative topic and national index refers to CLC volumes and other Gale series volumes.
Twentieth Century Literary Criticism
Call Number: PN 771 .G2
Comprehensive surveys of an author’s career or an individual work. include novelists, short story writers, dramatists, poets who died between 1900 and 1999. Volumes published from 1978 through 1999 include authors who died between 1900 and 1960. Each entry includes a biographical sketch, excerpts of criticisms in the order published with source information. Bibliographies of further reading. Cumulative author index, cumulative topic and nationality index refers to CLC volumes and other Gale series volumes.
Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism
Call Number: PN 761 .N5
Comprehensive surveys of an author’s career or an individual work includes novelists, short story writers, dramatists, poets who died between 1800 and 1899. Each entry includes a biographical sketch, excerpts of criticisms in the order published with source information. Bibliographies for further reading. Cumulative author index, cumulative topic and nationality indexes refer to CLC volumes and other Gale series’.
Short Story Criticism
Call Number: PN 3373 .S386
Criticism excerpts, arranged in order published, on short story writers of all eras and nationalities. Each author entry includes biographical and critical overview of author’s work as a whole, criticisms of principal works and a selected bibliography of further reading. Cumulative author and nationality index to all Gale series’ in each volume.
Poetry Criticism
Call Number: PN 1010 .P6
Includes poets of various nationalities and eras. Each author entry includes a biography and a critical overview of the author’s work as a whole, criticisms of principal works and a selected bibliography of further reading. Cumulative author and nationality index to all Gale series’ in each volume.
Critical Survey of Poetry by Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman
Call Number: PN 1021 .C7 2011
Covers 845 poets from around the world, and throughout history, from antiquity to the 21st century. Volumes are: American poets, British, Irish, and Commonwealth poets, European poets, World poets, Topical essays, and includes Cumulative indexes.
Drama Criticism
Call Number: PN 1601 .D59
Critical response to dramatists of all time periods and nationalities. Biographies, overviews and general studies of the dramatist’s career. Criticism of individual plays in order of publication. Each volume has a cumulative author and nationality index to all Gale series.
The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance by Dennis Kennedy (Editor)
Features over 2400 entries covering the diverse world of live entertainment. Incorporates biographies of noted playwrights, actors, directors, as well as performance styles, organizations, and movements.

Circulating Books

You can check these out!

This is just a small selection of what is available in the library. These are mostly anthologies including many different authors, which wouldn't show up in a catalog search of a particular author's name. Just remember, books like this may have what you're looking for; you'll just need to consult the index to find out! Also remember to look on the shelf near these books to find even more (hopefully) relevant titles.

The Bedford Introduction to Literature by Michael Meyer
Call Number: PN 6014 .B396 1987
This introduction contains 45 stories, over 350 poems, and 17 plays. Complementing these are a number of features and innovations designed to enhance the appreciation and enjoyment of literature as well as to facilitate writing about it.
Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern by R. S. Crane
Call Number: PN 81 .C8
A selection of writings on critical theory and method by various authors.
The Critical Temper by Martin Tucker
Call Number: PR 83 .C764
Scholarly opinion on major American and English writers, poets, novelists and dramatists, covering Old English to the turn of the 20th century aims to reveal a writer in terms of his work, his life and his influence. 4 volume set.
Modern American Literature by Dorothy Nyren (Editor)
Call Number: PS 221 .N9 1964
A survey of significant criticism of 174 American authors, from the writings of American and British critics.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature by Margaret Drabble
Call Number: PR 19 .D73 1985
Contains nearly 3000 concise biographies of authors born up to 1939 and over 2000 plot summaries of novels and plays. Also outlines the themes of poems, and includes extensive coverage of movements in literature and literary criticism.
Cassell's History of English Literature by Peter Conrad
Call Number: PR 83 .C2 2003
Surveys 1200 years of English Literature. Emphasizes relations between writers; characterizes the literature as a whole, from Beowulf to Chaucer to Tennyson and Browning.
The Art of the Short Story by Dana Gioia; R. S. Gwynn
Call Number: PN 6120.2 .A73 2006
52 great authors, their best short fiction, and their insights on writing.
American Poets by Hyatt H. Waggoner
Call Number: PS 303 .W3 1984
One of the most comprehensive surveys of American Poetry. Surveying the breadth of American poetry and poetics, this book begins with the Puritans and Deists, and continues on through Longfellow, Lowell, Dickinson, Eliot, Cummings, Berryman and Dickey.
Modern American Poetry by Harold Bloom (Editor)
Call Number: PS 374 .M535 M63 2005
ISBN: 0791082377
Essays in this volume survey the major works of modern American poetry.