Biography Resource Center - Provides biographical information on nearly 220,000 people throughout history and across many disciplines and subject areas. It brings together narrative biographies, thumbnail sketches, Who's Who entries, magazine articles, and Web sites.
Contemporary Authors - Contains biographical and bibliographical information about 20th century authors.
Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research Co., 1981-. Call Number: PS221 .D5 (for yearbook).
Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) is a series of volumes providing in-depth biographical, bibliographical, and critical essays on writers. Each volume focuses on a particular genre, time period, or geographical region. Use the index from the most recent yearbook volume to find the needed writer. Use the listing of volumes in the series to find the name of the volume. Search this title in FRANCIS to find its location. Note: we do not have every volume in the series.
Haralson, Eric L. Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Twentieth Century. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001. Call Number: PS323.5 .E53 2001.
Provides biographical information on poets and analysis of the historical and biographical context of their landmark poems. Also includes entries on major topics in American poetry in the 20th century.
Haralson, Eric L., and John Hollander. Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Nineteenth Century. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998. Call Number: PS316 .E53 1998.
A reference companion to the anthology American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century , this resource provides biographies of the poets represented in the anthology as well as topical essays important to 19th-century American poetry.
Unger, Leonard, et al. American Writers. New York: Scribner, 1974. Call Number: PS129 .A55 1974.
A collection of literary biographies, each biography discusses the writer's work in relation to his/her life. The articles end with a selected bibliography of works by and about the writer.
Biography Index - Indexes biographical information found in magazines and books of individual and collective biography.
You can search FRANCIS to find book-length biographies and biographies within collective works. Try one of these strategies:
Because poems tend to be so short, they are generally not published by themselves. Thus, you cannot just do a title search in FRANCIS to find them. Here are some possible ways to find a needed poem:
1. Many times you can find a poem within an anthology. Granger's Index to Poetry in Anthologies (Sawyer Reference, call number: PN1022 .H39 1997) indexes poems in 379 of the most common anthologies.It has a first line, last line, and title index in the first volume, and the second volume has author and subject indexes keyed to the entries in the first volume.Once you have identified the anthology, you can do a Title Search to find the poetry collection.
2. Sometimes a list of poems appearing in anthologies and collected works is available in the contents notes in FRANCIS records. To search the contents notes, do a Keyword search. Try searching for the title of the poem, or distinctive words from the title.
Example: For Memory
To make the search more precise, add the author’s last name.
Example: For Memory and Rich
3. You may also find the needed poem in a collection of the poet’s works. To find collections of poems, do a Keyword search for [author’s last name] and (works or poems)
Example: Wilbur and (works or poems)
Note: these searches may also find sound or video recordings as well as the actual text.