Subject Guide » English Language and Literature
Biographical Sources
9 resources available.
 - Restricted to WMU users  - Open Access
For a book-length biography use the subject approach (look under the name of the author - last name first) or the keyword approach in WestCat to see if the Libraries own the book.
The following resources are reference sources usually providing briefer biographical information about literary authors. Most of the authors discussed are British or American but some
writers in the English language are from other countries such as Canada, Ireland, Australia, and South Africa.
Dictionary of Literary Biography
PS221.D5 (Ref) 1978-present
Now available online, the print consists of hundreds of volumes, each covering a distinct literary period, genre, or theme, with extensive essays, frequently illustrated with images of the author and his/her works, which link biography with interpretations of the literary work. Included are literary authors, journalists, historians, screenwriters, scholars, critics, and publishers. Though international is scope, emphasis is on those authors writing in English. Some authors appear in more than one volume. Use the online index or the index in the latest published volume to find all the previous volumes.
Literature Resource Center Full-text biographies, critical essays and reviews, poems, short stories and plays of more than 130,000 international authors. This database contains the full content of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors, and selections from Children's Literature Review, Drama Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism and 11 other literary criticism series.
Contemporary Authors Z 1224 .c6 (Ref)
Part of the Literature Resource center, this directory provides brief biographical information about more than 120,000 authors from the US and elsewhere. Includes writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, journalism, and many other fields.
Biographies Plus Illustrated Contains more than 145,000 biographies and more than 36,000 photographs. Includes full text articles from Current Biography and other biographical sources. Many of the biographies have links to other sources and citations to articles.
American National Biography Authoritative biographical essays on more than 17,400 deceased Americans from all eras and walks of life published by Oxford University Press. Some of these entries are for literary figures.
Biography and Genealogy Master Index Indexes numerous printed reference sources that include usually short biograhical information on multiple persons. Covers living and deceased people all over the world in all occupations.
Biography Index Z 5301 .B5 (Ref)
Indexes biographical information from thousands of periodicals and books. Coverage from 1984. Updated weekly.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography An illustrated collection of 50,000 specially written biographies of the men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's past, from the fourth century BC to the year 2000. This database excludes living people but includes the infamous and the legendary (Richard III and Robin Hood) as well as famous and documented people (Churchill and Shakespeare). Click on "Subscribers enter here."
Print: DA 28 .D47 (Ref)
Biographical Information GuideAn in-depth guide to finding biographical information at WMU libraries with an extensive list of print and online sources.
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Last updated: March 2008
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