American Literature Resource Guide: Handbooks, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias

Call number: REF PS153 .N5 Y36 1986

Call number: REF PS153.H56 K48 2003

Call number: REF PS153.A84 A82 1999

Call number: REF PS153.I52 W47 1999

Call number: REF PN41 .A184 2012
Informative, concise essays that discuss literary terms, critical theories and viewpoints. Entries arranged in alphabetical order.

Call number: REF PN81 .J554 2005
Scholarly, signed essays by literary critics and theorists on critics, schools, and movements from antiquity to the present.

REF PN81 .E435 2011 (3 volumes)
"The Johns Hopkins Guide provides greater detail and in-depth treatment of the major personalities and movements. In turn, this encyclopedia includes numerous entries on personalities and concepts that are not included in Johns Hopkins. In particular, the third volume, dedicated to cultural studies, sets this publication apart by covering figures such as Tariq Ali and Marshall Sahlins; describing the cultural history and influence of popular music and magazines, comics, and newspapers; and treating topics such as sports studies, which are either absent or mentioned only obliquely in Johns Hopkins." (CHOICE magazine review)

Call number: REF PN41 .H355 2009
The main section of this compact volume consists of concise entries, and in some cases, short articles for literary terms but you will also find here a chronological outline of English and American literary history and lists of winners of the Nobel Prize for literature and Pulitzer Prizes for fiction, poetry, and drama.

Call number: REF PN44.5 .H37 2000
A good companion to Harmon's Handbook to Literature and Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms.

Call number: REF PN41 .C83 1998
Providing a larger and more wide-ranging selection of literary terms than A Handbook to Literature, this dictionary also includes entries on literary genres, concepts, schools and movements, and literary theories.

REF PN1861 .M27 1984
The use of excerpts from reviews, articles, and books create overviews of the careers of major modern Western dramatists from the late-nineteenth through the late-twentieth centuries.

REF PN1625 .V5 1993
Contains entries on living English-language writers for the stage." Each entry includes bio-critical information and a signed essay.

REF PN1021 .W67
Bio-critical essays of primarily English and American poets plus 14 essays on themes such as "Harlem Renaissance Poetry" and "Performance Poetry" are published in this 3-volume set.

REF PN1625 .M3
Coverage includes plays of the ancient Greeks and Romans to modern English language dramas. Enlivened by black and white photographs of stage productions, articles for each author include a biography, criticism of the author's works, synopses of the plays, a bibliography, and a play list.

REF PS374 .S5 R43 2001
Includes biographical information, bibliographies and analyses of specific works for writers of short stories in English whose writing dates from the 1960s to the present.

REF PS21 .K8 1938
This is a one-volume biographical dictionary containing entries on almost 1,300 American authors.

REF PN1022 .H39 2007
Granger's indexes poems published in 400 anthologies. You can search for poems by author, title, first line, last line, and subject.

REF PN1655 .P53
A comprehensive index to plays written in English or translated into English which are published separately or in collections. Locate plays using the integrated author, title and subject index. The Sawyer Library has all volumes currently in print, i.e. 1953 through 2007.

REF PN3375 .Z935 1950-2004
Multi-volume set provides a combined author, title and subject index to thousands of English language stories and stories in English translation. The author entries give publication information for the collections, anthologies or periodicals where the short stories appear.

"Examines African American literature from its earliest origins, through the rise of antislavery literature in the decades leading into the Civil War, to the modern development of contemporary African American cultural media, literary aesthetics, and political ideologies." (Publisher's description)

"It features more than 270 entries on a wide range of topics, including writers, works, themes, genres, important historical events, special topics, concepts, and terms related to Asian American literature from the late 1890s to 2007. Written by North American experts of Asian descent, all essays conclude with a list of further information resources." (CHOICE magazine review.) Also see Asian American playwrights: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook, Asian-American poets: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook,Asian American novelists: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook.

"...this one-volume resource presents introductory essays on more than 100 Jewish American writers-concentrating on poets, novelists, and dramatists-from the early beginnings of Jewish American literature to the post-1980s resurgence of Jewish American women writers, the second and now third generation of post-Holocaust writers, postmodern writers, the so-called Jewish American Literary Revival, and the New York Resurgence." (Library Journal review)

Both this series and Contemporary Authors provide biographical and bibliographical sketches for a wide range of modern (20th & 21st centuries) authors from around the world. Recent volumes (2003 to the present) of both series can be found online in the Gale Virtual Reference Library database. Use Gale's Literary Index to easily identify the series and volumes that cover a particular author or a particular work.

It includes "only traditional symbols, those that have been used over many years by many authors," appearing in works from the Bible to twentieth century English, American, and European literature. Also available in print in the Sawyer Reference stacks.

This encyclopedia surveys the history of poetry of over 100 nations from ancient to modern times. Also available in print (REF PN1021 .N39 1993).