Background Information
Encyclopedia of Romanticism: Culture in Britain 1780s-1830s Seminar Room 4B12 DA529.E53 1992
Encyclopedia of the Novel Ref. PN41.E53 1998
A Companion to Romanticism Ref. PR457.C58 1998
Handbook to English Romanticism PR457.H26 1992
English Literature, 1789-1815 (Oxford History of English Literature, vol. 9) PR447.R4 1963
English Literature, 1815-1832 (Oxford History of English Literature, vol. 10) PR457.J24
The English Novel 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles Ref. PR851.E52 2000
The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 Z1003.A57
Literature of the Romantic Period: A Bibliographical Guide Ref. Z2013.L58 1998

Biographical Sources

Basic biographical information can be found in the following sources.  For more detailed biographies, use the MERLIN catalog to do a subject search on your person's name, putting last name first.  Scroll down the resulting list of subject headings to find biographies.

LION: Literature Online  
Click on "Find Authors" and type in your author's name, last name first. 

Dictionary of Literary Biography Ref. Alcove 9. 
Use the Literary Index or check the index in the last volume of this series to see which volume contains information on your author. The DLB also gives nice lists of the authors' works.

Criticism

Criticism may be published in books or as articles in journals.

Use the MERLIN and MOBIUS catalogs to locate books of criticism about an author or topic. 
Do a subject search on the author’s name and scroll to an appropriate subheading. 
For example: Austen, Jane--Criticism and Interpretation.
Do a table of contents search to locate relevant chapters in books with a broader focus.
Note that tables of contents are not included in the catalog records for all books. Another way to find essays in collections is to use The Essay and General Literature Index (Ref. Alcove 9 AI3.E752 )
The keyword search searches for words in author, title, subject headings, tables of contents and notes all at once.  You can use various search options to make your search more precise and to sort the results in various ways.
You may expand your search to include all MOBIUS libraries. Materials requested through MOBIUS are usually delivered in about 48 hours.
If you haven't found enough, use WorldCat to search libraries throughout North America. You may request books from WorldCat by clicking on the button at the top left of each record.

Finding criticism in journal articles is usually a two step process. 
1) Use the following databases and indexes to see what articles have been published and where.  If you're looking for articles from a specific time period, be sure to use an index or database that covers publications from that time. 
2) If the full text of the article is not provided in the database, use the MERLIN catalog to see if we have the journal or newspaper and where we keep it. You may also check Find it @ MU to see if the journal's available electronically. 
If a journal isn't available locally, use the journal request form to tell us what you need. We'll order a photocopy from another source. This is a free service with delivery usually within one to two weeks. Feel free to ask a librarian for help.

 The major literary databases are: 
MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures
1963-present online, 1921-1962 in print in Ref. Alcove 9.
ABELL: Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature
1920-1999 online.

Although the MLA  and ABELL specialize in literature, both suffer from a delay in publishing.  
Supplement these specialized indexes with searches in less specialized but more current databases:
Expanded Academic Index

Article1st
Web of Science
Expanded Academic and Periodical Abstracts both contain the full-text of selected journals. 
 

Print bibliographies provide an overview of scholarly work.
Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 3rd ed. Ref. Alcove 9 PR83.N45 1999
New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature Ref. Alcove 9 Z2011.N45
Year's Work in English Studies Seminar Room 202J PE58.E6

A Guide to Serial Bibliographies for Modern Literature (Ref. PN695.W67 1995) lists many additional specialized bibliographies.

To locate older critical materials, use the following databases and reference tools.
19th Century Masterfile (1802-1906)
The American Periodicals Series Online (1740-1900)
The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900 (Ref. computers)
The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature (1890-) (Ref. Index Table 12)
International Index to Periodicals (1907-1965) (Ref. Alcove 2 AI3.R49)
Literary Index to American Magazines 1850-1900 Ref. PS 214.W38 1996
Literary Index to American Magazines, 1815-1865 Ref. Z6513.W44
Literary Reviews in British Periodicals, 1789-1797 Ref. Z2013.W36 1979
Literary Reviews in British Periodicals, 1798-1820 Ref. Z2013.W36

The Literary Index indexes the many Gale literature criticism sets. These books excerpt literary criticism from all periods on individual authors.
Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (Ref. PN761.N5)
Literature Criticism, from 1400-1800 (Ref. PN80.L57) 
Poetry Criticism (Ref. Alcove 9 PN1010 .P499)
Short Story Criticism (Ref. Alcove 9 PN3373 .S386)

Alternative and minority publications are not always well represented in the major databases. Use these indexes to hear these voices.
Alt-Press Watch
Alternative Press Index
Ethnic News Watch
GenderWatch
Index to Black Periodicals (Ref. AI3 .I552 -- Earlier volumes, including title changes, are in the circulating stacks.)
Women Studies Abstracts (Ref. Alcove 2 Z7962 .W65)

Electronic Literary Texts 

LION: Literature Online provides online texts of many English and American literary works with a search mechanism to facilitate text analysis.
From the main LION menu, choose Search Texts to search for words and phrases within a specific work or group of works. The advanced search feature allows you to define a corpus by period, literary movement, author's gender or ethnicity, and other criteria.

Additional collections:
The Internet Public Library Online Text Page

Project Gutenberg

Collections of Internet Resources

Literary Resources on the Net

Voice of the Shuttle

LION: Literature Online contains a database of literary web sites. From the main LION menu, choose Search Criticism and Reference, then WWW.

The Internet Public Library

Guides to Research

James L. Harner. Literary Research Guide: An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies (Ref. Alcove 9, PR83.H34 2000)

Michael J. Marcuse. A Reference Guide for English Studies. (Ref. Alcove 9, PR56.M37 1990)

James K. Bracken. Reference Works in British and American Literature (Ref. Alcove 9, Z2011.B74 1998)

Citation Guides
MLA style manuals are available on Index Table 11 in Ellis' Reference area in 1 South.
If you use articles you obtained in full-text version directly from a library database, the citation protocol will be different than if you had found the article in paper copy in the library.