Short Story Research Guide   Tags: authors, english_literature, fiction, literary_research, literature, research_guide, short_stories  

Specialized, subject encyclopedias can help a researcher save a lot of time.  Before diving into dense books or peer-reviewed journals, introductory articles found in reference material provide an overviewe of a topic and can help a researcher get a grounding and context to a research topic.  Browsing entries in these encyclopedic works can help refine a search.

Search through reference works from Alkek Library:

Subject dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks typically provide background essays, definitions, broad overviews of various topics, or other pertinent facts. They also provide a quick overview of authors and their works.

Reference Material

Reference Material provides resources that contain brief critical essays about authors and their works. These criticism sets are not considered to be comprehensive.

Thus, if a short story or an author is not included in one of the resources listed below, be prepared to repeat your search in another appropriate set.

Short Story Criticism (SSC) Online

Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC) Online | Covers writers who are still living or who died after 1959.

Critical Survey of Short Fiction 

Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism (NCLC) Online | Covers writers who died between 1800 and 1900.

Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (TCLC) Online | Covers writers who lived between 1900 and 1960.

Black Literature Criticism (BLC)

Biography

Contemporary Authors Online

Contemporary Novelists 

Dictionary of Literary Biographyn (DLB) Online

Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century 

American Women Writers 

Modern Black Writers 

Modern American Women Writers 

Contemporary Chicano Fiction 

Modern Latin American Writers 

Hispanic Writers 

Spanish American Authors, The 20th Century 

Literature Dictionaries

A variety of literary dictionaries or handbooks are available to describe Terms, genres, or literature concepts. Examples include:

Dictionary of Literary Terms 

Glossary of Literary Terms 

Handbook to Literature 

Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism & Theory 

Finding Short Stories

If you are unable to locate a copy of the short story in our Library collection, use a specialty index to short stories. These do not refer to criticism, instead they indicate where (in what book or periodical) the short story itself is published.

Short Story Index Online

Chicorel Index to Short Stories in Anthologies & Collections 

Short Story Periodicals