the Internet Public Library
the Internet Public LibraryFinding biographical information on authors can be either very easy or frustratingly difficult. While much is written about the very famous, locating a biography on a less famous author can be challenging. Finding anything on the obscure or new writer can be as difficult as solving a murder mystery.
Unless you absolutely know otherwise, the best initial strategy to take is to assume your author is famous enough to be found without too much difficulty. The Contemporary Authors series is an excellent place to start. As its name implies, this massive set of books mainly covers authors who wrote in the twentieth-century.
The Dictionary of Literary Biography includes authors from many time periods. It covers the literatures of a wide selection of nations and regions.
For children's authors, Something About the Author provides nice biographies and treatment of their works. Check at your local library to see if they own any of these sets. They are likely to be located in the reference section of the library.
Your library may own other books or materials on author biography. Check with library staff for assistance. If your library uses the Dewey Decimal Classification, you can look for these books and others like them at the following numbers:
928 Persons in literature
920 General biography(often author biographies can be found in collections that cover persons from all occupations)
If you are having trouble finding a print source that has information on your author, you may want to do a search on Gale's Literary Index. This free index lets you search it by author or by title. Using this index can save you from having to look through tons of reference books at your library, since you'll know exactly what books (and what page numbers) will be helpful to you.
More and more author biographies are appearing on the Internet. Most of the information is not compiled by a single person or organization. Instead each author's page tends to be written by someone different, so the information available can vary tremendously from author to author. Coverage is still fairly erratic. Some but certainly not all "famous" authors can be found. The Internet holds great potential as a resource on very new authors as both publishers and authors begin to use this medium to promote books by beginning authors.
xrefer. This unique reference search engine allows the user to search the full text of several reference books, including a number of biographical dictionaries and literary encyclopedias. Not every author will be listed, and some of the biographies are brief, though.
Authors Calendar - Index to Authors: an extensive collection of biographies compiled by a public library in Finland. In English.
Google's Directory also links to a large number of authors. These are organized by genre, or type of writing. Within a number of the categories, author web sites are indexed by the first letter of their last name.
Nobel Prize Internet Archive: If you just want to check out who won the Nobel Prize in Literature and need nothing more than birth and death dates plus a list of the author's works, then this site is for you.
Don't forget that Yahoo, and our own Internet Public Library all point to additional resources on specialized genres and national literatures. Of special interest are the Online Literary Criticism, and Native American Authors collections.
So you've checked all the resources listed above and still have nothing. What next? The first thing to do is to consider all the clues you currently have available to you. The best place to get clues is from the book itself. Often the jacket, the beginning pages, or the ending pages of the book will have a brief biography of the author. It may be no more than one line, but it could contain priceless information. The initial publication date or copyright date can also help you to find out how long ago the book was written and thus place your author in time.
The best clue to find is a place of birth or a place where the author currently resides. If the town mentioned is not too large, chances are good that the local library, museum, or historical society (if the author lived long ago) would have some information on the author. To find these organizations, check in a yellow pages guide like BigBook, which allows searching by yellow-page category.
The local newspaper where the author currently lives or was born may also have articles or reviews of the book. If the book was recently released, you may want to check on the Internet to see if the town's newspaper might be available online. If not, check with your local library to see how you can access these local newspapers.
Magazines are also a good place to look. They may include reviews or interviews with the author. To find out if there is an article in a magazine, you'll need to search a periodical index first. Your local library will have access to these, either in paper, CD-ROM, or online. Ingenta is an online periodical index that you can search for free on the Internet. Just search on the author's name or the title of the book. Amazon.com also has a section of author interviews.
You may decide you want to write to the author. The books listed in the first part of this pathfinder include addresses where the author can be reached. Many other reference books also include this information. There are also online sources. The Author Guru Is In provides both email and postal addresses for authors. Addresses for Kid's Authors are also included.
This pathfinder created by Christine Johnson
You may also wish to see IPL Frequently Asked Reference Questions
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