English Literature

Books, and more specifically, reference books, will give you background information on your topic. They are also useful as a shortcut to other sources (both books and journal articles),  as they may have "further readings" on the topic.

One online tool to try is Credo Reference , which can be found on this list of electronic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. A quick-search box for Credo is also displayed below.

When you enter a search term(s) in Credo (or one of the other encyclopedia packages), Credo will search its collection of reference books for your term.

Please note that while Credo might be the search tool - the results which come up will be from individual reference works within the Credo collection. In the example below, you would actually be reading the Robertson Davies entry within the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English - which is important to know if you need to cite this entry (Credo does have a "cite" button for each entry).

Using the Advanced Search in OMNI, choose SUBJECT from the drop-down menu, and then enter your AUTHOR.