The Twayne Authors Series is the premier literary reference resource series comprising Twayne's U.S. Authors, Twayne's English Authors, and Twayne's World Authors. Each of these individual titles provides literary criticism for approximately 200 authors, bringing the total number of authors covered in the Series to nearly 600. Each author selected for coverage is tied to the high school and college curriculum.

The Twayne Authors Series offers criticism by scholars on hundreds of years of literature--from Aristophanes to Bharati Mukherjee. It provides critical introductions to the lives and works of writers, to the history and influence of literary movements, or the development of literary genres. Primarily devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of authors's works, these studies take account of major literary trends and important contributions to scholarship and criticism, and provide new critical insights and original points of view.

The Twayne Authors Series is structured in a consistent format: All titles feature comment elements, such as a chronology, a biography, a comprehensive critical analysis, and an annotated bibliography. The discussions of each author in the series are between 175-200 printed pages.

Several search paths have been designed to facilitate the literary research process. The following search paths offer the user various approaches to discovering information about authors and their works:

Authors A-Z. Enables the user to quickly select an author name or topic from a comprehensive list to find critical discussion, chronologies, bibliographies, and other information on an author’s works and literary career.

In Depth Search. Enables the user to design a specific search using such criteria as Author Name, Genre, Time Period, Gender, Nationality (for Twayne's World Authors), and Full Text.

Research Ideas. View curriculum related topics then select from a variety of authors writing within those topics as research starting points.

If you are a current student or employee of Niagara University, you can search the Twayne Authors Series from off campus by obtaining a user id and password from a reference librarian.