I have avoided those pages which deal with only one work, or only one facet of the author's life or work. For example, many pages are simply e-texts or short biographies. I felt that these pages could be found easily with a search engine. What I have tried to do is sort through the various pages to find those which are most comprehensive. I looked for biographical information, bibliographies of critical works, links to on-line criticism, links to other sites, and information about the historical and cultural context in which the works were produced. Hopefully, these sites will be gateways through which the student can access yet more information.
The strictness of my criteria mean that many authors are not represented at all, even though good sites exist on one work. This is regrettable, but there simply isn't room for every good webpage on a single work, because there are quite a few of them out there. Also, very few of the authors I chose wrote anything past the secnnd half of this century. I have no prejudice against modern or postmodern literature, but I chose to concentrate on previous periods because I am not familiar with many modern writers and felt I was unqualified to judge webpages on them.
It was surprisingly difficult to find good comprehensive websites on many authors. For example, I could find very little about any of the Restoration writers - Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Dryden and their contemporaries - which is why that period is not represented. Most of my search was done through Yahoo! and links from personal webpages, so it is certainly possible that I missed a page that had the information I wanted. Basically, the fact that an author is not represented on this page does not mean that nothing useful exists; it only means that I could not find a page that met my particular criteria.