First published in 1870, Brewer's is a good handbook for identifying characters, themes, and expressions throughout literature.  It has grown steadily with each new edition, but this online format is particularly convenient.

A full-text searchable database of articles on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also treats related persons and fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped literary theory and criticism. Each entry includes a selective primary and secondary bibliography.

Provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline. Covers more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,500 of the most-studied authors.

Annual publication of essays on the latest critical work done in English and American literature.  Use the Find command to locate references to the author and title you are researching.  The essay writers frequently give very frank evaluations of their colleagues' work:

In ‘The Gibberish Threat: Unrestrained Narrative in Heart of Darkness’ (Conradiana 34:iii[2002] 195–210), Lee Rumbarger argues that language in the novella is continually threatened with a descent into meaninglessness, disconnection, and silence. In a work obsessed with the telling of stories, words offer only lies and imprecision. The definitive relationship between world and word is, for Rumbarger, represented by the elusiveness of Kurtz's voice and ultimately by his silence. Diana Arbin Ben-Merre's ‘Conrad's Marlow and Britain's Franklin: Redoubling the Narrative in Heart of Darkness’ (Conradiana 34:iii[2002] 211–26) engages with the figure of Sir John Franklin, a celebrated mid-nineteenth-century arctic explorer who met his end on expedition amidst stories of cannibalism. Ben-Merre's article argues that the popular horror of anthropophagy by white men becomes ironically inverted in Heart of Darkness into black cannibalism in Africa. The final article in this year's volume is Mary Morzinski's ‘Heart of Darkness and Plato's Myth of the Cave’ (Conradiana 34:iii[2002] 227–34) which draws comparisons between Conrad's fiction and The Republic. The concept is intriguing but Morzinski's exposition is too underdeveloped to persuade completely.
     Year's Work in English Studies 83, 1 (2004).

This is another annual survey of scholarship that highlights important critical work written about American authors.  Search your author's name in the Keyword box.

Provides indexing, abstracts, and full text of scholarly overview articles in the Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics, The Cambridge Companions to Philosophy, Religion and Culture, and Shakespeare Survey.  These analyses of literature and related works are written by major scholars for student use.  These are a great place to start your reading.

Provides full-text and page images from many of the top journals in academic fields including literary studies. Coverage is from the inception of the journal through three to five years ago.

Provides citations to journal articles, books, working papers, conference proceedings, bibliographies, and other materials. Areas covered include literature, language, linguistics, film, theatre and folklore. Covers 1926-present.

Provides access to journals published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Disciplines covered include the humanities with literary criticism well represented.

Provides citations and frequently full-text magazine and journal articles in a wide variety of disciplines, both scholarly and popular in scope. Covers 1971-present.