If you are looking for critical articles on Victorian literature, I always suggest the MLA database through the library. You can access it here.
Other, more specific online databases may be useful as well. Some of them are:
Digital Victorian Archives
While a google search is often helpful, I have some very concrete suggestions for outside research. First, there are a number of excellent digital humanities projects on the nineteenth century. Look at the following archives:
- Victorian Web: Use the search box (lower right) to help you narrow your areas. All of the work on The Victorian Web is written by scholars—so don’t be put off by the design.
- British Library: The new “Discovering Literature” collection is a wonderful resource. If you click on “Romantics and Victorians” you will be able to scroll through all of the related articles.
- BRANCH (Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History): This is a huge site with lots of historical texts.
Dickinson Library Resources
These are all available through the library’s website under “Do Research” then by “research guides by subject,” and “English.” These are (with the exception of the last one) large, encyclopedia-like resources for background information.
- The Oxford Encyclopedia of British literature
- Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Other lists of online projects
- Victorian Resources Online is an annotated list of resources divided by topic.
- Victoria Research Web– Other Victorian Resources. This offers a list of many of the other online digital Victorian projects.
- Literary Resources on the Net (Victorian) Another annotated list of credible, online resources.
Victorian-studies Journals
Finally, Victoria Research Web has a list of Victorian-studies related journals. I suggest that, if you are looking for articles, you will want to narrow your sources to mostly those that appear on this list.