About this collection
Alabama Authors is the primary place to verify Alabamiana. The charge of the Bibliographic Committee is to identify and verify biographical and bibliographical information related to literary, historical, and cultural works produced by Alabama authors.
Alabama authors are defined as those who were 1) born in Alabama, or 2) spent at least 5 years in Alabama. The parameters of “literary, historical, and cultural” are sometimes fuzzy, and it may be easier to detemine what is NOT eligible than to say what is. Alabama Authors does not include (usually) textbooks, scientific treatises, religious tracts, theses, or dissertations. It does get fuzzy, though, if a work of non-fiction is adopted as a textbook. Family histories, many privately published, are hard to document, but are more often included than excluded. We make a special effort to include obscure authors or those who have written only a small number of books, since they may be omitted from other such directories.