LibAnswers

There are actually a couple of places you can go to get ideas on what author to choose:

In Literature Online (LION):

• KnowledgeNotes Student Guides
  View a list of available authors/stories and just click on the ones that sound intersecting to you. You'll get an overview of author, plot, style, themes, etc.
  
• Author Search
  Select the Author link under Search on the main page.  You may not know what author, but frequently students know some preferences that that have. Using LION's author search, you can select by gender, nationality, ethnicity, literary movement, literary period or living in a date range. You can choose as many or as few criteria as you like. For instance, if you chose female authors, American, from the American romantic period 1830-1865 and click on search, you would retrieve a list of 82 authors that match the criteria. Clicking on any will take you to more info about that author. Sometimes it may be brief but may include links to all of the following: criticism, bibliography, biography, articles on author and relevant web links.
  

Web sites:

• Emory Women Writers Resource Project
  The Emory Women Writers Resource Project is a collection of edited and unedited texts by women writing in English from the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century. Texts can be sorted by ethnicity, date, genre or nationality.
• Luminarium
  Multi-award winning Luminarium web site. This portion includes quotes, life and works such authors as John Donne, Sir Thomas Malory, William Shakespeare, as well as essays and articles and additional resources. 16th Century Renaissance English Literature (1485-1603), Anthology of Middle English Literature: (1350-1485), English Literature: Early 17th Century (1603-1660) and more. 
• PAL: Table of Contents
  From Paul P. Reuben, Ph.D., Professor of English, California State University Stanislaus. This online text book covers American Literature from Early American Literature to Contemporary. It gives background information on each period and author, including links to full text versions of the author's work where available.
• USA Literature in Brief
  From the US Information Agency (USINFO). This resource is a virtual textbook, with background information on each era of American literature, prominent authors of the era, and some full text works by those authors. Special interest: Dreams of Edgar Allen Poe, USA Literature in Brief, Outline of American Literature, Writers on America.
• The Victorian Web: An Overview
  From George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University. Access full text literatures, historical, and cultural information and full text books on the period. Special interest: Authors, Victorian Web Books, and Victorianism.