Literary Criticism Resources

Literary Criticism
Originally uploaded by barbfecteau.

BHS Library has an excellent collection of casebooks as well as many volumes of Contemporary Literary Criticism. But the web offers access to literary criticism, particularly of newer writers, that we just can't offer in print. But web-criticism is a dicey business, particularly if you are new to the game. There are a lot of great online book review sources you just need to learn which ones are reliable.

For "the classics" Rutgers Literary Resources on the Net is an excellent resource. "This set of pages is a collection of links to sites on the Internet dealing especially with English and American literature, excluding most single electronic texts, and is limited to collections of information useful to academics. I've excluded most poetry journals, for instance," according to site creator Jack Lynch, PhD.

If you are looking for reviews of more current or popular, but still literary writers, ReviewsOfBooks is wonderful. It is a clearinghouse for full length newspaper and magazine reviews.

Amazon will often reprint reviews from reputable sources like Library Journal or Publishers Weekly which can be convenient for less literary books. Just remember that, while they might help you decidwhetherer or not to buy a particular book, the customer reviews are not citeable because they are not edited the way that the magazine and newspaper reviews are.

Allreaders seemed like a good idea at the time, but it is useless for research. Everyone is referred to as a "resident scholar". Which becomes increasingly more ironic the more of these reviews you read.