Reviews of books using current and historic sources, online and in print.
The State Library subscribes to a large number of online databases which provide full journal and newspaper articles or citations to the articles. These are available within the Library and outside the Library to registered Victorian users.
The databases listed below index book reviews from a range of publications, mostly journals. Many entries are full-text: that is, the full article is provided. Other entries give excerpts from the article, or the citation details only, such as the title of the publication and article, author, date and page numbers. You can search by the author's name or by the title of the book.
If the full text is not given, search the library catalogue for a print edition of the journal, searching by journal title.
The Gale company provides excellent literary databases which include reviews from previous centuries to the present on a vast range of authors. The library holds print versions of these volumes, from the first volumes to the latest. The print titles are Nineteenth-century Literature Criticism, Twentieth-century Literary Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism
Each printed volume has an index which indicates which volumes have information on each author. The online versions cover the same material, taken from the print editions back to around 1995. That is, the reviews were written from that date onwards, but do cover authors from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as contemporary authors.
These databases now appear online, letting you search different indexes simultaneously, which saves a lot of time. These reviews date from recent years, so do not include all the reviews held in the early print editions.
Literature Criticism Online and Something about the Author online
Includes online versions of Dictionary of literary biography complete, Literature criticism, and Something about the author.
This site includes databases Children's literature review; Classical & medieval literature criticism; Contemporary literary criticism; Drama criticism; Literature criticism from 1400 to 1800; Nineteenth-century literature criticism; Poetry criticism; Shakespearean criticism and Twentieth-century literary criticism.
Here you will find up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on more than 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world, including Contemporary Authors and the Scribner Writers Series and Twayne's World, U.S., and English Authors Series.
Through the 'Articles' tab from above the search box in our catalogue you can do a quick search for full text and indexed journal articles. Click the image below for an example search.
The databases here are specifically for book reviews or literary articles.
MLA International Bibliography
These databases cover a vast range of subjects but include many reviews. because these databases are so large and varied, searches need to be more specific. Broader searches may return some irrelevant items.
Masterfile Premier and Academic Search Premier
Australia and New Zealand Newsstand
For information on children's and young adult books, see our separate Children's literature guide.
There is a lot of information on books, including reviews and recommendations, available without restriction, on the Internet.
Sites such as Amazon.com provide user comments and reviews on a vast range of books.
You can also use a search engine to try and find reviews.
Author's personal sites often include reviews. To locate them do a search under an author's name. The web address of the author's site will usually include their name.
In general the best quality and most impartial reviews will be found via online subscription databases or published journals as per box opposite or tabs above.
