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Literary reviews

Reviews of literary works are available online in many different shapes and forms, ranging from the mostly subjective and generally unsubstantiated opinions of readers on commercial sites such as Amazon.com and Bol.com to superficial reviews (such as on deRecensent.nl, where you will mainly find summaries), as well as interesting reviews (such as on Recensieweb and The Harvard Book Review, both of which are maintained by students).

Serious reviews of literary works written by experienced and professional critics mainly appear in newspapers and magazines. You can find links to the websites of newspapers from around the world on  OnlineNewspapers.com, for example. Also, recently published reviews can usually be accessed free of charge through the website of the newspaper, but free users cannot usually access the archive. The New York Times, for example, has an online archive of book reviews, which used to be free, but which now requires you to register first. This also applies to the review archives of The Times Literary Supplement, The TLS Historical Archive.

LexisNexis Academic (available via the menu option e-resources A-Z of the University Library) provides access to a large number of digitized international newspapers and magazines published in recent decades and can also be used as a source for reviews.

There are also unbound review archives, which can't usually be accessed free of charge. LiteRom is a good example, containing the full text of a large number of (mostly Dutch) book reviews and author interviews. This archive can be accessed via the University Library (e-Resources header).

There is also an increasing number of serious and comprehensive websites that are entirely dedicated to one (usually famous) author, which sometimes also include digitized reviews of the author's work. The Reviews section on the Louis Couperus Society website is one example. Another example is the website Mark Twain in His Times, which includes contemporary reviews for each book written by Mark Twain. These reviews can be searched from various angles by using a search engine. These websites can be a great source to find reviews of the works of specific authors.

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