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Last updated: May 05, 2024

Welcome to our literary criticism section, where we gather interviews with the finest scholars of English literature and letters, from the eminent Yale Professor Harold Bloom to the Pulitzer prize-winning author of the defining critical text  Renaissance Self-Fashioning ,  Stephen Greenblatt .

If you're new to an era and want a big-picture historical view, check out our interviews on Adam and Eve , the Victorian essay , Victorian literature , and modernism , to name a few. After a specific author? Look no further—we have interviews with the foremost experts on Virginia Woolf , Oscar Wilde , D H Lawrence and Jane Austen .

Whether it's a fresh look at a literary genre you already know well or a granular view of an author completely new to you, Five Books has expert recommendations to help you read more, and read smarter.

The best books on Shakespeare’s Reception , recommended by Emma Smith

Titus andronicus (arden shakespeare) by jonathan bate & william shakespeare, reinventing shakespeare: a cultural history, from the restoration to the present by gary taylor, passing strange: shakespeare, race, and contemporary america by ayanna thompson, shakespeare on film by judith buchanan, the palgrave encyclopedia of global shakespeare by alexa alice joubin (editor).

In the years after William Shakespeare died, his plays took on a life of their own. They meant different things to different people at different times as they spread around the world, turning a glover's son from a one-horse town in central England into one of the best-known authors of all time. Emma Smith , Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford, recommends books to better understand 'Shakespeare reception'—the study of Shakespeare since his death.

In the years after William Shakespeare died, his plays took on a life of their own. They meant different things to different people at different times as they spread around the world, turning a glover’s son from a one-horse town in central England into one of the best-known authors of all time. Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford, recommends books to better understand ‘Shakespeare reception’—the study of Shakespeare since his death.

The Best Postcolonial Literature , recommended by Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb

Notebook of a return to the native land by aimé césaire, a dying colonialism by frantz fanon, i, tituba, black witch of salem by maryse condé, maps: a novel by nuruddin farah, can the subaltern speak: reflections on the history of an idea ed. rosalind morris, original essay by gayatri chakravorty spivak.

Postcolonial literature brings together writings from formerly colonised territories, allowing commonalities across disparate cultures to be identified and examined. Here, the University of Toronto academic Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb recommends five key works that explore philosophical and political questions through allegory, personal reflection and powerful polemic.

The best books on Deconstruction , recommended by Peter Salmon

Of grammatology by jacques derrida & translated by gayatri chakravorty spivak, the dialogic imagination: four essays by mikhail bakhtin & translated by michael holquist and caryl emerson, jacques derrida circumfession by geoffrey bennington & jacques derrida, the newly born woman by catherine clément, hélène cixous & translated by betsy wing, "53 days" by georges perec, translated by david bellos.

For the general reader deconstruction has a bad reputation. It is seen as over-complicating, arcane and wilfully obscure—but as its founding genius Jacques Derrida pointed out, “If things were simple, word would have gotten around.” Here Peter Salmon , author of an excellent new biography of Derrida, chooses five books to get you started on the text and everything inside it.

For the general reader deconstruction has a bad reputation. It is seen as over-complicating, arcane and wilfully obscure—but as its founding genius Jacques Derrida pointed out, “If things were simple, word would have gotten around.” Here Peter Salmon, author of an excellent new biography of Derrida, chooses five books to get you started on the text and everything inside it.

Harold Bloom recommends the best of Literary Criticism

The greeks and the irrational by e r dodds, european literature and the latin middle ages by ernst robert curtius, the mirror and the lamp by mh abrams, the rhetoric of religion by kenneth burke, colors of the mind by angus fletcher.

The distinguished literary critic Harold Bloom discusses the five works of literary scholarship that have most influenced him.

The best books on Modernism , recommended by Alexandra Harris

Early modernism by christopher butler, vision and design by roger fry, british writers of the thirties by valentine cunningham, jacob's room by virginia woolf, the good soldier by ford madox ford.

Modernism is about form more than content, says literary scholar and critic Alexandra Harris , author of Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper. She tells us about the history of the modernist movement, and picks five books that exemplify or explain it.

Modernism is about form more than content, says literary scholar and critic Alexandra Harris, author of Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper. She tells us about the history of the modernist movement, and picks five books that exemplify or explain it.

David Russell on The Victorian Essay

Selected prose by charles lamb, culture and anarchy and other writings by matthew arnold, selected essays, poems, and other writings by george eliot, studies in the history of the renaissance by walter pater, the hands of the living god: an account of a psychoanalytic treatment by marion milner.

With the advent of the Victorian age, polite maxims of eighteenth-century essays in the  Spectator  were replaced by a new generation of writers who thought deeply—and playfully—about social relationships, moral responsibility, education and culture. Here, Oxford literary critic  David Russell explores the distinct qualities that define the Victorian essay and recommends five of its greatest practitioners.

With the advent of the Victorian age, polite maxims of eighteenth-century essays in the  Spectator  were replaced by a new generation of writers who thought deeply—and playfully—about social relationships, moral responsibility, education and culture. Here, Oxford literary critic David Russell explores the distinct qualities that define the Victorian essay and recommends five of its greatest practitioners.

The best books on Sex in Victorian Literature , recommended by Claire Jarvis

Wuthering heights by emily brontë, aurora floyd by mary elizabeth braddon, dracula by bram stoker, poems and ballads by algernon charles swinburne, my secret life by walter.

We often assume the Victorians had puritanical attitudes to sex, but this was far from the reality. From familiar classics to neglected gems, Claire Jarvis —Stanford academic and author of  Exquisite Masochism: Sex, Marriage and the Novel Form— selects the best books on sex in Victorian literature.

We often assume the Victorians had puritanical attitudes to sex, but this was far from the reality. From familiar classics to neglected gems, Claire Jarvis—Stanford academic and author of  Exquisite Masochism: Sex, Marriage and the Novel Form— selects the best books on sex in Victorian literature.

The best books on Oscar Wilde , recommended by Sos Eltis

The soul of man under socialism by oscar wilde, the importance of being earnest and other plays by oscar wilde, the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde, the complete short stories by oscar wilde, de profundis by oscar wilde.

Oscar Wilde cultivated an image of himself as an idle genius, dashing off masterpieces with a lazy brilliance. But below the glittering linguistic surface of his works, suggests Sos Eltis , lies an anarchic politics and a phenomenal analysis of power.

Oscar Wilde cultivated an image of himself as an idle genius, dashing off masterpieces with a lazy brilliance. But below the glittering linguistic surface of his works, suggests Sos Eltis, lies an anarchic politics and a phenomenal analysis of power.

The best books on Adam and Eve , recommended by Stephen Greenblatt

The five books of moses: a translation with commentary by robert alter, on genesis by augustine, paradise lost by john milton, the bible according to mark twain by mark twain, the symbolism of evil by paul ricoeur.

Who were Adam and Eve, really? Over many centuries, the origin story has undergone countless transformations. The Pulitzer Prize-winner and Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt chooses five books that explore the history of Adam and Eve, and tells us why the world isn't ready to leave the narrative of Eden behind

Who were Adam and Eve, really? Over many centuries, the origin story has undergone countless transformations. The Pulitzer Prize-winner and Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt chooses five books that explore the history of Adam and Eve, and tells us why the world isn’t ready to leave the narrative of Eden behind

The best books on D H Lawrence , recommended by Catherine Brown

Twilight in italy by d. h. lawrence, women in love by d. h. lawrence, mr noon by d. h. lawrence, reflections on the death of a porcupine by d. h. lawrence, birds, beasts and flowers by d. h. lawrence.

Although less flamboyantly experimental than his contemporaries Joyce and Woolf , D H Lawrence was a modernist, says literary scholar Catherine Brown . Here, she selects five books that make the case for this most contradictory, and often divisive, of writers—a man whose fictions and ‘philosophicalish’ works were by turns brilliant and bewildering, sublime and ridiculous

Although less flamboyantly experimental than his contemporaries Joyce and Woolf , D H Lawrence was a modernist, says literary scholar Catherine Brown. Here, she selects five books that make the case for this most contradictory, and often divisive, of writers—a man whose fictions and ‘philosophicalish’ works were by turns brilliant and bewildering, sublime and ridiculous

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

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The Gap at the End of the World

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What Is the Point of Such Inhumane Programs? On Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska’s “Microhistories of Memory”

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Another World, Another Life: On Anaïs Ngbanzo’s “Who Are You Dorothy Dean?”

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literary criticism , the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues. It applies, as a term, to any argumentation about literature , whether or not specific works are analyzed. Plato ’s cautions against the risky consequences of poetic inspiration in general in his Republic are thus often taken as the earliest important example of literary criticism .

More strictly construed, the term covers only what has been called “practical criticism,” the interpretation of meaning and the judgment of quality. Criticism in this narrow sense can be distinguished not only from aesthetics (the philosophy of artistic value) but also from other matters that may concern the student of literature: biographical questions, bibliography , historical knowledge, sources and influences, and problems of method. Thus, especially in academic studies, “criticism” is often considered to be separate from “scholarship.” In practice, however, this distinction often proves artificial, and even the most single-minded concentration on a text may be informed by outside knowledge, while many notable works of criticism combine discussion of texts with broad arguments about the nature of literature and the principles of assessing it.

Criticism will here be taken to cover all phases of literary understanding, though the emphasis will be on the evaluation of literary works and of their authors’ places in literary history. For another particular aspect of literary criticism, see textual criticism .

The functions of literary criticism vary widely, ranging from the reviewing of books as they are published to systematic theoretical discussion. Though reviews may sometimes determine whether a given book will be widely sold, many works succeed commercially despite negative reviews, and many classic works, including Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), have acquired appreciative publics long after being unfavourably reviewed and at first neglected. One of criticism’s principal functions is to express the shifts in sensibility that make such revaluations possible. The minimal condition for such a new appraisal is, of course, that the original text survive. The literary critic is sometimes cast in the role of scholarly detective, unearthing, authenticating, and editing unknown manuscripts. Thus, even rarefied scholarly skills may be put to criticism’s most elementary use, the bringing of literary works to a public’s attention.

The variety of criticism’s functions is reflected in the range of publications in which it appears. Criticism in the daily press rarely displays sustained acts of analysis and may sometimes do little more than summarize a publisher’s claims for a book’s interest. Weekly and biweekly magazines serve to introduce new books but are often more discriminating in their judgments, and some of these magazines, such as The (London) Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books , are far from indulgent toward popular works. Sustained criticism can also be found in monthlies and quarterlies with a broad circulation, in “little magazines” for specialized audiences, and in scholarly journals and books.

Because critics often try to be lawgivers, declaring which works deserve respect and presuming to say what they are “really” about, criticism is a perennial target of resentment. Misguided or malicious critics can discourage an author who has been feeling his way toward a new mode that offends received taste. Pedantic critics can obstruct a serious engagement with literature by deflecting attention toward inessential matters. As the French philosopher-critic Jean-Paul Sartre observed, the critic may announce that French thought is a perpetual colloquy between Pascal and Montaigne not in order to make those thinkers more alive but to make thinkers of his own time more dead. Criticism can antagonize authors even when it performs its function well. Authors who regard literature as needing no advocates or investigators are less than grateful when told that their works possess unintended meaning or are imitative or incomplete.

What such authors may tend to forget is that their works, once published, belong to them only in a legal sense. The true owner of their works is the public, which will appropriate them for its own concerns regardless of the critic. The critic’s responsibility is not to the author’s self-esteem but to the public and to his own standards of judgment, which are usually more exacting than the public’s. Justification for his role rests on the premise that literary works are not in fact self-explanatory. A critic is socially useful to the extent that society wants, and receives, a fuller understanding of literature than it could have achieved without him. In filling this appetite, the critic whets it further, helping to create a public that cares about artistic quality. Without sensing the presence of such a public, an author may either prostitute his talent or squander it in sterile acts of defiance. In this sense, the critic is not a parasite but, potentially, someone who is responsible in part for the existence of good writing in his own time and afterward.

Although some critics believe that literature should be discussed in isolation from other matters, criticism usually seems to be openly or covertly involved with social and political debate. Since literature itself is often partisan, is always rooted to some degree in local circumstances, and has a way of calling forth affirmations of ultimate values, it is not surprising that the finest critics have never paid much attention to the alleged boundaries between criticism and other types of discourse. Especially in modern Europe, literary criticism has occupied a central place in debate about cultural and political issues. Sartre’s own What Is Literature? (1947) is typical in its wide-ranging attempt to prescribe the literary intellectual’s ideal relation to the development of his society and to literature as a manifestation of human freedom. Similarly, some prominent American critics, including Alfred Kazin , Lionel Trilling , Kenneth Burke , Philip Rahv , and Irving Howe , began as political radicals in the 1930s and sharpened their concern for literature on the dilemmas and disillusionments of that era. Trilling’s influential The Liberal Imagination (1950) is simultaneously a collection of literary essays and an attempt to reconcile the claims of politics and art.

Such a reconciliation is bound to be tentative and problematic if the critic believes, as Trilling does, that literature possesses an independent value and a deeper faithfulness to reality than is contained in any political formula. In Marxist states, however, literature has usually been considered a means to social ends and, therefore, criticism has been cast in forthrightly partisan terms. Dialectical materialism does not necessarily turn the critic into a mere guardian of party doctrine, but it does forbid him to treat literature as a cause in itself, apart from the working class’s needs as interpreted by the party. Where this utilitarian view prevails, the function of criticism is taken to be continuous with that of the state itself, namely, furtherance of the social revolution. The critic’s main obligation is not to his texts but rather to the masses of people whose consciousness must be advanced in the designated direction. In periods of severe orthodoxy, the practice of literary criticism has not always been distinguishable from that of censorship.

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Literary Review

The current issue, march 2012 issue - out now.

In This Issue: John Gray on Tony Judt’s Thinking the Twentieth Century • Elaine Showalter on the first Pop Age • Donald Rayfield on Belarus • Praveen Swami on Sharia law • A C Grayling: What are Universities For? • The Letters of Joseph Roth • Jane Ridley on the Queen • Seamus Perry on the poetry of translation • Jonathan Fenby on Mao • Richard Holloway on religion for atheists • John Sutherland on growing old • Frances Wilson on cruelty and laughter and much, much more…

August 2024

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‘This magazine is flush with tight, smart writing.’ Washington Post

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in central London.

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in London.

Highlights from the Current Issue

August 2024, Issue 532 John Adamson on Oliver Cromwell * Edward Vallance on the English Republic * Andrew McMillan on Thom Gunn * Tanya Harrod on art and motherhood * Alexander Christie-Miller on Turkey * Peter Davidson on Caspar David Friedrich * Stephen Walsh on Tchaikovsky * Douglas Field on James Baldwin * Dmitri Levitin on Andreas Vesalius * Lucy Moore on artistic swimming * George Cochrane on the new horror * Rosa Lyster on Ursula Parrott * Peyton Skipwith on Charles J Connick *  Glenn Richardson on Catherine de’ Medici * Ian Ellison on Kafka * Jonathan Romney on Twisters  and much, much more…

John Adamson

Oliver cromwell: commander in chief, by ronald hutton.

Ever since Thomas Carlyle first launched his Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell on the world in 1845, the Lord Protector’s published words have exercised an almost mesmeric hold on posterity. Overnight, they transformed a figure who had hitherto been a byword for villainy – was he not the killer of King Charles I? – into a hero for the new Victorian age: a God-fearing, class-transcending champion of ‘russet-coated captains’ who became Britain’s first non-royal head of state. His words resonated with a newly politically ascendant and morally earnest middle class. And in Hamo Thornycroft’s vast sculpture installed outside Westminster Hall in 1899, the Carlylean transformation of Oliver begun by the Letters and Speeches found its embodiment in bronze...  read more

More Articles from this Issue

Peter davidson, caspar david friedrich: art for a new age, by markus bertsch & johannes grave (edd), caspar david friedrich: infinite landscapes, by ralph gleis & birgit verwiebe (edd).

The German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), who is celebrated in these two books published to accompany the exhibitions in Hamburg and Berlin marking the 250th anniversary of his birth, has fascinated me all my life. When I was at school, his mysterious and emotive paintings...  read more

The German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), who is celebrated in these two books published to accompany the exhibitions in Hamburg and Berlin marking the 250th anniversary of his birth, has fascinated me all my life. When I was at school, his mysterious and emotive paintings started to appear on the covers of the grey-spined Penguin Modern Classics series: Abbey in the Oakwood on the cover of Hermann Hesse’s Narziss and Goldmund ; Woman at a Window (the woman’s back turned, one shutter open to the spring morning and the riverbank) on that of Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar . Covers featuring Sea of Ice , with its unfathomable grey-blue sky, and the yearning, autumnal Moonwatchers soon followed. Every image was memorable; every one hinted at emotional and spiritual depths embodied in northern European landscapes and places.

This fascination led me to attempt an undergraduate dissertation on the halted traveller in Romantic poetry and painting. I was following an intuition that Friedrich’s solitary figure in the storm-lit uplands of Mountain Landscape with Rainbow resonated with those moments of disquiet in Wordsworth’s Prelude that are perceptions of sublimity in nature shot through with loneliness and melancholy: ‘forlorn cascades/Among the windings of the mountain brooks’. A tutor reproved me for writing about a painter in relation to poetry, especially a painter tainted by fascist approval. I still think that I was onto something.

Andrew Mcmillan

Thom gunn: a cool queer life, by michael nott.

If this were a biography of any of the other great 20th-century poets, one might open a review by contrasting the new publication with other books that had appeared about them. How does this one measure up? Does it present information hitherto unknown? In the case of Thom Gunn, no such body of work exists. To piece together from scratch the fragments of Gunn’s life, that is Michael Nott’s mission here. It has been twenty years since Gunn died of acute polysubstance abuse, aged seventy-four...  read more

If this were a biography of any of the other great 20th-century poets, one might open a review by contrasting the new publication with other books that had appeared about them. How does this one measure up? Does it present information hitherto unknown? In the case of Thom Gunn, no such body of work exists. To piece together from scratch the fragments of Gunn’s life, that is Michael Nott’s mission here.

It has been twenty years since Gunn died of acute polysubstance abuse, aged seventy-four. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Gunn’s friend Clive Wilmer, who edited his Selected Poems in 2017 and, with Nott and August Kleinzahler, his letters in 2021, as well as other academics such as Stefania Michelucci whose own critical study of Gunn’s poetry was published in 2009, he’s been having a bit of a renaissance. It’s odd that he needed one at all – that he didn’t sit on the same shelf as those he came of age with, such as Ted Hughes (Faber brought out a hugely popular joint collection in 1962) and Philip Larkin. One factor is Gunn’s decision to relocate to the United States. I remember once chatting about Gunn with a renowned biographer who said, ‘Oh, but he’s just so terribly American, isn’t he.’ In the years after I started reading him, it often seemed that Gunn was stranded somewhere in the middle of the ocean, too American for the English, too English for the Americans. He was thought too queer, too structurally formal. One of Nott’s successes in this biography is to take the contradictions and idiosyncrasies and treat them not as problems but as the foundations of a three-dimensional portrait of Gunn as man and poet.

Tanya Harrod

Acts of creation: on art and motherhood, by hettie judah.

This remarkable book begins dramatically and truthfully: ‘A monstrous child is blocking my view and has carved a nest in the soft darkness of my head. It eats the hours, this child, leaving me only crumbs.’ Motherhood can be overwhelming, however longed for. It is never a small thing, even if the rest of the world chooses to ignore it or view it as a block to professionalism. Cyril Connolly’s remark in Enemies of Promise, ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall’,...  read more

This remarkable book begins dramatically and truthfully: ‘A monstrous child is blocking my view and has carved a nest in the soft darkness of my head. It eats the hours, this child, leaving me only crumbs.’ Motherhood can be overwhelming, however longed for. It is never a small thing, even if the rest of the world chooses to ignore it or view it as a block to professionalism. Cyril Connolly’s remark in Enemies of Promise (1938), ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall’, was, of course, a reference to male creativity. But women have routinely been brainwashed into concurring with this dismissive observation – made, admittedly, before Connolly had children. In the 1950s, respected male tutors in colleges of art would dismiss female making as ‘frustrated maternity’. The sculptor Reg Butler asked Slade School of Fine Art students in 1962, ‘Can a woman become a vital creative artist without ceasing to be a woman except for the purposes of a census?’  

The 20th century proved a surprisingly bleak period for the recognition of women’s artistic activity. The flood of books on women artists which had appeared in the 19th century dwindled. And the women’s movement of the 1970s grappled with a peculiarly limited art world, characterised by exclusionary boundaries and plenty of straightforward misogyny. Art that celebrated or commented on motherhood was regarded as beyond the pale, even if presented in the dispassionate form of Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (1973–9) or Susan Hiller’s Ten Months (1977–9). Of this record of her pregnancy, Hiller noted that few could ‘accept the right of a woman to be both the artist and the sexed subject of a work’.

Alexander Christie-Miller

The endless country: a personal journey through turkey’s first hundred years, by sami kent.

Turkey marked its centenary last year in muted fashion. Celebrations for the anniversary on 29 October were cut back due to ‘the alarming human tragedy in Gaza’, the state broadcaster said, though some claimed the true reason was that the country’s longtime leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is no fan of the Westernised, secular model of statehood imposed...  read more

Turkey marked its centenary last year in muted fashion. Celebrations for the anniversary on 29 October were cut back due to ‘the alarming human tragedy in Gaza’, the state broadcaster said, though some claimed the true reason was that the country’s longtime leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is no fan of the Westernised, secular model of statehood imposed by Atatürk a hundred years ago.

Whatever the truth, it often seems that there is little to celebrate in today’s Turkey. The country is mired in economic crisis, with inflation running at 70 per cent. It is riven by social tensions, culture wars and mass migration, and languishing in a state of fear and despondency under Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule. ‘Perhaps the cruellest part of the Turkey I had seen over the last few years’, writes Sami Kent in The Endless Country , a personal and idiosyncratic history of Turkey’s first century, is ‘the brute fact of unaccountable power, and how callously, how capriciously it decides the fate of others’.

Rosa Lyster

By ursula parrott.

How do marketing departments decide when to pitch a reissued novel as a ‘forgotten classic’? Does it need to have been greeted with acclaim the first time round before dropping out of view, or is it okay to define it as such even if it attracted little attention on first appearance, sitting around fretfully in second-hand bookshops and waiting for an excitable young agent to hold it to the light and discover that it has the weight and feel of a classic?...  read more

How do marketing departments decide when to pitch a reissued novel as a ‘forgotten classic’? Does it need to have been greeted with acclaim the first time round before dropping out of view, or is it okay to define it as such even if it attracted little attention on first appearance, sitting around fretfully in second-hand bookshops and waiting for an excitable young agent to hold it to the light and discover that it has the weight and feel of a classic?

Kay Dick’s They (‘the radical dystopian classic, lost for forty years’) falls into the second category. Initially, critics were dismissive or indifferent, sales were bad and the novel disappeared almost before anyone had noticed it was there. Caroline Blackwood’s The Fate of Mary Rose , soon to be reissued by Virago, falls into the first. Widely and favourably reviewed, it was published in several languages before going out of print. Ursula Parrott’s 1929 novel Ex-Wife (‘a forgotten classic … darkly funny’) is a more complicated case – not so much a once-acclaimed book searching for a new generation of readers as a racy bestseller looking for a home in the literary fiction section.

Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water

By vicki valosik.

When F Scott Fitzgerald fell in love with Zelda Sayre in the late 1910s, he was as impressed by her courage on the high diving board as by her flesh-coloured silk swimming costume. Her fearlessness and strength were part of her allure. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, as Vicki Valosik shows in Swimming Pretty, water was a hugely important arena for women seeking...  read more

When F Scott Fitzgerald fell in love with Zelda Sayre in the late 1910s, he was as impressed by her courage on the high diving board as by her flesh-coloured silk swimming costume. Her fearlessness and strength were part of her allure. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, as Vicki Valosik shows in Swimming Pretty , water was a hugely important arena for women seeking to assert their autonomy and independence.

Ostensibly a history of synchronised swimming – renamed artistic swimming in 2017 – Valosik’s fascinating book opens in London in the 1850s, when the enterprising superintendent of a new ‘natatorium’, hoping to attract more visitors to his swimming pool, began inviting families to ‘aquatic entertainments’ at which his children performed in races and galas. In 1875 his fourteen-year-old daughter, Agnes Beckwith, swam five miles from London Bridge to Greenwich, blowing kisses to cheering onlookers on the riverbanks. A hundred years later, Sports Illustrated magazine hailed this feat as the start of women’s participation in spectator sports.

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Literary Criticism: How to Find It: Book Reviews

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Book Reviews vs. Literary Criticism

Book reviews are generally evaluative whereas criticism is an exploration of the ideas in a work. In other words, a book review is meant to tell you if a book is good or bad, and whether you should read it (or buy it) or not. Criticism is more of a serious analysis of some aspect of a work, whether the work be good or bad. Reviews of literary works are usually not written by scholars, while criticism is almost always written by scholars.

One of the simplest ways of distinguishing book reviews from literary criticism is the time of publication of the review/critical article compared to the original publication date of the book . Book reviews tend to be written around the time the book was published, while literary criticism will be published in later years.

Online Sources for Reviews of Newer Books

• Academic Search Elite (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window Offers full text for more than 2,000 serials, including more than 1,500 peer-reviewed titles. This multi-disciplinary database covers virtually every area of academic study. More than 100 journals have PDF images back to 1985.
• ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window ProQuest Central is the largest single periodical resource available, bringing together complete databases across all major subject areas, including thousands of full-text newspapers from around the world.

For reviews of newer (or older) books in a particular discipline, also try searching the most comprehensive journal database(s) for that discipline.

Click this link to learn which are the most comprehensive databases for many disciplines .

Newspapers can be great sources of book reviews from the present time and from the past.

Click this link to see a research guide connecting you to newspaper collections.

Sources for Reviews of Older Books

• New York Times,1851 - 2007 -- (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window The New York Times (1851-2007) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.
• Nineteenth-Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window Provides an as-it-happened window on events, culture, and daily life in 19th-century America that is of interest to both professional and general researchers. With 1.8 million pages available, the collection features publications of all kinds, from the political party newspapers at the beginning of the 19th century to the mammoth dailies that shaped the nation at the century's end. Major newspapers stand alongside those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women’s rights groups, labor groups, and the Confederacy. Titles selected by leading scholars of the 19th-century American press, and headnotes have been included for the individual titles.
• Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window An archive with backfiles of scholarly periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences that provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of titles. The database spans more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages.
• Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature Retrospective: 1890-1982 This link opens in a new window Provides indexing of over 3 million articles from more than 550 leading magazines, including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. This important resource offers a wide range of researchers access to information about history, culture and seminal developments across nearly a century.
• Poole's Index to Periodical Literature This is a print multi-volume set. It is the premiere index to nineteenth century periodicals.

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Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.

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Book Review Outlets

Book reviews can be an indispensable asset to writers and their careers. Our Book Review Outlets database is an excellent platform for authors—from self-published independents to household names—to research and discover a spectrum of book review options.

Book Nerdection

Book Nerdection is a website offering services for book reviews, sponsored book listings, author interviews, and an abundance of content for both authors and readers. Reviews are available for both written books and audiobooks.

VIDA Review

The  VIDA Review  is an online literary magazine publishing original fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, and reviews. Reviews must be for full-length or chapbooks of poetry or prose by writers from historically-marginalized...

Established in 1990 at the University of Idaho, Fugue biannually publishes poetry, fiction, essays, hybrid work, and visual art from established and emerging writers and artists. Fugue is managed and edited entirely by...

Adroit Journal

The Adroit Journal  is a registered literary and arts nonprofit organization that was founded in 2010 by poet Peter LaBerge. At its foundation, the journal has its eyes focused ahead, seeking to showcase what its global staff of emerging...

Bone Bouquet

Bone Bouquet is a biannual print journal publishing new writing by female and nonbinary poets, from artists both established and emerging. Work that breaks with tradition, creating new forms by dwelling in thought rather than seeking...

Asymptote  is the premier site for world literature in translation. They take their name from the dotted line on a graph that a mathematical function may tend toward, but never reach. Similarly, a translated text may never fully replicate...

Published since 2009, Big Other is an online arts and culture magazine accepting submissions in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, lyric essay, art, video, short drama, and hybrid work from both established and emerging writers and artists....

Barrelhouse

Barrelhouse is a biannual print journal featuring fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays about music, art, and the detritus of popular culture. Their website regularly posts new short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, and book...

Another Chicago Magazine

Another Chicago Magazine  is independent of any institution, and has lived on volunteer efforts and grants. Each editor has autonomy and publishes work that ranges from conventional to experimental. They adore writing that is engaged with...

American Poetry Review

The American Poetry Review is dedicated to reaching a worldwide audience with a diverse array of the best contemporary poetry and literary prose. They also aim to expand the audience interested in poetry and literature, and to provide...

Printed twice a year (in July and December) and distributed internationally with subscribers in over twenty countries, each issue includes thirty-two shorter poems. In 2013, 32 Poems expanded to publish regular prose features online....

Self-Publishing Review

Self-Publishing Review has been a leading name in self-publishing services and author advocacy since 2008. Offering professional editorial book reviews across all genres with a number of options for paid reviews, their services also...

Under a Warm Green Linden

Under a Warm Green Linden , launched in 2008, is both a forum on the technical and ineffable qualities of the art of poetry, and a digital poetry journal. Reviews and interviews with established and emerging poets are intended to deepen,...

Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Founded in 2009, Volume 1 Brooklyn engages and connects the literary-minded from Brooklyn and beyond. Their website features short and long content, news, book reviews and more.  Vol. 1 Brooklyn seeks to motivate the community to...

Masters Review

The Masters Review is an online and print publication celebrating new and emerging writers. It is on the lookout for the best new talent with hopes of publishing stories from writers who will continue to produce great work. It offers...

BookLife is a website from  Publishers Weekly  dedicated to indie authors. The site provides a free and easy way to submit self-published books to  Publishers Weekly  for review, and offers editorial content—success stories,...

City Book Review

Since 2009 City Book Review has reviewed more than 20,000 books under the San Francisco, Manhattan, and Seattle Book Review brands, and Kids’ Book Buzz. They review 300 books a month in more than 40 genres.

Books within 90 days of their...

Stirring is a journal with several editors who all contribute their individual input for each issue. The joy of Stirring is a confluence of diverse opinions. Creative work from all genres and a variety of visual art media are...

Newfound is a nonprofit publisher based in Austin, Texas. The work published explores how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding. The journal is published biannually online and annually in print, and features fiction,...

CALYX Journal

A forum for women’s creative work—including work by women of color, lesbian and queer women, young women, old women— CALYX Journal  breaks new ground. Each issue is packed with new poetry, short stories, full-color artwork, photography,...

American Poets

American Poets , published biannually by the Academy of American Poets, provides readers with a panorama of the contemporary poetic landscape and offers ten to twelve reviews of new poetry books in each issue. The magazine, which publishes...

The Guardian was founded in 1821 and known as the Manchester Guardian until 1959. The Guardian has evolved from a local paper into an international publication that offers publishing industry news, book reviews, and the...

Georgia Review

The Georgia Review  seeks to create a lasting environment for literature by supporting writers at every stage of their careers. Committed to the art of editorial practice, the  Review  collaborates with authors of essays, stories,...

The Independent

Founded in 1986, the Independent, nicknamed the Indy , is a major newspaper in the United Kingdom. The Indy —which launched an online version in 2008—covers the publishing industry, literary news, and all things books.

Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader features reviews of books by contemporary writers, as well as exclusive author interviews and literary news and criticism. Compulsive Reader works with an eclectic and extensive team of book reviewers who are...

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Book Reviews in Journals

Academic Search Complete is a database of academic journals, magazines, and other scholarly resources, covering a wide range of subjects across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. It's a great starting point for research, especially with its inclusion of many open access publications.

ATLA Religion Database is the premier index for scholarly research in religion and theology. Offers comprehensive coverage of articles, reviews, and essays across diverse religious traditions, languages, and historical periods.

ATLA Serials is a comprehensive collection of full-text journals in religion and theology. Provides access to leading academic publications for in-depth analysis and exploration of current research and scholarship in the field.

JSTOR provides comprehensive access to peer-reviewed scholarly journals, books, and primary sources from varies disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.

Print Sources on Literary Criticism

Online literary criticism.

• Complete Review: A Literary Saloon and Site of Review On this site you will find individual pages devoted to each book under review.
• Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
• Literary Criticism Collection
• H-Net Book Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences
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How Do I Find ~ Literary Criticism

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Book Reviews

• More Guides & Help
• When to Use Them Use book reviews when you want to document the critical reception of a book at its time of publication or when you can establish the scholarly credentials of the reviewer. There isn't always a clear distinction between literary criticism and book reviews. Influential critics like William Dean Howells, T. S. Eliot, and Edmund Wilson wrote critical reviews for publications like Harper's New Monthly Magazine , the Times Literary Supplement , and the New Republic —none of which would be considered a scholarly journal.  
• Where to Find Them The publication date for your book will determine which resources are most useful to you. Many book reviews are indexed, excerpted, or reproduced in full by the resources listed in previous sections. You may find additional reviews using the sources listed below.

• Paste the following into the search terms main search box on the Nexis Uni home page. Substitute for italicized terms:   HLEAD ( author first name w/3 author last name ) AND HLEAD ( book title ) AND TERMS (book reviews)
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Literary studies research guide.

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What is literary criticism?

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Literary criticism can be found most often in critical books and scholarly articles. Critical books provide in-depth, scholarly, expert analysis of your topic. Scholarly articles also provide expert analysis, and are usually peer-reviewed, a process by which articles are reviewed by other scholars in the same field of study before being published. Peer review is an important step in the scholarly publishing process. To learn more about peer review, watch the video below. 

What is peer review?

Video transcript

Find Literary Criticism

Find literary criticism in both books and journals using the resources below. A complete list of literary criticism databases can be found on the UH Libraries website . 

• WorldCat This link opens in a new window Search for books, videos, and more from libraries worldwide.
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English 112: Book Reviews vs. Literary Criticism

• Book Reviews vs. Literary Criticism
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Choosing a Literary Topic

Literary criticism is the study and evaluation of literature. depending on your assignment, you may be looking for information about a particular work, author, or themes from the text. use the library's print and electronic resources to find literary criticism on short stories, poems, or books., take a look at the examples below to discuss book reviews vs literary criticism:, book reviews.

Book reviews:

• Give a brief overview of the plot followed by a surface viewpoint about the book.
• Short in length and discuss their opinion of the book, not themes or close examinations of the story.
• Written for a general, non-academic audience. Often uses "I" statements ("I enjoyed the book", "I appreciated this", etc.).
• Below is a sample book review about Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing :

Literary Criticism

Literary criticism:

• Give a brief overview of the plot followed by a close examination of the themes in the story.
• Longer in length; often makes comparisons and references to other books and articles about similar topics.
• Written for an academic audience in a formal, third-person style.
• Below is literary criticism about Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing :

Choosing Keywords

• Search by the title of a particular work (ex: A Rose for Emily)
• Search by the author's name (ex: William Faulkner)
• Search for themes found in the work (ex: racism)

Find literary criticism in print books by searching the library catalog. 

• Search for the author's name under "subject" in the library catalog.
• Search for the author's name and criticism (ex: Jane Austen and criticism)
• Search other works by your author to explore similar themes. 
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Book Review: ‘The Cheesemaker’s Daughter’ is a culturally rich novel that’ll make you really hungry

This cover image released by Regalo Press shows “The Cheesemaker’s Daughter” by Kristin Vukovic. (Regalo Press via AP)

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This year, Marina’s annual summer visit home to the island of Pag in Croatia turns into an extended stay. Marina has a lot to figure out, and home seems like the place to do it, if indeed Pag is still home.

Kristin Vuković's debut novel is a mouthwatering platter of culture, history, and the everlasting struggle for balance between tradition and progress. “The Cheesemaker’s Daughter” is told from Marina’s perspective on Pag, where she spent most of her childhood and teen years, as Croatia counts down the days before officially joining the European Union in 2013.

After moving to New York as a refugee from the Yugoslav wars, Marina built a life in the bustling city. But her job is unfulfilling and her coworkers unfriendly; her husband is inattentive and unfaithful; and with her trouble having children, it seems like that life she built is wearing down to nothing before her eyes.

There are plenty of distractions for Marina back on Pag, including a struggling family cheese business with failing Soviet-era machines and a rival cheesemaker whose son, Marina’s first love, could be her family’s reputational ruin if he keeps bumping into her and sending sparks flying between them.

Meanwhile, there’s an ongoing push and pull between the characters over gender issues — when to jostle for parity and when to respect tradition and leave it be.

OK, so it may seem like everything is going wrong. And it honestly is. But at least there’s mouthwatering food.

Reading “The Cheesemaker’s Daughter” gave me a thorough craving for cheese and a deep desire to visit Croatia. Vuković employs beautiful, all-encompassing sensory descriptions, from the smell of the herbs in the air to the squawk of seagulls, or the faded floral print on the sheets Marina had since before she could remember. These rich details build an enticing world — a scraggly yet comfortable one, cold but cozy.

Dedicated to the author’s Croatian grandparents who made America home, the novel is culturally rich. Vuković takes us on a tour of Croatian history and cheesemaking that requires no prior knowledge of either, peppering these bits throughout the book like herbs dotting the scraggly seaside landscape. She takes care to explain everything in due time, slowly introducing and building upon the religion, traditions, food and music Marina experiences.

“The Cheesemaker’s Daughter” is a quiet but commanding debut — a bit repetitive, but in a way that forces you to slow down to the speed of life on the island. It’s not the kind of book that leaves you on the edge of your seat needing to know what happens next, but it did leave me yearning to be back in that world after I finished the book and left it.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

Book Review: 'The Cheesemaker's Daughter' is a culturally rich novel that'll make you really hungry

This year, Marina’s annual summer visit home to Croatia turns into an extended stay

This year, Marina's annual summer visit home to the island of Pag in Croatia turns into an extended stay. Marina has a lot to figure out, and home seems like the place to do it, if indeed Pag is still home.

Kristin Vuković's debut novel is a mouthwatering platter of culture, history, and the everlasting struggle for balance between tradition and progress. “The Cheesemaker's Daughter” is told from Marina's perspective on Pag, where she spent most of her childhood and teen years, as Croatia counts down the days before officially joining the European Union in 2013.

After moving to New York as a refugee from the Yugoslav wars, Marina built a life in the bustling city. But her job is unfulfilling and her coworkers unfriendly; her husband is inattentive and unfaithful; and with her trouble having children, it seems like that life she built is wearing down to nothing before her eyes.

There are plenty of distractions for Marina back on Pag, including a struggling family cheese business with failing Soviet-era machines and a rival cheesemaker whose son, Marina's first love, could be her family's reputational ruin if he keeps bumping into her and sending sparks flying between them.

Meanwhile, there’s an ongoing push and pull between the characters over gender issues — when to jostle for parity and when to respect tradition and leave it be.

OK, so it may seem like everything is going wrong. And it honestly is. But at least there's mouthwatering food.

Reading “The Cheesemaker's Daughter” gave me a thorough craving for cheese and a deep desire to visit Croatia. Vuković employs beautiful, all-encompassing sensory descriptions, from the smell of the herbs in the air to the squawk of seagulls, or the faded floral print on the sheets Marina had since before she could remember. These rich details build an enticing world — a scraggly yet comfortable one, cold but cozy.

Dedicated to the author's Croatian grandparents who made America home, the novel is culturally rich. Vuković takes us on a tour of Croatian history and cheesemaking that requires no prior knowledge of either, peppering these bits throughout the book like herbs dotting the scraggly seaside landscape. She takes care to explain everything in due time, slowly introducing and building upon the religion, traditions, food and music Marina experiences.

“The Cheesemaker's Daughter” is a quiet but commanding debut — a bit repetitive, but in a way that forces you to slow down to the speed of life on the island. It’s not the kind of book that leaves you on the edge of your seat needing to know what happens next, but it did leave me yearning to be back in that world after I finished the book and left it.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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What Is Literary Criticism For?

John Guillory’s “Cultural Capital,” published amid the 1990s canon wars, became a classic. In a follow-up, “Professing Criticism,” he takes on his field’s deep funk.

By Jennifer Schuessler

Thirty years ago, it was common to pick up a newspaper or a magazine and read about high drama in university literature departments. Star professors were either master thinkers introducing new rigor and glamour into a tweedy profession gone stale, or theory-addled tenured radicals taking a hatchet to the masterpieces of Western culture.

These days, though, the news out of literature departments — and the humanities writ large — tends to be less about juicy faculty-lounge flame wars than about declining majors , shrinking budgets and the collapsing job market for Ph.D.s.

Enter another professor, with a big book that aims to shift the conversation. In 1993, John Guillory published “Cultural Capital,” a dense study of the then-raging canon wars that has become a stealth classic. Now, in a follow-up, “Professing Criticism,” he takes on an even bigger question: What is literary criticism — specifically, the kind of highly specialized, theoretically sophisticated textual readings generated by academic critics — really for ?

Guillory’s answer (if it’s even an answer) is complex. But what literary criticism is not for, he argues, is what many of his colleagues think it is for: changing the world.

“When people read the book, I suspect they’re going to be upset,” he said in an interview. “They’re going to say, ‘You’re saying we don’t do anything, we accomplish nothing.’ That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Professing Criticism,” published last month by the University of Chicago Press, is no throaty defense of the Great Books in the manner of Harold Bloom . Readers seeking culture-war red meat will be disappointed. Still, it has stirred unusually wide response for an exhaustively researched, intricately argued book by an author largely unknown outside the academy.

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