LibGuides: English: Book Reviews

Library Resources for Book reviews

New York Times, Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
Provides access to full text and full image articles from the New York Times, including every issue from 1851 until five years ago.
Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
Online access to every issue of the TLS from 1902-2019. Articles are indexed and searchable.
MasterFILE Premier This link opens in a new window
Popular-oriented magazines and publications covering a wide range of subject areas including business, health, and education.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
A database with a large collection of newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals.
Times (London) Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
An online full-text archive of the Times of London newspaper, including all articles, ads, and photos from 1785 through 2014.

New York Review of Books
Available in microfilm (1963-2007) and print (2007-present). Ask a librarian for assistance in locating this title.
New York Times Book Review
Available online from 1997-present. Earlier issues are available in microfilm in the library's Remote Storage facility; ask a librarian for assistance in locating these.

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
A searchable archive of 19th Century newspapers from across the U.S., allowing readers to view individual articles and entire pages.

Print Index: Book Review Digest

Book Review Digest - Compact Shelving
These volumes, on the library's ground floor, contain collections of excerpts from book reviews, organized by year, covering the years 1905-2005. Use the "Journals" tab on the library homepage to see if the library has access to the magazine or newspaper issues containing the full reviews.
Book Review Digest: Author Title Index, R 028.1 B6441 (1905-1994)
Look in these indexes to find out which volumes of the Book Review Digest contain review excerpts for books from 1905-1994. They are located in the Compact Shelving, along with the volumes of Book Review Digest.

Using OneSearch for book reviews

Use this box to do a search in OneSearch limited to Book Reviews, Newspaper Articles and Magazine Articles

Finding older reviews (pre-1920s) in HathiTrust

HathiTrust is a huge collection of digitized books from major university libraries-- it includes libraries’ bound volumes of magazines going back to the 18^th century, some of which contain book reviews.

HathiTrust is a good source for reviews of 19^th century and earlier works—but finding them takes some digging! For best results when looking for reviews in HathiTrust, use the advanced full-text search to:

Limit publication type to “serials.”
Limit date to within a few years of your work’s appearance.

Try searching for the book’s title, and including the author’s name if the book title consists of common words. You may find some hits that are brief mentions of the book (or catalogs/advertisements), rather than reviews-- including the name of a main character in your search may help with this.