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Victorian Literature Research Guide

Learn about resources for Victorian literature studies, and how to find them

What is literary criticism?

Scholarly books, articles, and glasses"Literary criticism is the comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of works of literature. Literary criticism is essentially an opinion, supported by evidence, relating to theme, style, setting or historical or political context. It usually includes discussion of the work’s content and integrates your ideas with other insights gained from research. Literary criticism may have a positive or a negative bias and may be a study of an individual piece of literature or an author’s body of work."  

Dickinson College Waidner-Spahr Library 

 

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. 

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

Browsing for books

Browse for books related to Victorian literature in the following sections, located on the 3rd floor of the Brown wing.

PR 1-9680 - English Literature
PR 451-469 - 19th century
PR 3991-5990 - 19th century (1770/1800-1890/1900)  
PR 8309-9680 - English Literature: Provincial, local, etc.

Print journals are located in the basement of the Red Wing. You can browse the print titles there.