Literary Criticism: How to Find It: Books: Classic Catalog

Geoffrey Chaucer

Find Books: Classic Catalog

The quickest way to find all printed books about an author, including literary criticism, is to do a Subject search for the author's name in the Classic Catalog (not in DUQSearch). To get to the Classic Catalog, click the blue button in the box on the left side of the screen.

One great feature of the Classic Catalog is that a subject search run in it will bring together all books on a subject and will break them down into alphabetically arranged subdivisions. This means you can quickly get to books under a subdivision without having to sort through a long list of results, as you might need to do in DUQSearch.

Be aware that you will not find EBooks using the Classic Catalog (This is its one drawback). To find those, use DUQSearch. To learn how to find EBooks in DUQSearch, go to the "EBooks: How to Find Them" research guide.

When you click the blue Classic Catalog button, you will be taken to the Basic search screen. At this point we need to get to the Advanced Search Screen. Click the "Advanced Search" link.

On the Advanced Search screen, type the author's name in the search box. You must type it last name first, then first name ("Miller Arthur"). You should then pull down the menu to the left of the search box and change it to "Subject." Then click Search. This will cause the search engine to find all books about that author and his or her work.

In the search result we are presented with a basic subject

and alphabetically arranged subdivisions. At the far right side of the line we see how many books are under a heading. To see the titles under a heading, just click on the heading.

For literary criticism there are three headings to look for. The first is just the author’s name, possibly with birth and death dates (the example directly above). Under this heading you would find a mixture of different kinds of books which might include some criticism and biography. Don't ignore these books.

The next heading to look under is the one with the subdivision “Criticism and interpretation.” Books under this heading will provide criticism with more than one of an author’s works.

The final kind of heading to explore is one that ends with the name of a work. These books would contain criticism of just that one work of the author.

Mark Twain