Literary critics often refer to works by eminent authors and to previous publications of the author under review. Both types of reference involve making judgments of analogy. They serve classificatory as well as evaluative aims. The question this paper addresses is whether references to eminent authors and previous books by the author under review occur predominantly in reviews of books by those authors who are most highly esteemed, that is, those who get the most attention from reviewers. An analysis was made of a database containing reviews of 32 new literary books by 16 Dutch and Flemish writers. Previous publications were mentioned predominantly in reviews of authors who got broad coverage. However, references to eminent authors appeared to be evenly distributed across all reviews in the sample. Relying on personal reading experiences in commenting on an author's latest book is less committal than drawing parallels with the accomplishments of eminent authors. Both types of reference were found to be lengthier in reviews of authors getting the majority of reviewers' attention. This relates to the fact that authors whom reviewers regard as most talented are primarily covered by quality newspapers with nationwide distribution. These papers allocate much more space to literary reviews than regional papers. Of course, the length of both types of mention is not determined solely by the type of periodical in which a review appears. It reflects a decision taken by the reviewer. It was also found that in comparing writers with prominent authors, reviewers tend to remain within the boundaries of one national literature. Even when authors of different nationality, but writing in the same language, were compared with eminent writers, these parallels mostly pertained to authors of the same nationality. The extent to which an author's new book is covered by reviewers was not positively related to the number of publications this author had. The amount of attention an author may expect to get from reviewers seems to reach its point of saturation at a relatively early stage. © 1994.
