Novelguide

A popular site with students, this site is used as a study resource with a large collection of educational related material. Popular with students studying english literature, the site was voted as a "Top 14 website for students" by Microsoft. The site is also referenced in "The Best Web Sites for Teachers" by Vicki F. Sharp who indicates that "Novelguide is a massive online source for literary analysis of classic and contemporary literature..."
Consisting of many literary study guides this site emerged during a time in the late 1990s when many literary study guide websites were developed.
History of Literature Study Guides (Booknotes)
First appearing in the 1950s, the booknotes market - during the old days of only hard copy books - was dominated by two popular titles:
(1)Monarch Notes and
(2)Cliffs Notes
These two paperback publications quickly became a hit with students everywhere. The Monarch Notes book cover was recognized by its red and black jacket cover and Cliffs Notes carried a yellow with black stripes logo on its book jacket. As the years went by, these book summaries came to be know by many different names (study guides, book notes, etc.) and more and more companies rushed to produce their own study related material.
Today, the market is dominated by a handful of online websites. The need to purchase this material in a bookstore is gone. Novelguide is among this group of reliable online reference sites. Also popular are sites such as Sparknotes (owned by Barnes & Noble), Bookrags, and Cliffs Notes which transformed from the hardcover marketplace to remain today as an online website.
In Holly Koelling's book "Classic Connections: Turning Teens on to Great Literature", she writes that "Book notes can be a real aid to you when trying to make more sense of any particular classic, and they are invaluable for helping you recall the salient points in a classic... Novelguide.com (another surprise) provides a similar style of information."

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