Reading lists (first year)

Each of the module descriptions on our webpages contains details of primary reading for that module, often with suggestions of critical works on the subject.

Here's a summary of the reading for English modules in the first semester of the first year.

A Literary Genre: The Novel

Alll BA English and BA English and American Studies students will take 'The Novel' module.

The novels studied on the course are:

• Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (all students);
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela
• Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
• George Eliot, Adam Bede
• D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
• Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
• Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

You'll study 7 of these texts in seminars and attend lectures on all 8. Exactly which of these texts you'll study in detail in seminars will depend upon your seminar group but you'll be encouraged to read all of them during the course of the term. 

The first text studied is usually 'The Turn of the Screw' which every group reads.

Don't feel you have to buy any of these books until you have met with your seminar tutor -- but if you can borrow copies or lay hands on a cheap secondhand copies it's a good idea to get some reading in early.

Reading English

In the first semester if you are doing BA English, BA English and American Studies or BA English and History you will take 'Reading English'.

The set text for this course is  The Norton Anthology of Poetry, ed. by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy (fifth edition, 2005). 

This text is one you'll be using every week. Follow the link above to the module site, and you'll also find other works that are helpful background reading.

If you can purchase the anthology cheaply before your arrive and in the right edition, that would be helpful but it is not essential. Copies will be available from the university bookshops.

See the module descriptions for more details of reading