BA (Hons) Creative Writing and English Literature course preparation
To help you feel prepared for your BA (Hons) Creative Writing and English Literature studies, we’ve gathered together a range of course related activities including suggested reading, useful websites and some great things to do right now. Read on to find out more.
Suggested reading
You’ll be given lots of information about which textbooks to read and introduced to the University Library, as well as the many ebooks we have for you to access, when you begin your studies in September.
In the meantime, there are a some suggested texts you might like to read, if you can, before starting your degree. We don’t recommend rushing out to buy texts before you arrive. But if you can pick some up second hand, borrow from a library, or access online, we suggest:
General texts for Creative Writing
Graham, R., The Road to Somewhere: A Creative Writing Companion (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004)
May, S, Doing Creative Writing (London: Routledge, 2007)
These texts set the groundwork for your journey into creative writing. They will rarely, if ever, be used in seminars or workshops but it is expected that you’re well acquainted with these works.
WRI1018: Introduction to Poetry
Neil Astley, Ed., Being Human (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2011)
WRI1019: Introduction to Fiction
Creative
Borrowdale, David (ed.) A Girl’s Guide to Fly-Fishing (Reflex Press, 2018)
Marek, Adam, The Stone Thrower (1st Edition, Comma Press, 2012)
Craft
Graham, Robert et al, How to Write a Short Story (And Think About It) (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017 – 2nd edition)
WRI1020: Introduction to Scriptwriting
Ball, D., Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays
Caulfield, A., Writing for Radio: A Practical Guide
Yorke, J., Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey into Story
General texts for English Literature
These are three pieces of literature that we think you should read if you’re thinking of studying an English degree (and they’re all set text on first year modules – so you’ll get a great head start!)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
LIT1020: Ways of Reading
Set Texts:
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (Penguin or Oxford edition)
Arthur Conan Doyle, select stories from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. For class we read: ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, ‘The Man With the Twisted Lip’, and ‘The Copper Beeches’
Henrik Ibsen, ‘A Doll’s House’ in Four Major Plays (Oxford, 2008)
Indicative secondary reading. There’s no need to go out and purchase your own copies of any of the following texts, but they’ll all provide some useful introductory reading if you can find them in libraries:
Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, This Thing Called Literature (London: Routledge, 2015)
Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, 5th edition (London: Routledge, 2016)
Rhian Williams, The Poetry Toolkit (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)
LIT1024: Literary History
Set Texts:
Carson, Anne, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (London: Virago, 2003)
Homer, The Odyssey, transl. Robert Fagles (London: Penguin, 2000) – we look at books 1-4 and 9-12 in class
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (online text available at start of module)
William Shakespeare, Richard II (available online)
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (London: Penguin, 1988)
Indicative secondary reading. There’s no need to go out and purchase your own copies of any of the following texts, but they’ll all provide some useful introductory reading if you can find them in libraries
Alexander, Michael, A History of English Literature. 2nd ed. (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Sanders, Andrew, The Short Oxford History of English Literature. 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004)
Widdowson, Peter, The Palgrave Guide to English Literature and its Contexts 1500-2000. (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
Read Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
This text is available in various cheap editions. Even if you’ve studied this text before, please reread over the summer and think about the following questions:
To what extent does Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre draw on themes and figures from fairy tales and the Gothic to tell the story of Jane’s development from a child into a young woman?
To what extent is Jane Eyre a politically engaged novel? Find out what you can about what events were going on in Britain and the world in the 1840s.
How does Brontë represent Jane’s psychological development in the novel?
How does Brontë represent masculinity through the different characters of Mr Rochester and St John Rivers, among others?
To what extent is Jane a reliable narrator of her own story?
Useful websites
If you’re looking for something to read, have a look at the Poetry Foundation website.
Make sure to visit the Prospects website if you’re thinking about a future career in English.
You might also want to create an online to do list.
Suggested tasks for summer
Buy a notebook and use it to record ideas, snippets of overheard conversations, poems, short stories, etc.
Write in your notebook every day
Describe one incident in clear prose as though it were a passage from a novel you’d like to read