Which books are on the English Literature A-Level syllabus?

In 1974, OCR set texts were King Lear and A Winter's Tale; The Franklin's Tale, First volume of TS Eliot's poetry, Robert Frost, Wilfred Owen, Emma, The Old Wives Tale and some I don't recall. Plus anything else one fancied reading. There was much more emphasis on breadth of reading then.

Dayslikethis - thank you for answering. What you say about whether you would like it now is interesting as I was put off various poets which we had to do for A level and now I enjoy reading them. My favourite E Bowen is The Death of the Heart about a 16 year old recently orphaned girl who goes to live with her half brother and falls in love with the (possibly) lover of her sister. I say 'possibly' as E Bowen can be quite ambiguous and abstract and I'm not always exactly sure what she means!

dd (currently in Lower 6th) is doing

Emma,

Taming of the Shrew, and

The Importance of being Earnest

if that's any help

I just couldn't get into it at all Dapple - I didn't like any of the characters and found the writing style really hard work.

I wonder if I would enjoy it anymore now? As you can probably tell from our choices I did my A-levels in N.Ireland and I always wondered if the text was chosen because they HAD to have an Irish text on there, rather than choosing it on its own merit.

dayslikethis - out of interest, why did you hate The Last September?

ahhh! no!! How can you hate Seamus Heaney?

A while ago, but we studied:-

Shakespeare: King Lear (OK)
Oleander Jacaranda (Enjoyable)
Mill on The Floss (Bearable)
Seamus Heaney Poetry (Terrible, hated the stuff!)

Hmm DD has had bought for her so far ( memory poor..)

great gatsby
a play called Top Girls
Othello
A jane Austen ( can't remember which!)
poetry anthology

Lots of great classic novels already suggested here. I'd also suggest Great Gatsby if you haven't read that. Modern novels that I've taught / have been on the syllabus in recent years that have been great are Cloud Atlas, Atonement, Birdsong, Handmaid's Tale, The Road.

I might have got a decent grade if I'd had some of these choices! We got Goodbye To All That, As You Like It, some impenetrable Welsh poetry, Catch-22 and Persuasion. The only two I remember enjoying were The Wife Of Bath's Tale and The Big Sleep.

I did a level English many years ago and studied Hamlet, A winters tale, Wuthering Heights, Wide Sargasso Sea, Chaucer, John Donne poetry and some others that I can't remember!

What genre do you like? Poems? Short stories? Drama? Novels? Scary? Romantic? I teach A level and am happy to help!

Days Robert Frost is brilliant isn't he? Never studied him but came across him via poems on the tube. Writes poems you fall in love with.

I liked the unreliable narrator in enduring love.

Has anyone said The Handmaid's Tale yet?

This year I am teaching The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter and Frankenstein. Macbeth, Northanger Abbey, The Yellow Wallpaper, Atonement and Dracula are some of the other books being studied in our Sixth Form.

I did my A-levels almost 2 decades ago, but here's my list...

Prose
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
The Last September - Elizabeth Bowen

Drama
Anthony & Cleopatra - Shakespeare
Amadeus - Peter Shaffer
Translations - Brian Friel

Poetry
Robert Frost
The Pardoner's Tale (Chaucer)
(we also did an unseen poetry question in the exam hence why we only had 2 poetry texts)

I loved Mansfield Park & Age of Innocence - hated The Last September. Loved Translations and hated both the other plays. Loved all my poetry - Frost is still one of my favourite poets.

In Cold Blood and Gatsby and Colour Purple are all wonderful. Sounds like pot luck whether you get something worth studying or not.

Atonement is OK I suppose. Bit hackneyed, with the (spoiler alert) wicked chocolate factory owner. 'Baddy paedo runs sweety making business' is to my mind very lazy characterisation. And he got away with direct plagiarism by being a snooty member of the establishment literati versus an unknown mere nurse who'd recorded her time as a medic in the war. I reread Enduring Love recently and was disappointed. I remembered it being interesting but there's a lot of padding and some very clumsy plotting. I don't rate McEwan much, except for Child in Time which is clever and moving and would be fascinating to study for its structure.

I remember when that list came out Senua. I had read a good percentage of them and there were perhaps too many children's books for my liking, but I enjoyed going through and filling in some gaps.
Little did I know when I read Mice and Men in 2003 that DC were destined to do that book to death for GCSE .

DS is reading Atonement, The Great Gatsby and Othello this term in Y12.

DD has done the Great Gatsby and the Color Purple. Also Othello. I can't remember the others!

DS did the combined Lit&Lang A Level and was allowed to choose a book to study. It occurred to me that if OP liked 1984 then she might like another grand-daddy-of-the-genre book, DS's choice of I am Legend by Richard Matheson (again, much better than the film - more philosophical).

In Cold Blood. Best book ever.

Ian mcewan-wise, I also taught Enduring Love. Great, unreliable narrator. Good film too. Daniel Craig, if I recall correctly.

A streetcar named desire.

Aeons ago I taught Wise Children and A Woman of no Importance. Both great.