Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Did you do A-Level English Literature?

349 replies

BrilliantineMortality · 20/04/2015 10:57

When did you study it?
Can you remember what books you read?

For me, I did it between 1993-95. Can't believe I sat my exams 20 years ago Shock. I found some of my set texts recently which jogged my memory as to the other books I studied:

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Have the men had enough - Margaret Forster
Oranges are not the only fruit - Jeanette Winterson
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan
The man who mistook his wife for a hat - Oliver Sacks (non-fiction component to the course)
King Lear
The Merchant of Venice
Ted Hughes' animal poems
John Keats' poems
The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
The Revenger's Tragedy - Tourneur/Middleton (A Jacobean play)

The thing that immediately strikes me is that the novels were all relatively contemporary with a (mostly) feminist slant. Probably because both my teachers were female and in their late twenties/early thirties, so these were probably the books that they had read in the preceding decade or so.

Only the John Keats' poetry from the 19th Century, which is pretty shocking, come to think of it now. Everything was either late 20th Century or much, much earlier. I loved doing my English Lit A Level, but reading this list back I can see that it didn't do me many favours when it came to study it for my degree.

OP posts:
Sevendown · 02/01/2018 21:55

I think it was Romeo and Juliet, to kill a mockingbird and Larkin poems.

Others I did but can’t remember the years:
The inheritors
Lord of the flies
Brave new world
Kidnapped
The pearl

Drama:
An inspector calls
Winslow boy

Poetry:
WW1/ Owen

Shakespeare:
Macbeth
Midsummers night dream
Julius Caesar

yellowplumpreserves · 03/01/2018 09:05

Yes. 1994-1996

Novels:

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Two Shakespeare plays:
The Winter's Tale
Anthony and Cleopatra

Other plays:
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
The Duchess of Malfi - John Webster

Poetry:

The Pardoner's Tale - Chaucer
Selections from William Wordsworth

honeyroar · 11/02/2018 21:21

I think it was 1991 and the ones I can remember are..

Death of a Salesman.
Jude the Obscure.
The Winters Tale.
A Bit of Singing and Dancing (Susan Hill)
The French Lieutenant's Woman.

I'm sure there must have been one or two more.

ClosdesMouches · 12/02/2018 08:02

Early 1980s. Struggling to remember them all.

Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus

Drama - Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, A View from the Bridge, The Crucible. I've never seen or read any Arthur Miller since!

Persuasion
The Secret Agent
Jude the Obscure

Romantic Poets including Blake.

CramptonHodnet · 12/02/2018 11:04

Yes. Late 1980s.

Novels - The Bell - Iris Murdoch, The Color Purple - Alice Walker, Schindler's Ark - Thomas Kenneally

Plays - Shakespeare - Richard II, Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller, The Malcontent - John Marston, Translations - Brian Friel.

surreymum734 · 13/02/2018 14:23

I can only remember one!
The Return of the Native - Hardy

Clawdy · 13/02/2018 21:32

Hamlet
A Winter's Tale
Wuthering Heights
Mayor of Casterbridge
Wordsworth's Prelude.

Long time ago!

woodhill · 13/02/2018 22:12

Was telling ds about ROTN today by some coincidence and Clem's mum died of an adder bite?

Backingvocals · 14/02/2018 15:46

Hamlet
Chaucer (can't remember which one)
Byron - Don Juan
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Importance of being Earnest
Great Gatsby
The Go Between
Emma

Looking back I notice that you wouldn't get a list like that now. Only one woman. No one who isn't white. The ones that stayed with me are Gerard Manley Hopkins and Austen. Still love them both and I would never have read or understood GMH without A Level.

On the other hand, Byron - totally dull. Cannot remember a single phrase. I don't think anyone reads Byron now and quite rightly - I'm guessing he was the celebrity of his era so his work had some longevity due to his fame but the content doesn't really stand up whereas Austen does.

LashingsOfHamAndGingerBeer · 14/02/2018 22:41

'96-'98
Way of the World - Congreve
The Tempest
Richard II
Edward II - Marlowe
Sense and Sensibility - Austen
The Handmaid's Tale - Atwood
Paradise Lost - Milton
Poems of U.A. Fanthorpe

Think that was it...

spidey66 · 15/02/2018 12:29

It was in mid 90s (long after I left FT education) and was a mixed Language and Literature course.
I read
I Know why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott
Hamlet
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead by Tom Stoppard
The Franklins Take
Making History by Brian Friel.

CharltonLido73 · 17/02/2018 12:27

1975 - 77

Shakespeare: Coriolanus
Shakespeare: Anthony and Cleopatra
Chaucer: the Prologue (and I can't remember which actual tale)
Ben Jonson: Volpone
George Eliot: Silas Marner
DH Lawrence: The Rainbow

There may have been others, but I cannot recall so far back in the mists of time...
Confused

TolstoyAteMyHamster · 19/02/2018 22:28

1991

Shakespeare: King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, King John (!) and possibly another but I can’t think what

Then The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Rainbow (urgh, put me off Lawrence for life), Howard’s End. Also Dylan Thomas and WB Yeates. We must have done The Franklin’s tale as Chaucer was compulsory and it’s the only one I’ve read but I don’t remember. And then surely some other drama but can’t think what - I know we read The Crucible at school but I think that was for GCSE.

What a list. There’s nothing there even vaguely modern - how odd. I have a lot of affection for all those authors bar the terrible DH Lawrence who I loathed beyond all measure of reasonableness but I do think a girls’ school in the early 90s could and should have done better.

LadyLapsang · 20/02/2018 23:51

1980
The one thing I remember is our teacher being horrified that the exam board did not require us to study more texts - however, she required it! Can't remember everything, but it included:
Webster - The White Devil or The Duchess of Malfi
Chaucer - Nun's Priest and Prologue
Paradise Lost
EM Forster Passage to India
WB Yeats Collected Poems
Some Shakespeare - perhaps Much Ado, Othello or Antony and Cleopatra

happypotamus · 22/02/2018 08:23

99-2000

The color purple
Paradise lost
Sense and sensibility
The tempest
Talking Heads (Alan Bennet)
Othello
The Wife of Bath (Chaucer)
Selected poems by Thomas Hardy

scaryteacher · 23/02/2018 14:35

82-84
Poetry:
WH Auden
Keats
Knights Tale (Chaucer)
Paradise Lost

Plays:
Death of a Salesman
Anthony and Cleopatra

Novels:
Great Expectations
The Bell Jar

I'm sure there was more, but at this remove, I get it confused with the minor I did in Eng Lit for my degree.

codswallopandbalderdash · 24/02/2018 15:12

OP - you sure you did all those books for A-Level? That seems a lot. In 1988 I did the 'Siege of Krishnapur', 'Emma', poetry I can't remember and 'Antony and Cleopatra'

Rupeomatic · 27/02/2018 11:47

1990-1992

We definitely did Anthony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Pride and Prejudice and one of the Canterbury Tales - apart from that I can't remember any of the texts. The poetry we looked at clearly didn't stick!

auberginesrus · 01/03/2018 16:26

I think I can remember all of mine (1990)
Hamlet,
As You Like It
WH Austen,
Metaphysical poetry,
Pardoners Tale,
Murder in the Cathedral,
Death of a Salesman,
Sons and Lovers,
A Handful of Dust,
A Passage to India

Seems a lot! All men, all white - don't think it would pass muster now

auberginesrus · 01/03/2018 16:27

Obviously Auden not Austen, I'm blaming autocorrect Blush

Uhohmummy · 03/03/2018 07:52

I did mine 1996-1998 (!)
We studied:
Chaucer - General Prologue and Wife of Bath’s Tale
Poetry of the 1930s
Mansfield Park
The Go Between
Measure for Measure
Volpone
I only did English Lit as my original chosen third subject (French) clashed on the timetable with my other choices but it would ended up being the only one I absolutely loved.

ClinkyMonkey · 03/03/2018 16:56

1985

Can't remember them all:

Comedy of Errors
Anthony and Cleopatra
Strumpet City by James Plunkett
Poems of Seamus Heaney
The War Poets (Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon etc)
Wuthering Heights

It was the Northern Ireland syllabus. Can't believe I've forgotten the rest. I remember studying All My Sons by Arthur Miller and Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey, but not sure if those were for 'O' level.

Flamingo84 · 07/03/2018 20:25

2001-2003

Seamus Heaney
Chaucer
Othello
Duchess of Malfi
Oranges are not the only fruit

I did an English degree and remember those books a bit better!

Nuffaluff · 08/03/2018 09:58

I loved my English A level. I had a brilliant teacher - every moment discussing these texts was thrilling to me.
It was 1994-1996
We did:
Hamlet
The Tempest
Ghosts by Ibsen
The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
Poetry of Robert Browning

The only one I didn’t like was North and South by a Elizabeth Gaskell. I know lots of people really like it but I couldn’t stand it.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page