Did you do A-Level English Literature?

[BrilliantineMortality]

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 . 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.

1979 - 81

Dr Faustus - Marlowe
Metaphysical Poets (John Donne and?)
Paradise Lost -Milton
Chaucer - the Prologue
Antony and Cleopatra
The Tempest
Emma
Wordsworth and Keats

We had a vote on the poetry, the other option was Dylan Thomas and TSEliot.
Out of a class of 25 girls, I was the only one who didn't vote for Keats and Wordsworth.

French A level lit

Symphonie Pastoral -Andre Gide
Moliere -les Femmes Savant
A book which I can't remember the name of but it was about Bernard who wanted to ride in the Tour de France.

French Poets , Hugo, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Leconte de Lisle. I adored these.

1996-1998

Can't remember the poetry at all.

Hamlet
Much Ado about Nothing
A Streetcar Named Desire
Wuthering Heights
Great Expectations
Chaucer - The Miller's Tale

I remember studying Catcher in the Rye - but that might have been at GCSE

I also remember having a free choice essay as part of the coursework and I wrote it on the language in A Clockwork Orange.

I took it twice! (didn't do that well first time around)

1983:

Antony and Cleopatra
Paradise Lost books 9 & 10
Wife of Bath
Our Mutual Friend (didn't bother reading it though - it was optional)
The Power and the Glory - Greene
Auden's poetry
Far From the Madding Crowd

1984:
Same Shakespeare & Milton.
Knights Tale
Brideshead Revisited
Playboy of the Western World
Auden again

Loads of other texts for comparison but I think those were the set texts.

It's fascinating how the syllabuses (syllabi?) have changed over the years.

My comparison essay was on The Handmaid's Tale, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World.

I'd forgotten about the Practical Criticism paper with the unseen texts. Urgh, just came out in a cold sweat!

Takver, I had to do some Joseph Conrad for O Level. Now that is suffering! I read some more in adult life, fuck knows why, and hated it lots. I read Chinau Achebe's crit of the gentleman and had to agree.

Anywayzzz
A levels were in 1984 (yes, I am wearing reading glasses). I can't remember what we were examined on and what we had to read 'for context'. Had three English teachers, all blokes, one who reeked of BO, one with a squint who was up all night with his new baby and one who was physically unable to look the girls in the class in eye or address them by name.

Macbeth (I still like Shakespeare)
Anthony and Cleopatra
The Wasteland++ (I thought it was rather pretentious twaddle)
Poetry of Robert Lowell (really pretentious upper-middle-class American twaddle)
Chaucer - Prologue and the Knight's Tale (because Squinty thought the Wife of Bath too crude... Did he not read the desks? I still liked Chaucer, though)
Sons and Lovers (had to read The Rainbow as well, which was even worse, AND some of his poetry)
Our Mutual Friend (launched it across my bedroom, don't think I ever finished it)
Mansfield Park (Squinty again, amazing knack for choosing boring books)
The Mayor of Casterbridge (I think I struggled to the end of that one)
Waiting for Godot (in cloud of BO)
Pinter's The Caretaker (as above)

And we also read, but I don't think were examined on:
Murder in the Cathedral
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (More BO)

I slouched self-pityingly off to an English graduate I knew, who had already introduced me to Hopkins, waily-waily about how I hated Dickens and Lowell and Lawrence and Jane Austen. I was told nobody had to like the first three, but that I was wrong about Jane Austen. And indeed, I have never touched the first three since, except to read Lady Chatterly (wildly over-rated), but I love Jane Austen now.

1997-1999. We did:
Othello
The Tempest
Bleak House
The Color Purple
Dubliners
Paradise Lost
Keats -selected poems
The Wife of Bath's Tale

The great thing about Eng Lit was going to the theatre to see the plays - we saw an amazing production of Dr Faustus at (I think) the Young Vic. I was blown away by it.

Also got to see any Shakespeare that was on at the theatre at the time - and spent loads of lessons just watching the films. Watched the Go Between with Alan Bates and Julie Christie, some dodgy old BBC version of Mansfield Park with wobbly scenery, Much Ado about Nothing with Cherie Lunghi & Robert Lindsay.

I've just remembered another novel we did - The Siege of Krishnapur. Excellent book, I've just read it again fairly recently.

2000/2001

Handmaid's Tale
Hamlet
King Lear
Wife of Bath's Prologue & Tale
Wide Sargasso Sea
Fuck loads of Heaney (still can't stand him)

Erm that's all I can remember, we did A LOT of feminist authors at Uni though

Ah yes 1984 also

I did it in 1980, then went on to do it as part of my degree.

We did:
Tess - which I loved and still do
Pride and Prejudice - I've never really liked Jane Austen
Rozencrantz and Guildenstern - must get my old copy down and re-read it
Antony and Cleopatra - ok'ish
Some war poetry, Wilfred Owen etc.
Some Chaucer, maybe Wife of Bath

Probably lots more but I remember my degree works more. I was fortunate to have a teacher who was passionate about literature and lent those of us who were keen lots of books of his own. He really sparked a lifelong love of literature in me.

It's fascinating to see the books other people studied.

Did it in about 1990 I think?

Franklins tale
Great Gatsby
Sons and lovers
Hamlet
Death of a salesman (or was that GCSE?)
The tempest
Gerard Manley Hopkins poems

Oh and waiting for Godot!

Oh god, just catching up on the thread and yes we also had to read Silas fucking Marner. Saw the film too: "Epi? Where are you, Epi?" "In the coal hole, Daddy!" Said by a v young Patsy Kensit

And boring old Shirley, by x Bronte, who doesn't appear until a third into the book, or something. Vapid 'heroine', floppy fopsy men, grrr. Did open my eyes to the Industrial Revolution and the advent of Luddites, so I have that to be grateful for at least.

1992 - 1994

Er . . .

Antony & Cleopatra
The Winter's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale
Christina Rosetti
Chaucer - Prologue & the Wife of Bath I think
Possibly Keats
Some Paradise Lost
The Great Gatsby (or that might have been GCSE)

Err . . . Really can't remember any more though I'm sure there must have been . . .

Just remembered.. Did Pinter's The Caretaker in 1976.
God that was depressing.

1980 - 82
Paradise lost. 1 and 2
Handful of dust Waugh urggggg
As you like it
The return of the native even urggggier
Dylan Thomas fabfabfab.

Went to see hamlet but skived off to see the clash instead, got into massive trouble but it was worth it

1994-1996

Hamlet
Much Ado about Nothing
The Handmaid's Tale
Wuthering Heights
Poems: Philip Larkin, John Betjamin, Gerard Manly Hopkins and others.
Lavengro
Chaucer- The Miller's Tale
A Streetcar Named Desire

This makes me want to crack open my Norton Anthology

1988-90

Hamlet
As You Like It
John Keats
W B Yeats
Bleak House
The Pardoner's Tale
Er....

1992 and digging deep into my memory bank:

Henry IV part 1 and can't remember if we also did part 11
Othello
Wife of Bath
Emma
Samson Agonistes

I Have a total mind blank as to what else we did but perhaps the Colour purple? Maybe someone else of the same era will remember.

I did it 1967-1969. I am very envious of the more recent texts you all did!

Shakespeare was Othello plus a n other (we did Macbeth, Tempest, Julius Caesar & Dream at some point but I can't remember what was O and what was A & what was neither)
Milton - Samson Agonistes
Wordsworth - The Prelude & something else
Chaucer was Prologue plus Pardoner's (I think). I did have the benefit of the Coghill version. One of my English teachers, who was probably born in the 19th century (although he smoked a lot, he was always sloping off for a swift fag, he could have been much younger) could read the original text beautifully, it used to send me to sleep
Silas fucking Marner too

I'm sure there was more but I can't remember. There must have been at least one 20th century text? I wonder what that was

Villette, possibly. I've definitely read it & I can't possibly have done it for fun.

2010 - 2012.

Wuthering Heights
A River Sutra
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Much Ado About Nothing
A shitload of poems

That's all I can remember...

ohhhh - Merchant of Venice may have been A level.

We did do a lot of Shakespeare

GooseyLoosey, thank you!

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man was the most modern thing we did I'm pretty sure