During the module, most of your reading (essays, short stories, and extracts from longer works) will be provided electronically. However, there are four full-length novels on the course which we suggest that you own:

  • Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818) - Norton 9780393911534
  • Malcolm Bradbury (Ed.), The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories (1987) - Penguin  978-0241952863
  • Agatha Christie, The A.B.C. Murders (1936) - Harper 9780007119295
  • Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) - Norton 9780393970128

It is recommended that you purchase the prescribed (Norton) editions of Persuasion and Dracula as they contain other useful materials for the course; any edition of the other two texts will serve.

You are strongly advised to have read Dracula and Persuasion in full before the course begins.

The following works are not directly referred to on the course, but may be useful to have on your shelf – not only for this module, but for the whole of your time at Birmingham. Purchasing and/or reading one or two of them now might be considered an investment!

  • Chris Baldick, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, 3rd edn (2008) - OUP 9780199208272
  • Peter Barry, Beginning Theory, 3rd edn (2009) - MUP 9780719079276
  • Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2011) - OUP 9780199691340
  • Jeremy Hawthorn, Studying the Novel, 6th edn (2010) - B’bury 9780340985137
  • David Macey, The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory (2000) - Penguin 9780140513691
  • Stuart Sim, Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide (2009) - Icon 9781848310599

If you have any questions about the reading for this module, please do contact me: Will Tattersdill w.j.tattersdill@bham.ac.uk

  • T. V. F. Brogan (ed.), The New Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)
  • Margaret Ferguson, et al. (eds), The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005)

It’s summer; and though I trust – indeed, hope – that many of you will be busy gathering rosebuds, anyone wishing to turn a hand to the reading for Poetry next year might consider picking up a copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edn (NA below) and enjoying some of the following selections. You’ll encounter most of these during the first weeks of the module:

  • Caedmon’s Hymn(NA 1)
  • William Langland, from Piers Plowman (NA 71-74)
  • Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, ‘Wyatt Resteth Here’ (NA 138)
  • Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene Book I, Canto 1 (NA 166-179)
  • John Donne, ‘The Flea’ (NA 309-10)
  • Ben Jonson, ‘To Penshurst’ (NA 328-30), ‘To John Donne’ (NA 326); ‘To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare’ (NA 342-344)
  • Robert Herrick, ‘His Prayer to Ben Jonson’ (NA 358); ‘Upon Ben Jonson’ (NA 360)
  • John Milton, ‘On Shakespeare’ (NA 401-402)
  • Andrew Marvell, ‘The Garden’ (NA 484-85)
  • Henry Vaughan, ‘The Waterfall’ (NA 496-497)
  • John Dryden, ‘To the Memory of Mr. Oldham’ (NA 523-524)
  • Aphra Benn, ‘The Disappointment’ (NA 541-44); ‘On the Death of the Late Earl of Rochester’ (NA 546-548)
  • Oliver Goldsmith, ‘The Deserted Village’ (NA 686-695)
  • Charlotte Smith, ‘To the Shade of Burns’ (NA 711-12)
  • William Wordsworth, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbery’ (NA 765-68)
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ (NA 807-808)
  • Walter Savage Landor, ‘To Robert Browning’ (NA 832-33)
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘To Wordsworth’ (NA 863-64), ‘Ozymandias’ (NA 870)
  • John Keats, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’; ‘On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again’; ‘To Homer’ (NA 905-06); ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (NA 935-37)
  • Robert Browning, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ (NA 1009-10)
  • Matthew Arnold, ‘Shakespeare’ (NA 1087-88)
  • Thomas Hardy, ‘Under the Waterfall’, (NA 1159-1160)
  • Rudyard Kipling, ‘Tommy’ (1181-82)
  • W. B. Yeats, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ (NA 1190)
  • Edward Thomas, ‘Adlestrop’ (NA 1253-54)
  • Ezra Pound, ‘A Pact’ (NA 1296)
  • Rupert Brooke, from ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’ (NA 1325-27)
  • Hart Crane, ‘At Melville’s Tomb’ (NA 1410-11); ‘To Emily Dickinson’ (NA 1416)
  • W. H. Auden, ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ (NA 1472-1474)
  • Ted Hughes, ‘Examination at the Womb-Door’ (NA 1813-14)

Additionally, I would invite you to read Jon Stallworthy’s essay on ‘Versification’ (NA 2027-52), and the entries on ‘Dramatic Poetry’, ‘Lyric’, and ‘Narrative Poetry’ in the Princeton Handbook (pp. 57-64, 172-80, 200-04).

Should you have any questions about the module, you’re very welcome to write to me at c.donaldson@bham.ac.uk.  I look forward to meeting you in September.