TEXTS FOR WIDER READING IN UNIT ONE
There follow suggestions for finding material to support the chosen option for Unit 1. The lists have been
compiled to include reading across genre, texts in translation and non-fiction texts.
Candidates are required to choose at least three texts covering all three genres.
(Set texts listed in Section 3 which have not been selected for study may be chosen as wider
reading)
Option A Victorian Literature
(* denotes post-1990)
HOW TO LOG YOUR WIDER READING
1. Include the CONTENT of your text (what it's about)
2. Comment on the writer's thoughts and feelings as shown in the text. Does gender have an effect here? (AO1)
3. Comment on the language, form and struture of the text. (AO2)
- What genre is used and why?
- What literary devices are used?
- How is meaning built into the structure of the text?
4. Comment on the context of the text. (How was the writer affected by the time in which s/he was writing?) (AO4)
- Assess the typicality of the text (Was it popular reading at the time; were there other texts like it..?)
3.5 Wider Reading
GCE English Literature A Specification for AS exams 2009 onwards and A2 exams 2012 onwards (version 1.2)
PROSE FICTION
Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983)
Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie * (1998)
Arnold Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns (1902)
Andrew Drummond, An Abridged History * (2004)
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848)
G. & W. Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody (1892)
Michael Redhill, Consolation * (2006)
Herman Melville, Redburn (1849)
William Morris, News from Nowhere (1891)
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Any of the ten named prose texts for Unit 2, or any other novel by
Dickens, Eliot, Hardy or the Brontës.
PROSE NON-FICTION
Victorian non-fiction
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1869)
Thomas Carlyle, Selected Writings (Penguin)
John Clare, Selected Letters (OUP)
Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)
Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (1907)
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
John Ruskin, Selected Writings (Penguin)
The Brontës, A Life in Letters (ed. Barker)
Henry Thoreau, Walden (1854)
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1905)
Modern non-fiction
Peter Ackroyd, Dickens * (1990)
Juliet Barker, The Brontës * (1994)
Jonathan Bate, John Clare * (2003)
Quentin Bell, A New and Noble School (1982)
Winston Churchill, My Early Life (1930)
Terry Eagleton, Heathcliff and the Great Hunger * (1996)
Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde (1988)
Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1918)
Kate Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher * (2008)
Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man * (2006)
DRAMA
Anonymous, Maria Marten, or Murder in the Red Barn (1840)
J.M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton (1902)
Dion Boucicault, The Streets of London (1864)
John Walker, The Factory Lad (1825)
Brian Friel, The Home Place * (2005)
Patrick Hamilton, Gaslight (1939)
David Hare, The Judas Kiss * (1998)
Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893)
Harold Pinter, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (screenplay) (1981)
George Bernard Shaw, Mrs Warren’s Profession (1894)
George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man (1898)
Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love * (1997)
Tom Taylor, The Ticket-of-Leave Man (1863)
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
POETRY
Matthew Arnold
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Robert Browning
Arthur Clough
Emily Dickinson
Gerald Manley Hopkins
A.E. Housman
George Meredith
Christina Rossetti
Algernon Swinburne
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Walt Whitman
TEXTS IN TRANSLATION
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya (1897)
Feodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866)
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857)
Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education (1869)
Nikolai Gogol, The Government Inspector (1836)
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People (1882)
August Strindberg, Miss Julie (1888)
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1875)
Emile Zola, Germinal (1885)
Emile Zola, La Bête Humaine (1890)
