1.

https://sites.google.com/site/englishdep

artmentvoccollege/resources/pg-i-year 2. http://www.mannmuseum.com/?

s=Keats+Endymion&x=35&y=20 3. 4. http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/ http://www.bydewey.com/800literature.h

tml#820 5. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature-

study-guides.html 6. http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2968

(suggesting the links.) 7. http://www.novelguide.com/animalfarm/t

hemeanalysis.html 8. http://www.pinkmonkey.com/dl/all.asp

(only books not analysis)

9.

http://www.tuition.com.hk/english-

literature/e.htm (English literature one word dictionary) 10. 11. http://www.shmoop.com/animal-farm/ http://www.freebooknotes.com/summari

es-analysis/brave-new-world/ (The Best which can give all links to guides) 12. http://www.gradesaver.com/brave-new-

world/study-guide/ 13. http://www.ukstudentlife.com/English/Re

ading/Literature.htm (The best5 site) 14. http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/

(The best site all things theme, style every thing available in a single page)

15.

http://www.uncp.edu/home/monika/eng-

web.htm (Dateabase for literature and film studies) 16. http://archive.org/details/VerdictOnIndia

(Gives free book downloads) 17. http://tucows.com/ (text to speech and

other softwares are available) 18. http://www.literature.org/authors/eliot-

george/adam-bede/ (we can read the complete books) 19. http://www.goodreads.com/reader/640-

jane-eyre?percent=3.351897 (we can read finely all literature books) 20. http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/boo

k/English_Literature_by_William_Joseph_L

ong (rs fREE aUDIO BOOKS DOWNLOADS) 21. Vade Mecum: A GRE for Literature

Study Tool www.duke.edu/~tmw15/ (RS Best site Quick reference in short description.) 22. http://www.online-

literature.com/periods/modernism.php Referencxe 23. http://www.quiz-

tree.com/GRE_main.html (GRE quizzes for vocabulary) 24. http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hyp

ergrammar/claustyp.html#subordinate clauses (helps fastly to imrove writing skills)

25.

http://education-portal.com ((database

for many literatue sites) 26. http://www.lang.nagoya-

u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/EngLit.html#17th (RS VVimp database connected to all imp sites) 27. FAMOUS WRITERS & THEIR WORK 28. Old English (Anglo-Saxon Period): writers: Caedmon and Cynewulf. work: Beowulf (by anonymous). 1200-1500: Middle English Period : Geoffrey Chaucer's(1343-1400) : The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and Book of the Duchess. Other Major Poems The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowles, The Legend of Good Women. Prose Treatises Treatise on the astrolabe. Short Poems The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse ,Truth, Gentilesse, Merciles

Beaute, Lak of Stedfastnesse, Against Women Unconstant.

29. 30.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Thomas Malory's (1405-1471) : Morte d'Arthur. work: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (by anonymous). 1500-1660: The English Renaissance 1500-1558: Tudor Period (Humanist Era) The Humanists:

31. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) : Utopia, The History of King Richard the Third, The Life of Pico della Mirandola, The Four Last Things, A Dialogue Concerning Tyndale, The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation and Sadness of Christ .

32. 33.

Sir Thomas More

John Skelton (1460-1529): A ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge

34. 35.

John Skelton

Sir Thomas Wyatt(1503-1542): My Lute Awake! Once, As Methought, Fortune Me Kissed They Flee From Me The restful place ! renewer of my smart It may be good, like it who list In faith I wot not what to say There Was Never Nothing More Me Pained Patience ! though I have not Though I Cannot Your Cruelty Constrain Blame Not My Lute My Pen ! Take Pain The heart and service to you proffer'd Is It Possible? And Wilt Thou Leave Me Thus?

Since so ye please to hear me plain Forget Not Yet The Tried Intent What Should I Say! 36.

Sir Thomas Wyatt. 37. The Renaissance Period consists of four subsets: 1. 1558-1603: The Elizabethan Age (High Renaissance): 38. William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Comedies: All's Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of

Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Winter's Tale Histories: King John, Richard II, Henry IV, part 1, Henry IV, part 2, Henry V, Henry VI, part1, Henry VI, part 2, Henry VI, part 3, Richard III,Henry VIII Tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra.Poems: Shakespeare's Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, The Phoenix and the Turtle, A Lover's Complaint.

39. 40.

William Shakespeare

Christopher Marlowe(1564-1593): The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus The Jew of Malta Massacre at Paris Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1 Tamburlaine the Great, Part 2 Lucan's First Book Edward II Dido Queen of Carthage Hero and Leander Ovid's Elegies The Passionate Shepherd to his Love

41. Marlowe 42.

Christopher

Edmund Spenser(1552-1599): The Faerie Queene, Iambicum Trimetrum, The Shepheardes Calender.

43. Spenser 44.

Edmund

Sir Walter Raleigh(1552 1618): What is Our Life, The Ocean to Cynthia and The Lie.

45. Raleigh 46.

Sir Walter

Ben Jonson(1573-1637): An Hymn to God the Father An Hymn on the Nativity of My Savior An Epitaph on Master Vincent Corbet On the Portrait of Shakspeare To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare To Mr. John Fletcher, Upon His "Faithful Shepherdess" Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke Epitaph on Michael Drayton To His Much and Worthily Esteemed Friend,

the Author To My Worthy and Honored Friend, Master George Chapman

47. 48.

Ben Jonson

2. 1603-1625:The Jacobean Age {Mannerist Style (1590-1640) other styles: Metaphysical Poets; Devotional Poets}: John Donne(1572-1631): Song A Hymn to God the Father Death, Be Not Proud Confined Love The Dissolution Oh my black soul! now art thou summoned Father, part of his double interest A Hymn to Christ at the Author's Last Going into Germany

49.

John Donne 50. Francis Bacon (1561-1626): The Advancement of Learning, The Essays, The New Atlantis, Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature

51.

Francis Bacon 52. Thomas Middleton (1580-1627): The Phoenix Michaelmas Term A Mad World, My Masters A Trick to Catch the Old One The Puritan

53.

Thomas Middleton 54. 3.1625-1649: The Caroline Age : John Ford, John Milton 55. John Milton (1608-1674): Lycidas Paradise Lost Paradise Regained

56. 57.

John Milton

John Ford (1586-1640): Fame's Memorial Christ's Bloody Sweat, attr. Honour Triumphant The Witch of Edmonton The Sun's Darling The Lover's Melancholy Contention of a Bird and a Musician The Broken Heart A Bridal Song Love's Sacrifice 'Tis Pity She's a Whore Perkin Warbeck The Fancies, Chaste and Noble The Lady's Trial

58. 59.

John Ford

4. 1649-1660: The Commonwealth Period (which is also known as the Puritan & The Protectorate (Baroque Style, and later, Rococo Style) The Neoclassical Period: political writings of John Milton, Thomas Hobbes' political treatise Leviathan, and the prose of Andrew Marvell. Andrew Marvell (1621-1678): To his coy mistress

The Neoclassical Period can be divided into three subsets: 1. 1660-1700: The Restoration: John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. John Dryden (1631-1700), John Wilmot 2nd Earl of Rochester (16471680), satirical poet; and John Locke. John Dryden 2. 1700-1800: The Eighteenth Century(The Enlightenment; Neoclassical Period; The Augustan Age) The Augustan Age: Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope , Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, (first English novels by Defoe) and Pamela, by Samuel Richardson. 60. Alexander Pope (1688-1744): An Essay on Criticism The Rape of the Lock The Dunciad

61. 62.

Alexander Pope

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): A Modest Proposal Gulliver's Travels Ladys Dressing room Strephon and Chloe Cassinus and Peter

63. 64.

Jonathan Swift

3. The Age of Sensibility. Samuel Johnson , and Henry Fielding Henry Fielding (1707-1754) Tom Jones. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): A Dictionary of the English Language To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield 1785-1870: Romanticism (The Age of

Revolution) William Blake, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Jane Austen. 65. William Wordsworth (1770-1850): London 1802 Ode: Intimations of Immortality The Prelude To a Skylark Tintern Abbey

66. 67.

William Wordsworth

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 1834):

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Chrisabel Kubla Khan 68.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 69. George Gordon Byron (1788-1824): Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Don Juan Song for the Luddites The Isles of Greece

70.

George Gordon Byron 71. 1870-1914: Victorian Period (Early, Middle and Late Victorian) Charles Dickens, the Bronts, George Eliot, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Hardy. 72. Charles Dickens (1812-1870): Great Expectations Hard Times The Old Curiosity Shop Dombey and Son A Tale of Two Cities Oliver Twist

73.

Charles Dickens 74. George Eliot (1819-1880): Middlemarch The mill on the floss George Eliot Robert Browning (1812-1889): The Ring and the Book My Last Duchess

75. 76.

Robert Browning

1914-1945: Modern Period: 77. George Bernard Shaw, John Galosworthy, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot. 78. George Bernard Shaw(1856-1950): Candida Pygmalion An Unsocial Socialist Arms and the Man Caesar and Cleopatra

The Irrational Knot Cashel Byron's Profession 79.

George Bernard Shaw 80. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): The Island Of Statutes Iris Fairy Tales On Baile' Strand The Hour Glass In The Seven Woods The Kings Treshold Reveries Over Childhood And Youth

Responsibilities Sailing To Byzantium The Second Coming At The Hawk's Well 81.

William Butler Yeats 82. 83. D.H. Lawrence(1885-1930): Sons and Lovers Everlasting Flowers Elegy Discord in Childhood Dolor of Autumn Excursion

Lady Chatterley's Lover Women in Love 84.

D.H. Lawrence 85. T.S.Eliot(1888-1965): The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Gerontion Sweeney Among the Nightingales The Waste Land The Hollow Men The Journey of the Magi Ash Wednesday

86.

T.S.Eliot

Introduction This study guide is intended for GCE Advanced and Advanced Supplementary (A2 and AS) level students in the UK, who are taking exams or modules in English literature. It should be most useful right at the start of the course, or later as a resource for exercises in revision, and to help you reflect on value judgements in literary criticism. It may also be suitable for university students and the general reader who is interested in the history of literature. This guide reflects a view of literature which is

sometimes described as canonical, and sometimes as a Dead White European Male view. That is, I have not especially sought to express my own value judgements but to reflect those which are commonly found in printed guides by judges whose views command more respect than mine. I hope that students who visit this page will take issue with the summary comments here, or discuss them with their peers. But young readers will not thank teachers for leaving them in the dark about established critical opinion or the canon of English literature. (If you doubt that there is a canon, look at the degree course structure for English literature in a selection of our most prestigious universities.) Students who recognize that they have little or no sense of English literary culture have often asked me to suggest texts for them to study - this guide may help them in this process. This is NOT a tutorial, in the sense of a close reading of any text. And it is not very interesting to read from start to finish. I hope, rather, that it will be used as a point of reference or way in to literature for beginners. You will soon see if it is not for you.

Back to top And while I have made a selection from the many authors who deserve study, I have throughout presented them in a chronogical sequence. At the end I consider briefly questions of genre and literary value. I have not attempted to record the achivements of writers in other languages, though these include some of the greatest and most influential writers of all time, such as Dante Alighieri, Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka andBertolt Brecht. Happily, examiners of Advanced level literature have allowed students, in recent years, to study these foreign authors, in translation, in independent extended literary studies. Please use the hyperlinks in the table above to navigate this page. If you have any comments or suggestions to make about this page, please e-mail me by clicking on this link. The typographic conventions of this page are red for emphasis and the names of authors when first mentioned, and when they appear outside of the section which relates to

their historic period. Brown type is used in place of italic for titles of works. The screen fonts display in such a way that neither true italic nor bold are very pleasant to read. If you find the text size too small, you can increase it, using the text size item in the view menu of your browser. Back to top Literary forms Literary forms such as the novel or lyric poem, or genres, such as the horror-story, have a history. In one sense, they appear because they have not been thought of before, but they also appear, or become popular for other cultural reasons, such as the absence or emergence of literacy. In studying the history of literature (or any kind of art), you are challenged to consider

what constitutes a given form, how it has developed, and whether it has a future.

The novels of the late Catherine Cookson may have much in common with those of Charlotte Bront, but is it worth mimicking in the late 20th century, what was ground-breaking in the 1840s? While Bront examines what is contemporary for her, Miss Cookson invents an imagined past which may be of interest to the cultural historian in studying the present sources of her nostalgia, but not to the student of the period in which her novels are set. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is a long work of prose fiction, but critics do not necessarily describe it as a novel. Why might this be? Knowing works in their historical context does not give easy answers, but may shed more or less light on our darkness in considering such questions. Back to top Old English, Middle English and Chaucer Old English English, as we know it, descends from the language spoken by the north Germanic tribes who settled in England from the 5th century

A.D. onwards. They had no writing (except runes, used as charms) until they learned the Latin alphabet from Roman missionaries. The earliest written works in Old English (as their language is now known to scholars) were probably composed orally at first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. We know the names of some of the later writers (Cdmon, lfric and King Alfred) but most writing is anonymous. Old English literature is mostly chronicle and poetry - lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. By the time literacy becomes widespread, Old English is effectively a foreign and dead language. And its forms do not significantly affect subsequent developments in English literature. (With the scholarly exception of the 19th century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who finds in Old English verse the model for his metrical system of "sprung rhythm".) Back to top Middle English and Chaucer

From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English. Ideas and themes from French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at about this time, but the first great name in English literature is that of Geoffrey Chaucer (?1343-1400). Chaucer introduces the iambic pentameter line, the rhyming couplet and other rhymes used in Italian poetry (a language in which rhyming is arguably much easier than in English, thanks to the frequency of terminal vowels). Some of Chaucer's work is prose and some is lyric poetry, but his greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we find in Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Other notable mediaeval works are the anonymous Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight (probably by the same author) and William Langlands' Piers Plowman. Back to top Tudor lyric poetry Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work of Sir Thomas

Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while Surrey (as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse) thus inventing the verse form which will be of great use to contemporary dramatists. A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth comes with such writers as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser(1552-1599), Sir Walter Ralegh (15521618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) andWilliam Shakespeare (1564-1616). The major works of the time are Spenser's Faerie Queene, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's sonnets. Back to top Renaissance drama The first great English dramatist is Marlowe. Before the 16th century English drama meant the amateur performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on public holidays. Marlowe's plays

(Tamburlaine; Dr. Faustus; Edward II and The Jew of Malta) use thefive act structure and the medium of blank verse, which Shakespeare finds so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually exhausts this form, his Jacobean successors producing work which is rarely performed today, though some pieces have literary merit, notably The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil by John Webster(1580-1625) and The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626). The excessive and gratuitous violence of Jacobean plays leads to the clamour for closing down the theatres, which is enacted by parliament after the Civil war. Back to top Metaphysical poetry The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose short love poems are characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest meaning from experience. The preoccupation with the big questions of love, death and religious faith marks out Donne and

his successors who are often called metaphysical poets. (This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an essay of 1779, was revived and popularized by T.S. Eliot, in an essay of 1921. It can be unhelpful to modern students who are unfamiliar with this adjective, and who are led to think that these poets belonged to some kind of school or group which is not the case.) After his wife's death, Donne underwent a serious religious conversion, and wrote much fine devotional verse. The best known of the other metaphysicals are George Herbert (15931633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695). Back to top Epic poetry Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) and Roman (Virgil's neid) poetry. John Milton (1608-1674) who was Cromwell's secretary, set out to write a great biblical epic, unsure whether to write in

Latin or English, but settling for the latter in Paradise Lost. John Dryden (1631-1700) also wrote epic poetry, on classical and biblical subjects. Though Dryden's work is little read today it leads to a comic parody of the epic form, or mock-heroic. The best poetry of the mid 18th century is the comic writing of Alexander Pope(1688-1744). Pope is the best-regarded comic writer and satirist of English poetry. Among his many masterpieces, one of the more accessible is The Rape of the Lock(seekers of sensation should note that "rape" here has its archaic sense of "removal by force"; the "lock" is a curl of the heroine's hair). Serious poetry of the period is well represented by the neo-classical Thomas Gray (1716-1771) whose Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard virtually perfects the elegant style favoured at the time. Back to top Restoration comedy On the death of Oliver Cromwell (in 1658) plays were no longer prohibited. A new kind of comic

drama, dealing with issues of sexual politics among the wealthy and the bourgeois, arose. This is Restoration Comedy, and the style developed well beyond the restoration period into the mid 18th century almost. The total number of plays performed is vast, and many lack real merit, but the best drama uses the restoration conventions for a serious examination of contemporary morality. A play which exemplifies this well is The Country Wife by William Wycherley (1640-1716). Back to top Prose fiction and the novel Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known for the extended prose work Gulliver's Travels, in which a fantastic account of a series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing familiar English institutions, such as religion, politics and law. Another writer who uses prose fiction, this time much more naturalistic, to explore other questions of politics or economics is Daniel

Defoe (1661-1731), author Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

ofRobinson

The first English novel is generally accepted to be Pamela (1740), by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761): this novel takes the form of a series of letters; Pamela, a virtuous housemaid resists the advances of her rich employer, who eventually marries her. Richardson's work was almost at once satirized by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) inJoseph Andrews (Joseph is depicted as the brother of Richardson's Pamela Andrews) and Tom Jones. After Fielding, the two great figures 1832) and Jane typify, respectively, romanticism and classical views. novel is dominated by the of Sir Walter Scott (1771Austen (1775-1817), who the new regional, historical the established, urbane

Novels depicting extreme behaviour, madness or cruelty, often in historically remote or exotic settings are called Gothic. They are ridiculed by Austen in Northanger Abbeybut include one

undisputed masterpiece, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1797-1851). Back to top Romanticism The rise of Romanticism A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William Blake (1757-1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a significant event in English literary history, though the poems were poorly received and few books sold. The elegant latinisms of Gray are dropped in favour

of a kind of English closer to that spoken by real people (supposedly). Actually, the attempts to render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly convincing. Robert Burns (1759 1796) writes lyric verse in the dialect of lowland Scots (a variety of English). After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the most often quoted of writers in English: we sing his Auld Lang Syne every New Year's Eve. Back to top Later Romanticism The work of the later romantics John Keats (1795-1821) and his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822; husband of Mary Shelley) is marked by an attempt to make language beautiful, and by an interest in remote history and exotic places. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) uses romantic themes, sometimes comically, to explain contemporary events. Romanticism begins as a revolt against established views, but eventually becomes the established outlook. Wordsworth becomes a kind of national monument, while the Victorians

make what was at first revolutionary seem familiar, domestic and sentimental. Back to top Victorian poetry The major poets of the Victorian era are Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Both are prolific and varied, and their work defies easy classification. Tennyson makes extensive use of classical myth and Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities of his writing. Browning's chief interest is in people; he uses blank verse in writing dramatic monologues in which the speaker achieves a kind of selfportraiture: his subjects are both historical individuals (Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto) and representative types or caricatures (Mr. Sludge the Medium). Other Victorian poets of note include Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning(1806-1861) and Christina

Rossetti (1830-1894). Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is notable for his use of what he calls "sprung rhythm"; as in Old English verse syllables are not counted, but there is a pattern of stresses. Hopkins' work was not wellknown until very long after his death. Back to top The Victorian novel The rise of the popular novel In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide education by the state, and self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly the result of the popularity of the novel. Publication in instalments means that works are affordable for people of modest means. The change in the reading public is reflected in a change in the subjects of novels: the high bourgeois world of Austen gives way to an interest in characters of humble origins. The great novelists write works which in some ways transcend their own period, but which in detail very much explore the preoccupations of their time.

Back to top Dickens and the Bronts Certainly the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and possibly of all time, isCharles Dickens (1812-1870). The complexity of his best work, the variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create surface problems for the modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading. But Great Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friendand Little Dorrit are works with which every student should be acquainted. Charlotte Bront (1816-1855) and her sisters Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) are understandably linked together, but their work differs greatly. Charlotte is notable for several good novels, among which her masterpiece is Jane Eyre, in which we see the heroine, after much adversity, achieve happiness on her own terms. Emily Bront'sWthering Heights is a strange work, which enjoys almost cult status. Its concerns are more romantic, less contemporary than those of Jane Eyre - but its themes of obsessive love and self-destructive

passion have proved popular with the 20th century reader. Back to top The beginnings of American literature The early 19th century sees the emergence of American literature, with the stories ofEdgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), Herman Melville (181991), and Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910), and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-92) and Emily Dickinson (183086). Notable works include Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby Dick, Twain's Huckleberry Finnand Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Back to top Later Victorian novelists After the middle of the century, the novel, as a form, becomes firmly-established: sensational or melodramatic "popular" writing is represented by Mrs. Henry Wood'sEast Lynne (1861), but

the best novelists achieved serious critical acclaim while reaching a wide public, notable authors being Anthony Trollope (181582), Wilkie Collins (1824-89), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans; 1819-80) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Among the best novels are Collins'sThe Moonstone, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede andMiddlemarch, and Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Back to top Modern literature Early 20th century poets W.B. (William Butler) Yeats (1865-1939) is one of two figures who dominate modern poetry, the other being T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (18881965). Yeats was Irish; Eliot was born in the USA but settled in England, and took UK citizenship in 1927. Yeats uses conventional lyric forms, but explores the connection between modern themes and classical and

romantic ideas. Eliot uses elements of conventional forms, within an unconventionally structured whole in his greatest works. Where Yeats is prolific as a poet, Eliot's reputation largely rests on two long and complex works: The Waste Land(1922) and Four Quartets (1943). The work of these two has overshadowed the work of the best late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian poets, some of whom came to prominence during the First World War. Among these are Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), A.E. Housman (18591936), Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Siegfried Sassoon(18861967), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The most celebrated modern American poet, is Robert Frost (18741963), who befriended Edward Thomas before the war of 1914-1918. Back to top Early modern writers

The late Victorian and early modern periods are spanned by two novelists of foreign birth: the American Henry James (1843-1916) and the Pole Joseph Conrad (Josef Korzeniowski; 1857-1924). James relates character to issues of culture and ethics, but his style can be opaque; Conrad's narratives may resemble adventure stories in incident and setting, but his real concern is with issues of character and morality. The best of their work would include James's The Portrait of a Lady and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent. Other notable writers of the early part of the century include George Bernard Shaw(18561950), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and E.M. Forster (1879-1970). Shaw was an essaywriter, language scholar and critic, but is bestremembered as a playwright. Of his many plays, the best-known is Pygmalion (even better known today in its form as the musical My Fair Lady). Wells is celebrated as a popularizer of science, but his best novels explore serious social and cultural themes, The History of Mr. Polly being perhaps his masterpiece. Forster's

novels include Howard's End, A Room with a Viewand A Passage to India. Back to top Joyce and Woolf Where these writers show continuity with the Victorian tradition of the novel, more radically modern writing is found in the novels of James Joyce (1882-1941), of Virginia Woolf (18821941), and of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Where Joyce and Woolf challenge traditional narrative methods of viewpoint and structure, Lawrence is concerned to explore human relationships more profoundly than his predecessors, attempting to marry the insights of the new psychology with his own acute observation. Working-class characters are presented as serious and dignified; their manners and speech are not objects of ridicule. Other notable novelists include George Orwell (1903-50), Evelyn Waugh (19031966),Graham Greene (1904-1991) and the 1983 Nobel prize-winner, William Golding (1911-1993).

Back to top Poetry in the later 20th century Between the two wars, a revival of romanticism in poetry is associated with the work ofW.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907-73), Louis MacNeice (1907-63) and Cecil DayLewis(1904-72). Auden seems to be a major figure on the poetic landscape, but is almost too contemporary to see in perspective. The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-53) is notable for strange effects of language, alternating from extreme simplicity to massive overstatement. Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century, evaluation is even more difficult, but writers of note include the American Robert Lowell (1917-77),Philip Larkin (1922-1985), R.S. Thomas (19132000), Thom Gunn (1929-2004), Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and the 1995 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney (b. 1939). Back to top

Notable writers outside mainstream movements Any list of "important" names is bound to be uneven and selective. Identifying broad movements leads to the exclusion of those who do not easily fit into schematic outlines of history. Writers not referred to above, but highly regarded by some readers might include Laurence Sterne (1713-68), author of Tristram Shandy, R.L. Stevenson(1850-94) writer of Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde (18541900), author of The Importance of Being Earnest, and novelists such asArnold Bennett (1867-1931), John Galsworthy (18671933) and the Americans F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), John Steinbeck (1902-68) andJ.D. Salinger (b. 1919). Two works notable not just for their literary merit but for their articulation of the spirit of the age are Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. The American dramatist Arthur Miller (b. 1915) has

received similar acclaim for his play Death of a Salesman (1949). Miller is more popular in the UK than his native country, and is familiar to many teachers and students because his work is so often set for study in examinations. Back to top Literature and culture Literature has a history, and this connects with cultural history more widely. Prose narratives were written in the 16th century, but the novel as we know it could not arise, in the absence of a literate public. The popular and very contemporary medium for narrative in the 16th century is the theatre. The earliest novels reflect a bourgeois view of the world because this is the world of the authors and their readers (working people are depicted, but patronizingly, not from inside knowledge). The growth of literacy in the Victorian era leads to enormous diversification in the subjects and settings of the novel.

Recent and future trends In recent times the novel has developed different genres such as the thriller, the whodunnit, the pot-boiler, the western and works of science-fiction, horror and the sexand-shopping novel. Some of these may be brief fashions (the western seems to be dying) while others such as the detective story or science-fiction have survived for well over a century. As the dominant form of narrative in contemporary western popular culture, the novel may have given way to the feature film and television drama. But it has proved surprisingly resilient. As society alters, so the novel may reflect or define this change; many works may be written, but few of them will fulfil this defining rle; those which seem to do so now, may not speak to later generations in the same way. Evaluating literature The "test of time" may be a clich, but is a genuine measure of how a work of imagination can transcend cultural boundaries; we should,

perhaps, now speak of the "test of time and place", as the best works cross boundaries of both kinds. We may not "like" or "enjoy" works such as Wthering Heights, Heart of Darkness or The Waste Land, but they are the perfect expression of particular ways of looking at the world; the author has articulated a view which connects with the reader's search for meaning. It is, of course, perfectly possible for a work of imagination to make sense of the world or of experience (or love, or God, or death) while also entertaining or delighting the reader or audience with the detail and eloquence of the work, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Great Expectations. Back to top Add to this page Have I missed anything out? Of course I have, in the search for brevity. But have I missed out writers or their works which are as important as those I have included, or even more important? If you would like to add a comment

or section to this page, you may submit suggestions to me. I don't guarantee that I'll add them - this is NOT a forum for personal favourites (not even mine). But when I see that you are right to recall my attention to an overlooked author or work, I will be happy to edit this guide, and acknowledge your additions. If you are a teacher or student, you could see this as a task for a seminar or discussion. It will help with critical commentary tasks (sometimes called critical explorations).
Titles from Open Response Questions*
Updated from an original list by Norma J. Wilkerson. Works referred to on the AP Literature exams since 1971 (specific years in parentheses) Please note that only authors were recommended in early years, not specific titles..

A Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner (76, 00, 10, 12) Adam Bede by George Eliot (06) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (80, 82, 85, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99, 05, 06, 07, 08,11) The Aeneid by Virgil (06) Agnes of God by John Pielmeier (00) The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (97, 02, 03, 08, 12) Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (00, 04, 08) All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren (00, 02, 04, 07, 08, 09, 11) All My Sons by Arthur Miller (85, 90) All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (95, 96, 06, 07, 08, 10, 11) America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan (95) An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (81, 82, 95, 03) American Pastoral by Philip Roth (09) The American by Henry James (05, 07, 10) Angels in America by Tony Kushner (09) Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (10)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (80, 91, 99, 03, 04, 06, 08, 09) Another Country by James Baldwin (95, 10, 12) Antigone by Sophocles (79, 80, 90, 94, 99, 03, 05, 09, 11) Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (80, 91) Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (94) Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer (76) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (78, 89, 90, 94, 01, 04, 06, 07, 09) As You Like It by William Shakespeare (92 05, 06, 10) Atonement by Ian McEwan (07, 11) Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson (02, 05) The Awakening by Kate Chopin (87, 88, 91, 92, 95, 97, 99, 02, 04, 07, 09, 11) B The Bear by William Faulkner (94, 06) Beloved by Toni Morrison (90, 99, 01, 03, 05, 07, 09, 10, 11) A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul (03) Benito Cereno by Herman Melville (89) Billy Budd by Herman Melville (79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 99, 02, 04, 05, 07, 08) The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter (89, 97) Black Boy by Richard Wright (06, 08) Bleak House by Charles Dickens (94, 00, 04, 09, 10) Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (94, 96, 97, 99, 04, 05, 06, 08) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (07, 11) The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (95, 08, 09) Bone: A Novel by Fae M. Ng (03) The Bonesetters Daughter by Amy Tan (06, 07, 11) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (89, 05, 09, 10) Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh (12) Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (79) Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos (09) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevski (90, 08) C Candida by George Bernard Shaw (80) Candide by Voltaire (80, 86, 87, 91, 95, 96, 04, 06, 10) The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (06) The Caretaker by Harold Pinter (85) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (82, 85, 87, 89, 94, 01, 03, 04, 05, 07, 08, 11) The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (01, 08, 11) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (00)

Cats Eye by Margaret Atwood (94, 08, 09) The Centaur by John Updike (81) Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (94, 96, 97, 99, 01, 03, 05, 06, 07, 09, 12) The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (71, 77, 06, 07, 09, 10) The Chosen by Chaim Potok (08) Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (76) Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (06, 08) The Color Purple by Alice Walker (92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 05, 08, 09, 12) Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje (01) Copenhagen by Michael Frayn (09) The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett (10) Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton (85, 87, 91, 95, 96, 07, 09) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski (76, 79, 80, 82, 88, 96, 99, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 09, 10, 11) The Crisis by Thomas Paine (76) The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (09) The Crucible by Arthur Miller (71, 83, 86, 89, 04, 05, 09) D Daisy Miller by Henry James (97, 03, 12) Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel (01) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (78, 83, 06) The Dead by James Joyce (97) The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (86) Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (86, 88, 94, 03, 04, 05, 07, 12) Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty (97) Desire under the Elms by Eugene ONeill (81) Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (97) The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (06) The Diviners by Margaret Laurence (95) Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (79, 86, 99, 04, 11) Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (10) A Dolls House by Henrik Ibsen (71, 83, 87, 88, 95, 05, 09) The Dollmaker by Harriet Arnot (91) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (01, 04, 06, 08) Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia (03) Dutchman by Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones (03, 06) E East of Eden by John Steinbeck (06) Emma by Jane Austen (96, 08)

An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen (76, 80, 87, 99, 01, 07) Equus by Peter Shaffer (92, 99, 00, 01, 08, 09) Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (80, 85, 03, 05, 06, 07) The Eumenides by Aeschylus (in The Orestia) (96) F The Fall by Albert Camus (81) A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (99, 04, 09) The Father by August Strindberg (01) Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (90) Faust by Johann Goethe (02, 03) The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton (76) Fences by August Wilson (02, 03, 05, 09, 10) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (03) Fifth Business by Robertson Davis (00, 07) The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (07) For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (03, 06) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (89, 00, 03, 06, 08) A Free Life: A Novel by Ha Jin (10) G A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines (00, 11) Germinal by Emile Zola (09) A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee (04, 05) Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (00, 04) The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (71, 90, 94, 97, 99, 02, 08, 09, 10, 12) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (10, 11) Going After Cacciato by Tim OBrien (01, 06, 10) The Golden Bowl by Henry James (09) The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (00, 11) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (95, 03, 06, 09, 10, 11, 12) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (79, 80, 88, 89, 92, 95, 96, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 07, 08, 10, 12) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (82, 83, 88, 91, 92, 97, 00, 02, 04, 05, 07, 10) Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (83, 88, 90, 05, 09) Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift (87, 89, 01, 04, 06, 09) H The Hairy Ape by Eugene ONeill (89, 0994, 97, 99, 00) Hamlet by William Shakespeare (88, 94, 97, 99, 00) The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood (03, 09) Hard Times by Charles Dickens (87, 90, 09)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (71, 76, 91, 94, 96, 99, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 06, 09, 10, 11, 12) The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene (71) Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (79, 92, 00, 02, 03, 05) Henry IV, Parts I and II by William Shakespeare (80, 90, 08) Henry V by William Shakespeare (02) A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (08) The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (78, 90) Home to Harlem by Claude McKay (10) A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipul (10) House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (95, 06, 09) The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (04, 07, 10) The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (89) The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (08, 10) I The Iliad by Homer (80) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (06) The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (10) In the Lake of the Woods by Tim OBrien (00) In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (05) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (76, 77, 78, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 01, 03, 04, 05, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12) J Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (78, 79, 80, 88, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 00, 05, 07, 08, 10) Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee (99, 10) J.B. by Archibald MacLeish (81, 94) Joe Turners Come and Gone by August Wilson (00, 04) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (97, 03) Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding (99) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (71, 76, 80, 85, 87, 95, 04, 09, 10) Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (82, 97, 05, 07, 09) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (77, 78, 82, 88, 89, 90, 96, 09) K Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (08) King Lear by William Shakespeare (77, 78, 82, 88, 89, 90, 96, 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 08, 10, 11, 12) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (07, 08, 09) L Lady Windermeres Fan by Oscar Wilde (09)

A Lesson before Dying by Ernest Gaines (99, 11) Letters from an American Farmer by de Crevecoeur (76), 11) The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman (85, 90, 10) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (08) Long Days Journey into Night by Eugene ONeill (90, 03, 07) Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (10) Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (77, 78, 82, 86, 00, 03, 07) Lord of the Flies by William Golding (85, 08) The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (89) Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (95) Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot (85) Lysistrata by Aristophanes (87) M Macbeth by William Shakespeare (83, 99, 03, 05, 09) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (80, 85, 04, 05, 06, 09, 10) Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane (12) Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (87, 09) Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw (79, 96, 04, 07, 09, 11) Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (81) Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (03, 06) Master Harold...and the Boys by Athol Fugard (03, 08, 09) The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (94, 99, 00, 02, 07, 10, 11) M. Butterfly by David Henry Wang (95, 11, 12) Medea by Euripides (82, 92, 95, 01, 03) The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (97, 08) The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards (09) The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (85, 91, 95, 02, 03, 11) Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (78, 89) Middlemarch by George Eliot (95, 04, 05, 07) Middle Passage by V. S. Naipaul (06) A Midsummer Nights Dream by William Shakespeare (06, 12) The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (90, 92, 04) The Misanthrope by Moliere (08) Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (89) Moby Dick by Herman Melville (76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 89, 94, 96, 01, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 09) Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (76, 77, 86, 87, 95, 09) Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao (00, 03) The Moors Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie (07) Mother Courage and Her Children by Berthold Brecht (85, 87, 06)

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (94, 97, 04, 05, 07, 11) Mrs. Warrens Profession by George Bernard Shaw (87, 90, 95, 02, 09) Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (97) Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot (76, 80, 85, 95, 07, 11) My Last Duchess by Robert Browning (85) My ntonia by Willa Cather (03, 08, 10, 12) My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (03) N The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (09, 10) Native Son by Richard Wright (79, 82, 85, 87, 95, 01, 04, 09, 11, 12) Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee (99, 03, 05, 07, 08) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (09, 10) 1984 by George Orwell (87, 94, 05, 09) No Exit by John Paul Sartre (86, 12) No-No Boy by John Okada (95) Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevski (89) O Obasan by Joy Kogawa (94, 95, 04, 05, 06, 07, 10) The Octopus by Frank Norris (09) The Odyssey by Homer (86, 06, 10) Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (77, 85, 88, 00, 03, 04, 11) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (01) Old School by Tobia Wolff (08) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (09) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (05, 10) One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey (0, 121) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (89, 04, 12) O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (06) The Optimists Daughter by Eudora Welty (94) The Orestia by Aeschylus (90) Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf (04) Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood Othello by William Shakespeare (79, 85, 88, 92, 95, 03, 04, 07, 11) The Other by Thomas Tryon (10) Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (90) Our Town by Thornton Wilder (86, 97, 09) Out of Africa by Isaak Dinesen (06) P

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (01) Pamela by Samuel Richardson (86) A Passage to India by E. M. Forster (71, 77, 78, 88, 91, 92, 07, 09, 12) Paradise Lost by John Milton (85, 86, 10) Passing by Nella Larsen (11) Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (06) Pre Goriot by Honore de Balzac (02) Persuasion by Jane Austen (90, 05, 07) Phaedre by Jean Racine (92, 03) The Piano Lesson by August Wilson (96, 99, 07, 08, 10, 12) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (02) The Plague by Albert Camus (02, 09, 12) Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (97) Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal (02, 08) The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (10, 11, 12) Portrait of a Lady by Henry James ( 88, 92, 96, 03, 05, 07, 11) Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (76, 77, 80, 86, 88, 96, 99, 04, 05, 08, 09, 10, 11) The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (95) Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (96) A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (09) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (83, 88, 92, 97, 08, 11, 12) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (90, 08) Push by Sapphire (07) Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (03, 05, 08) R Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow (03, 07) A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (87, 90, 94, 96, 99, 07, 09, 12) The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope (81) The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (08) Redburn by Herman Melville (87) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (00, 03, 11) Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie (08, 09) The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (07) Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco (09) Richard III by William Shakespeare (79) A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (08) The Road by Cormac McCarthy (10) Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (10) A Room of Ones Own by Virginia Woolf (76)

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (03) Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (90, 92, 97, 08) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (81, 94, 00, 04, 05, 06, 10, 11) S Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw (95) The Sandbox by Edward Albee (71) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (71, 77, 78, 83, 88, 91, 99, 02, 04, 05, 06, 11) Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman (03) A Separate Peace by John Knowles (82, 07) Set This House on Fire by William Styron (11) The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (97) Silas Marner by George Eliot (02) Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (87, 02, 04, 09, 10) Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (10) Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (91, 04) Snow by Orhan Pamuk (09) Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson (00, 10, 12) A Soldiers Play by Charles Fuller (11) Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (81, 88, 96, 00, 04, 05, 06, 07, 10) Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (77, 90) Sophies Choice by William Styron (09) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (77, 86, 97, 01, 07, 08) The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (96, 04) The Story of Edgar sawtelle by David Wroblewski (11) The Stranger by Albert Camus (79, 82, 86, 04) A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (91, 92, 01, 04, 07, 08, 09, 1, 110) The Street by Ann Petry (07) Sula by Toni Morrison (92, 97, 02, 04, 07, 08, 10, 12) Surfacing by Margaret Atwood (05) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (85, 91, 95, 96, 04, 05, 12) T A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (82, 91, 04, 08) Tarftuffe by Moliere (87) The Tempest by William Shakespeare (71, 78, 96, 03, 05, 07, 10) Tess of the DUrbervilles by Thomas Hardy (82, 91, 03, 06, 07, 12) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston (88, 90, 91, 96, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 10, 11) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (91, 97, 03, 09, 10, 11) The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien (04, 09)

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (06) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (11) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (08, 09, 11) To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (77, 86, 88, 08) Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (90, 00, 06, 08) Tracks by Louise Erdrich (05) The Trial by Franz Kafka (88, 89, 00, 11) Trifles by Susan Glaspell (00) Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (86) The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (92, 94, 00, 02, 04, 08) Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (85, 94, 96, 11) Typical American by Gish Jen (02, 03, 05) U Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (87, 09) U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos (09) V The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (06) Victory by Joseph Conrad (83) Volpone by Ben Jonson (83) W Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (77, 85, 86, 89, 94, 01, 09, 12) The Warden by Anthony Trollope (96) Washington Square by Henry James (90) The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot (81) Watch on the Rhine by Lillian Hellman (87) The Way of the World by William Congreve (71) The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (06) We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates (07) When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka (12) Who Has Seen the Wind by W. O. Mitchell (11) Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (88, 94, 00, 04, 07, 11) Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (89, 92, 05, 07, 08) The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen (78) Winter in the Blood by James Welch (95) Winters Tale by William Shakespeare (82, 89, 95, 06) Wise Blood by Flannery OConnor (82, 89, 95, 09, 10) Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston (91, 08) The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor (09, 10, 12)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (71,77, 78, 79, 83, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 99, 01, 06, 07, 08, 10, 12) Z The Zoo Story by Edward Albee (82, 01) Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez (95) Most Frequently Cited 1970-2012 25 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 20 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 17 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 16 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski 16 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 16 King Lear by William Shakespeare 15 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 15 Moby Dick by Herman Melville 14 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 12 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 12 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 12 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 12 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 11 The Awakening by Kate Chopin 11 Billy Budd by Herman Melville 11 Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko 11 Light in August by William Faulkner 11 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston 10 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 10 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams 10 Native Son by Richard Wright 9 Antigone by Sophocles 9 Beloved by Toni Morrison 9 The Color Purple by Alice Walker 9 Othello by William Shakespeare 9 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster 9 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 9 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams 8 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 8 Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya 8 Candide by Voltaire 8 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

8 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy 8 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair 8 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry 8 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard 8 Sula by Toni Morrison 8 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett 7 All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren 7 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy 7 The Crucible by Arthur Miller 7 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton 7 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 7 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad 7 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 7 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy 7 Oedipus Rex by Sophocles 7 Portrait of a Lady by Henry James 7 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 7 The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 7 The Tempest by William Shakespeare 6 A Dolls House by Henrik Ibsen 6 An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen 6 Equus by Peter Shaffer 6 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 6 Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift 6 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen 6 Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw 6 Medea by Euripides 6 The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare 6 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe 6 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 6 Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot 6 Obasan by Joy Kogawa 6 The Piano Lesson by August Wilson 6 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 6 Tess of the DUrbervilles by Thomas Hardy 6 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 6 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 6 Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee 5 Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

5 Bleak House by Charles Dickens 5 The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chkhov 5 Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe 5 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 5 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin 5 Hamlet by William Shakespeare 5 Macbeth by William Shakespeare 5 Mrs. Warrens Profession by George Bernard Shaw 5 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser 5 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys 5 Wise Blood by Flannery OConnor Shakespeare - All Plays Total = 86 2 Anthony and Cleopatra 4 As You Like It 5 Hamlet 3 Henry IV, Parts I and II 1 Henry V 4 Julius Caesar 14 King Lear 5 Macbeth 6 Merchant of Venice 2 A Midsummer Night's Dream 1 Much Ado About Nothing 9 Othello 1 Richard III 4 Romeo and Juliet 7 The Tempest 4 Twelfth Night 4 Winter's Tale Classical Greek & Roman Literature = 29 1 The Aeneid by Virgil 9 Antigone by Sophocles 1 The Eumenides by Aeschylus 1 The Iliad by Homer 1 Lysistrata by Aristophanes 6 Medea by Euripides 3 The Odyssey by Homer 6 Oedipus Rex by Sophocles 1 The Orestia by Aeschylus

To get good marks it is advisable to study previous 10 years question papers. To download previous years papers visit: http://www.ugc.ac.in/inside/oldqpyr.php?sub=30 Please find few reference books details: 1.UGC NET ENGLISH: A CRITICAL HANDBOOK OF LITERATURE IN ENGLISH Edited by: Shubhamoy Das Publisher: Jawahar Publishers & Distributors

Rs. 327/2.UGC NET ENGLISH Edited by: Dr. B.B Jain Rs. 175/FOR HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 1. Hudson A History of English Literature 2. Moody & Lovett A Complete History of English Literature 3. Michael Alexander A Palgrave History of English Literature 4. Andrew Sanders An Oxford History of English Literature 5. Patricia Waugh -Contemporary Critical Theory 6. Peter Barry-Beginning Theory 7. M.H. Abrams A Glossary of Literary Terms

Read more: http://www.theexamresult.com/forum/ best-reference-books-english-literature-ugcnet-exam-2013.html#ixzz1wqQry8Ta