Take a look at these suggestions from undergraduate course leader Dr Bea Hitchman, described by her as “indispensable to the study of writing at university.”
You won’t ever regret reading/watching any or all of the following (in translation as appropriate, and easily obtained second hand) – and this is the ideal opportunity!
Please note – these are not essential reading – just a good education. Don’t read all of them but perhaps try a couple you haven’t heard of or always meant to read?
- Homer, The Odyssey
- John McCullough, Reckless Paper Birds
- Virgil, The Aeneid
- The Arabian Nights
- Ovid, Metamorphoses
- Candice Carty-Williams, Queenie
- Shakespeare, Hamlet
- Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
- S.Eliot, The Waste Land
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
- Martin Amis, Money
- Ali Smith, The Accidental
- Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
- Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind
Something to watch:
And here are two examples of how thrilling the best literary criticism can be. These two books have been extremely influential:
- Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Chatto, 1973)
- Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (YUP, 2000)
Joining us to study Creative Writing?
We recommend you read one or both of the following general guides to the advanced study of literature: both of these books will support you throughout the three years of your course and they complement each other well. Both these books are good to possess and buy.
- Andrew Bennett and Nick Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (5th Pearson, 2016)
- Richard Jacobs, A Beginner’s Guide to Critical Reading: an Anthology of Literary Texts (Routledge, 2001)
These titles are extremely useful reference books and for browsing:
- Raymond Williams, Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Fontana, 2010)
- H.Abrams and G.Harpman A Glossary of Literary Terms (2014, 11th edition)
And these titles are also recommended as general introductory reading:
- Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction (OUP, 1997)
- Robert Eaglestone, Doing English (Routledge, 2000)
- Hillis Miller, On Literature (Routledge, 2002)
- Terry Eagleton, How to Read Literature (2014)
Find out about Creative Writing at Brighton.
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