Literature Courses in London
We offer a wide range of literature courses at City Lit. From contemporary & classical literature, and novels to short stories, as well as our popular reading groups, you will find a course to suit your literary needs.
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Play in a day: 'The Tempest'
Course Date: Sat 29 Jun 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetRead or seen the play but want to know more? This course examines the background to Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', discusses characters, identifies themes, draws parallels with Shakespeare's other plays, looks at language and analyses key scenes.Full fee: £49.00Senior fee: £39.00Concession: £25.00 -
Poetry and resistance: Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam and the decades of Soviet rule
Course Date: Thu 11 Jul 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetThe three greatest poets of the revolutionary and Stalinist periods, and the ways their personalities and the calamitous events that beset their society found expression in works of unparalleled passion, intellectual sophistication and monumental restraint.Full fee: £59.00Senior fee: £59.00Concession: £26.00 -
Shakespeare: a dip into some key tragedies, comedies and histories
Course Date: Mon 29 Jul 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetCelebrate the genius of Shakespeare: his timeless themes, complex characterisation, beautiful language and power in performance. Explore extracts from plays including 'Hamlet', 'Othello, Richard III', 'Twelfth Night' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.Full fee: £139.00Senior fee: £111.00Concession: £61.00 -
Literature taster
Course Date: Sat 14 Sep 2019 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetDo you want to find out how to go about understanding a poem or how to do a close reading of a work of fiction? Come and join us to discover what makes a literature class at City Lit so special.Full fee: £19.00Senior fee: £19.00Concession: £10.00 -
Ways into advanced literary study
Course Date: Mon 16 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetFrom Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson, from Charles Dickens to Ibsen, Henry James and Virginia Wolf, this course will enhance your appreciation of literary genres and styles from different periods, developing the rigour and skills of reading and writing that belong to a higher level of study. Includes three Saturdays.Full fee: £439.00Senior fee: £439.00Concession: £220.00 -
Modern Irish and British drama
Course Date: Mon 16 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetRead and discuss some key drama texts from the last 50 years in terms of theme, character, language and as performance texts. Plays studied will include 'Betrayal' by Harold Pinter, Top Girls by Caryl Churchill and Translations by Brian Friel.Full fee: £179.00Senior fee: £143.00Concession: £79.00 -
Proust Vol 2: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
Course Date: Mon 16 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetProust’s masterpiece comes to life with supportive resources and invigorated discussion. Through close reading of the second volume, we are immersed in the life of this most introspective narrator in the modernist classic.Full fee: £219.00Senior fee: £175.00Concession: £96.00 -
Visiting London theatre today
Course Date: Tue 17 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetSee a play every other week, mostly off West End and fringe theatre. You will explore the playwright's work beforehand and analyse and discuss the production afterwards. Fee includes a contribution towards theatre tickets. The first session is at City Lit. If you miss this session please contact Humanities on 020 7492 2652. Visits on
24 September, 8 October, 29October and12 and 26 November. No class on 22 October.Full fee: £329.00Senior fee: £329.00Concession: £223.00 -
Great European short stories
Course Date: Tue 17 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetExplore some of the most intriguing, powerful and moving European short stories of the modern age – from the great realists such as Gustave Flaubert, Isaac Babel and Thomas Mann, to Joseph Conrad and Albert Camus and master of the narrative form Somerset Maugham, to the fantastical tales of Italo Calvino.Full fee: £199.00Senior fee: £159.00Concession: £88.00 -
British Literature 1900-1950: Travellers' Tales
Course Date: Wed 18 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetDiscover the ways in which British writers such as Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf and Christopher Isherwood used ‘travellers’ tales’ to explore themes of identity, history, creativity and transgression in the first half of the twentieth century.Full fee: £159.00Senior fee: £159.00Concession: £70.00 -
Fiction narratives: how symbols reach our deepest feelings
Course Date: Wed 18 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetWhat makes some stories more memorable than others so that, once we’ve read them, we never forget them? We explore how some stories are more powerful and memorable than others because they use symbols which reach directly to our deepest desires and fears.Full fee: £219.00Senior fee: £175.00Concession: £96.00 -
Myths and classics retold: from Jean Rhys to Colm Toibin
Course Date: Wed 18 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetWe will read reworkings of canonical myths and classics including Colm Toibin's House of Names (the Oresteia), Christa Wolf's Cassandra, Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (The Iliad), John Updike’s Gertrude and Claudius (Hamlet) and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (Jane Eyre).Full fee: £179.00Senior fee: £143.00Concession: £79.00 -
Contemporary American writing by women
Course Date: Wed 18 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetThe American canon is dominated by white, male writers. In this course, we seek to rectify this by exploring the work of women from all backgrounds working across disciplines. Authors include Joan Didion, Alice Walker, Amy Tan and Siri Hustvedt.Full fee: £219.00Senior fee: £175.00Concession: £96.00 -
An introduction to literature: drama
Course Date: Thu 19 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetYou will read, discuss and view extracts from three plays: Hamlet by Shakespeare, The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett in terms of theme, character, language and how they work as performance texts.Full fee: £219.00Senior fee: £175.00Concession: £96.00 -
19th century American literature
Course Date: Thu 19 Sep 2019
Location on this date: KS - Keeley StreetThis class explores 19th century American literature, from slave narratives to the works of the American Renaissance, reading classic texts to broaden knowledge of literary history through a range of influential stories, poems and novels. Among the writers considered will be Irving, Douglass, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, and Twain.Full fee: £179.00Senior fee: £143.00Concession: £79.00
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