Literature Courses in London
Explore our exciting range of Literature courses, from Literary History, to specialist courses in Fiction, Poetry and Drama. We offer introductory and in-depth courses to suit all levels of interest and experience, where you can revisit classic texts and discover new writers.
Study in-person or online from the comfort of home, with classes that allow you to participate in discussions with fellow adult students and share your passion for literature as part of a learning community. We offer daytime, evening and weekend courses, both short and long.
Our tutors are experts in their fields and experienced educators; many also teach in universities or share their expertise in the media. Tutors share their knowledge and passion for fiction, poetry and drama through presentations, readings, interactive discussion, analysis, and other activities.
Many students return to take more courses, telling us they enjoy being part of our City Lit literary community; others are inspired to progress onto university study.
Our popular courses often sell out quickly, so we invite you to browse and book your place now.
- City Lit evening reading group
Course start date: Mon 25 Sep 2023Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Claire AllenShare thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session with suggestions (contemporary fiction in paperback) and having read The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed. Monthly meetings on 25 Sept, 23 Oct, 27 Nov; 15 Jan, 19 Feb, 18 March, 29 April, 10 June, and 08 July.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - An historical tour of drama from William Shakespeare to Caryl ChurchillCourse start date: Mon 25 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Laura BaggaleyOn this whistle-stop tour of British Drama, visit five time periods from the 16th Century to the 20th Century, and
rediscover what makes these great classics such perennially popular plays: William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1598), Aphra Behn's The Rover (1677), Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1775), Oscar Wilde's Lady Windemere’s Fan (1892) and Caryl Churchill's Top Girls (1983).Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - British literature of the 1930s: under the shadow of warCourse start date: Tue 26 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Lewis WardIn these troubled times, we often hear that we are ‘going back to the 1930s’. But what was it like the first time round? Find out through essential writings by George Orwell, W.H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, Stevie Smith and more.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - Literature taster: poetry Course start date: Wed 27 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamEver wondered what an online Literature course at City Lit is like? Or wondering whether studying poetry is for you? Tempted to try, but not ready to commit to a whole course? Try this taster session on studying poetry to boost your confidence and whet your appetite for further study!
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £10.00 Concession £7.00 - Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion Course start date: Wed 27 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamThis online Literature course explores three novels by Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. We will develop an appreciation of Austen’s narrative style and social critique through close analysis of her language, informing our reading by engaging with the literary, historical and critical contexts of these novels.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - Make it new: European and American modernismCourse start date: Thu 28 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Woody RiverModernism was a period defined by radical thinking boldly proclaimed in manifestos and expressed through a variety of different art forms. Within literature, pre-conceived notions of narrative and syntax were challenged, characters were developed using insights drawn from psychology, and poets explored the visual representation of their words on the page. As boundaries were extended, new ‘isms’ were born. Through following the development of Modernist literature in Europe and America, this course will compare the changes in the written word to the changes occurring within art, architecture, music and film.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £229.00 Concession £149.00 - Get together and readCourse start date: Thu 28 Sep 2023 (and 2 other dates)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Claire AllenEnjoy talking with other people about the things you have read? Want to share great stories, poems and drama? Come along and join the conversation. The group is led by a shared reading practitioner trained by The Reader Organisation.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £50.00 - Exploring literature: an introduction to prose and poetry Course start date: Thu 28 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Kate WilkinsonThis course introduces you to a variety of prose texts and poems from the nineteenth century to the present. Explore how poems work both ‘on the page’ and as spoken words. Reading novels and short stories, we’ll think about writers’ narrative techniques, characterisation and social context. Come and discover what’s distinctive about these different forms of literature.Full fee £179.00 - Modern French literature Course start date: Fri 29 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandExplore modern French literature in translation, discussing literary style, themes, and contexts as a way of sharing and developing responses to celebrated French writers. From Cendrars and Céline to Modiano and Ernaux, come discover poetry, prose, fiction, and autobiography by essential French authors of the past one hundred years.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Nineteenth century French fictionCourse start date: Mon 2 Oct 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Megan BeechNineteenth-century France was full of intrigue and squalor. Even a century after the upheaval of the French revolution, the country continued to grapple with issues of hierarchy, capitalism, and inevitable family dramas. In this course we’ll explore these themes through three of the most successful writers of this period: Zola, Maupassant and Flaubert.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - The myth of the American West in 20th and 21st century literatureCourse start date: Tue 3 Oct 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Caroline Millar‘The West is a country in the mind, and so eternal.’ Archibald McLeish
The idea of the American West has captured the imagination of writers for decades, perhaps even centuries. This course offers an opportunity to read, explore and discuss a selection of novelists, short story writers, poets and essayists as they depict and debate the American West through the written word.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - 'Bowers of bliss'? Gardens and the poetic imagination Course start date: Wed 4 Oct 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamThis online poetry course considers some of the many ways in which poets have written about gardens to explore a range of concerns, including sexuality and desire; corruption, decay, and mortality; retreat and consolation; growth and renewal; cultivation and wildness; and changing perspectives on the relationship between humans and nature.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Ways into advanced fiction, poetry and drama: nineteenth century voices
Course start date: Wed 4 Oct 2023Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Patricia SweeneyExplore the rewards of close reading analysis, focusing on the three main literary genres of fiction,
poetry and drama. Read, analyse and debate seminal 19th century British, European and American works including A Doll's House (1879) by Henrik Ibsen, Washington Square by Henry James (1880), and poetry by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - Black British literature of the early twentieth centuryCourse start date: Sat 7 Oct 2023
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Rebecca BalfourthDiscover Black British Literature in the twentieth century, featuring early work that has become part of the canon. Includes works by Samuel Selvon and Una Marson and an exploration of key themes and styles of narration for the literature of the period.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £15.00 Concession £12.00 - Poetry of the 30s: T.S. Eliot to Dylan ThomasCourse start date: Sun 8 Oct 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Phoebe BraithwaiteWedged between the two wars, the poets of the 1930s were drawn to forces larger than themselves. For poets such as W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, war, revolution and the allure of communism dwarfed mere personal anxieties. Others – such as William Empson, Kathleen Raine and Dylan Thomas – found a seam of spiritualism in other, more mystical, even Romantic antecedents. Our course traces these discrepant paths through the decade.
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