Fiction Literature Courses
Study online & in London

What does it mean to be alone? This online literature class focuses on solitude. We’ll read and discuss extracts from two books – non-fiction and fiction – to think about different representations and experiences of solitude, its history of creative and spiritual significance, and the meanings solitude has for us today.







We’ll discuss extracts from:



Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence (2008). This unusual memoir combines autobiography, travel writing, meditation and essay, describing Maitland’s journey over several years away from a busy urban life towards contemplative solitude.







Dave Eggers, The Circle (2013). A dystopian satire of the early internet age, this novel imagines a future in which technology is reshaping human connection in unsettling ways.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Explore some important names in Black British Literature – from Booker-winning novelist Bernadine Evaristo to T.S. Eliot Award-winning poet Roger Robinson, through to new and exciting work by Okechukwu Nzelu, who was longlisted for the 2023 Jhalak Prize, and non-fiction by Zadie Smith. Read, analyse and discuss this literature in context to earlier examples of writing by Black people in Britain, including pioneering feminist, poet, playwright, and broadcaster Una Marson and novelist and short fiction writer, Sam Selvon.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Oscar Wilde was the most controversial writer of late Victorian Britain. He was famed for his wit, extravagant lifestyle, and sexual adventures. His plays and his sensational novel The Picture of Dorian Gray were celebrated and admired. But his scandalous trial and conviction “for gross indecency with men” ruined him, and he ended his life in Paris, destitute and alone. His dramatic trial marked a turning point in British attitudes to sex and culture.