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.
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- The rise and fall of Oscar WildeCourse start date: Mon 22 Apr 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Julian BirkettOscar 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.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - The History of the Irish short story: from early Joyce to Claire KeeganCourse start date: Tue 23 Apr 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandThe short story has come to be seen as one of Irish Literature’s most celebrated forms of expression. From the early stories of George Moore and James Joyce, to modern classics by John McGahern, William Trevor and Claire Keegan, the short story has allowed Irish writers to pick apart the complexities of Irish society in powerful, precise and poetic terms. This course will explore some of the most iconic short stories of twentieth-century Irish literature.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - Women writing and walking: Virginia Woolf, Nan Shepherd, Rebecca Solnit
Course start date: Wed 24 Apr 2024Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamThis online course considers the relationship between walking and writing in three innovative works of literary non-fiction: Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Street Haunting’ (1927), Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’ (written c. 1945, first pub. 1977), and Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’ (2006).
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Tales from everywhere: international fictions from the 20th centuryCourse start date: Wed 24 Apr 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Aamer HusseinJoin us to read and discuss a selection of novels from the 1950s and 1960, in English and in translation, some of which, like Stan Barstow’s powerful story of upward mobility A Kind of Loving and Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s poignant portrait of unrest in Kenya Weep Not, My Child, have rarely been out of print. Some are recent rediscoveries, such as Han Suyin’s story of forbidden romance in wartime London, Winter Love, and Chingiz Aitmatov’s delicate Kyrgyz fable, Jamilia. Fresh translations of Magda Szabo’s Iza’s Ballad and Tove Ditlevsen’s autobiographical coming of age story,Youth, are also included.
NB. This course will have a break week on Wednesday 29 May.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - A day in the life of the everyday: the twentieth century circadian novel: Mrs. Dalloway, One Fine Day, The HoursCourse start date: Fri 26 Apr 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Jenny StevensNovels that fit all their action into just one day (‘circadian novels’) have been penned by some of literature’s most esteemed authors. This course focuses on three novels which use the one-day structure to tell their stories: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), Mollie Pater-Downes’s One Fine Day (1947), and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1999). It explores how they portray the inner life of characters, at the same time as engaging with broader social issues of the time.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - French and Russian literatureCourse start date: Tue 30 Apr 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandExplore classic texts of 19th century French and Russian literature, discussing literary style, themes, and contexts as a way of developing and sharing responses to celebrated European writing. Among the French writers examined will be Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert and Rimbaud, with our Russians including Pushkin, Lemontov, and Tolstoy.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - British literature of the 1980s: the Granta generationCourse start date: Tue 30 Apr 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Lewis WardWho were considered the ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ in 1983, and what became of them? What do their styles and topics reveal about the decade, looking back from 40 years on? Read extracts by all twenty writers plus novels by Pat Barker, Graham Swift and Julian Barnes.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre and Villette
Course start date: Thu 2 May 2024Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamThis Literature course focuses on two novels by Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre and Villette. We will develop an appreciation of Brontë’s narrative methods and concerns through close analysis of her language, alongside engaging with the literary, historical and critical contexts of these novels, and the Brontë ‘mythology’ itself. - The world of Bob DylanCourse start date: Thu 2 May 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandThis class explores the work of Bob Dylan, examining his song writing, musical style, and persona in the context of American cultural, political, and musical history, exploring how Dylan engages with American culture through his absorption and reworking of multifarious aspects of both historical and modern Americana.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Get together and readCourse start date: Thu 2 May 2024
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. - Twenty-first Century Folklore: myth and magic in the global worldCourse start date: Thu 2 May 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Katie GossThis online course focuses on innovative short fiction from around the globe which reworks folkloric traditions to grapple with conditions of twenty-first century life. As well as engaging with the unique folkloric influences each text draws on, we’ll consider the complexities of the present that they are addressed to – and how the rising popularity of ghost stories, fairy tales, dark fables and surreal myths suggests a renewed fascination with the intrigues of the mysterious, monstrous and inexplicable.
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 - Struggle to be heard: Rimbaud, Cavafy, Tsvetaeva, Binta BreezeCourse start date: Thu 2 May 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Laurie SmithWe look at four poets who struggled to be heard or accepted because their work was so different from what their society expected. What were the barriers they had to overcome and how did they win through to become admired and highly regarded? What made one of the poets stop writing at the age of 21 and the other three continue for the rest of their lives? What makes the poetry of all of them so original, and what can we learn from their resilience?Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £69.00 Concession £45.00 - Historical fiction: reimagining and rewritingCourse start date: Thu 2 May 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Kate WilkinsonWhat’s the unique appeal of historical fiction? Why do we read it, and what are we looking for? This course investigates historical fiction written in the twenty-first century and how it reimagines the past for us as contemporary readers. Reading novels and short stories set in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we’ll explore historical fiction’s strategies, challenges and pleasures: how it can bring unknown stories into view and rewrite what we think we know. Includes Francis Spufford's Golden Hill (2016), Emma Donoghue's The Woman who Gave Birth to Rabbits (2002) and Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet (2020).Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - The Worlds of Contemporary Travel LiteratureCourse start date: Fri 3 May 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Rebecca JonesExplore new directions in contemporary travel literature, as authors from across the world take the genre beyond the colonial European gaze that once characterised it. We examine themes such as diaspora, postcolonialism, language and ethics, looking at classic texts by Caryl Phillips, Pico Iyer and Jamaica Kincaid, and recent works by Emmanuel Iduma, Noo Saro-Wiwa, and Raja Shehadeh.Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £99.00 Concession £64.00 - Classic drama: Antigone, Measure for Measure, The Country WifeCourse start date: Mon 13 May 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Jenny StevensWe will read and discuss three classic plays: Sophocles’ Antigone, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and William Wycherley’s The Country Wife. Focusing closely on structure, language and tone, we will consider how dramatists across time have explored themes such as sexual politics, family relationships and state power through their plays, as well as considering the social, cultural and historical contexts in which they were produced.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00
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