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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- 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 - 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. - 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 - 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 - 'A terrible beauty is born': poetry in revolutionary times
Course start date: Mon 13 May 2024Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Laurie SmithIs W H Auden right that “poetry makes nothing happen”? We look at how poets have helped people to understand, cope with and sometimes resist oppression in revolutionary periods from the late18th century to the present.Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £191.00 Concession £155.00 - The detective in popular modern crime fictionCourse start date: Tue 14 May 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Christine HawkinsWhat sells crime novels? Does knowing about the detective's other life make readers appreciate or rate their detective skills more? Why does the figure of the male detective remain so dominant in the genre, especially given that many of the texts are by female authors? We will analyse and the discuss the development of the male detective figure in recent crime fiction, including 'A certain Justice' by P.D. James, 'In the Woods' by Tana French and 'Career of Evil' by Robert Galbraith.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - The city and the myth: Venice in 20th & 21st century literatureCourse start date: Fri 31 May 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: David BarnesThe beautiful city of Venice has attracted writers as diverse as Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann, Ezra Pound and Jeanette Winterson. These writers eulogised Venice as a city of art and culture, praising its gorgeous Gothic palaces and shimmering waters. In this course we look behind the myth, exploring the fascinating and surprising stories behind these Venetian visions.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - Marriage and murder: Othello and MacbethCourse start date: Tue 4 Jun 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Julian BirkettShakespeare presents us with two visions of marriage, the Macbeths’ longstanding but filled with passion and rivalry, Othello’s fragile and still largely innocent. Macbeth and his wife know each other only too well – Othello and Desdemona barely at all. We the audience become sucked into these marital dramas through the force of Shakespeare’s dazzling imagery, psychological insight and sensational plotting. We’ll be studying the characters, the poetry and the ideas of both plays in detail.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - Beckett and The Divine Comedy: a lifelong influenceCourse start date: Thu 13 Jun 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Stephen WinfieldExplore the intimate relationship between Beckett’s universe of unbelief, presided over by a Godot who never comes, and Dante’s poem, the most exalted, vastly influential literary expression of medieval Christianity, whose presence can be felt everywhere in the Irishman’s long oeuvre, in every genre – in his plays, novels, stories, poems, essays - and at every stage of his career. What brought them together, and what were the results?Full fee £99.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £64.00 - Queer Storytelling: writing as a radical actCourse start date: Sun 16 Jun 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Megan BeechThis one day short course will explore the writing of two contemporary queer writers, both of whom use innovative form to tell unique stories of lesbian and trans experience. We'll look at the exhilarating, T.S Eliot Prize winning, C+nto and Othered Poems (2021) by Joelle Taylor and Variations (2022).Full fee £59.00 Senior fee £47.00 Concession £38.00 - A journey through Boccaccio's DecameronCourse start date: Sat 6 Jul 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Francesco BucciolThe Decameron is one of the early literary works in the Italian language and it had a significant influence on many other writers. Come and discover the genesis of the novel and some of the stories that still resonate with readers today.Full fee £59.00 Senior fee £47.00 Concession £38.00
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