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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- Writing from Life: memoir, autofiction, novelsCourse start date: Tue 24 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Kate WilkinsonWhat do we want and expect from life stories? On this online literature course we’ll read a selection of fascinating books and extracts, which experiment in different ways to combine stories of personal experience and literary invention. As well as memoirs the course includes ‘autofiction’ – a description for the work of novelists whose material is, explicitly, their own life – and we’ll explore this tricky and sometimes controversial category of writing. We’ll think too about some of the ethical and cultural questions that writing from life can raise, including privacy and a right of reply, and think about factors that may affect a book’s critical reception.
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 £169.00 Concession £110.00 - It Can't Happen Here: Sinclair Lewis, Philip Roth, Muriel SparkCourse start date: Tue 24 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Alexander Fairbairn-DixonExplore three ground-breaking works of ‘speculative’ prose fiction, each offering a highly innovative examination of C20 American political populism. From bitter satire, unnerving dystopia, to the lightly comic, we’ll see how the texts embody genuine anxieties of authoritarianism in America. Surely,- ‘it can’t happen here’?Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Great European Short StoriesCourse start date: Tue 24 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Julian BirkettThe short story in Europe has characteristics all of its own. While British, Irish and American stories are rooted in psychological realism, many European writers have tended towards a more philosophical approach, reflecting the concerns of the modern age as experienced by the sensibilities of individual writers. Authors such as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Albert Camus are masters of the kinds of tale which ask profound question about the nature of our existence. They are also supreme stylists capable of sustaining a gripping narrative. - Shakespeare: King Lear and The TempestCourse start date: Wed 25 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamJoin us to explore two of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, his tragedy King Lear, and his late ‘romance’, The Tempest. We’ll consider the connections – and differences - between these works, thinking about Shakespeare’s use of genre and language, the historical contexts, changing critical perspectives, and aspects of the plays in performance.
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 - From Nonsense to the Surreal: Edward Lear to Angela CarterCourse start date: Wed 25 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Laurie SmithSurrealism is one of the great developments of 20th century literature. It’s different from the fantasies of previous centuries (fairy and folk tales, imaginative stories set in remote parts of the world, satires, science fiction) because it expresses complex bizarre experiences that many people recognise as possibly part of themselves. It may reflect desires which are difficult to admit but are sometimes expressed with wit and humour. We explore how surrealism developed from the apparent nonsense of three 19th century English writers.Full fee £249.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £162.00 - Reading Shakespeare: a director's perspective - Romeo and Juliet and the Taming of the ShrewCourse start date: Wed 25 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Laura BaggaleyTake a fresh look at Shakespeare, exploring selected plays in the company of an experienced theatre director. With performance in mind, we will examine the language and themes of two plays and discuss the extraordinary variety to be found within Shakespeare’s work.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - Exploring literature: an introduction to prose and poetry
Course start date: Thu 26 Sep 2024Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Kate WilkinsonThis course introduces you to a range of prose and poetry from the nineteenth century to the present. Learn about how poems work, both ‘on the page’ and as spoken words. Reading novels and short stories, we’ll explore characterisation, the social and historical contexts of the works and writers’ techniques. Come and discover what’s distinctive about different forms of literature.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £129.00 - Nineteenth Century American Literary ClassicsCourse start date: Fri 27 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandThis class explores the wonderful world of 19th century American literature, reading classic texts to broaden knowledge of literary history through a range of influential novels, stories, and poems. Among the writers considered in their literary, political, and cultural contexts will be Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £129.00 - City Lit reading group 1 Course start date: Fri 29 Sep 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Kate WilkinsonShare thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session on Friday 29 September with suggestions (English-language contemporary fiction in paperback) and having read 'Unsettled Ground', by Clare Fuller. Meetings take place on 29 September, 10 November, 2 February, 1 March, 10 May and 14 June.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - Nineteenth century French fictionCourse start date: Mon 30 Sep 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Megan BeechGreed, ambition, social mobility, and complexity of family structures: these are the key issues at play in the three French novels we will discuss in this course. Focusing on Stendhal's The Red and the Black (1830), Balzac's La Cousine Bette (1846) and Flaubert's Sentimental Education (1869). We'll explore the evolution of French literary style and social mores over the course of the 19th Century, thinking about representations of gender, marriage, social class and wealth along the way.
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 £169.00 Concession £110.00 - British Fiction of the 40s and 50s: matters of life, death and peaceCourse start date: Thu 3 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: William BradyBritish Writers of the 1940s contended with a series of hitherto unimaginable challenges, dilemmas and paradoxes. From living in a climate of ‘total war’ to grappling with a disorienting rush of social and cultural change, the literature of the period reflects, often fragmentedly, a time of hope, anxiety and upheaval. We will explore a range of texts, spanning the gothic, the semi-autobiographical, the escapist and elegiac with a range of voices, including Virginia Woolf, Roald Dahl, Elizabeth Bowen, and Terrence Rattigan under discussion.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £95.00 Concession £77.00 - From the Land of the Rising Sun: an introduction to Japanese LiteratureCourse start date: Thu 3 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Woody RiverExplore the strange and beautiful world of Japanese literature from the 17th century to the present. Follow the footsteps of a medieval travelling poet, delve into the Tokyo pleasure district, view Hiroshima through the eyes of survivors after the atomic bombing, and interpret dreams to illuminate Japanese history and culture. Using art, photography, history and film, you will explore poems, journals, short stories and novels by ten of Japan’s most important writers.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information. - Writing from the Margins: Great Expectations, Jude the Obscure and MakeshiftCourse start date: Wed 9 Oct 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Fiona McCullochThis online course will introduce and discuss a selection of novels depicting British society from the Victorian period to the 1920s. This allows us to make links between literary texts and social context to consider how fiction might be influenced by and influencing the real world beyond its covers. As we explore each novel, we will consider the characters as outliers in relation to social pressures and stigmas, as perceived through these literary and social perspectives.
This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - 20th & 21st Century Black British LiteratureCourse start date: Mon 4 Nov 2024
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Rebecca BalfourthExplore 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.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £77.00 - 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
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