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.
- Leonard Cohen: song, poetry, prose and personaCourse start date: Thu 15 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Richard NilandThis class explores the work of Leonard Cohen, examining his poetry, song, prose and persona in the context of the literary and musical traditions that shaped his art. We delve into Cohen’s meditations on life and the modern world through his absorption and reworking of a rich range of cultural influences.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Literary Landscapes: Black London in Caleb Nelson’s Open Water and Sam Selvon’s The Lonely LondonersCourse start date: Thu 26 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Online
Black London is shifting and ever-evolving. This course explores how Costa award winning Caleb Nelson’s novel ‘Open Water’ and the great 1950’s classic of immigrant fiction, Sam Selvon’s ‘The Lonely Londoners’ reimagined our multicultural metropolis.Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £79.00 - Literature Taster: Shakespeare
Course start date: Thu 11 Sep 2025Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamCurious about studying Shakespeare? Join us for this taster session in which we explore aspects of two of his plays: the tragedy, Hamlet and the comedy, As You Like It. - Get together and readCourse start date: Thu 1 May 2025 (and 1 other date)
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 £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £75.00 - An Introduction to Japanese Crime FictionCourse start date: Thu 25 Sep 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Christine HawkinsThis course explores the development of the crime fiction genre in Japan from 1920s to the present. We begin with some historical context on how/why the genre developed in Japan when it did. The texts covered include The two-sen copper coin by Taro Hirai(1923), Koga Sabura’s The Spider (1930), and the following novels - Seishi Yokomizo’s The Honjin Murders (1946), Seicho Matsumoto’s, Point Zero (1957), Soji Shimada’s, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (1981), and Malice (1996) by Keigo Higashino.
Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00 - Exploring literature: an introduction to prose and poetryCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location 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 £219.00 Senior fee £175.00 Concession £142.00 - Shakespeare's Women: Hamlet, Macbeth and As You Like ItCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamThis Literature course will look at three of Shakespeare’s female characters: Rosalind (As You Like It), Ophelia (Hamlet) and Lady Macbeth (Macbeth). We will consider their wit, madness and ambition, exploring Shakespeare’s language, the historical context, and the plays in performance.Full fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - Queens of Crime: Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. SayersCourse start date: Thu 2 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: William BradyAgatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers dominated the inter-war Golden Age of British detective fiction and continue to this day to beguile and enthral readers with their intricate plotting, fiendish twists and formidable detectives. This course critically explores how both authors shaped the detective genre, the publishing history of some of their most celebrated works, and how Christie and Sayers navigated themes of class, gender, morality and justice. Through selected readings, discussions and analysis, we will explore the literary significance and enduring appeal of these Queens of Crime.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - Contemporary Body Horror: Bodies, Trauma, and TransformationCourse start date: Thu 9 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Katie GossThis in-college literature course delves into the provocative and unsettling world of contemporary body horror - primarily by femme and queer authors. Over six-weeks we will explore how writers reframe the body as a site of both violence and transformation: using aesthetics of the uncanny, grotesque or abject to disturb and overturn societal norms surrounding gender, sexuality, identity, and power.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Black British LiteratureCourse start date: Thu 9 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
From Roman society to the present day, from the memoirs of Equiano to the experimental poetics of Kwesi Johnson, Black British writers have significantly impacted British literature, despite limited recognition.
Through an exploration of social, political and historical contexts, this course examines how diasporic writers decolonised genres and mapped their own metaphors onto the literary landscape.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £179.00 Concession £116.00 - Fact and Fantasy: English Houses in FictionCourse start date: Thu 30 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Phyllis RichardsonWhy have so many British authors set stories in and around an important house? How does the structure, history and atmosphere of a great house affect plot and narrative? And where do authors derive their inspiration to build fictional houses that capture readers’ imaginations so fully? The novels on this course all focus on one finely imagined house and demonstrate the author’s own personal concerns of the time.Full fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00 - 20th to 21st Century War Poetry: British and InternationalCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Stephen WinfieldExplore the astonishing range of poetic responses to a hundred years of warfare, acts of witnessing, endurance, defiance and condemnation by writers across the globe: Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in Britain, Brecht, Milosz, Celan, Akhmatova and Stepanova in Europe and Russia, Darwish and Zhadan in the Middle East and Ukraine, and many others. How do they describe the indescribable? High art or doggerel, what does it matter once the bombs start to fall?Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £103.00 Concession £84.00 - Shakespeare: King Lear and The TempestCourse start date: Thu 6 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
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.Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Women writing and walking: Virginia Woolf, Nan Shepherd, Rebecca Solnit, Elizabeth-Jane BurnettCourse start date: Thu 8 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamThis in-person Literature course considers the relationship between walking and writing in four 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), Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’ (2006), and Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s ‘The Grassling’ (2019).Full fee £179.00 Senior fee £143.00 Concession £116.00 - Women with a view: British short fiction of the mid-centuryCourse start date: Thu 12 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Patricia SweeneyExplore and discover extraordinary short stories from renowned women writers of the 1940s and 50s, which present an insight into a time of great change in Britain, when domestic situations were rewritten, social customs challenged and new freedoms embraced. Authors include Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Penelope Mortimer, Elizabeth Taylor and Daphne du Maurier.Full fee £119.00 Senior fee £95.00 Concession £77.00
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