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.
- In Conversation with Hallie Rubenhold
Course start date: Wed 14 May 2025Location on this date: Keeley Street
Join us at City Lit for an event with Hallie Rubenhold to celebrate her new book, Story of a Murder: The Wives, The Mistress and Dr Crippen. Hosted by City Lit Principal Mark Malcomson CBE, the conversation will focus on Hallie's feminist retelling of the infamous true-crime story of Dr Crippen. The event includes an audience Q&A, followed by a drinks reception and book signing.
Full fee £10.00 Senior fee £10.00 Concession £10.00 - Reading Shakespeare: a director's perspective - A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Henry IV Part 1Course start date: Wed 14 May 2025
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 Henry IV Part I and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and discuss the extraordinary variety to be found in Shakespeare's work.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £129.00 - Fairytales RemadeCourse start date: Wed 21 May 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Fiona McCullochThis online course introduces a selection of fairy tales from the First Golden Age of Children’s Literature, occurring in the latter half of the 19th century until the early 20th century. We will focus upon L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911), George McDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby (1863).Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - Modern Women PlaywrightsCourse start date: Wed 21 May 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Laura BaggaleyExplore seminal modern plays by three leading women playwrights – Caryl Churchill, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Moira Buffini – who are all known for groundbreaking and innovative dramatic work.
In the company of an experienced theatre director, examine the different theatrical visions of three exciting plays.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - Modern American SatireCourse start date: Wed 18 Jun 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Alexander Fairbairn-DixonCome and explore the work of three pioneering American satirists of the inter-war years. Ranging from sharp, dry, bitter irony to macabre laughter, the precise insights of Dorothy Parker, Nathanael West, and Sinclair Lewis still resonate with modern readers. We’ll look at their dissection of society, considering their critiques of social aspiration, snobbery, status anxiety, and The American Dream.Full fee £169.00 Senior fee £135.00 Concession £110.00 - Global Literatures: Han Kang & Elif ShafakCourse start date: Wed 16 Jul 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Join us for an exploration of the ways we experience global literatures of our time. Inter-generational memory is the focus of two prize-winning novels, The Vegetarian (2007) by Han Kang and The Island of Missing Trees (2021) by Elif Shafak. Unearthing the painful truths of history in the context of culturally/politically divided Korea and Cyprus, the authors deal delicately, and brutally, with love, the environment, patriarchy, resistance and the metamorphosis of the female body.Full fee £49.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £32.00 - Contemporary British and international fictionCourse start date: Wed 17 Sep 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Aamer HusseinWe will be looking at novels from recent years that explore various dimensions of culture and society, reading and discussing a brief and careful selection of novels in English from several countries, diverse in style and genre. Titles include Piranesi, Susanna Clarke's mysterious and 'weird' tale of secrets and lost texts, William Boyd's Trio, which follows the life of an actress, a film producer, and a writer obsessed with the suicide of Virginia Woolf, Small Things Like These by Clare Keegan, in which a coal merchant becomes involved with the fate of a pregnant teenager trapped in a Magdalene Laundry, and Michelle de Kretser's Theory and Practice follows the academic trajectory of a Sri Lankan feminist researching the novels of Woolf.Full fee £259.00 Senior fee £207.00 Concession £168.00 - Reading Shakespeare: a director's perspective - Merchant of Venice and OthelloCourse start date: Wed 24 Sep 2025
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, watch and compare clips of stage productions and discuss the extraordinary variety to be found in Shakespeare’s work.Full fee £219.00 Senior fee £175.00 Concession £142.00 - Literature taster: poetryCourse start date: Wed 24 Sep 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamCurious about reading poetry? Join us for this taster session to boost your confidence and whet your appetite for further learning and exploration!
Full fee £19.00 Senior fee £15.00 Concession £12.00 - Wild Nights: poetry and desireCourse start date: Wed 24 Sep 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Laurie SmithSome friendships, including with people of the same sex, may become so intense as to be love, though not necessarily of a sexual kind. We will look at some great poets who have had this experience and expressed it brilliantly in their work: Shakespeare and Byron, Tennyson and Emily Dickinson, Arthur Rimbaud and Thomas Hardy, C P Cavafy and the great 20th century Russian poet Some Marina Tsvetaeva, and finally our recent Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.Full fee £259.00 Senior fee £207.00 Concession £168.00 - Ways into Advanced Literature: the dawning of modernityCourse start date: Wed 1 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Patricia SweeneyFor those who want to explore the rewards of in-depth literary study, focusing on fiction and drama. Read, analyse and debate works that reflect the cultural and historical changes in a shifting world, exploring three seminal works of the modern age: Three Sisters (1900) by Anton Chekhov, The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford and The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton.Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - Poetry Reading GroupCourse start date: Wed 1 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Sophie OxenhamThis Poetry Reading Group explores a wide range of poetry across different themes and periods, in a supportive and friendly group. Each week we will read and discuss a selection of 2-4 poems, focusing on a different theme each session. The tutor will select poetry from different poets, forms and periods, introducing you to a broad range of poetic voices and perspectives. Poetry is for everyone - come and join us!
Full fee £219.00 Senior fee £175.00 Concession £142.00 - Angela Carter: ‘A Different Kind of Human Being’ -Course start date: Wed 8 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Fiona McCullochThis course will introduce and discuss the fiction of renowned author, Angela Carter, specifically focusing upon one novel and one short story. Carter wanted her writing to ‘demythologise the fictions that regulate our lives’, to explore how society narrates us into being and holds us there. In doing so, she offers us a chance to read and, ultimately, release ourselves through her work, as we come to understand the relationship between fiction and reality. For Carter, both of these – fiction and reality – are two sides of the same coin.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00 - Crime fiction reading groupCourse start date: Wed 8 Oct 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Christine HawkinsAre you obsessed with reading crime fiction? You might like to join our Crime fiction reading group, where we share thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session with suggestions (crime fiction in paperback) and having read 'The Big Sleep' by Rayond Chandler. Monthly meetings take place on 8/10, 5/11, 3/12, 21/1, 18/2, 18/3, 6/5, 3/6, 1/7.Full fee £189.00 Senior fee £189.00 Concession £123.00 - ‘Stranger’ Things: Muriel Spark’s ShapeshiftingCourse start date: Wed 5 Nov 2025
Location on this date: Online
Tutors: Fiona McCullochThis course will introduce and discuss two novels by eminent author, Muriel Spark- Memento Mori (1959) and The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960). Her writing wilfully upends notions of conformity and acts as a disrupter to accepted conventions. Instead, ‘Spark beckons us to encounter the stranger’ (Marilyn Reizbaum). Playfully disrupting passive readers and stretching comfort zones, Spark’s work provides a space to access unaccustomed outlooks that make us rethink our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world. Instead of unconsciously going with the flow, she awakens us to life’s stranger things.Full fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00
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