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.
113 courses available
Literature taster: poetryCurious 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- Tales from Everywhere
This course looks at freshly translated or newly rediscovered gems of international writing from the second half of the 20th century. Texts include The Way to Colonos by Kay Cicellis (Greece); God’s Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane (Senegal); Behind the Portrait by Siburapha (Thailand); and Woman in the Pillory by Brigitte Reimann (Germany).
Keeley Street
Wed 16 Sep 2026Aamer HusseinFull fee £279.00 Senior fee £223.00 Concession £181.00 - Introduction to Global Literature
Are you curious about reading literature from across the world? Would you like to encounter some of the world’s major literary works, reading across cultures and national borders, and in translation? This in-college taster session will give you a flavour of what it’s like to study and explore what global literature is, reading excerpts from two recent works of global literature.
Keeley Street
Sat 19 Sep 2026Hannah Hutchings-GeorgiouFull fee £39.00 Senior fee £31.00 Concession £25.00 - Key Texts of 20th and 21st century drama: The Glass Menagerie, The Judas Kiss, Sweat
This course covers the thematic concerns, dramatic styles and contextual influences of three plays from the 20th and 21st centuries: Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1944), David Hare’s The Judas Kiss (1998) and Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat (2015). Drawing on the plays’ production histories, it considers how dramatists and theatre practitioners have represented the social, cultural and political worlds of specific times and places.
Keeley Street
Mon 21 Sep 2026Jenny StevensFull fee £279.00 Senior fee £223.00 Concession £181.00 - City Lit evening reading group
Share thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session with suggestions (contemporary literary fiction in paperback) and having read Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.We meet on the following dates: 21/9, 26/10, 23/11, 11/1, 8/2, 8/3, 19/4, 24/5, 28/6.
Online
Mon 21 Sep 2026Claire AllenFull fee £199.00 Senior fee £199.00 Concession £129.00 - The Birth of English Tragedy
Come and explore three pioneering tragedies of the early English Renaissance commercial stage (1585-1592): The Spanish Tragedy (1586), Arden of Faversham (1588-92), and Tamburlaine Part I (1587). These plays were to become the models setting the standard and blueprint for three influential sub-genres: Revenge Tragedy, Domestic Tragedy, and Heroic Tragedy. We’ll look at their dramatic inventiveness, creativity in handling sources, and why they enthralled contemporary audiences.
Keeley Street
Mon 21 Sep 2026Alexander Fairbairn-DixonFull fee £279.00 Senior fee £223.00 Concession £181.00 - Romantic Visions
“What is now proved, was once only imagin’d” declared the visionary poet and artist William Blake in 1790. He was right: the Romantic revolution transformed Western culture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and still shapes the way we think today. On the one hand, violent political change with revolutions in America and in France - “ Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven”, wrote Wordsworth - on the other, a new way of looking at the world, in which imagination overthrew reason and the individual sensibility triumphed over social convention.
Keeley Street
Tue 22 Sep 2026Julian BirkettFull fee £279.00 Senior fee £223.00 Concession £181.00 - Classics Revisited: Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell and Julia by Sandra Newman
This online literature course explores George Orwell’s classic Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Sandra Newman’s acclaimed novel Julia (2023).
Online
Tue 22 Sep 2026Kate WilkinsonFull fee £89.00 Senior fee £89.00 Concession £58.00 - The Sublime, a History: Ancient to Romantic
This literature course centres on exploring the wild exhilarating landscapes of Byron and Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the prose of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley. We will look at earlier passages from the Renaissance and the philosophy of Longinus. We will question whether ‘the sublime’ is an intense state of mind, a physical force, or a mode of expression by relating these writers to the history of the concept.
Keeley Street
Tue 22 Sep 2026Alexander Fairbairn-DixonFull fee £279.00 Senior fee £223.00 Concession £181.00 - Poetry Cooked and Raw: Emily Dickinson to the Beat Poets
We will explore how poets changed during the 20th century from writing in formal ‘poetic’ language and regular forms towards writing in more natural language, freer forms and with more direct expression of feelings. We will look at free verse, political poetry, the Beat Poets, confessional poetry and prose poetry.
Keeley Street
Wed 23 Sep 2026Laurie SmithFull fee £279.00 Senior fee £223.00 Concession £181.00 - Get together and read
Enjoy talking with other people about the things you have read? Want to share great stories, poems and drama? Come along and join the conversation.
Full fee £199.00 Senior fee £159.00 Concession £100.00 - Latin American Literary Classics
From Mexico to Patagonia, Latin America has produced some of the most spellbinding literature of the modern age. From dictatorship and death to national identity and the natural world, join us as we investigate the cultural heritage of the continent through some of its best writers.
Keeley Street
Fri 25 Sep 2026Richard NilandFull fee £239.00 Senior fee £191.00 Concession £155.00 - The East End in Fact and FictionCovering the early 19th century to the early 20th century, we will examine the East End and analyse how it was portrayed in works of fiction, thinking about how imaginative fiction and historical fact intertwine to create local legend.
Keeley Street
Sat 26 Sep 2026Sarah WiseFull fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - Medieval Medicine
Source material for medieval medicine is rich and diverse. In this course we explore extracts from the work of literary greats, such as Langland, Gower,Chaucer and Boccacio, alongside extracts from scientific writings, recipes, legal and constitutional works, religious writing and other historical records, to illuminate ideas about the body, society and health in the middle ages.
Online
Mon 28 Sep 2026Rachel BuglassFull fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £97.00 - 1939: In the Shadow of Crisis
The coming of the Second World War loomed large in the imagination of many writers in 1939. We explore how this crisis was represented in a selection of novels published that year by Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley and Jean Rhys. Each novel is set in a different part of the world - Berlin, California and Paris - and refracts the personal and political anxieties of the period.
Online
Mon 28 Sep 2026Jake PollerFull fee £149.00 Senior fee £149.00 Concession £97.00
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