Literature Courses in London

Both Edith Wharton and Henry James had a keen eye for a well-designed and tastefully decorated house and both brought us depictions of splendid interiors in their novels set in ‘the Gilded Age’. On this course we will look at The Decoration of Houses, a book on interior design that Edith Wharton wrote with her friend and architect Ogden Codman, Jr., published in 1897. We will compare descriptions found in her novel The House of Mirth. We’ll also see how Henry James describes the ideal English country house in the opening scenes of A Portrait of a Lady, and his less complimentary opinions in The Spoils of Poynton.

Explore the extraordinary artistic quality, emotional power and imaginative energy of Palestinian writing over more than half a century, a great modern literature born out of a calamitous history. From the eye of the storm in Gaza and Israel to exile and the wider diaspora, read and discuss seminal works by many of the leading figures across the generations, including Ghassan Kanafani, the two Darwishes, Zaqtan, Adania Shibli and the younger Mosab Abu Toha and Batool Abu Akleen.

Publishing essays, poetry and autofiction across three decades, from the 1960s to the early 1990s, Audre Lorde was one of literature’s most radical thinkers. A self-described ‘black, lesbian, mother warrior, poet’, her writing sought to transform 'silence into language and action'.

This one day workshop provides a literary critique of some of Lorde’s key texts, and an opportunity to create new writing in response.

Come and explore the origins and development of the short story form in America. Often claimed as the defining genre in American culture, we’ll explore how the short story form was used by writers, how the stories were disseminated, the ways in which the form is connected to developments in publishing technology, and how regional and democratic the form was to a nation forging its own national identity. Starting with great innovators of the genre, Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain, we’ll also look at a range of ground-breaking female writers such as Flannery O’Connor and Dorothy Parker.

On this course we will read some classic ghost stories from M.R. James, Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton and others. Ghost stories achieve some of their effects through the presence of the strange within the familiar, or the eruption of the past in the present (the return of the repressed), which Sigmund Freud termed the uncanny. We will explore Freud’s essay ‘The Uncanny’ and use this psychoanalytic concept to think about the ghost stories we read.

In this course we take a deep dive into the writings of Sylvia Plath. As well as poetry from Ariel and the novel The Bell Jar, we will explore Plath's letters and journals. Reading across the categories of literature and life-writing, we will focus on Plath's conflicted relationship with motherhood, and the 'madness' that was possibly both a symptom of depression and a source of edgy creativity.

Read, view and discuss three dramas, focusing on the trajectory from play text to performance to better understand the playwrights and their impact on American and British theatre in the radically changing societies of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Plays include: Awake and Sing! By Clifford Odets (1935), A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (1947) and The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan(1952).

Dream Visions were a hugely popular literary form in the ancient world and Middle Ages. These works were not merely descriptions of dreams, but became vehicles for philosophical and religious contemplation, advice, consolation, feminist polemic, rhetorical exempla and social critique. This one-day workshop introduces students to the genre of dream vision, contextualizing two of Chaucer’s poets’ dreams with earlier examples of the form and medieval scientific and literary theories. The main focus for the day is Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls and The Book of the Duchess.

This short in-person literature course will explore George Eliot’s novel, ‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2). Considered by many to be the greatest nineteenth century novel, we explore its narrative methods and characterisation, its rich engagement with the ideas and concerns of its age, and above all, its deep humanity that still resonates with us today.

This one-day course examines how Yeats’ career spans three decades of experimentation. Tracking the development of the poet chronologically, selecting the greatest poems from each collection in turn, we shall discover the variety of his artistic output: love poet, lyric poet, balladeer, political poet, symbolist and elegist.

The Divine Comedy is an imaginary journey through the three realms of the afterlife, a fascinating compendium of life in 14th century Italy. Dante's ability to depict humanity in all its aspects is timeless and has fascinated readers ever since its rediscovery in the 19th century.

Ever wondered what studying a Literature course at City Lit is like? Tempted to try, but not ready to commit to a whole course? Try this taster session on contemporary fiction to boost your confidence and whet your appetite for further study!

Includes information on the Literature programme offering for term three, which runs from April to July 2027.

Important food source, dear companion, or powerful allegory? Placing literary works alongside non-fiction and surviving material culture, this course explores the varied relationships between humans and animals in the medieval world.

This short literature course will explore Henry James’s novel ‘A Portrait of a Lady’ (1881), a complex representation of female agency, responsibility, secrets, manipulation and marriage through the characters of Isabel Archer and Gilbert Osmond (among others). We also consider James’s distinctive literary style and his views on fiction writing itself.