Disclaimer
Writing a reading list is just like making a playlist. It's hopelessly partial and limited by its creator's background, blindspots and favourites.
Take this reading list as it is intended – as a few suggestions to whet your appetite.
Advice to those preparing to read English at university
If you're preparing an application to read English at university, it's worth considering these comments, made by Dr Sam Lucy (admissions, Newnham College, Cambridge) in a 2019 school Oxbridge admissions conference:
'We have stopped asking prospective students to do wider reading.'
'We ask them to do ‘subject immersion’ instead. Get into an area of interest – go as deeply as you can and be ready to talk about it'.
'Look for essay prizes to enter as well.'
So, you might be excited and inspired by T.S. Eliot. You might start with his poetry and then look at his drama. Perhaps you read a few of his essays and books about him. Perhaps these lead you to the poetry of W.B. Yeats, or Ezra Pound... Following your nose like this is like wandering the corridors of an ever-branching labyrinth. Once you've made a few choices, your reading profile starts to become as unique as your fingerprint.
Make some notes on your read - a reading journal. It's amazing how much is lost to the mists of memory and you'll want to capitalise on your reading when the time comes to draft a personal statement, or prepare for an interview.
Poetry
The novel is a comparatively new form. This means that, if you're studying English Literature, you will be reading a lot of poetry.
Develop your confidence with poetry by spending some time exploring how it is put together.
Philip Hobsbaum, Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form (1996)
Okay, this may not be the most exciting book on this list, but it hands you the keys to unlock poetry. This book, or something like it, is essential reading. ('Something like it' being Tom Paulin's wonderful The Secret Life of Poems, or Helen Vendler's Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, or Don Paterson's Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: A New Commentary).
Consider reading poetry through time and from a variety of cultures. It's easy to presume that poetry was hitherto the sole preserve of bald, bearded, straight white guys. While this is often true, there's plenty more to discover out there.
Aemelia Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611)
Here's my first idiosyncratic choice. Lanyer was a contemporary of Shakespeare's and these poems - published in book form in her own lifetime - defend Eve's role in the Fall (apple eating in Eden) and lay the blame squarely on Adam's shoulders. It's brilliant.
John Keats, Selected Poems
Oozing sensuality, Keats' poetry takes some beating. Ben Wishaw, playing Keats in the film Bright Star, may whet your appetite.
Linton Kwesi Johnson, Selected Poems
Johnson is only the second living poet and the first black poet to be published as a Penguin Modern Classic. His poetry seethes with anger.
Drama
Watch plays when you have the opportunity and keep an eye on YouTube channels like the National Theatre's. Again, be mindful of the historical range.
Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays
Miracle and Mystery plays were a popular form of entertainment in Medieval England. They're surprisingly bawdy.
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1592)
Marlowe is one of literature's bad boys and, if you want to find out more about his shady life, read Charles Nicholl's brilliant biography, The Reckoning. Faustus sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of unlimited power.
Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677)
Possibly a spy, a successful playwright and one of the earliest novelists, Behn is sensational. The Rover is set at carnival time in Naples in 1656 and presents its 1677 audience with the imagined exploits of a group of ‘banished Cavaliers’. Taking its audience back to the world of Royalist continental exile, the play would have sparked ever-ready memories of the civil wars of the 1640s, which had resulted in the execution of Charles I in 1649.
Tony Kushner, Angels in America (1991)
Another idiosyncratic choice - Angels in America explores identity and belonging as it follows Prior, a young gay New Yorker who has just received the news that he has AIDS. Kushner describes his play as a 'gay fantasia on national themes' and it's a camp, crazy, bloated, flawed, uneven delight. You'll find a good HBO adaptation online.
Novels
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Defoe presents his novel as the Crusoe's autobiography and, before the end of 1719, it had been reprinted three times.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
A coming of age novel (bildungsroman). You can't go wrong with any of the nineteenth century's big hitters: the Brontës (try Emily's Wuthering Heights, or Charlotte's Jane Eyre), or Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005)
Ishiguro's been awarded the Nobel Prize for his writing and this novel celebrates its 20th birthday this year. This birthday was celebrated in the Guardian a week ago. Here's what Anne Enright had to say about it:
If the story works close to folktale, the concept satisfies an anxious interest in speculative and dystopian fiction. The world on the page seems like our own, but it contains a huge and cruel secret, one that involves sinister doubling and the terrifying disposability of characters who are full of love and hopefulness. As I describe it here, the book sounds worse and worse, but there are reasons why this finely written novel should be treasured by readers who sometimes prefer fiction that is not so subtly done. With breathtaking focus and elan, Ishiguro uses the pleasures afforded by other genres and ignores them at the same time. The dystopia is etherised, it is everywhere and nowhere, waiting to be named. The rush of plot is replaced by steady storytelling and slow heartbreak. This is an impossibly sad novel, it offers no escape. It is also, and radically, a book about what it is to be human.
Competitions
These can encourage you to up your game in terms of reading and writing. Look out for the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2025 (closing date 31st July), The Tower Poetry Competition, which will probably open in October and on The Laurie Herring Prize when it opens in early 2026.