Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Entry requirements

Applicants normally require a minimum of a 2:1 honours degree in English Literature or a cognate discipline; consideration will be given to those who hold a lower classification who can demonstrate they are capable of performing at the level required to complete the course successfully. Applicants are subject to written application, references, and evidence of written work, and may be invited for interview.

Months of entry

October

Course content

Course overview

Join us to explore the dynamic relationship between literary texts of the long 19th century (1789-1914) and the fascinating culture from which they emerged.

Our MA offers a rich interdisciplinary study of the key events, debates, discourses, genres, and obsessions of the revolutionary 19th-century period and its afterlives. This is an opportunity to explore an era you may be familiar with in much greater depth, and with attention to the contexts in which the texts were produced.

Why study Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture with us?

The Department of English, housed in a Grade II-listed Vicarage designed by John Douglas, in an institution founded in 1839 and officially opened by Gladstone in 1842, has longstanding teaching and research strengths in 19th-century literature.

Our course is taught by a dedicated and experienced team of tutors with expertise in a wide range of areas, including Romantic poetry; the Sensation novel; detective fiction; the Gothic; and 19th-century Irish, American and South African literature. Our research publications include work on Shelley, Coleridge, the Brontës, Dickens, Collins, Eliot, travel literature, women and material culture, the Victorian periodical press, literature of the Great Famine, colonialism, Neo-Victorian literature, and representations of the body.

How will I be taught?

For the taught modules (Nineteenth-Century Literature, Nineteenth-Century Culture, Research Methods, and Special Author(s)/Topic(s)), you will have group seminars and individual tutorials. For the Dissertation, you will work one-to-one with a supervisor to develop your project.

How will I be assessed?

Modules are assessed by a variety of methods, including essays, research portfolios, conference-style presentations, and a Dissertation.

Fees and funding