English Literature: Victorian Literature

Entry requirements

A UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in a relevant subject, normally English literature.

Months of entry

September

Course content

The literature of the Victorian era offers an extraordinary range of styles, themes and intellectual ideas. This diverse and dynamic literary field reflects a period which witnessed rapid change in almost every area of existence.

Writers such as Dickens, Eliot, the Brontë sisters, Stevenson, Tennyson, Browning, and Christina Rossetti used their work to explore new developments in topics that ranged from religion to sexuality, evolution to imperialism, and mass culture to aestheticism. This programme offers you the opportunity to undertake a substantial piece of supervised independent research in your chosen area.

We are the oldest department of English Literature in the world, and at the last Research Assessment Exercise were awarded the highest research rating possible, of 5*A. We have one of the largest graduate programmes in this area in the country and a rich research culture covering all aspects of literatures in English.

We offer supervision in all areas of Victorian literature, and have particular strengths in social, historical and philosophical approaches to literature, in gender studies, and in the literary culture of the fin de siecle.

The research of staff has made valuable contributions to the areas of literature and philosophy, modernism/postmodernism, medieval and early modern literature, history of the book, romanticism, transatlantic studies and performance studies.

English Literature houses the Centre for the History of the Book and is one of the UK's leading forces in this area. It works closely with the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and with the National Library of Scotland. The latter's recently acquired Murray Archive is crucial for studies in Romanticism, Book History, Bibliography and Archive Studies.