Thoughts on my British Lit reading list....

[Chris in PA]

Ok, I am planning a British lit class at home for my dd's grades 10 and 12. So far this is what I've come up with:

 

Canterbury Tales (selected tales - any recommendations?)

Mid-Summer Night's Dream

Pride and Prejudice

Frankenstein

Jane Eyre

Heart of Darkness

Animal Farm (10th grader)

1984 (12th grader - she already read Animal Farm)

Robinson Crusoe

Gulliver's Travels

Alice In Wonderland (something light and fun)

Peter Pan (10th grader - already read Alice in Wonderland)

The Time Machine

 

Short Stories (any recommendations for ones not to miss?)

 

Poetry unit (any recommendations for ones not to miss?)

 

We will use a variety of methods: read alouds, books on CD and silent reading. There will be a few writing assignments and lots of discussion as we read together.

 

How does this look?

 

Thanks

[Nissi]

How about one of Dickens novels or something by George Eliot like Silas Marner?

[Gratia271]

Another vote for Dickens. I am probably odd, but I developed such a fondness for Dickens in my childhood. I don't think his works should ever be omitted from lit. studies. We also enjoyed Silas Marner.

[FairProspects]

Personally, I would add a modern British play to round things out and contrast the Shakespeare (coming from a former High School drama teacher), like Look Back in Anger or Equus. Plays are easy to read, yet both are great jumping off points for studying a multitude of complex modern economic and sociological issues. These plays do have adult themes, so your family's comfort level with these will need to be a consideration.

[brendafromtenn]

a Shakespeare comedy, but I would throw in a tragedy too. Macbeth or Hamlet are my favs.

 

And I also would agree that Dickens is a must.

 

Brenda:001_smile:

[mrbmom77]

I took British Lit a year or so ago in college. We spent most of our time on Chaucer - Neville Coghill's translation is excellent. Your list looks good.

 

Poetry - We covered Thomas Wyatt, John Donne, George Herbert, John Milton.

 

What about Beowulf and Bede the Bard? Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Thomas More. KJV Bible (1611). Calvin. Foxe. Edmund Spenser. Christopher Marlowe. Ben Jonson. Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume. Jonathan Swift. Alexander Pope.

 

Of course, all that would take a couple of years! Just throwing some ideas out there. Some of these are philosophers and some high schoolers may not be ready for that level yet. OTOH, they'll hear it all in college, with the prof's biases.

 

HTH.

[Farmgirl70]

One resource that we have enjoyed is a podcast called "Craftlit." The woman is an English teacher and lover of crafting. Initially, I started listening to it while I knit. She spends the first bit talking about what she's making and the second bit reading through a classic and talking about it like you might in a lit class. I've now listened to two books with the kids. I fast forward past all the stuff about crafts and just go to the part about the book with the kids (ages 16, 15, 13). They've enjoyed "The Scarlet Letter" and "Frankenstein" this way.

Anyway, she does a great job with "Tale of Two Cities". You can subscribe on itunes or go to craftlit.com. It's been nice to have another voice once in a while!

[aly]

Are you planning to link this with British history? If so, some great 19th century social history accounts come in Dickens (Great Expectations is always a good starting point), Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope (humorous). Moonfleet by Faulkner is a good account of Cornish smuggling in a very exciting story.

For a great account of modern multi-racial London, try Brick Lane by Monica Ali.

[Lori D.]

Looks like a great list to me, with lots of variety over time and genres! Below are more ideas (in case you wanted more!) :) Warmest regards, Lori D.

 

 

British Lit short stories:

- a Sherlock Holmes mystery (Doyle)

- The Monkey's Paw (Jacobs)

- The Open Window (Saki)

- a Father Brown mystery (Chesterton)

- a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery (Sayers)

- a short story by JRR Tolkien: Leaf by Niggle; Smith of Wooten Major; Farmer Giles of Ham

 

 

British poets:

- Shakespeare sonnets

- William Blake

- Samuel Coleridge

- John Keats

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

- William Wordsworth

- Christina Rossetti

- Alfred Tennyson

- John Donne

- Elizabeth Browning

- Robert Browning

 

 

British plays (maybe just WATCH, not read):

- Shakespeare comedy and a tragedy

- Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde) -- comedy

- Pygmalion (Shaw) -- the play on which the musical film My Fair Lady was based

 

 

other British Lit to consider:

- Paradise Lost by John Milton

- something by Charles Dickens (novella = A Christmas Carol)

- something by Robert Lewis Stevenson (short story = The Bottle Imp; novella = Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde; novel = Treasure Island)

- Wooster & Jeeves story or novel (Wodehouse) -- humorous

- Brave New World (Huxley) -- preview!

- Lord of the Flies (Golding)

- Till We Have Faces -- OR -- Screwtape Letters (Lewis)

- Watership Down (Adams) -- can lead to some great discussion on different types of governments!

Edited May 15, 2010 by Lori D.
added info

[Hunter's Moon]

Would you consider adding Wuthering Heights? I think it is a timeless classic.

[LynnG in Arizona]

I think your list looks good overall!

 

Since you asked for input, here are my thoughts based on doing British Lit with my senior last year:

 

~I personally loathe Heart of Darkness on many levels after studying it at both the high school and college levels. I find it dark and with no redeeming value. Think carefully about this one. ;)

 

~I agree that a Shakespeare tragedy is a "must". I'd recommend Hamlet or Macbeth.

 

~Wuthering Heights is a bit odd, but memorable. It's probably a good one to add with daughters, even if much of your discussion is centered on the poor choices that the characters frequently make. :)

 

~Dickens is probably a must, too. How about throwing in A Christmas Carol in December? That's what we did. It was enough to give my dd a taste of Dickens without getting us too bogged down in him.

 

~How about a CS Lewis book? We did Screwtape Letters.

 

~A surprising hit for us was the distopia novel A Brave New World. Now, you already have 1984 listed, so maybe you don't want to add another one. Both my dd and I really enjoyed Brave New World, and it led to some great discussions.

 

HTH! :)

[Lori D.]

Would you consider adding Wuthering Heights?

 

Sure!

 

But the original poster had already listed Jane Eyre as part of her British lit, and even though Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were written by different Bronte sisters, there are SO many classics to try to get in a year for British lit, that most people are looking for as wide a variety in genres, time periods and authors. I was just tossing out a few more titles for variety consideration. :)

 

[idea: whatever doesn't make the official list for school can always be enjoyed later on as fun summer reading, in a book club, in a college class, or in one's own continuing self education. ;) ]

 

Warmest regards, Lori D.

[Chris in PA]

Wow! You all have given me great suggestions. My oldest has read several Dicken's novels and he is one of her favorite authors. My youngest read A Christmas Carol last year. So that explains the lack of Dickens on the list. She will read more in 12th grade (we will do American Lit in 11th).

 

Lynn: Thanks for the input on The Heart of Darkness. I was questioning that one as I remember it from HS and really didn't enjoy it.

 

We did Romeo and Juliet last year. My girls same a modern day adaptation of Mid-Summer Night's Dream and that is what they requested. I would love to do Macbeth as it is one of my personal favorites. I am going to see if we can fit it in.

 

Lori: Thanks for the suggestion of summer reading. My 10th grade dd is going to read the LOTR trilogy. My oldest is going to read Jane Eyre over the summer since my youngest will loathe it (she is a LOTR kind of a girls not a romance girl).

 

I am going to spend the weekend investigating the great ideas given here. You all are a wealth of knowledge!

 

Many, many thanks!!!! :001_smile:

[cathmom]

This is the list I made up a few years ago. I haven't read everything on the list though. I did read A Passage to India two years ago, and I would now take it off the list because I pretty much hated it and thought it was worthless. Heart of Darkness is one I haven't read - I've heard conflicting things about it so I should get to that. There are just too many things to read and not enough time in the day!

 

 

Beowulf (1000)

Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (1300s)

Dr. Faustus by Marlowe (1588)

Faerie Queene (summary) by Spenser (1596)

Shakespeare plays and sonnets (@1600)

Paradise Lost by Milton (1667)

Gulliver’s Travels by Swift (1726)

Tom Jones by Fielding (1749)

Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge (1798)

Pride and Prejudice by Austen (1813)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)

Vanity Fair by Thackeray (1848)

A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens (1859)

Great Expectations by Dickens (1861)

Tess of the D’urbervilles by Hardy (1891)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde (1891)

The Importance of Being Earnest by Wilde (1899)

The Heart of Darkness by Conrad (1902)

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Orczy (1905)

A Passage to India by Forster (1924)

Brave New World by Huxley (1932)

1984 by Orwell (1949)

Edited May 16, 2010 by cathmom

[nmoira]

In place of the Dickens, you might consider Erewhon for Victorian era satire, especially given that you'd already have studied Gulliver's Travels.

[Charles Wallace]

I've added stuff in blue!

Ok, I am planning a British lit class at home for my dd's grades 10 and 12. So far this is what I've come up with:

 

Beowulf -- Seamus Heaney translation

Canterbury Tales (selected tales - any recommendations?)

Prologue

Wife of Bath's Prologue

Wife of Bath's Tale

Miller's Tale

Pardoner's Tale

Mid-Summer Night's Dream

Hamlet

Richard III

Sonnets

Poetry by Sidney, Wyatt, Marvell (esp. "To His Coy Mistress"), Herbert, Herrick

Poetry by John Donne, especially "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" and his sermon containing the famous lines, "No man is an island..."

Poetry by Alexander Pope, particularly "An Essay on Criticism," "An Essay on Man," and "The Rape of the Lock"

Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal"

Addison and Steele, "The Spectator" (Selections)

Diary of Samuel Pepys (selections)

Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year

Fielding, Tom Jones

Pride and Prejudice

Poetry by the "Big Six" -- Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, particularly "Ode on a Grecian Urn," by Keats; "Ozymandias," by Shelley; and Keats' letter on "Negative Capability."

Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, "A Vindication of the Rights of Women"

Jane Eyre

Dickens, Great Expectations

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess," "Porphyria's Lover"

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur," "Pied Beauty," "The Windhover"

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

James Joyce, Dubliners

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest

George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion

Heart of Darkness

Animal Farm (10th grader)

1984 (12th grader - she already read Animal Farm)

Orwell, "Politics and the English Language'

Robinson Crusoe

Gulliver's Travels

Alice In Wonderland (something light and fun)

Peter Pan (10th grader - already read Alice in Wonderland)

The Time Machine

 

Short Stories (any recommendations for ones not to miss?)

 

Poetry unit (any recommendations for ones not to miss?)

 

We will use a variety of methods: read alouds, books on CD and silent reading. There will be a few writing assignments and lots of discussion as we read together.

 

How does this look?

 

Thanks

[Chris in PA]

Thanks for all the additional info!!! I am going to look through those today. :001_smile:

 

I now have some ideas for the Canterbury Tales. Anyone else for which ones we should do?

 

I did order a Beowulf translation so I am adding that to the list.

 

So much more to research.....