Which books are in the A Level English literature reading list this year - full guide

• English literature is not currently a compulsory subject for A Level candidates.
• But the reading-heavy course is still a popular choice, as well as a combined English lit and language A Level.
• Students who take this A Level will have plenty of reading to do, with teachers assigning multiple novels, plays and poems from exam boards’ set lists.
• There is also a little flexibility in assessments, where students may be able to select some books on their own.

This year’s new A Level learners who have stuck with English lit might be in for a shock when they see the size of their reading list.

While there are a few compulsory GCSEs in England, including maths, at least two science subjects, and English language or literature - or both, in many schools - none are currently compulsory for students that continue on to take their A Levels. So for those that do choose to keep on studying English literature, the course might look a little different or be a little more complex than they remember.

Exam boards also offer different variations of their English literature A Level, including, for some, a combined course with English language. But at its heart, the subject still involves studying a range of books, plays and poetry - both modern and classic - in depth, with assessments often revolving around comparing themes, genres, and shared contexts across time and different authors.

This often means students will have to read one or two core texts, as well as a few comparative ones. Common themes include love and romance, World War I and its aftermath, Gothic fiction, and many others.

Teachers will still usually pick most of the books and plays their classes will study, and again each exam board - AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel or WJEC Eduqas for most students in England - has a set list of approved books, plays, and poems for them to choose from. Students sometimes have to study as many as eight texts chosen from the list during their course, and perhaps even a few independently selected works.

Here are both the core and comparative texts for English literature, selected by England’s major exam boards. We’ve left out recommended texts for independent study projects, where students are free to select their own so long as they meet the requirements.

Modern novels

• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (AQA, OCR, Pearson)
• A Room with a View, E.M. Forster (AQA, Pearson)
• The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley (AQA)
• Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier (AQA, Eduqas)
• The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (AQA, OCR, Pearson)
• Waterland, Graham Swift (AQA)
• Regeneration, Pat Barker (AQA)
• Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks (AQA)
• The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West (AQA)
• All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque (AQA - this must be the Vintage paperback edition translated by Brian Murdoch)
• Strange Meeting, Susan Hill (AQA)
• The Woman in Black, Susan Hill (Eduqas)
• A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (AQA)
• Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves (AQA)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (AQA)
• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy (AQA, OCR)
• The Color Purple, Alice Walker (AQA, Pearson, Eduqas)
• Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson (AQA)
• Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates (AQA)
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (AQA)
• Brighton Rock, Graham Greene (AQA)
• Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer (AQA)
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (OCR)
• Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (OCR)
• Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell (OCR)
• Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell (Eduqas)
• Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (OCR, Pearson)
• Call It Sleep, Henry Roth (OCR)
• The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter (OCR, Pearson, Eduqas)
• Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe (OCR)
• Skating to Antarctica, Jenny Diski (OCR, Eduqas)
• The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson (OCR)
• Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northrop (OCR)
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (OCR, Pearson, Eduqas)
• The Lonely Londoners, Sam Selvon (Pearson)
• Beloved, Toni Morrison (Pearson)
• The Bone People, Keri Hulme (Pearson)
• A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood (Pearson)
• Enduring Love, Ian McEwan (Pearson)
• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (Pearson)

For WJEC Eduqas pure English literature students, the main prose assessment allows any two novels so long as one was published before and one after the year 2000. Both must be substantial books, however, and need to be submitted to Eduqas for approval.

Eduqas English language and literature students, on the other hand, have to choose a genre out of one of these categories; gothic, science fiction, romance, dystopia, crime, satire/comedy, historical fiction, war/conflict, adventures/journeys, life writing, journalism, travel or identity. They must read one to two classic books from each genre - a complete list of which can be found online here, in Appendix A.

New (post-2000s) novels

• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (AQA)
• The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (AQA)
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini (Pearson)
• Atonement, Ian McEwan (AQA, OCR, Pearson, Eduqas)
• Harvest, Jim Crace (AQA)
• The Help, Kathryn Stockett (AQA)
• When Will There Be Good News? Kate Atkinson (AQA)
• Small Island, Andrea Levy (AQA)
• Spies, Michael Frayn (AQA)
• Life Class, Pat Barker (AQA)
• The First Casualty, Ben Elton (AQA)
• A Long, Long Way, Sebastian Barry (AQA)
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, Kate Summerscale (AQA)
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid (OCR)
• The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri (OCR)
• The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri (Pearson)
• Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters (OCR)
• Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh (OCR)
• I Am The Secret Footballer, Anonymous (OCR)
• Stasiland, Anna Funder (OCR)
• Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? Jeannette Winterson (OCR)
• The Examined Life, Stephen Grosz (OCR)
• What the Chinese Don’t Eat, Xinran (OCR)
• Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie (Pearson)
• The Cutting Season, Attica Locke (Pearson)
• Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (Pearson)
• The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (Eduqas)
• The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters (Pearson, Eduqas)
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, David Eggers (Eduqas)

Pre 1900 novels

• Persuasion, Jane Austen (AQA)
• Emma, Jane Austen (AQA)
• Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen (OCR)
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (AQA, OCR, Eduqas)
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (AQA, Pearson)
• The Awakening, Kate Chopin (AQA)
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy (AQA, Pearson)
• The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer (AQA)
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (AQA)
• Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens (AQA)
• Hard Times, Charles Dickens (AQA, Pearson)
• Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (Pearson, Eduqas)
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (AQA, Pearson, Eduqas)
• Dracula, Bram Stoker (AQA, OCR, Pearson, Eduqas)
• What Maisie Knew, Henry James (Pearson)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (Pearson)
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (Pearson)
• Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Pearson)
• The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins (Pearson)
• The War of the Worlds, H G Wells (Pearson, Eduqas)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (Pearson)

Plays and poetry

• Oh! What a Lovely War, Joan Littlewood (AQA)
• Journey’s End, R.C. Sherriff (AQA)
• Top Girls, Caryl Churchill (AQA, Pearson)
• A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams (AQA, OCR, Pearson, Eduqas)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams (AQA, Eduqas)
• The Accrington Pals, Peter Whelan (AQA)
• Blackadder Goes Forth, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton (AQA)
• My Boy Jack, David Haig (AQA)
• The Wipers Times, Ian Hislop and Nick Newman (AQA)
• Translations, Brian Friel (AQA, Pearson, Eduqas)
• All My Sons, Arthur Miller (AQA, Pearson)
• Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller (AQA)
• Our Country’s Good, Timberlake Wertenbaker (AQA)
• She Stoops to Conquer, Oliver Goldsmith (AQA, OCR)
• The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde (AQA, OCR, Pearson)
• An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde (OCR)
• Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde (Eduqas)
• A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen (AQA - must be the Bloomsbury Methuen Drama edition translated by Michael Meyer, OCR)
• The Herd, Rory Kinnear (AQA)
• Edward II, Christopher Marlowe (OCR)
• The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster (OCR, Pearson, Eduqas)
• Barber Shop Chronicles, Inua Ellam (OCR)
• Tribes, Nina Raine (OCR)
• Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth (OCR)
• Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe (Pearson, Eduqas)
• The Rover, Aphra Behn (Pearson)
• Les Blancs, Lorraine Hansberry (Pearson)
• Sweat, Lynn Nottage (Pearson)
• Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett (Pearson)
• Elmina’s Kitchen, Kwame Kwei-Armah (Pearson)
• Equus, Peter Shaffer (Pearson)
• The History Boys, Alan Bennett (Pearson, Eduqas)
• A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry (Pearson)
• Betrayal, Harold Pinter (Pearson, Eduqas)
• Rock ‘N’ Roll, Tom Stoppard (Pearson)
• Oleanna, David Mamet (Pearson)
• Enron, Lucy Prebble (Eduqas)
• The Revenger’s Tragedy, Thomas Middleton (Eduqas)
• Loot, Joe Orton (Eduqas)
• Murmuring Judges, David Hare (Eduqas)
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee (Eduqas)
• Kindertransport, Diane Samuels (Eduqas)

When it comes to poetry, exam boards usually have their own specific anthologies of poems on a particular theme, or have selected an existing collection, often by multiple writers. Your child’s school should be able to advise you on which one they will need, if any.

Shakespeare

• Othello (AQA, OCR, Pearson, Eduqas)
• The Taming of the Shrew (AQA, OCR, Pearson)
• Measure for Measure (AQA, OCR until 2026, Pearson, Eduqas)
• The Winter's Tale (AQA)
• King Lear (AQA, OCR, Pearson, Eduqas)
• Richard II (AQA, OCR)
• Twelfth Night (AQA, OCR until 2026, Pearson)
• Hamlet (AQA, OCR, Pearson)
• Henry IV, Part 1 (AQA, Eduqas)
• Coriolanus (OCR until 2026)
• The Tempest (OCR, Eduqas)
• Antony and Cleopatra (Pearson, Eduqas)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Pearson)
• Much Ado About Nothing (Pearson, Eduqas)

What do you think about the books and plays being studied by England’s A Level students? Have your say and make your voice heard by leaving a comment below.