This Guide has been produced with the aim of giving Sixth Form students a little more assistance with the planning of their reading than they would get from a straightforward list of titles. Though it has not been practicable to provide synopses of all the books listed, the Guide does signpost a significant number of authors and their works, by description or by other means. Furthermore, it groups poems, plays, works of fiction, non-fiction and criticism in such a way as to help students form a picture of the wealth, diversity, historical importance and chronology of the literature which is their cultural inheritance. Inevitably, the compiler’s idiosyncratic preferences have crept in here and there, not least, perhaps, in the brief non-fiction selection at the end; nevertheless the Guide is intended to be as wide-ranging and comprehensive as possible without being intimidating and students are urged to explore it and to use it to the full.

You should be familiar with the work of these nineteenth century novelists.....

Jane Austen

The best introduction to her work is, of course, Pride and Prejudice, the story of Elizabeth Bennet and how she eventually marries the proud Mr Darcy. Her earlier novel Northanger Abbey, a satire on the then popular Gothic novel, also makes an amusing short book to start with. Perhaps her best novel, however, is Emma. Her characters are sharply observed, her style classically precise and her ironic wit a constant delight, snobbery, self-deception and vulgarity being its customary targets.

The Brontës

The two novels which stand out are Wuthering Heights by Emily, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte. The former, Emily's only book, is an astonishingly individual and very intense exploration of human passion. The famously stormy and doomed relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff is played out against the powerfully evoked setting of the Yorkshire moors. Jane Eyre is in part an interesting autobiographical account of Charlotte's life as a governess. The figure of Mr Rochester supplies a romantic interest rather more conventional than that of Heathcliff in her sister's book.

Dickens

The sheer length of most of Dickens's novels can seem somewhat daunting. However, one of his greatest books is also one of his shortest, and that is Great Expectations, the darkly compelling story of Pip and his tangled relations with the weirdly eccentric Miss Havisham, the cold-hearted Estella and the convict Magwitch. Dickens saw himself as an entertainer, but was more than simply a great storyteller and creator of a vast gallery of comic or grotesque characters; he was a moralist and a vigorous campaigner against social injustices of various kinds. Oliver Twist is a good introduction to this side of Dickens, but those wishing to explore further should try Bleak House, a monumental attack on the legal system and the treatment of the poor.

Hardy

Hardy should be read while one is in one's teens, when perhaps the often tragic stories of his characters, set in the Wessex countryside and with their sense of a malign fate dogging human existence, can best be appreciated. Good novels to begin with are Far From the Madding Crowd, the story of Bathsheba Everdene and her relationships with the loyal Gabriel Oak, the dashing but irresponsible Sergeant Troy and the unstable Farmer Boldwood, The Mayor of Casterbridge, the stark tale of the rise and fall of "a man of character", and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the moving story of a young girl betrayed by the men in her life, whom Hardy saw as a "pure woman" and the victim of an unjust society.

 

 next