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Writing Lives: Non-fiction texts by people of colour from the 18th and 19th centuries

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Writing Lives: Non-fiction texts by people of colour from the 18th and 19th centuries

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Writing Lives is a teaching resource that brings together texts by men and women of African, Caribbean and Asian heritage who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. It has been designed with UK GCSE English Language teachers in mind, but you’ll also find inspiration for students aged 12-18 (Key Stage 3 and A-level) and beyond.

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This collection features short films with Malorie Blackman.

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Small Island by Andrea Levy: character, setting, context, legacy

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Small Island by Andrea Levy: character, setting, context, legacy

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In this film, Hannah Lowe and Nicole-Rachelle Moore introduce Small Island by Andrea Levy. Through notes, sketches and drafts from Andrea Levy’s archive, discover how Levy developed character, voice and setting in the novel and explore key contexts including Windrush and migration from the Caribbean to Britain.

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Small Island by Andrea Levy: character, setting, context, legacy

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Hannah Lowe and Nicole-Rachelle Moore introduce Small Island by Andrea Levy. Through notes, sketches and drafts from Andrea Levy’s archive, discover how Levy developed character, voice and setting in the novel and explore key contexts including Windrush and migration from the Caribbean to Britain. 

Explore more Discovering Literature resources: padlet.com/discovering_literature/articles

Director: Timi Akindele-Ajani
Producer: Cree Brown (Pavilion Works)
Camera operator: Caleb Johnston
Sound recordist: Danny Hilton
British Library editorial and production: Katie Adams, Noha Choudhury 

Generously supported by The Patricia G. and Jonathan S. England – British Library Innovation Fund, Eccles Institute and The American Trust for the British Library. 

Music from #Uppbeat uppbeat.io/t/sega-williams/forever
License code: ETXXCRRK6HW0B1FJ 

For an audio described version, follow this link: vimeo.com/1113266845?share=copy

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This collection features articles on Small Island, plus a film and primary sources.

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Teachers’ guide: approaches to representations of race, racism and racist language in literary texts

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Teachers’ guide: approaches to representations of race, racism and racist language in literary texts

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Authored by Bennie Kara, published by Lit in Colour and the British Library. This resource is aimed at teachers who wish to develop their practice on teaching about the representation of race, the presentation of racism and approaches to exploring racist language in English Literature texts.

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The Lonely Londoners: a new way of reading and writing the city

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The Lonely Londoners: a new way of reading and writing the city

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The Lonely Londoners is an iconic chronicle of post-war Caribbean migration to Britain. Susheila Nasta explores how Samuel Selvon created a new means of describing the city by giving voice to the early migrant experience and capturing the romance and disenchantment of London for its new citizens.

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A close reading of James Berry's ‘On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955’ by James Berry

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A close reading of James Berry's ‘On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955’ by James Berry

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James Berry's poem ‘On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955’ was first published in 1985 and has recently been added to GCSE English poetry anthologies. Hannah Lowe provides a close reading and explores its wider literary context.

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This collection features articles on 'On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955' and Windrush Songs, plus audio recordings and primary sources.

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This collection features articles and films connected to Princess & the Hustler, plus primary sources.

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Teachers’ guide: approaches to representations of race, racism and racist language in literary texts

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Teachers’ guide: approaches to representations of race, racism and racist language in literary texts

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Authored by Bennie Kara, published by Lit in Colour and the British Library. This resource is aimed at teachers who wish to develop their practice on teaching about the representation of race, the presentation of racism and approaches to exploring racist language in English Literature texts.

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An introduction to Chinonyerem Odimba’s Princess & the Hustler: Black beauty, family and resistance

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An introduction to Chinonyerem Odimba’s Princess & the Hustler: Black beauty, family and resistance

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In Princess & the Hustler, set during the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott, 10-year-old Phyllis ‘Princess’ James goes on her own journey of resistance and self-love. Amy Saleh offers an analysis of the play’s front cover as an entry point to its themes, characters and events.

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Barber Shop Chronicles: Inua Ellams’ research trip across Sub-Saharan Africa

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Barber Shop Chronicles: Inua Ellams’ research trip across Sub-Saharan Africa

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In December 2013, Inua Ellams left London to travel through Sub-Saharan Africa for six weeks to research his play, Barber Shop Chronicles. The play is set in five African cities – Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos, Accra – and in London. This is the first of six journey-logs, accompanied by photographs Ellams took on the trip.

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From Stratford to London (and back again), from ‘upstart crow’ to 'wonder of our stage', Andrew Dickson recounts some of the details of William Shakespeare’s life.

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Virginia Woolf loved London, and her novel Mrs Dalloway famously begins with Clarissa Dalloway walking through the city. David Bradshaw investigates how the excitement, beauty and inequalities of London influenced Woolf's writing.

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When Zadie Smith encountered The Buddha of Suburbia as a teenager, she found in its description of multiracial South London suburbs an image of her own experience. Here she remembers her first reading of the novel and describes how, on rereading it as an adult, she continues to appreciate Hanif Kureishi's sense of mischief and his depictions of race and class.

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Chris Power introduces An Inspector Calls as a morality play that denounces the hypocrisy and callousness of capitalism and argues that a just society can only be achieved if all individuals feel a sense of social responsibility.

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An Inspector Calls and J B Priestley’s political journey

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An Inspector Calls and J B Priestley’s political journey

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Alison Cullingford explores how J B Priestley's childhood in Bradford and experiences during two world wars shaped his socialist beliefs and fueled the anger of his play An Inspector Calls, a work that revolves around ideas of social responsibility and guilt.

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Close readings of John Agard's ‘Checking Out Me History’, ‘Flag’ and ‘Half Caste’

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Close readings of John Agard's ‘Checking Out Me History’, ‘Flag’ and ‘Half Caste’

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John Agard's poetry has political complexities. Daljit Nagra delivers close readings of three of Agard's poems, analysing how each engages with questions of identity, nationhood and the brutal legacies of empire and enslavement.

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A close reading of Chaucer's ‘The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale'

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A close reading of Chaucer's ‘The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale'

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Jenny Stevens introduces 'The Merchant's Prologue and Tale', exploring the way in which it combines literary genres and traditions, and refuses to give the reader a clear moral or message.

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Over the course of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet goes from being a sheltered child to a young woman passionately in love. Penny Gay considers how this transformation, and its tragic consequences, are accompanied by Juliet's development as a poet.

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Professor John Bowen discusses key motifs in Gothic novels, including the uncanny, the sublime and the supernatural. Filmed at Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham.

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An introduction to Forgotten 遗忘 by Daniel York Loh

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An introduction to Forgotten 遗忘 by Daniel York Loh

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Daniel York Loh’s play Forgotten 遗忘 is inspired by the little-known story of the 140,000 Chinese labourers who worked for Britain and the Allies during World War One. Dr Anne Witchard explores how Forgotten 遗忘 dramatises the experiences of those in the Chinese Labour Corps and illuminates China’s role in the war.

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'Dulce Et Decorum Est', a close reading 

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'Dulce Et Decorum Est', a close reading 

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Santanu Das examines the crafting of one of Owen’s most poignant poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, and shows how Owen’s war poems evoke the extreme sense-experience of the battlefield.

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Film: Wilfred Owen, 'Dulce et Decorum Est'

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Film: Wilfred Owen, 'Dulce et Decorum Est'

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Dr Santanu Das explores the manuscript for Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est', revealing new insights into the composition of one of World War One's most well-known poems.

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Broken mirrors: the First World War and modernist literature

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Broken mirrors: the First World War and modernist literature

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Randall Stevenson describes how the violence and loss of the First World War affected modernist writers’ attitudes towards nature and time, as well as shaping their experiments with language, literary form and the representation of consciousness.

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Explore the rich history of Black writing and literature in Britain. This literary timeline explores the history of Black literature and writing in Britain through around 50 texts.

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South Asian writing in Britain: a timeline

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South Asian writing in Britain: a timeline

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Explore a snapshot of the vast wealth of literature written and published in Britain and Ireland by writers of South Asian heritage and learn more about the history of South Asian writing in Britain.

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South Asian writing in Britain: a timeline

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A snapshot of South Asian writing and literature in Britain. This timeline provides a snapshot of the vast wealth of literature written and published in Britain and Ireland by writers of South Asian heritage. Aimed at Secondary school teachers, students and librarians, we hope it will lead you to explore novels, plays, poetry and non-fiction by authors of South Asian heritage and learn more about the history of South Asian writing in Britain.1 Here we look at South Asia as encompassing the histories of the modern states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and administered Kashmir. We recognise that identity is nuanced and that each writer defines themselves differently in relation to ethnicity, nationality and other aspects of their identity. We use the title ‘South Asian writing in Britain’ to highlight a region of writing, within which writers with connections to South Asia and Britain published their texts in Britain and Ireland.2 These connections are linked to British colonialism and imperialism, alongside diverse migration journeys and diaspora experiences. Some authors featured here were born in India during the East India Company’s rule (1757–1858) or Britain’s direct colonial administration (1858–1947), and migrated to or visited Britain; others migrated to Britain after World War Two, Independence and Partition, or other independence movements; while other writers have moved to Britain in more recent years, or were born and grew up here. Teachers and students may recognise many writers from their curriculums, including Meera Syal, Monica Ali, Daljit Nagra, Imtiaz Dharker and Seni Seneviratne. The design of the timeline particularly aims to support and contextualise the study of South Asian writing in Britain featured in English curriculums. It also aims to provide an idea of the breadth of writing. We feature many writers who have reached canonical statuses, from Dean Mohamed to Kamila Shamsie. We place these writers alongside works that broaden the representation of South Asian writing in Britain from writers such as Cedric Dover, Shelley Silas and Suhayl Saadi. This timeline provides examples of novels, poetry, plays, travel narratives, non-fiction and memoirs spanning from the 18th century up to the present day. We have also included entries that demonstrate initiatives to promote British and South Asian voices, including examples of notable publishing companies, literary organisations, theatre companies and magazines. Beyond these entries, there is also more literary history to uncover. For example, the 19th-century poet and playwright Madhusudan Dutt tried to publish in Britain, but his work was not accepted. In the 20th century, the activist, lawyer and politician Krishna Menon became a founding editor of Pelican Books (the non-fiction, educational imprint of Penguin Books) and made significant contributions to library services in St Pancras. Read together, we hope the timeline illuminates the literary and cultural heritages each writer emerges from, as well as the connections between some writers. Beyond this timeline, we hope you’re inspired to explore British and South Asian literature, arts and culture more widely. South Asian presence in Britain encompasses at least 400 years of history. To learn more about the relationship between South Asia and Britain see: South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories South Asian Diaspora Arts Archive British Library’s India Office Records and Private Papers British South Asian Theatre: mapping histories and practices The Next Act podcast Striking Women Bichitra: Digitised Tagore manuscripts

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Tanika Gupta's The Empress: historical context

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Tanika Gupta's The Empress: historical context

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Florian Stadtler explores key historical contexts for The Empress, including the presence of ayahs, lascars, Dadabhai Naoroji and Abdul Karim in 19th-century Britain.

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An introduction to Andrea Levy's Small Island

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An introduction to Andrea Levy's Small Island

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Andrea Levy's Small Island is a story of post-war Caribbean migration, narrated from four different perspectives. Hannah Lowe explores how the novel is intrinsically linked with Levy's own Caribbean ancestry, as well as how it has become more widely associated with the Windrush experience.

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Back to My Own Country: An essay by Andrea Levy

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Back to My Own Country: An essay by Andrea Levy

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In this reflective essay, Andrea Levy delves deep into race, racism and class, and pinpoints events which compelled her to use writing as a tool to explore and understand her Caribbean heritage.

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‘How come England did not know me?’: Recording Andrea Levy for Authors’ Lives

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‘How come England did not know me?’: Recording Andrea Levy for Authors’ Lives

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Sarah O’Reilly has been recording life story interviews with writers since 2007 for NLS’s Authors’ Lives project. Here she reflects on a recording she made with the novelist Andrea Levy in 2014.

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George Orwell’s Animal Farm combines animal fable with political satire targeting Stalinist Russia. John Sutherland describes the novel’s genesis, its struggle to find a publisher, and its eventual success.

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Nineteen Eighty Four and the politics of dystopia 

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Nineteen Eighty Four and the politics of dystopia 

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Roger Luckhurst describes the political environment in which George Orwell wrote and published Nineteen Eighty-Four, and analyses its different – and often opposing – interpretations.

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What does it mean to say a text is Gothic? Professor John Bowen considers some of the best-known Gothic novels of the late 18th and 19th centuries, exploring the features they have in common, including marginal places, transitional time periods and the use of fear and manipulation.

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Writing Lives: Non-fiction texts by people of colour from the 18th and 19th centuries

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Writing Lives: Non-fiction texts by people of colour from the 18th and 19th centuries

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Writing Lives is a teaching resource that brings together texts by men and women of African, Caribbean and Asian heritage who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. It has been designed with UK GCSE English Language teachers in mind, but you’ll also find inspiration for students aged 12-18 (Key Stage 3 and A-level) and beyond.

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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Equiano's autobiography, book tour, legacy

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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Equiano's autobiography, book tour, legacy

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In this film, S I Martin and Sandra A Agard introduce Olaudah Equiano and his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African. Discover more about the book, Black and African writers in 18th-19th century Britain, Equiano’s abolitionist campaigning, and his legacy.

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The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Equiano's autobiography, book tour, legacy

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S I Martin and Sandra A Agard introduce Olaudah Equiano and his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African. Discover more about the book, Black and African writers in 18th-19th century Britain, Equiano’s abolitionist campaigning, and his legacy. 

Explore more Discovering Literature resources: padlet.com/discovering_literature/articles

Director: Timi Akindele-Ajani 
Producer: Cree Brown (Pavilion Works) 
Camera operator: Caleb Johnston 
Sound recordist: Danny Hilton 
British Library editorial and production: Katie Adams, Noha Choudhury 

Generously supported by The Patricia G. and Jonathan S. England – British Library Innovation Fund, Eccles Institute and The American Trust for the British Library. 

Music: 'Life In Motion' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

For an audio described version, follow this link: vimeo.com/1112341953?share=copy

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African writers and Black thought in 18th-century Britain

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African writers and Black thought in 18th-century Britain

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By 1780, Britain had a Black population of at least 20,000 people. S I Martin describes how four writers, taken from Africa as children and sold into slavery, grew up to write works that challenged British ideas about race, called for African brotherhood and demanded the abolition of the slave trade.

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The science of life and death in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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The science of life and death in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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Professor Sharon Ruston surveys the scientific background to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, considering contemporary investigations into resuscitation, galvanism and the possibility of states between life and death.

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Professor Elaine Showalter explores modernity, consciousness, gender and time in Virginia Woolf’s ground-breaking work, 'Mrs Dalloway'. The film is shot around the streets of London, as well as at the British Library and at Gordon Square in Bloomsbury where Virginia and her siblings lived in the early 20th century.

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Mrs Dalloway: exploring consciousness and the modern world

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Mrs Dalloway: exploring consciousness and the modern world

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Elaine Showalter describes how, in Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf uses stream of consciousness to enter the minds of her characters and portray cultural and individual change in the period following the First World War.

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Wide Sargasso Sea is both a response and a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, set in the West Indies and imagining the lives of Bertha Mason and her family. Bidisha describes how Jean Rhys’s novel portrays the racial and sexual exploitation at the heart of western civilisation and literature.

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The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories: articles and sources

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The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories: articles and sources

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Explore Angela Carter's manuscript drafts and all three articles on The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.

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An introduction to The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

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An introduction to The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

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Chris Power examines how Angela Carter’s collection of reworked fairy tales is a unique, disruptive work that places gender politics centre-stage and refuses to be easily categorised.

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Angela Carter, Gothic literature and The Bloody Chamber

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Angela Carter, Gothic literature and The Bloody Chamber

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The Bloody Chamber is a collection of modern fairy tales, many of which incorporate elements of Gothic literature. Greg Buzwell traces the Gothic influence on Carter's stories, from the Marquis de Sade to Edgar Allan Poe.

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Romeo and Juliet is not only a love story. Andrew Dickson describes how the play reflects the violence and chaos of Shakespearean London – and how, more recently, directors have used it to explore conflicts of their own time.

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Character analysis: Benvolio, Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet

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Character analysis: Benvolio, Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet

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Emma Torrance analyses the characters of Benvolio, Mercutio and Tybalt within Act 3, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet – a key scene in which a fight breaks out between the Capulets and Montagues.

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‘Unsex me here’: Lady Macbeth’s ‘hell broth’

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‘Unsex me here’: Lady Macbeth’s ‘hell broth’

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Sandra M. Gilbert considers how Lady Macbeth in her murderous ambition goes beyond prescribed gender roles, but in doing so only succeeds in monstering herself and becoming a parody of womanhood, until madness again confines her to feminine helplessness.

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Manhood and the ‘milk of human kindness’ in Macbeth

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Manhood and the ‘milk of human kindness’ in Macbeth

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The tragedy of Macbeth revolves around the question of what it means to be a man, argues Kiernan Ryan.

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Focussing on characterisation, language and imagery, Michael Donkor analyses Lady Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 5 of Macbeth, and considers how this scene fits into the play as a whole.

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Character analysis: The Witches in Macbeth

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Character analysis: The Witches in Macbeth

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Looking at context, language and form, Carol Atherton provides a close analysis of the Witches in Act 1, Scene 3 of Macbeth.

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Much of Macbeth is set at night, yet its first performances took place in the open air, during daylight hours. John Mullan explores how Shakespeare uses speech and action to conjure the play's sense of growing darkness.

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Macbeth and Shakespeare's linguistic innovation

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Macbeth and Shakespeare's linguistic innovation

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In Macbeth, Shakespeare coins an extraordinary number of words and phrases, including 'assassination', 'unsex' and 'stealthy'. David Crystal shows how these linguistic innovations help express the action and atmosphere of the play and the troubled psychology of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

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Hamlet shows Shakespeare intent on sabotaging the conventions of revenge tragedy. Kiernan Ryan explains why.

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The character of Ophelia has fascinated directors, actresses, writers and painters since she first appeared on stage. Here Elaine Showalter discusses Ophelia's madness as a particularly female malady, showing how from Shakespeare's day to our own Ophelia has been used both to reflect and to challenge evolving ideas about female psychology and sexuality.

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Emma Smith reads Hamlet as a play obsessed with retrospection, repetition and the theatre of the past.

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From The Murder of Gonzago to Hamlet's pretence of madness, Hamlet is a work obsessed with acting and deception. Gillian Woods explores how the play unsettles distinctions between performance and reality and how it thus exposes the mechanisms of theatre.

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Focussing on key quotations and theatrical interpretations, Tamara Tubb explores the character of Gertrude in Hamlet and her role within the play.

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John Mullan explains the position of ghosts in Elizabethan and Jacobean culture, and shows how the ghosts in Shakespeare's plays relate to and boldly depart from ghostly representations in other drama of the period.

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Will Tosh examines early modern attitudes towards madness, and how these informed Shakespeare's varied depictions of mental illness in Hamlet, King Lear and other plays.

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In his portrayal of Prospero's 'art', Shakespeare seems to draw parallels between theatre and magic. Emma Smith explores these, but questions the idea that the magus is a self-portrait of the playwright.

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Prospero’s island: colonialism and ecocide in The Tempest

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Prospero’s island: colonialism and ecocide in The Tempest

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Emma Smith explores how The Tempest participates in a moment of colonial expansion and ecological cost, suggesting that, in this light, Prospero is the play’s anti-hero.

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Post-colonial readings of The Tempest were inspired by the decolonisation movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Jyotsna Singh describes how these readings challenge more traditional interpretations of the play, questioning Prospero's ownership of the island and rethinking the role of Caliban.

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Character analysis: Ariel and Prospero in The Tempest

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Character analysis: Ariel and Prospero in The Tempest

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Focusing on Act 1, Scene 2 of The Tempest, John Gordon analyses the characters of Ariel and Prospero through the frame of magic and power.

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Character analysis: Miranda in The Tempest 

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Character analysis: Miranda in The Tempest 

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Lilla Grindlay explores the character of Miranda in Act 3, Scene 1 of The Tempest, considering language, form and a feminist interpretation.

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The Tempest was first performed in the enclosed, candlelit space of the new Blackfriars theatre. Here Professor Gordon McMullan describes how audience members would have found themselves participating in an innovative and captivating theatrical experience.

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Benedick and Beatrice: the 'merry war' of courtship 

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Benedick and Beatrice: the 'merry war' of courtship 

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Penny Gay sees Benedick and Beatrice as the witty stars of a Shakespearean rom-com. She explores both their modernity and their conformity to traditional gender roles and marriage.

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Comedy, tragedy and gender politics in Much Ado About Nothing 

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Comedy, tragedy and gender politics in Much Ado About Nothing 

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Much Ado About Nothing pits male bonding against heterosexual relationships. Emma Smith examines this conflict and the ways in which it threatens the play's status as comedy.

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Deception and dramatic irony in Much Ado About Nothing 

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Deception and dramatic irony in Much Ado About Nothing 

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Although the characters might be fooled by the many deceptions in the play, the audience seems to know better, but Andrea Varney suggests that our role as observers is more complex and uncertain.

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Racism, misogyny and ‘motiveless malignity’ in Othello

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Racism, misogyny and ‘motiveless malignity’ in Othello

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The causes of the tragedy of Othello are more complex and disturbing than they might at first appear, Kiernan Ryan contends.

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Othello is a tragedy that proceeds from misunderstandings and miscommunication. Many of these errors are bound up with Iago's deception, but Michael Donkor looks at other, additional causes in the play.

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Alexandra Melville provides a close reading of the villainous character of Iago in Act 2, Scene 1 of Othello.

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Strangers in the city: the cosmopolitan nature of 16th-century Venice

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Strangers in the city: the cosmopolitan nature of 16th-century Venice

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Othello shows us the cosmopolitan nature of renaissance Venice, as Dr Farah Karim-Cooper reveals.

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Sovereignty and subversion in King Lear 

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Sovereignty and subversion in King Lear 

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Professor Kiernan Ryan argues that the subversive spirit of King Lear remains as powerful as ever, four centuries after it was first performed.

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‘Wretched strangers’: Shakespeare’s plea for tolerance towards immigrants in Sir Thomas More

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‘Wretched strangers’: Shakespeare’s plea for tolerance towards immigrants in Sir Thomas More

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‘The Book of Sir Thomas More’ is the only surviving literary manuscript in Shakespeare’s hand. Here Andrew Dickson describes how the scene Shakespeare wrote for the play contains a moving plea for the plight of immigrants.

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Power and gender in The Taming of the Shrew 

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Power and gender in The Taming of the Shrew 

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Does The Taming of the Shrew advocate sexual inequality or does it show and critique men’s attempts to subordinate women? Rachel De Wachter discusses how we should think about relations between the sexes in the play, and examines how writers, directors and actors have explored this question over the past four centuries.

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An introduction to Shakespearean tragedy 

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An introduction to Shakespearean tragedy 

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Despite their dazzling diversity, the tragedies of Shakespeare gain their enduring power from a shared dramatic vision, argues Kiernan Ryan.

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An introduction to Shakespeare’s comedy

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An introduction to Shakespeare’s comedy

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John Mullan considers the key characteristics of Shakespeare's varied comedies, but he also considers the ways the playwright mixes genres by bringing comedy into his tragedies and tragedy into his comedies.

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From the open-air Globe to the candlelit Blackfriars, Professor Eric Rasmussen and Ian DeJong explore early modern playhouses.

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An introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets

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An introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets

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Hannah Crawforth explores how Shakespeare used and radically changed the conventions of love poetry, and how modern poets have reinvented his Sonnets for themselves.

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Andrew Dickson follows the progress of the Renaissance through Europe, and examines the educational, religious, artistic and geographical developments that shaped culture during the period.

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Michael Donkor explains what makes John Donne a metaphysical poet, and looks at the creative and distinctive ways in which Donne used metaphysical techniques.

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Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Villa Diodati

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Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Villa Diodati

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Curator Greg Buzwell describes the bizarre circumstances that gave rise to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the other works that emerged from the ‘ghost story challenge’ at the Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816.

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‘Man is not truly one, but truly two’: duality in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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‘Man is not truly one, but truly two’: duality in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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Curator Greg Buzwell considers duality in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, exploring how the novel engages with 19th-century debates about evolution, degeneration, consciousness, homosexuality and criminal psychology.

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Teachers’ guide: approaches to representations of race, racism and racist language in literary texts

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Teachers’ guide: approaches to representations of race, racism and racist language in literary texts

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Authored by Bennie Kara, published by Lit in Colour and the British Library. This resource is aimed at teachers who wish to develop their practice on teaching about the representation of race, the presentation of racism and approaches to exploring racist language in English Literature texts.

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Disfigurement and disability in Gothic literature: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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Disfigurement and disability in Gothic literature: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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With a focus on Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Jen Campbell examines how historical beliefs about disfigurement and disability are explored in Victorian Gothic fiction.

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Professor Suzanne Daly explores the ‘imperial Gothic’, examining the ways in which ‘otherness’ and Empire were depicted in 19th-century Gothic novels such as Jane Eyre, The Moonstone, Dracula and Heart of Darkness.

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From marriage and sexuality to education and work, Professor Kathryn Hughes looks at attitudes towards gender in 19th-century Britain.

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Michael Slater explains the background to Charles Dickens's novel, A Christmas Carol, reveals his reasons for writing it and discusses its monumental success. Filmed at the Charles Dickens Museum, London.

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Professor John Sutherland considers how Dickens’s A Christmas Carol engages with Victorian attitudes towards poverty, labour and the Christmas spirit.

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Professor Sally Shuttleworth explores how Charlotte Brontë challenges 19th-century conceptions of appropriate female behaviour through the creation of a heroine who works, demands respect and combines self-control with passion and rebellion.

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Drawing on children’s literature, educational texts and Charlotte Brontë’s own childhood experience, Professor Sally Shuttleworth looks at the passionate and defiant child of Jane Eyre.

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Songs of Innocence and of Experience contains two poems about young chimney sweepers: one in 'Innocence' and one in 'Experience'. Dr Linda Freedman considers how this allows for a complex, subtle engagement with the figure of the sweep.

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Looking at the manuscript of William Blake’s ‘London’

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Looking at the manuscript of William Blake’s ‘London’

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In his poem ‘London’ William Blake explores poverty, revolution and the power of the imagination. Dr Linda Freedman examines the original draft manuscript, to discover the meanings behind this iconic poem.

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An introduction to The Importance of Being Earnest

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An introduction to The Importance of Being Earnest

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The Importance of Being Earnest draws on elements of farce and melodrama in its depiction of a particular social world. Professor John Stokes considers how Oscar Wilde combined disparate influences into a brilliant satire which contained hidden, progressive sentiments.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray: art, ethics and the artist

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The Picture of Dorian Gray: art, ethics and the artist

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Dark desires and forbidden pleasure are at the centre of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Greg Buzwell examines the interplay between art and morality in Oscar Wilde’s novel, and considers its use of traditional Gothic motifs as well as the theories of the new aesthetic movement.

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Explore the rich history of Black writing and literature in Britain. This literary timeline explores the history of Black literature and writing in Britain through around 50 texts.

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South Asian writing in Britain: a timeline

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South Asian writing in Britain: a timeline

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Explore a snapshot of the vast wealth of literature written and published in Britain and Ireland by writers of South Asian heritage and learn more about the history of South Asian writing in Britain.

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South Asian writing in Britain: a timeline

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A snapshot of South Asian writing and literature in Britain. This timeline provides a snapshot of the vast wealth of literature written and published in Britain and Ireland by writers of South Asian heritage. Aimed at Secondary school teachers, students and librarians, we hope it will lead you to explore novels, plays, poetry and non-fiction by authors of South Asian heritage and learn more about the history of South Asian writing in Britain.1 Here we look at South Asia as encompassing the histories of the modern states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and administered Kashmir. We recognise that identity is nuanced and that each writer defines themselves differently in relation to ethnicity, nationality and other aspects of their identity. We use the title ‘South Asian writing in Britain’ to highlight a region of writing, within which writers with connections to South Asia and Britain published their texts in Britain and Ireland.2 These connections are linked to British colonialism and imperialism, alongside diverse migration journeys and diaspora experiences. Some authors featured here were born in India during the East India Company’s rule (1757–1858) or Britain’s direct colonial administration (1858–1947), and migrated to or visited Britain; others migrated to Britain after World War Two, Independence and Partition, or other independence movements; while other writers have moved to Britain in more recent years, or were born and grew up here. Teachers and students may recognise many writers from their curriculums, including Meera Syal, Monica Ali, Daljit Nagra, Imtiaz Dharker and Seni Seneviratne. The design of the timeline particularly aims to support and contextualise the study of South Asian writing in Britain featured in English curriculums. It also aims to provide an idea of the breadth of writing. We feature many writers who have reached canonical statuses, from Dean Mohamed to Kamila Shamsie. We place these writers alongside works that broaden the representation of South Asian writing in Britain from writers such as Cedric Dover, Shelley Silas and Suhayl Saadi. This timeline provides examples of novels, poetry, plays, travel narratives, non-fiction and memoirs spanning from the 18th century up to the present day. We have also included entries that demonstrate initiatives to promote British and South Asian voices, including examples of notable publishing companies, literary organisations, theatre companies and magazines. Beyond these entries, there is also more literary history to uncover. For example, the 19th-century poet and playwright Madhusudan Dutt tried to publish in Britain, but his work was not accepted. In the 20th century, the activist, lawyer and politician Krishna Menon became a founding editor of Pelican Books (the non-fiction, educational imprint of Penguin Books) and made significant contributions to library services in St Pancras. Read together, we hope the timeline illuminates the literary and cultural heritages each writer emerges from, as well as the connections between some writers. Beyond this timeline, we hope you’re inspired to explore British and South Asian literature, arts and culture more widely. South Asian presence in Britain encompasses at least 400 years of history. To learn more about the relationship between South Asia and Britain see: South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories South Asian Diaspora Arts Archive British Library’s India Office Records and Private Papers British South Asian Theatre: mapping histories and practices The Next Act podcast Striking Women Bichitra: Digitised Tagore manuscripts

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Dr Stephanie Forward explains the key ideas and influences of Romanticism, and considers their place in the work of writers including Wordsworth, Blake, P B Shelley and Keats.

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Stephen Hebron explores Keats’s understanding of negative capability, a concept which prizes intuition and uncertainty above reason and knowledge.