Useful links
www.universalteacher.org.uk
This website contains comprehensive and interesting guidance about how best to read and discuss a wide range of texts, both individual and paired. A brief but helpful history of English literature, from Middle English to the late 20th Century, is also included.
www.sparknotes.com
This site has basic, but very useful notes on a huge range of commonly studied texts, with chapter synopses, character analyses, themes and motifs, essay ideas, and suggestions for further reading. It is a very useful site indeed.
www.bibliomania.com
Study notes on a very wide range of texts, with notes, suggested essay titles, and guidance on further reading (you need to register to access the material, but there appears to be no charge).
www.novelguide.com
The site contains detailed discussion of wide range of novels old and new, with relevant background material.
aspirations.english.cam.ac.uk
This is a fascinating site, with some good and challenging interactive material to help with the study of poetry in particular. Well worth a visit.
www.s-cool.co.uk/topic_index.asp?subject_id=4&d=0
Some quite basic, but very helpful and reassuring advice on how best to approach the study of literature, notes on how to study poetry, and on a few individual texts.
www.shakespearehelp.com
A very detailed listing of resource material on Shakespeare, his life, times and plays, particularly for advanced students.
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/16/sosteacher/english/browse.shtml
This site details a large number of questions that students have submitted on a range of literature topics, including particular texts, with some useful responses and advice.
www.englishbiz.co.uk
A site geared towards pre-A-Level students, but it does contain good and practical advice on planning, organising and writing critical and other sorts of essays.
The following sites are designed for more advanced study, but are well worth a look, as their material is full, detailed, and invariably interesting.
www.palgrave.com/skills4study/html/index.asp
This site is designed for university students, but also helpful at A Level. Discusses a range of study skills, including how to structure and write good literature essays.
www.literaryhistory.com
The material here is advanced, but useful and thought-provoking. A wealth of resource material is offered on a huge range of writers, old and modern.
www.victorianweb.org
This site contains very detailed and advanced material – mostly resource-based – on writers from the 19th and very early 20th Centuries. Well worth a visit if you are studying a text from this period.
