Which books are in Northern Ireland's A Level English literature reading list this year? Full guide

• Northern Irish pupils can choose to continue their English literature studies in their A Levels.
• Those who do will end up studying a wide range of books and plays - and plenty of poetry.
• A number of well-known Irish writers appear on the exam board’s reading list, including poet Seamus Heaney and playwright Brian Friel.
• But students will also be able to choose a few books of their own too.

Northern Ireland has a rich literary heritage all of its own, and students who opt to study English into their A Levels could be in for a taste of it.

Although there are a few compulsory GCSEs for all pupils in Northern Ireland, including English and maths, those who move on to their A Levels have a little more freedom in their class choices. Many will opt to continue their studies into the English language, or into its slightly more reading-heavy companion English literature - where they will study a rich assortment of novels, plays, and poetry.

Students will become intimately familiar with these texts before their final exams, but when it comes to which exact books these will be, it is actually up to their teachers. But the list teachers can choose from for students to study is in turn set by the exam board.

For most Northern Irish students, this will be the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA), although just like their English peers, a few might have AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel or WJEC Eduqas as their exam board (you can check out their A Level reading lists separately here).

Here are the books on the reading list for the this year’s students studying towards their AS and A Level qualifications in English lit, according to CCEA’s most up-to-date syllabus:

Prose

CCEA students will study a novel written before 1900, and will have to analyse it in their exam. This may be:

• The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• Silas Marner, George Elliot
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
• Emma, Jane Austen
• Dracula, Bram Stoker

They will later study two novels in detail, at least one of which was written after the year 2000, for an internal assessment. However, CCEA advises schools to let students select their own books for this - with some support and guidance from their teachers.

Modern drama

Students will study a play written between 1900 and the modern day, and their knowledge of it will be assessed in their exams. This could be:

• Translations, Brian Friel
• Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
• A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
• The Crucible, Arthur Miller
• Men Should Weep, Ena Lamont Stewart (the 1982 version)
• A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt

Shakespeare

Students will also study a Shakespeare play, which may be a tragedy, a comedy, a ‘problem play’, or a ‘last play’. This could be:

• Othello
• King Lear
• The Taming of the Shrew
• As You Like It
• Measure for Measure
• The Winter’s Tale

Modern poetry

Students will study a range of poetry by two different poets; analysing, comparing and contrasting their work in their assessment. These poets can be:

• Robert Frost (Into My Own; Mowing; Going For Water; Mending Wall; After Apple-Picking; The Road Not Taken; Birches; “Out, Out –”; For Once, Then, Something; Gathering Leaves; Acquainted With The Night; Desert Places) and Seamus Heaney (Personal Helicon; The Forge; The Peninsula; The Wife’s Tale; Bogland; The Harvest Bow; The Railway Children; The Summer of Lost Rachel; Postscript; ‘Had I not been awake’; The Conway Stewart; The Baler)
• Ted Hughes (The Thought-Fox; Wind; Hawk Roosting; Relic; Pike; Full Moon and Little Frieda; Wodwo; Lovesong; Roe-Deer; Crow Sickened; Daffodils; A Picture of Otto) and Sylvia Plath (Sheep in Fog; Lady Lazarus; Tulips; The Night Dances; Ariel; Daddy; The Arrival of the Bee Box; Poppies in July; Contusion; Mirror; The Colossus; Blackberrying)
• Elizabeth Jennings (Identity; Song At The Beginning of Autumn; Absence; Fountain; Letter from Assisi; The Annunciation; My Grandmother; The Young Ones; Night Sister; A Depression; Love Poem; One Flesh) and Philip Larkin (Church Going; Love Songs in Age; Faith Healing; For Sidney Bechet; The Whitsun Weddings; Talking in Bed; Dockery and Son; Aubade; High Windows; The Old Fools; Solar; The Explosion)
• Eavan Boland (Ode to Suburbia; Anorexic; The Journey; The Singers; This Moment; Love; Witness; How We Made a New Art on Old Ground; Is it Still the Same; And Soul; Cityscape; Amethyst Beads) and Jean Bleakney (Breaking the Surface; Nightscapes; Out To Tender; How Can You Say That?; Spring; A Watery City; Self-Portraits with Measuring Tape; Donegal Sightings; Csontváry’s Flowers; Notes for the Almanac; Consolidation; Winterisation)

Pre-1900s poetry

Students will also later have to study a range of poems by a single poet, penned before 1900. These can be:

• Geoffrey Chaucer (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale)
• John Donne (The Anniversary; The Flea; The Good Morrow; A Jet Ring Sent; The Sun Rising; The Triple Fool; A Valediction: forbidding Mourning; Here take my picture, though I bid farewell; Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?; I am a little world; This is my play’s last scene; Death be not proud; Spit in my face, ye Jews, and pierce my side; Batter my heart, three-personed God; Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt; A Hymn to God the Father)
• William Blake (The Ecchoing Green; The Lamb; The Little Black Boy; The Chimney Sweeper; Holy Thursday; Infant Joy; Introduction; Holy Thursday; The Chimney Sweeper; The Tyger; The Garden of Love; The Little Vagabond; London; Infant Sorrow; The School Boy)
• John Keats (On first looking into Chapman’s Homer; Sleep and Poetry; The Eve of St. Agnes; Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on a Grecian Urn; Ode to Psyche; To Autumn; Ode on Melancholy; On first seeing the Elgin Marbles; The Sea; When I have fears that I may cease to be; Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art; Ode on Indolence; La Belle Dame sans Merci)
• Emily Dickinson (An awful Tempest mashed the air; I’m “wife” – I’ve finished that; There’s a certain Slant of light; I felt a Funeral, in my Brain; How the old Mountains drip with Sunset; There came a Day at Summer’s full; I heard a Fly buzz – when I died; It was not Death, for I stood up; I cannot live with You; One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted; Because I could not stop for Death; She rose to His Requirement – dropt; The last Night that She lived)
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning (The Cry of the Children; The Mask; The face of all the world is changed, I think; What can I give thee back; And yet, because thou overcomest so; Beloved, my Beloved, when I think; Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife; If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange; Hiram Powers’ Greek Slave; A Curse for a Nation; A False Step; Void in Law; My Heart and I; First News from Villafranca; Mother and Poet; The Forced Recruit)

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