Program Overview

If you want a future with fewer limits, this is the degree for you. When you study English Literature at Portsmouth, you'll also explore history and politics, society and culture, human relationships and identities, and how we choose to live. And you’re doing it in a city steeped in lively literature, from Charles Dickens to Neil Gaiman.

You’ll explore complex, challenging issues – from masculinity to the Holocaust. You’ll learn the skills to critically analyse the purpose, truth and impact of any written text. You’ll also develop the skills to produce your own writing and presentations, so you can communicate original ideas in ways that engage and influence readers.

The combination of creative thinking and rigorous analysis you develop will make you a compelling candidate for all kinds of jobs – from marketing to museums, and journalism to publishing.

Course highlights

• Discover our literary city with the constantly evolving Portsmouth Literary Map – your course begins with a tour of literary Portsea and the Dockyards area, introducing significant places in the lives of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, today's local writers, and plenty more
• Enjoy the freedom to interpret assignments creatively, and develop employable skills in presentation and teamwork, on a course without exams
• Learn directly from staff who produce world-leading research into areas as diverse as magical realism and representations of food
• Build specialist knowledge by choosing the topics that match your interests – from global literature to dystopian and apocalyptic environments, from women’s writing to crime writing
• Develop your own style and build up your writer’s portfolio by becoming a contributor to our Writing Literary Portsmouth blog
• Curate your own literary prize or produce a prize pitch, to experience what happens when writing meets the commercial marketplace
• Build a professional network with high-profile figures including authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, prize judges and critics through our contacts and partnerships