LITERATURE COURSES

Image: Jeremy Peters @jezpete

Literature Cambridge Ltd is an independent educational organisation providing top-quality courses on the best of Classical literature and literature in English.
Our courses are taught by leading academics and are open to all.
Email us: info@literaturecambridge.co.uk

Online Study Sessions

We love to bring people together to study literature. For several years, we have offered intensive Summer Courses and Study Days in Cambridge. Now we also run Online Study Sessions. These cover works by a range of writers: Elizabeth von Arnim, Angela Carter, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, E. M. Forster, Elizabeth Gaskell, Zora Neale Hurston, D. H. Lawrence, Doris Lessing, Katherine Mansfield, Toni Morrison, Iris Murdoch, Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Tennyson, Virginia Woolf, refugee writers, and many others. We also offer Seasons and Courses on particular writers and themes.

New seasons of Online Study Sessions

The fourth Virginia Woolf Season, on the theme of Woolf and Freedom, runs from September 2023 to June 2024.

We offer short courses on close reading individual poets. So far we have studied Keats, Browning, Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti and two courses on 20thC Irish poets. More close reading courses will take place in 2024; see list below.

The lectures in our Seasons take place on Saturday or Sunday evenings, 18.00 British time. From time to time we offer sessions at 10.00 am or 12.00 British time, for the benefit of people in Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and similar time zones. But you are welcome to book for any session, wherever you are in the world.

The courses usually run on weekdays or Sundays at 14.00 or 18.00 British time.

Please note that the sessions are all live online. Participants can have access to a recording of the lecture for a period after the live event.

For the Online Courses and Seasons see these pages:

Lectures for Peace

We hold a regular lecture to raise money for refugee charities. Since 2020, we have donated to Freedom from Torture, Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, and others. In June 2024, we are extending our support to Oxfam Gaza, Standing Together (Palestinian and Jewish peace movement) as well as Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group. All proceedings from these lectures are shared equally between the named charities. 2024 Lectures for Peace page.

Summer Courses

Each summer course focuses on a particular author or theme. Taught by leading scholars in the field, they offer a rare chance to combine the study of literature with relevant walks, visits, and excursions.

Our courses include lectures, supervisions, discussions and above all close reading, in the tradition of Cambridge English since the 1920s. We explore the historical context of the books, asking what they have to say about their own time, and how they speak to ours.

In 2024 we offer a summer course on Virginia Woolf and Childhood. This will run first live online, 8-12 July, then in person in Cambridge, 4-9 August 2024. Bookings are open.

On the Blog

News of courses, book reviews, and more.

Podcast: The Virginia Woolf PodcasT

Presented by Karina Jakubowicz

In 2019 Karina recorded a podcast about Woolf's former home, Monk's House. It attracted a lot of interest, being listened to over 800 times in the months that followed.


It was also truly rewarding to make, and promoted conversations that might not have otherwise taken place. This inspired us to create The Virginia Woolf Podcast, a series designed to discover Woolf’s impact on art, philosophy, and politics in the present day, as well as Woolf’s interest in the arts and ideas of her own time. By winter 2023, the podcasts had been heard by 15,000 people.

Photo by Seb Peters, 2023

Karina Jakubowicz

INTENSIVE LEARNING

Our summer courses are structured around lectures and discussions, presented by leading scholars. Most days there is a Cambridge-style supervision, given to students in very small groups, and taught mainly by lecturers and post-docs from the University of Cambridge. 

Our Online Study Sessions and Study Days are taught by top academics, guiding students through intensive yet accessible lectures and discussions.

Summer course lectures at Clare Hall, 2023

STUDY 

Take time each day in the summer course to read and think, and share the fruits of your reading in discussions and supervisions. Our students are all ages from 18 to 70+. 

Clare Walker Gore’s supervision group, Clare Hall 2023

STAY

Our summer courses are based in a Cambridge college. You live, study, and share some meals with the course participants. A rare opportunity to live and work with other keen students of your subject. In 2024 our summer course lectures take place in the relaxed setting of Clare Hall. You can book accommodation at next-door Robinson College, or elsewhere.

Visit to the Wren Library, Trinity College, 2018

EXPLORE

Our summer courses include walks, talks, and excursions in Cambridge to places such as the Wren Library at Trinity (above), Girton College, Newnham College, King's College, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and other places of interest. 

THE CAMBRIDGE EXPERIENCE

There is nothing quite like studying in the beautiful city of Cambridge.
Walking through the ancient colleges, you join generations of scholars who take the time to read seriously and to think about that reading.

The city is small, so you can get around by bus or bike or on foot. There are beautiful gardens in which to sit and think and do more reading. Throughout the summer there are superb concerts, art exhibitions, museums and films. Above all, you meet many amazing people who have come to Cambridge for sheer love of learning. 

'It is a huge pleasure to offer our unique courses here in Cambridge. Virginia Woolf often visited Cambridge and was a lively participant in intellectual debates. This is the perfect place to explore the work of Woolf and many other brilliant writers. We have been offering summer courses in Cambridge since 2016, with a break during the pandemic. We enjoyed our 2023 course on Virginia Woolf's Women in Cambridge enormously; many thanks to our wonderful students who came from all over the world to study literature together. We continue to offer many live online courses and seasons, as well as our in-person summer course in Cambridge. We hope to offer both kinds of courses, online and in Cambridge, long into the future.’

 -TRUDI TATE, Director, Literature Cambridge