British and Irish Examination List 1939-Present

Please Note: You may wish to modify this list in consultation with your examination committee.

Fiction

Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (1934)

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940)

Flann O’Brien, The Poor Mouth (published in 1941 as An Beal Bocht, as Myles na gCopaleen, translation published in 1973).

Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955)

Samuel Beckett, Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, [and] The Unnamable (published together in 1959)

Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls (1960)

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962)

Iris Murdoch, The Red and The Green (1965)

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

J. G. Farrell, Troubles (1970)

John Banville, Birchwood (1973)

Muriel Spark, The Takeover (1976)

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981)

Alasdair Gray, Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981)

Graham Swift, Waterland (1983)

Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984)

John McGahern, Amongst Women (1990)

Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy (1992)

Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting (1993)

Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark (1996)

Zadie Smith, White Teeth: A Novel (2000)

Monica Ali, Brick Lane (2003)

Drama

Read the selected plays (or screenplays) of the following, except where a specific text is suggested:

Samuel Beckett, Collected Plays (Grove)

Caryl Churchill

Brian Friel

Hanif Kureishi (screenplays)

David Hare

Tony Harrison

Martin McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Other Plays, includes The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara, and The Lonesome West (Vintage Books)

John Osborne, Look Back in Anger

Harold Pinter

Tom Stoppard

Arnold Wesker, Three Plays

Poetry

Read the collected or selected works of the following poets, except where noted:

W. H. Auden (Later Poems)

Eavan Boland

David Dabydeen

Carol Ann Duffy

Douglas Dunn

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Ian Hamilton Finlay

Tony Harrison

Seamus Heaney

Geoffrey Hill

Ted Hughes

David Jones, The Anathemata

Philip Larkin

J. H. Prynne

Denise Riley

Dylan Thomas

Also consult:

Dannie Abse, ed., Twentieth Century Anglo-Welsh Poetry (second half)

Jeni Couzyn, ed., The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets

Patrick Crotty, ed., Modern Irish Poetry

Maurice Lindsay, ed., Modern Scottish Poetry

E.A. Markham, ed., Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies and Britain

John Matthias, ed., 23 Modern British Poets

Keith Tuma, ed., Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (second half)

Keith Tuma, ed., Talisman Special Issue: Irish Poets

Non-fiction prose and criticism

Robert Crawford, Devolving English Literature

Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness

Robert Hampson and Peter Barry, eds., New British Poetries: The Scope of the Possible (Manchester UP)