A Level reading in the holidays

Recent blogs have encouraged subscribers to tackle some of the larger texts you will be studying for the coming year, particularly any long Victorian novels, during the lazy days of the summer holidays.

Reading for yourself, but not on your own

Ideally this means that you:

• Develop a personal response
• Get a sense of what the story is about
• Engage with the characters and their situation
• Start to have a feel for the author’s perspective
• Enjoy the text!

However, a first reading will probably throw up all sorts of questions in your mind. Although term hasn’t yet started, you might like to find some immediate answers.
What to do? No-one's around, and the notes in the back of your text are too short or confusing. That's where Crossref-it.info can come in useful. You are not on your own.

Making sense of Victorian novels

At Crossref-it.info, you can click on any specific chapter of three significant Victorian novels to get a summary, an explanation of difficult words, and some pointers as to what the author is doing. If you want to switch over to read the actual text on-line in a new screen, go to texts.crossref-it.info, then you can flip between that and the explanations.

Or you can find out some biographical information about Dickens, Charlotte (and Emily) Brontë or Thomas Hardy themselves. How did each of them come to write their novels? Where in England did they set them, and why? Over the summer, four more texts by these authors are being covered by Crossref-it.info. Launched this week are helpful compilations of material relevant to two more Hardy novels: Context links: The Mayor of Casterbridge and Context links: The Return of the Native.

To get a picture of the times in which they were writing, there is a huge array of background material on the Victorian era. We are no longer familiar with things that these authors took for granted when they were writing, but a handy on-screen explanation can quickly halt confusion.

There is no substitute for reading at A Level, but for everything else, there is Crossref-it.info. It's been designed with you in mind.

Summertime, and the living is … Victorian?

Life after exams

Now your G.C.S.E.s / AS exams are out the way, you may feel like a well earned rest! Once your brain has stopped feeling like jelly, make sure reading is part of your recuperation. With longer days and a (slight) reduction in pressure, it might remind you why you want to study Eng. Lit. in the first place.

Using the summer

If you are progressing on to AS or A2 English, hopefully you will already have found out from teaching staff which texts are coming up. If they include any Victorian novels it makes good sense to start reading them now.

‘Victorian’ literature refers to anything written between 1837-1901. That includes Dickens, the Brontës and Thomas Hardy, but NOT Jane Austen! To get a sense of what that era was like in Britain, go to Crossref-it.info > The world of Victorian writers, where there is lots of handy information.

Victorian novels tend to be long, mainly because most of them were written for serial publication over a two-year period. Those that weren't, were designed for a 3-volume edition!

Come September, you'll be fighting for uninterrupted time to get them read. So pick up one now, while you have time.

Wuthering Heights

If your chosen Victorian fiction is this dramatic novel, there’s something to help you get the lowdown on Emily Brontë’s life and imagination. Launched this week is a handy guide to link you to all the relevant information at Crosssref-it.info > Wuthering Heights: Context links.

The World of the Victorians

You may just have brain ache by 9pm on a Sunday night, but if you can catch it, Jeremy Paxman’s BBC 1 series on looking at Victorian society through the pictures they painted is a great way of providing contextual information on any of the 19thC texts you are studying.

• If you have a note book handy, you could jot down the names of any memorable pictures that relate to a theme in your novel / poetry and potentially reap some real benefits in terms of exam results.
• Another idea is to go to the World of Victorian writers section on Crossref-it.info for handy articles about the impact of industrialisation, transport, education etc. on society
• Paxman’s series shows how Victorian society was heavily shaped and motivated by commonly held beliefs which were widely promoted, be it conventional Christian morality, free will or whatever. Some of these ideas are explained in more detail here.

Remember that 25% of the new A Level English Lit course depends on relating texts to the world in which they were created, so information like this can have a huge impact on your chances of success!