I studied English Literature at Exeter and I 100% agree it can ruin your love for reading, because you have no time to sit with any of the texts for long enough. You get a superficial impression of many many writers, and it becomes a game of bullshitting rather than following your interests deeply. I think Id have a much better enjoyment and understanding of English Literature if Id read as a hobby

Although I agree all the materials and raw text is freely available, the conversations and opportunities to speak and be critically reviewed with literature experts is what makes the education valuable. You are entering the chain of knowledge that largely passes from person to person.

I studied Fine Art in Oxford (the other University) and I think that destroyed a lot of peoples love of art. I had a breakdown in year 2. Sometimes I think Universites are designed to cause mental health crisis! Glad to say I regained my love of art.

I think the thing which separates a reading list from a university education is the focus on writing, deadlines, and other aspects of academic procedure. There is something to be gained by the pressure and intensity of the experience and in the people you meet, the lectures, etc. Those aspects also come with a whole bunch of problems but the university English experience does offer you a lot. You get to see the cutting room floor of one of the biggest literary institutions running today. That said, the benefit of reading through the Canon for pleasure is that reading remains a pure act of love not tainted by the neuroses of the academy.

I have never been to university, but now approaching 60 and always having a love of reading and studying, I do not feel I have missed out in educational terms.

You had the same experience as I did at university. I was a fine arts student (in the states) and they drained the life out of my passion. I graduated but did not create anything for five years until I rediscovered my love of rendering life drawings, illustration and painting. Now I consider myself a professional artist who is obsessed with literature. 😊

This is so great. I studied Literature at uni but flubbed it a bit, so have always wanted a second chance to properly engage with texts. I’ve just started reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte so might start there, and then dip into the mentioned lists. Would love a video on world literature!

Thank you so much for this. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. I’ve always been a voracious reader and went to a local university (not an elite one) for literature. I couldn’t make it work and failed out, and have spent the last ten years amassing student loans with The Open University. Your video has literally just now made me fully realise the vicious cycle I’m in. I genuinely thought that I couldn’t love and understand literature without a BA at least. But I can read and obsess over and discuss books without any objective, expensive education. Honestly, I can’t thank you enough.

I have always loved literature, and tried an English Literature course after school, but I hated it. It ruined literature for me while I was doing it. You learn that there's a right and a wrong 'way' to read, interpret and understand a book, and it takes away the joy and most of the meaning you can pull out of it. but I've always gotten so much more out of books by coming to an understanding of it through my own personal lens and getting what I can out of it in my own unique way, applying the lessons within to my own personal experience of the world. For instance, I didn't really understand Kafka, until I became embroiled in battle with a system that was the embodiment of the term 'Kafkaesque', a battle that lasted years and exhausted all my mental and emotional resources. Now he is one of my favourite authors, because I can truly understand where he is coming from and I feel the frustration and hopelessness of his characters, and having read him helped me get through that hellish time. I felt stronger and less alone because of his books. He taught me that I wasn't crazy or stupid, the system was. Seeing Kafka through the lens of my own experience rather than a dry, academic, often pretentious interpretation made reading his novels a much deeper, richer and more meaningful experience for me. I realised that all I want to do is enjoy books, and get what I can from them, while listening to reviews now and then for a different perspective that might lead me to new insights.

This video is like a dream come true, thank you so much! I decided to start with English Literature in the Middle Ages. A few months ago, I began studying an anthology, just to get situated in time and context, then went straight to Beowulf. Guess what? Had to jump to some older works (like Gilgamesh and Plato) before going back to medieval times. What I love about literature is the way everything connects, regardless of the order you tackle the big classics. I'm having the time of my life!!!

Gosh!!!! I spent two years of my life as a undergrad in the Physics dept at Hebrew U, In Jerusalem, and the sensation is exactly the same. The amount of work I did was extreme. It was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done and the most difficult because I hated every minute of it. My experience as a film student at a Brazilian public university: blissful. I’ve never been happier. 4.5 years that were too short. I work with Cinema now and both experiences built me who I am. Methodically artistic to the bone. 😂😂😂😂

Dude, I'm so happy I found your channel. You have ignited a passion in me to read books and write about them.

I'm so glad I came across your channel! I'm also glad you mentioned those of us who love world literature as well; right now I am having trouble finding a thesis advisor for my master's -- my writer is Thomas Mann -- simply because he wasn't an English writer. As far as reading goes, I find C. S. Lewis' advice useful: for every three modern (or postmodern or contemporary) work you read, read one classic.

Great stuff! It's especially sad to think of being rushed through an author's work, especially if it's your first time. It's so wonderful to have the freedom to pursue my own interests and loves and really get time to savor what I'm reading. Being out of university doesn't mean I have to stop reading and learning. I've always kind of romanticized an Oxford education. Thanks for this dose of perspective.

Hi Benjamin! Thank you so much for this video. It is really striking to hear how an “educational” system can turn off someone’s motivation for such a pleasant activity as reading. It is easy to tell how passionate you are about literature, and I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience in Oxford as well as that wonderful list of recommended readings. I already bookmarked the online article related to this video, and will certainly listen to your podcast and explore your other videos. Thanks for providing valuable content for people to follow their self-education and/or passion for literature.

You're hitting 35k sub Ben! Proud of ya! Love your work! Very helpful, very insightful!

This is what I do when I started my booktube channel back up. I started it in 2014 and I just used to talk about what I liked and didn’t like. But for me I really wasn’t getting much out of those books and my viewers weren’t either, so it was a failure. But last year I started my channel back up and I write an analysis for each book I review and I’m getting so much more out of the reading. I’m enjoying it so much more. I love it. I would love to do a literature degree but it’s too expensive in my opinion. This video is great. Thank you.

Outstanding. Love the straight bat talk, and I especially loved the recommendations on how to read and why to write!

Thank you for this reading list! There are some excellent suggestions, some of which I've actually not yet read, and I look forward to adding them to my TBR. As a working librarian, I appreciated your advice to slow down and give books their due. It took me six months to read Clarissa, but I'm glad I did it. Also, when it comes to reading secondary sources, university libraries really have the best databases. My advice would be to get a community membership to your local university's library and then use their computers in their library to access those databases. Those memberships are usually cheap, and they really do open up a world of material. I find it interesting that you included Austen, Fielding, and Sterne with the Romantics, but put Richardson in with the Restoration. I would actually group those authors with the pre-Romantic era. Fielding and Richardson sometimes offer direct criticism to one another and I think that Tom Jones had a definite influence on Austen in Pride and Prejudice. I always felt like the Romantics came along and ruined the nice, orderly, kinda cheeky, kinda bawdy, sort of subversive and experimental vibe that the Enlightenment era writers had going on. Similarly, if you are going to read Northanger Abbey, you more or less must read The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe first. A lot of the humor of Northanger Abbey will be lost on you unless you read Udolpho.

Fantastic! I love great literature, but I have no knowledge what those authors or books are, in order to search for them. I'm so glad you told me all those authors, as I was only familiar with a few of them, and don't enjoy most modern books. Thank you! Your pure GOLD! And I am so relieved!

The Literary Life podcast is a great support for doing this, self-educating in literature. Highly recommend it!

Everything you said about an English degree completely resonates! I thought speed-reading was a violation of all the hard work and energy writers put into their life work, and I naturally take a few weeks to get through a novel - also because one page alone can make me stop and think about a lot (ie: the sign of a great terrific writer) and want to write things down - which is exactly the kind of response you recommend, and I can't hestitate to second that if any young people are reading this. If you want to be a lawyer etc, the degree's great, but if you truly love literature, go on a module course at least to slow the degree down and take it part time. especially if you're from a low economic background and are self-supportive - I can't emphasise this enough from experience: the 3 year crash degree is for comfortable youngsters as was always traditionally so after the colleges stopped being charitable institutions, um, for the poor who were boarded and fed. So places like Oxford are living a fantasy life at the moment in continuing such an assumption. Otherwise this could destroy you morally and physically. Or, as Benjamin says, don't do it at all and practice writing responses and doing your own research - esp. as with the internet now you can ask any question you want. And then a blog is a great idea. Even paying for a mentor is going to be cheaper than student debt. We also live in an exciting time where these old all white male reading lists can be compared to other vibrant overlooked literature , so if that depresses you, you can strike up a conversation with it in your notes and blog. eg: a;lso Shakespeare etc is of his time, but it's a lie to pretend as modern readers we're not going to be having an engaged connection with his work without relating in our own current issues: discuss!

Although I didn't study literature I can definitely relate to the reading burnout that befalls anyone studying a topic with "reading lists" in Britain. I studied Philosophy and that's a special way of mistreating the brain, especially if you go my favourite route of focusing on Continental Philosophy - a lot of weird French and German stuff that makes your brain hurt because they obfuscate their ideas intentionally (French) or unintentionally by simply being bad writers (German). Hilariously, although I'm a native German speaker I only started to understand the German philosophers by reading them in English translation first! During that time I envied my friends who studied English Lit, because at least they got to read well written stuff and not this highly conceptual jargon salad! And of course nobody on the course could manage to get through even the core reading, let alone the recommended reading on the side. Apart from being very hard to understand and often badly written it was also way too much and unlike Literature students we didn't get Reading Week either! For about 2 years after graduating from my BA I couldn't really face any proper "reading" so I did an MSc where I only had to read scientific journal papers and technical manuals. At the time when I had to decide about my graduate studies it felt like another year or two of reading at this speed would have totally broken my brain for good! I only started reading again for pleasure after I was done with my MSc. What makes these courses hard isn't really the content, it's the breakneck speed at which we were meant to process all this information. I would have loved to study literature, but not at this pace!

What an enlightened attitude yours is, Benjamin. Absolutely. Learning resources are all around us, just waiting to be used. If you can't afford Oxford or are not qualified, just get a library ticket and get on with it! You can even do it in science. I took no science O levels and was scientifically almost completely uneducated, but now my home is stuffed with microscopes and equipment, I have published my own books and even made an important discovery. Another resource that is worth knowing about and which I have found very useful is ABE, (Advanced Book Exchange). It is actually a world-wide network of booksellers, many just secondhand items, but there are also specialist suppliers who sell out-of-the way new titles that you can't buy over the counter. It is also a huge learning resource and database. If you want to find a book about a subject that you know nothing about or can't find in your local library, enter the word(s) in the keywords window and something will come up, sometimes, literally hundreds and thousands of titles. You can easily find out from ABE when something was first published, how many editions there have been, etc. Many commonly used student textbooks are available for a pound or two.

As a musician, having a degree in Oxford would not be a lot useful to me, but as a giant literary nerd this sounds incredibly fun to me. I would love to dwell into the world of writing but I just feel so preoccupied with music that I don't think a career in that would ever happen. However I did like your idea of having a personal website where you just write about books you like and what you thought about them and potentially making money doing that, that sounds nice to me.

Great video. I would love to see a video where you talk about literary theory and choosing the lens through which to see the work.

Excellent discussion, thanks. It's certainly a good idea to have a structured reading plan. Qualifications are useful, but education (should) continues throughout life. As for time, the other problem is to read a book/ play for a 2/3d time, over the decades, but it's much more rewarding than binge watching a TV series!

I did an overview of English Lit, in my last year of high school in a summer program in England (via Canada) called "British Civilization). We actually used the Oxford Anthology of English Literature, two rather large volumes and were required to read Tom ones before we left. Thank you for your recommendations! I'm too old to go back to formal school, but have maintained my love of reading. So many books, so little time...

Great video! Thanks a lot for the lists and the piece of advice. If I may, I would strongly recommend reading Machado de Assis. Cheers!

Thanks for the lists!

This is fantastic. I’ve always wanted to look into this topic. Thank you for this video. I enjoyed Conrad I thought Heart of Darkness was very good obviously very dark as well. If I had to chose I’d probably want to pick between American because I’m a huge Faulkner fan. I’d also be extremely interested in Modernism or Victorianism. I also love Russian and Japanese literature. I’ve been studying Dostoevsky and Tolstoy for quite a few years on my own now.

I pray you keep making more videos ! Thank you!

Thank you so much for this video and all the work you put into it I will be getting the books and following your recommendations I will have fun with this Best wishes

I can’t begin to describe how happy I am that I stumbled upon this video. Thank you, thank you, thank you 🙏🏻

Thank you : ) I am so pleased you came back to your passions. Thank you : )

I took Western Literature in college in the 80s and I was surprised by some of the works I liked, Samuel Beckett comes to mind. On my own I've read _Dubliners_ by Joyce which was great and I recently read a short novel by Joseph Roth _Hotel Savoy_ which I thought was really good. I've read a several Graham Greene novels, but haven't got to _Brighton Rock,_ yet. I've read _Heart of Darkness_ several times and I think _The Secret Agent_ is really good, too. I read _On the Road, The Dharma Bums,_ and _Satori in Paris_ by Jack Kerouac. My BA is in Political Science and History.

Great advice and reading list. Thank you! Re: reading Shakespeare at any point in your reading journey...Harold Bloom makes a compelling case that Shakespeare's influence is felt in all directions. Not only did he influence everyone who came after him, but he changed the way we read and understand everyone who came before. There is a funny insight in his chapter on Freud in The Western Canon, where Bloom makes the case that although Freud made it his life's goal to perform analysis on Shakespeare and all his characters, in fact, the opposite occurred; Once can read Shakespeare to get a good "Freudian" analysis of Freud. TS Eliot said that each new work of art instantly changes all art that preceded it. And Faulkner said the past is not dead...it's not even past. Great writers seem to understand the nature of time better than physicists. You might start helping those who want physics degrees to get an Oxford English Degree ;-)

Thank you for this summary of what the degree course covers delivered in such a down to earth, conversational style. I've been wanting to study English Lit. for years but haven't found a course that's accessible to me online. I'm taking your advice and will use this outline to pursue my own studies. I realise it will be harder without those lectures and tutorials and other people to swap ideas with and give feedback, but it will give me joy. Just one question - where is the Victorian reading list? I've watched this twice and not seen it.

Your video is a literary mouthful. Thank you so much for sharing!!

Thank you so much! So happy to have stumbled upon this video at this specific time. ♥

This was so helpful! Thank you very much! I am new to your channel and will be spending a lot of time viewing your catalogue of videos.

ok where have you been all my life?!?? i can’t get enough of your videos and podcasts. i’ve literally gotten a library. on ibooks so many of these classics are free!!!! took a college class on shakespeare and drank up quite a bit especially the english history around the kings and such. will plan to join at the proust level (as soon as i…). was encouraged (forced) to major in the business college where i finished in a burnt out state in the ‘90s when american corporations were downsizing, leaning and meaning. so trying to compete with the upper 10% of the accounting class-i was a solid c student in acctg-i actually hated it. wanted to major in eng lit. so here’s my opportunity, right? actually quite excited about the thought. have sort of sidled into art-drawing and painting-since quarantine. loving that, too. ❤❤❤

The Oxford education involves contact with some extraordinary peers and academics. That is difficult to replicate. I do understand, however, that the cost is something to be sneezed at. In my day, although I studied Biochemistry, I also went to Eng Lit lectures, some of which were inspirational events. Val Cunningham was memorable. By the way there is a short cut for reading English: the Oxford Anthology in two big volumes edited by people like Trilling, Bloom and Kermode is very good (I imagine the Norton Anthology would be similar).

It's like you read my mind 😊 When I went to University, I learned one important thing. I could pretty much teach myself whatever subject that I'm interested in, I just need to know the course work they recommend and just read it myself, perhaps watch some tutorials and lectures on youtube. I understand if you do a PhD in the end you know more than your 'supervisor' don't know what they are called. I would be torn between Wilde and Dickens. All of shakespeare would be pretty heavy, I've read merchant of venice for A level lit and I've seen a few plays tv plays Othello, but then there's all boring stuff he wrote. Sounds doable. Thanks

I so do agree. I am a historian in Sweden where they study through several popular topical aspects which did not exist as such (in my case 1400 hundreds).

i feel inspired by this video because your thoughts are my inner thoughts that i didn’t listen, i know i am gonna be tired of speed up reading, i know i should not only read but write too, even if it gets real hard for me.

Thank you so much for this video! I'm going to start choosing from Victorian literature and will follow your advice and write a review after each one, but probably just for myself, for now 😊 Thanks again for sharing!❤

When I first bought my copy of Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa I had to special order it from Borders because nobody carried it. It took almost 2 months to come in, but well worth the wait. A real masterpiece, I have the same copy on my shelf with its tissue-thin paper. Definitely recommend that being read in tandem, or contemporaneously with, the Book of Five Rings.

Thanks for this fascinating description of a frighteningly intensive course of study. It's also shocking because I thought Oxford was the opposite -- I'd read you worked on your own, only met your tutor once every month or so, and basically it was way less work than A-levels. Maybe that was an older model. This sounds frantic and I'm anxious just hearing about how much they expected you to read. (Who would choose Dickens for their deep dive? The page count of his output is staggering!)

Great video Benjamin. Three years after making it, it’s relevancy is still spot on 🙌

My husband who will soon be 70 and I who will soon be 65 and taking on this on as a challenge. We are both extremely excited. Thanks for posting the reading suggestions.

Thanks for this valuable suggestion.

Thanks for sharing your story and these nuggets of insight. I’ll be taking the pets that I find most interesting and incorporating it into my ongoing education. Cheers,

I love this video, and I’m going to start planning for a literary immersion project soon. One addendum I’d like to add to the Romantic list, is if you ever get tired of Romantic poetry, it might be rewarding to read a short story (or novella) called “Love and Friendship” by Jane Austen, which is a delightfully charming, funny, and relaxing parody of Romantic poetry of the time. It’s one of her earlier works, written before she was sixteen, I believe. I deeply enjoyed it when I read it for my Brit Lit 1 class two semesters ago at university. It strikes the right balance between genuine exasperated mockery and true appreciation of the subject, in my opinion. However, having not read any of her other works, I don’t know if it holds a candle to her novels.

Great intro 😅 I applied to Oxford for physics because I was enamored with the UK and with “the smell of old stone” as they say in History Boys…I didn’t get in and I’m actually really happy about that today. I studied in Germany instead so have zero student debt yet still got 5 years at Manchester and Warwick through Erasmus and a phd program.

Please keep making videos! This is one of the best and most informative videos I've ever watched, exactly what I look for but can't seem to find anywhere. If there's a place where I could send you video topic recommendations, I would love to know, I have quite a few ideas. Thank you for the free education! You've earned a new subscriber (any hopefully many more to come). Have a nice week!

Thank you....Your thoughts, suggestions, and tips are appreciated. I'm Going to follow through with your suggested reading, note taking, and writing. . I love your channel

Thank you for saying this. Really good for people to know.

Before I burnt out, sometimes I read more than a book a day. I have slowed to a crawl, and now much more Indian advaita philosophy, but agonizingly slowly, since extended over-focus produces a state of deep sleep, shortly thereafter. I just came upon you today. Thank you for what you do.

I love this video. I focused on horses and agricultural science at university, but that was only because my parents thought a literature degree was a waste. I have always been a voracious and eclectic reader, and now I am an author so books are my life. But I love the idea of a more focused and directed approach and I am definitely borrowing from your reading list!! Several years ago I began making it a priority to read at least 12 classics and 12 nonfiction titles along with the other books I would otherwise choose. I have been intending to reread all of Shakespeare, but right now I am concentrating on some slightly obscure titles and world lit. I also have some big books on my TBR: Sigrid Undset's KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER, Boccacio's THE DECAMERON, all of Hugo and Dumas, and Eugene Sue's MYSTERIES OF PARIS (which just looks so intriguing). And I have personal reasons for focusing on ancient Greek myths and tragedies- a passion of mine - so I will be reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey this week.

What a great video. Thanks for all of the recommendations.

I enjoy your videos. I always feel smarter after watching them. Thank you for the time you put into them. Adam

Thank you! I truly appreciate your comments on how to read

This is brilliant. I barely got into University, and should have failed out. I still think studying Lit. at a place like MIT would be interesting because you would be a rebel.

This is amazing advice! You’ve inspired me to start an English course. And you probably get this all the time, but your eyes are magical. All the best! 💛

That insight about how reading critically can destroy your love for literature is so true. I only brushed up against it with English Language and Literature at A level (in the 70’s) and even that soured Shakespeare for me for a while :O.

I studied English at a university in America. I love Oxford. Had I been born and raised in Europe I would have studied at Oxford or King,s College London. Excellent video.

You gave me too much to think about. Well done, interesting and enjoyable video

Fantastic video. Thank you so much for going to the trouble. One concern I have is there isn't any mention of WH Auden... That's a pity... I think his poetry has so much to offer

Thank you ! I very much enjoyed listening to what you have to say. 🙂

I know how you felt. When i finished my English degree I couldn't face reading for about a year. But thankfully, like you, the appetite came back.

I love you, man. It helps if you wallpaper a wall with a scene from Oxford. You want to feel like you are really there as much as possible. Lean toward the British diet. Fish-n-chips every week.

I got an English Lit degree from a state school in the US and this is jaw dropping. They'd have no students left if there were this much reading lol

It's basically homeschooling. I have adored reading since I first could. I read Nightbirds on Nantucket, Little Women, Pilgrims Progress, Black Beauty, Forever Amber, Roninson Crusoe and loved Louie La'mour and Charles Dickens by 12. Sadly, in elementary school, I often felt lost in science and grammar, and history was purely memorization, which has always been a struggle for me. I loved literature, though and my parents didn't censore my reading. I didn't have teachers willing to help me to learn how to study and be a better student. Yes, beginning in junior high, I rusticated, but my love for reading and learning continued. I have read many of these but must keep reading because I also read Wallace Stegner, Janice Holt Giles, Mark Twain, etc., etc. I didn't go to college At 65, I am still learning and reading. The wonderful thing was when my children struggled I was able to get training and homeschool them. Thank you for this list and all your lists. I don't need a degree but I need to further my knowledge. I do need to get some John Donne. I continue building my library. I love listening to you.

This video was perfectly made and the timing of its occurrence in my algorithm, impeccable!

Asking as someone who will be entering an English Literature program at a university next year: if you could go back with the knowledge you have now, do you think that there would have been a way for you preserve your passion for reading while still performing well with your coursework? Love your videos btw. Just found your channel tonight and I love the amount of depth that you put into this.

I love your sense of humour! Must be aware though henceforth not to break into inappropriate giggle when I see a bust of the master in public!

I remember in the mid-1980s the prospectus actually said "Don't worry about the [posh] accent. You'll pick up the Oxford accent soon enough." I don't know about now, but back in 1990 when I applied to universities you could not mix oriental languages with a modern language or English (at Oxford or at Cambridge if I remember correctly). Which seemed needlessly restrictive to me. In fact the only East-West language combination at any of the top English universities was Arabic and French at SOAS in London. But I wanted to do Japanese and German. To cut a long story short I ended up doing a European literature course but I hadn't realised the approach would be so different to A Level, skating along the surface, talking more about themes, influences, literary and social movements and all that. Anyway I ended up dropping out. Not because of the course but because of bipolar depression. I was in no state to read a book when I left.

You are a man after my own heart. We share values. I did it ! got an (Oxford) education for free. No idea I was doing this. Started at six - reading reading reading. What I was drawn to: Thomas B Costain, cringe-cringe. I didn't yet care about form because my little brain had not yet learned. I cared about goodness and adventure - the Saints. We know they were scoundrels before saints. A natural love of adventure into foreign lands was born and nurtured. It informed my outer and inner lives. As one susceptible to the authority of teachers, it was a good thing I was not placed under their influence. What's being taught nowadays -- examining classic literature from various postures - does not recognize the crucial element of context and times, just as you say. It's a sort of mental-masturbation that fills class time and avoids the true depths of literature. Grateful to have been born post WWII, as my chances of becoming a Benjamin McE were slim. Can't wait to get to some of your favorites, a long and choice list.

Damn skippy. My sentiments, exactly. All you need is a library card. Addendum: the best profs I had in grad and undergrad seemed to be autodidacts and didn't take the ivory tower too seriously.

100% your insight into whether university is the right path is what I came to realize only AFTER taking on massive student debt. I realized too late that I could have gotten an even better education without spending a dime, and about a quarter of the time. Study and travel would have been a much better education.

Nursing school killed my reading for a bit. Especially having to.study for the boards. At the time I took them ( in US)test was 4 test over 2 days a total of almost 500 questions. It took me several years to get back to reading g as enjoyment.

Although 2 years have passed, I still had to write this. This video is totally what I was looking for. Although literature is my passion, dur to manu reasons, I decided not to get a degree in literature. But the one thing that made me feel unsettled was that if don't study literature academically, I can never look deeper into books and I cannot think as profoundly as literature students. But your video has given me hope. Though, I still am a bit doubtful. I have some vague ideas that students of literature discuss books, authors, their time and life, historical contexts and such things to amalyze the books, which I think gives a deeper insight. So can you please give me some specific resources for secondary reading that will let me analyze things deeply?

This is incredible. Thank you so much for this.

The video showed up just when I needed it!

Thanks UKposts for putting out this video and killing any regret I had over not studying English literature when I was going off to school… I love reading but I don’t think I would have survived some of these classes… turns out I like reading what I like to read.

From a financial perspective I don’t regret studying a science but from a personal perspective I really wish I’d gone into English or Classics. Thanks for letting me know that’s still doable. I know that you give lists of recommended books in the video, but if you wouldn’t mind, do you have all the books you recommend in a compiled list in suggested order? Would you also happen to have any recommendations for books to read to self-teach Classics?

I'm not an Oxford graduate and got my university years for free, so take this with a grain of salt: I studied History and if I were to start again I'd still do it. Getting access to the library and later to archives was great, but the greatest was interacting with people I could not have met otherwise: one lecturer who really read and actively helped fix the essays submitted for her class helped me understand the real point of writing, which is making yourself understood, not proving how smart you are or filling in pages. Then there were others who pointed me towards very technical books I would not have heard about otherwise. Two taught me about teaching. I think in all it makes less than 10 people, and it was worth the 5 years I wasted, including the last year which taught me I'm not cut out to become a professional historian ;-).

That introduction 🤣🤣🤣 oh man. Thank you for this video, what an amazing resource!

This is exactly why I‘ve taken up reading the classics in my spare time. I read a few chapters a day of something really difficult (comparatively) and then have the rest of the day to mull it over. It’ll probably take me 10 years instead of 3, but at least I still like what I’m doing. The only thing I miss from a formal education is like minds to discuss with. I don’t know a single person who would like to casually discuss the ideas of Voltaire.

Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress is an absolute gem!

The course sounds amazing. English Literature has always been a passion of mine, but i chose to study Pharmacy (completely different, I know!). As much as I wish i had studied literature, im glad i sidnt because i feel like it would have taken the fun out of it.

Thank you for making the vedio. It's really helpful and inspiring.

Read Paradise Lost on a bus going from Camberwell to Elephant and Castle in London. I wasn't in a room with professors or teachers but my mind was set alight and made me see through a different lens but one I already had from my own life experience. It keeps your flame burning and all the lights are on when you engage in reading from different periods of time. It allows you to see that some things never change and when they supposedly do change do they really?

Great video. I have read many of these books...well, some...and now I have some I will add to my TBR list. I see this was uploaded three years ago. Any new insights or changes based on input or your own reading recently?

I really appreciate your honesty and humility.

Thanks for the honesty man, great video. Nice thing about non-uni learning is you can make your own research program and you’re not tied down by the silos of disciplines. Want to read theoretical physics, postmodern lit and taxation policy? No problem!

I felt the same way about the Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' when I first read it. LOL!

If in Oxford - try to see Shakespeare on stage. There are always some productions & it get much more personal when seen it preformed

Thank you. I'm interested in what Oscar Wilde studied/read at Oxford University. I think it was a mix of Classics and English. He went to Magdalen College. One of his tutors was John Ruskin. I wanted to try to recreate what it was like at Oxford University during that time. The late Victorian era. There are many reasons why I like Oscar Wilde. I like that he was Irish/Celtic from the great city of Dublin. I like that he was different and had original thought. I like that he was an intellectual. I like that he was tall and seemed cool. I liked the way he dressed. He had interesting views on many topics. I like that he appreciated beauty. He had interesting views about religion. Oscar Wilde was super-bright he had a great mind. He had a double first from Oxford and he won a literary prize. I wish he was still alive. I know that is impossible. We could do with someone like that in this modern era. He also happens to be one of the greatest playwrights of all time and he was very witty. The way Oscar Wilde exposed the ridiculous class structure/system in Britain through his plays is amazing.