History and English Literature

Our joint honours BA History and English Literature course allows you to explore the richness of English literature alongside the rich history and variety of human experience.

Discover a thousand years of history whilst experiencing all the specialist areas on offer at the University of Reading. The History Department's expertise covers a wide range of regions, from Europe and Africa to America, South Asia and the Middle East. Module choices cover diverse periods and topics, from the Crusades to Cold War Berlin and from Medieval Magic to the Rwanda Crisis. The University of Reading is ranked in the top 125 universities in the world for Arts and Humanities and those offering History, Philosophy and Theology. (Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject 2024.)

In your English literature modules, you will read more of authors and genres that you may already know (from tragedy to Gothic, from Shakespeare and Dickens to Plath and Beckett). But you will also encounter aspects of literary studies that may be less familiar to you, from children’s literature to publishing studies and the history of the book. Our academics have published research on everything from medieval poetry to contemporary American fiction.

For more information, please visit the programme page: https://www.reading.ac.uk/ready-to-study/study/subject-area/history-ug/ba-history-and-english-literature