Every Book an English Major Reads

As an English major in Canada, I had the chance to dive deep into the amazing world of literature. I completed my Bachelor of Arts in English, and then I decided to do an Honours degree, which involved taking a lot of other neat literature classes. 

Throughout my studies, I read a ton of fascinating works—everything from classic novels to poetry and contemporary pieces. I am sure there are far more I read, but I tried my best to compile everything I could recall. 

So whether you’re a fellow bookworm, a student navigating your own English journey, or just curious about what an English major reads, I hope you find something here that sparks your interest!

Victorian Literature Class

• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• The Story of a Modern Woman by Ella Dicks
• Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Shakespeare Class

• The Merchant of Venice
• Much Ado About Nothing
• As You Like It
• Richard III
• Measure for Measure

Life Writing Class

• Half-Breed by Maria Campbell
• Essayism by Brian Dillon
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
• Shakespearean Company by Sylvia Beach
• Confessions by Augustine
• The Truth About Stories by Thomas King
• For Us at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Nutting by William Wordsworth
• Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey

Storytelling in Canada Class

• Earth Elder Stories by Alexander Wolf
• Cree Narrative by Neil McLeod
• Burning in This Midnight Dream
• The Ballad of Danny Wolfe by Joe Friesen
• Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont by Joseph Boyden

Indigenous Literature Class

• The Ecstasy of Rita Joe by George Ryga
• Johnny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
• Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
• Overlaid by Robertson Davies
• Seven Stories by Morris Panych
• Fronteras Americanas by Guillermo Verdecchia

World Literature Class

• The Odyssey by Homer
• The Inferno by Dante
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• Candide by Voltaire
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Poetry Class

• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
• The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Raleigh
• Astrophil and Stella
• Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare

Literature Theory Class

• Poetics by Aristotle
• Culture and Anarchy by Mathew Arnold
• The Well-Wrought Urn by Cleanth Brooks
• The Intentional Fallacy by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley
• The Canonization by John Donne
• Ode: Imitations of Immorality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth
• Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure
• The Archetypes of Literature by Northrop Frye
• The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes
• The Encantadas by Herman Melville
• The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
• Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Can the Subaltern Speak? by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
• The Sacrificial Egg by Chinua Achebe
• Billy Budd the Sailor by Herman Melville
• The Shaping of a Canon by Richard Ohmann
• On the Abolition of the English Department by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o et al.

Modernist Literature Class

• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
• Paris by Hope Mirrlees
• The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
• Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
• in our time by Ernest Hemingway
• Cane by Jean Toomer
• Quicksand by Nella Larsen

Canterbury Tales Class

• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Seventeenth-Century Verse and Prose Class

• The Flea by John Donne
• Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney
• Holy Sonnets by John Donne
• To Penshurst by Ben Jonson
• The Description of Cookham by Amelia Lanyer
• The Good Morrow by John Donne
• A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne
• Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed by John Donne
• The Canonization by John Donne
• Pamphilia to Amphilanthus by Mary Wroth
• Holy Sonnet IX by John Donne
• The Altar by George Herbert
• Easter Wings by George Herbert
• To My Book by Ben Jonson
• To Celia by Ben Jonson
• To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
• Corinna’s Going A-Maying by Robert Herrick
• Lycidas by John Milton
• On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity by John Milton
• L’Allegro by John Milton

Old English Class

• The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Decolonizing Literature Class

• The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling
• Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said
• Borders by Thomas King
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
• Salt Baby by Falen Johnson
• Terra Nullius by Claire Coleman

Simone Weil Class

• Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil
• Waiting for God by Simone Weil
• The Liar’s Wife by Mary Gordon
• Holy The Firm by Annie Dillard
• The Red Virgin by Stephanie Strickland,
• Lost Gospels by Lorri Neilsen Glenn

British Literature and Disability Studies

• The Sign of the Four by Doyle
• Wooden Tony by Clifford
• Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions by Dickens
• The Well of Pen-Morfa by Gaskell
• The Country of the Blind by Wells
• Dorothy’s Rival by Braddon
• The Withered Arm by Hardy

Science Fiction Literature

• The Star by H.G. Wells
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Custer on the Slipstream by Gerald Vizenor
• Terminal Avenue by Eden Robinson
• Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin