AQA A Level English Literature Specification A (legacy)
AQA LTA4 A Level Literature: Texts in Time
Final re-takes: January 2010
These are editions of the set texts for Unit 4 of the AQA A Level Specification A English Literature course. This final resit examinations will take place in January 2010. Remember that it is essential to refer to the AQA specification to ensure that you are reading the right text and edition for the right year! Also on the AQA site you will find:
- LTA4: Guidance on the new set texts for 2008: issued in summer 2007, this contains suggestions for work on Lyrical Ballads, Clare and Shelley. The reading suggestions are listed with the set texts below.
- Newsletter, February 2003: guidance on Unit 4 and extensive lists of debates and contexts on all the set texts at the time (most still relevant: an update was issued at support meetings in the autumn of 2006).
- Unit 4 Support Booklet - valuable advice and examples of candidates' responses
- Unit 4 Past Questions by Text - all the questions on texts set from 2001 to January 2004
- Revision notes on LTA4
: these notes from a revision day for A Level candidates may be useful.
Section A - Drama Pre-1770
See the Shakespeare page for links and materials relevant to the first three plays on this list.- Hamlet
- William Shakespeare (New Penguin)
- Measure for Measure
- The Winter's Tale
- William Shakespeare (New Penguin)
- Edward II
- Christopher Marlowe (New Mermaids)
- The White Devil
- John Webster (New Mermaids). See also:
- The Alchemist
- Ben Jonson (New Mermaids); see the books page for more Jonson reading.
Section B - Poetry Pre-1900: with new texts for 2008 and 2009
See also the page on Romanticism in English literature.- Lyrical Ballads
: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Penguin: this Penguin Classics editions is the same text as the Poetry First Editions version, which it now replaces). These books are suggested by AQA LTA4: Guidance on the New Set Texts in 2007:
- Lyrical Ballads (Routledge Classics)
: all the editions of the text, the Preface to the 1800 version and Wordsworth's appendix on 'Poetic Diction' from the 1802 edition.
- The Cambridge Cultural History of Britain: The Romantic Age
edited by Boris Ford (Cambridge Cultural History, Volume 6): the sections on 'Wordsworth: Loss and Consolation' and 'Coleridge's Comprehensiveness' by John Beer
- How to Study Romantic Poetry
by Paul Flinn - Chapter 3: Reading Wordsworth's Shorter Poems: Lyrical Ballads
- Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads by John Blades (Palgrave Macmillan)
- Ode to the West Wind and Other Poems
: Percy Bysshe Shelley - also known as Selected Poems (Dover Thrift Editions). These books are suggested by AQA LTA4: Guidance on the New Set Texts in 2007:
- Shelley's Poetry and Prose
(Norton Critical Editions): 'many major poems with some useful notes, major prose works and critical essays including helpful contextual links'
- Shelley (Open Guides to Literature)
by David Pirie
- The Cambridge Cultural History of Britain: The Romantic Age
- Red Shelley
by Paul Foot
- Shelley's Revolutionary Year
: Shelley's Political Poems and the Essay "A Philosophical View of Reform" with an Introduction by Paul Foot - but hard to obtain and expensive
- The Cambridge Companion to Shelley
: edited by by Timothy Morton
- Selected Poems
- John Clare: Major Works
(Oxford World's Classics), especially for Tom Paulin's introduction and the notes.
- John Clare: a Biography
by Jonathan Bate.
- Don Juan Cantos 1-4
- Lord Byron, edited by T S Dorsch (Routledge) is the set edition but seems currently to be out of print, though Amazon should help you to find a second-hand copy - or try Abebooks. AQA now suggests these alternatives:
- Byron's Collected Poems
in the Wordsworth Poetry Library, which contains the complete works including all of Don Juan. Readers may find the pages rather cramped.
- Lord Byron: The Major Works
(Oxford World's Classics): more expensive but better print.
- Byron's Collected Poems
Useful companion
to Shelley
Some background
