Prescribed Texts
Prescribed texts change. This page is built so that texts can be added and removed without disturbing anything else on the site.
The list changes — check it
The prescribed texts for A/L English Literature are set by the examination authority and are revised periodically. Always confirm the list for your own examination year against the current official syllabus.
Do not prepare a text because a website, a study guide or an older student's notes include it. Every year some candidates lose a great deal of work this way.
Each text page follows the same fifteen-section structure used throughout the site, so that everything belonging to one text stays together.
Texts are added here as they are prepared. Each text is set out in the same fifteen sections described above, so you always know where to look. Nothing is published for a text until the material has been written and checked, and no copyrighted text is reproduced in full.
What each text page contains
- Introduction — what the work is, and what to watch for.
- Author or playwright — verified facts only.
- Background — when and where written, and the context a reader needs.
- Summary or plot — what happens, in order.
- Characters — who they are, what they want, how they change.
- Themes — stated as arguable sentences, not as single words.
- Literary or dramatic techniques — named, illustrated, and tied to effect.
- Important quotations — short, accurate, and chosen for usefulness.
- Context questions — on printed extracts.
- Concise context answers — of the right length.
- Essay questions — of the kind the paper sets.
- Developed model answers — with notes on how each is built.
- Common student mistakes — on this particular text.
- Revision exercises.
- Related past-paper questions.
The prescribed poetry
The poems below are the twenty-four set for A/L English Literature under the 2017 cycle, listed in the order the official NIE Anthology of Poetry gives them.
We do not reproduce the poems here. The anthology prints them in full under permissions granted to the National Institute of Education — Larkin's Money, for instance, appears by permission of Faber and Faber. Those permissions belong to the NIE, not to this website. Use the anthology issued by your school, and check the list against the syllabus for your own examination year.
The twenty-four prescribed poems
| # | Poem | Poet |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sonnet 73 — That time of year thou mayst in me behold | William Shakespeare |
| 2 | Sonnet 141 — In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes | William Shakespeare |
| 3 | Batter My Heart (Holy Sonnet 14) | John Donne |
| 4 | Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star | John Donne |
| 5 | To the Memory of Mr Oldham | John Dryden |
| 6 | Extract from Canto 3, The Rape of the Lock | Alexander Pope |
| 7 | The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence) | William Blake |
| 8 | Ode to a Nightingale | John Keats |
| 9 | A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal | William Wordsworth |
| 10 | To a Snowdrop | William Wordsworth |
| 11 | Remember | Christina Rossetti |
| 12 | Among School Children | W. B. Yeats |
| 13 | Spring and Fall (To a Young Child) | Gerard Manley Hopkins |
| 14 | Design | Robert Frost |
| 15 | Suicide in the Trenches | Siegfried Sassoon |
| 16 | Morning at the Window | T. S. Eliot |
| 17 | Money | Philip Larkin |
| 18 | The Cathedral Builders | John Ormond |
| 19 | An Introduction | Kamala Das |
| 20 | An Unknown Girl | Moniza Alvi |
| 21 | Phenomenal Woman | Maya Angelou |
| 22 | The Fisherman Mourned by His Wife | Patrick Fernando |
| 23 | Animal Crackers | Richard de Zoysa |
| 24 | Explosion | Vivimarie Vanderpoorten |
The NIE resource book
G.C.E. A/L 2019 English Literature (Subject 73), Paper I
Department of Examinations, Sri Lanka
Department of Examinations paper, linked not rehosted
G.C.E. A/L 2019 English Literature (Subject 73), Paper II
Department of Examinations, Sri Lanka
Department of Examinations paper, linked not rehosted
G.C.E. A/L 2019 English Literature (Subject 73), Marking Scheme
Department of Examinations, Sri Lanka
Department of Examinations document, linked not rehosted
A/L English Literature Resource Book
National Institute of Education, Sri Lanka
NIE publication, linked not rehosted
Preparing a text that is not yet on this site
Use the fifteen sections as your own note-making structure. Build them yourself, in that order, in a notebook for each text.
This is not a second-best option. Notes you construct yourself are recalled far more reliably than notes you read, and building them is the revision.