Victorian Literature, Art and Culture MA

The course

Taught by experts from the Centre for Victorian Studies, this course offers you the opportunity to study nineteenth-century literature and art history in the midst of the outstanding Victorian architecture of our Egham campus. With the magnificent Victorian Founder’s Building and unique resources including the College’s own Victorian Picture Gallery and archives you couldn’t ask for a better location in which to study this fascinating period.

A central element of the course is the study of Victorian London; you will explore a variety of texts from a range of perspectives, from Dickens to the phenomenon of the department store; from the painters of fashionable life to the panic surrounding the Whitechapel murders. With London just a short train ride away from the main College campus, you will benefit from first-hand experience of the Victorian cityscape and access to archives.

You will also complete three other courses covering specialist areas of this rich period of literature and art and immerse yourself in a topic of your choice when completing the dissertation.

Teaching & assessment

For full-time students the course lasts an academic year from September to September; part-time students pursue the course over two years, completing ‘Victorian London’ and one or two other courses in their first year; the remaining course(s) from the four required in total and the dissertation in their second year.

All courses are taught by means of a weekly structured two-hour seminar and each course lasts for a term of 11 weeks in total. A full time student thus has four hours of seminars for two terms and then further dissertation workshops and discussion groups in the summer term, in addition to individual supervision in the process of completing dissertations. Students will be invited to prepare in-course presentations, will receive feedback on draft essays submitted at the beginning of the Spring term, and can see staff individually during their office hours. All students on the programme are also encouraged to attend the regular Nineteenth-Century Studies Reading Group meetings and the research seminars organised by the Centre for Victorian Studies.