A Reading List for English Applicants

I mostly just talked about Dan Brown, Chris Ryan and Clive Cussler on my PS.

Admissions tutors love Catherine Cookson, too.

Is is acceptable to mention quite a few respected modern authors as well? There's a few on there I'm planning to read anyway, Milton and Marlowe for example, there's also loads I know I should read but probably won't. I love Camus, Larkin, Williams and Steinbeck, but I'm also a big fan of David Foster Wallace and Haruki Murukami as well (in fact, I like a lot of modern Japanese literature). I'm thinking these might be a bit too recent?

Freud's stuff is amazing.
But hideously chauvinistic.

MSB et al....

Do you feel a PS that focused largely, (around 75% or so), on non-English Literature could be a risk. e.g. predominantly Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Chekhov. Feel slightly wary that whilst interesting it is may be percieved as less relevant by some admission tutors.

I am aware there is no real 'answer', am just looking for opinions. Ta

I assume you mean on a personal statement. I don't think there's any such thing as 'too recent'. The list is intended to give applicants a better awareness of the English canon, which extends backwards rather a long way, but there's no reason why one should be reading the older books on the list and not anything more recent. As I said in the first post, the omission of anything written in the last fifty years on the list doesn't mean that it isn't worth reading. On your personal statement, it is much better to be talking about a less central author who interests you and who you have something to say about than to say something dry about Milton or Marlowe purely because you feel you ought to.


Psychoanalytic criticism is fascinating, even if plenty of people are dubious about it. Creative Writers and Daydreaming (as mentioned on the list above) and The Uncanny are probably his writings that are most relevant to literature. Also, don't think psychoanalytic criticism is restricted to Freud. You could look at Jung or Lacan. I don't know much about the latter, but the former has some interesting things about archetypes and the collective unconscious which can interesting applied to literature.

In Barry's book he describes Lacan quite a bit. He's a bit insane.
But yeah psychoanalysis is actually really interesting, its just when they push it to the Oedipal thing it gets a bit silly.

No one likes to be told that they secretly wish to **** their mother.

I really have no books to include in my PS. I was thinking How I Live Now, Under the Wire and Great Expectations? Just books I generally enjoy and which show my love for War :awsome:

Freud's stuff is amazing.
But hideously chauvinistic.

On topic, I do not particularly like MSB's list. I much prefer the Rutgers University list, but even that misses off some significant works. Guess subjectivism will rule once again.

I guess Joseph Conrad was a racist, right?

On topic, I do not particularly like MSB's list. I much prefer the Rutgers University list, but even that misses off some significant works. Guess subjectivism will rule once again.

I'm glad that someone has disagreed with my choices. Could you suggest alternatives that you would have preferred?

I feel that the scope of most lists are far too narrow, though, my own list undoubtedly suffers from that problem too, especially the Romantic period, since I attempt to pigeon-hole entire movements into the space of four works.

Perhaps the reason why the list in the first post seems narrow in comparison to the one you posted is that, as I said somewhere above, "I've tried to restrict the list to books written in England in English".