English Literature, an Introduction

Welcome to the Department of English Literature, one of the oldest and most prestigious University departments of English in the UK. Its first Professor, John Nicholl (1833-1894), studied at Oxford before returning to his native city to take up the Regius Chair of English Literature in 1862, a post which he held until his retirement in 1889.  The position has since been been filled by some of the country’s most distinguished literary scholars, among them A.C Bradley, Sir Walter Raleigh, Peter Alexander, and Stephen Prickett, and it is currently held by Professor Nigel Leask. A second endowed Professorship, the Bradley Chair, was created in 1965 and has been held by such notable figures as John Bryce, Andrew Hook, and Clifford Siskin, and is currently occupied by Professor Murray Pittock.

The Department, which was incorporated in the confederal School of English and Scottish Language and Literature in 1996, aims to deliver high quality teaching and learning experience, based on our unrivalled range of scholarship and critical inquiry. Our success has been recognized by the outcomes of the two most recent reviews of our activity, the ‘Teaching Quality Assessment’ (1997) and the Research Assessment Exercise (2001) in which the School achieved the highest possible grades: "Excellent" and 5*.

 In these pages, you will find detailed descriptions of all our courses, along with details of seminars, conferences and other academic events, past, present and forthcoming. You can find out about the staff of the Department and, in some cases, read essays and articles by them. I hope you enjoy your visit.

Dr John Coyle
Head of Department