A-Level English Set Texts
This guide brings together the current A-level English set texts from all the main exam boards, including AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel, Eduqas, WJEC and CCEA. The lists change occasionally and often give schools a choice of texts rather than a single set option, so it’s always worth double-checking the official specification before placing orders.
Exam syllabus key and links:
AQA (7707, 7712, 7717) | CCEA | EDUQAS (English Language and Literature, English Literature) | Edexcel (English Language and Literature, English Literature) | OCR (English Language and Literature, English Literature) | WJEC (English Literature, English Language and Literature)
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19th-century novels, prose and drama for A-Level
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy | AQA 7712, 7717 | Edexcel 9EL0 | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474 | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë | AQA 7712 | eduqas Lang & Lit | OCR H474 | OCR H472 | WJEC English Lit
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë | AQA 7712 | CCEA | Edexcel 9EL0 | Edexcel 9ET0
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474
- Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley | AQA 7707 | CCEA | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde | AQA 7717 | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474
- Dracula by Bram Stoker | AQA 7707 | CCEA | Edexcel 9EL0 | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H472
- Emma by Jane Austen | AQA 7717 | CCEA | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Hard Times by Charles Dickens | AQA 7717 | Edexcel 9ET0
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens | eduqas Lang & Lit | Edexcel 9EL0 | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (Longman) | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9ET0 | WJEC English Lit
- The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster (Methuen) | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9ET0
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen | OCR H474 | WJEC English Lit
- Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde (New Mermaids) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin | AQA 7712
- The Nun’s Priest’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer | AQA 7717
- She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith | AQA 7717
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens | AQA 7717
- Persuasion by Jane Austen | AQA 7712
- A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (Translated by Michael Meyer) (Methuen Drama Student Edition 2008) | AQA 7717
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne | CCEA
- Silas Marner by George Eliot | CCEA
- The Revenger’s Tragedy by Thomas Middleton (Methuen) | eduqas English Lit
- The Rover by Aphra Behn | Edexcel 9ET0
- What Maisie Knew by Henry James | Edexcel 9ET0
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad | Edexcel 9ET0
- Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon | Edexcel 9ET0
- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins | Edexcel 9ET0
- War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells | Edexcel 9ET0
- The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James | OCR H472
- Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser | OCR H472
- Vathek by William Beckford | OCR H472
- The Italian by Ann Radcliffe | OCR H472
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells | OCR H472
- The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot | OCR H472
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair | OCR H472
- North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell | WJEC English Lit
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens | WJEC English Lit
- The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy | WJEC English Lit
Shakespeare for A-Level
- Othello | AQA 7707, 7717 | CCEA | eduqas Lang & Lit | Edexcel 9EL0 | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474 | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- King Lear | AQA 7717 | CCEA | eduqas Lang & Lit | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9ET0 | WJEC English Lit | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Antony and Cleopatra | eduqas Lang & Lit | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9ET0 | WJEC English Lit | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Hamlet | AQA 7717 | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9EL0 | Edexcel 9ET0 | WJEC English Lit
- The Tempest | eduqas Lang & Lit | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Much Ado About Nothing | Edexcel 9EL0 | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- The Taming of the Shrew | AQA 7717 | CCEA | Edexcel 9ET0
- Twelfth Night | AQA 7717 | Edexcel 9EL0 | Edexcel 9ET0
- Measure for Measure | CCEA | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9ET0
- Henry IV Part I | AQA 7717 | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Richard II | AQA 7717
- As You Like It | CCEA
- The Winter’s Tale | CCEA
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Edexcel 9ET0
Modern drama texts for A-Level
- A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams | AQA 7712, 7707 | CCEA | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9EL0 | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474 | WJEC English Lit | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Translations by Brian Friel | AQA 7712 | CCEA | eduqas Lang & Lit | Edexcel 9EL0 | WJEC English Lit
- Top Girls by Caryl Churchill | AQA 7712 | Edexcel 9EL0 | WJEC English Lit
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee | eduqas Lang & Lit | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- All My Sons by Arthur Miller | AQA 7712, 7707 | Edexcel 9EL0
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett | CCEA | Edexcel 9ET0
- Loot by Joe Orton (Methuen) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Betrayal by Harold Pinter (Faber) | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9EL0
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams | AQA 7712 | eduqas Lang & Lit
- The History Boys by Alan Bennett | eduqas Lang & Lit | Edexcel 9EL0
- Kindertransport by Diane Samuels | eduqas Lang & Lit | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Oh! What a Lovely War by Joan Littlewood | AQA 7712
- Journey’s End by R.C. Sherriff | AQA 7712
- The Accrington Pals by Peter Whelan | AQA 7712
- Blackadder Goes Forth by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton | AQA 7712
- My Boy Jack by David Haig | AQA 7712
- The Wipers Times (post-2000) by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman | AQA 7712
- Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker | AQA 7712
- The Herd by Rory Kinnear | AQA 7712
- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller | AQA 7717
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller | CCEA
- Men Should Weep (1982 version) by Ena Lamont Stewart | CCEA
- A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt | CCEA
- Enron by Lucy Prebble (Methuen) | eduqas English Lit
- Murmuring Judges by David Hare (Faber) | eduqas English Lit
- Elmina’s Kitchen by Kwame Kwei-Armah | Edexcel 9EL0
- Equus by Peter Shaffer | Edexcel 9EL0
- A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry | Edexcel 9EL0
- Rock ‘N’ Roll by Tom Stoppard | Edexcel 9EL0
- Oleanna by David Mamet | Edexcel 9EL0
- Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry | Edexcel 9ET0
- Sweat by Lynn Nottage | Edexcel 9ET0
- Barber Shop Chronicles by Inua Ellams | OCR H474
- Tribes by Nina Raine | OCR H474
- Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth | OCR H474
- Amadeus by Peter Shaffer | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Shakespeare in Love by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard | WJEC English Lang and Lit
Modern prose texts for A-Level
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald | AQA 7712, 7707, 7717 | Edexcel 9EL0 | OCR H474 | OCR H472
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood | AQA 7712, 7707, 7717 | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H472 | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker | AQA 7712 | eduqas Lang & Lit | Edexcel 9ET0 | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote | eduqas Lang & Lit | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474 | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Atonement by Ian McEwan | AQA 7712, 7717 | eduqas Lang & Lit | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474
- A Room with a View by E.M. Forster | AQA 7712 | Edexcel 9EL0
- Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson | AQA 7712 | OCR H474
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy | AQA 7712 | OCR H474
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway | AQA 7712 | OCR H472
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers | eduqas Lang & Lit | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Small Island by Andrea Levy | AQA 7717 | OCR H472
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini | AQA 7707, 7717
- Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell | OCR H474 | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter | Edexcel 9EL0 | OCR H472
- The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474
- The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri | OCR H474 | OCR H472
- Skating to Antarctica (post-2000) by Jenny Diski | OCR H474 | eduqas Lang & Lit
- Once in a House on Fire by Andrea Ashworth | eduqas Lang & Lit | WJEC English Lang and Lit
- Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier | AQA 7712
- Regeneration by Pat Barker | AQA 7712
- Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks | AQA 7712
- The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West | AQA 7712
- All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage paperback edition) by Erich Maria Remarque (translated by Brian Murdoch) | AQA 7712
- Strange Meeting by Susan Hill | AQA 7712
- Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves | AQA 7712
- A Long, Long Way (post-2000) by Sebastian Barry | AQA 7712
- The First Casualty (post-2000) by Ben Elton | AQA 7712
- Life Class (post-2000) by Pat Barker | AQA 7712
- Waterland by Graham Swift | AQA 7712
- Spies (post-2000) by Michael Frayn | AQA 7712
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey | AQA 7712
- The Help (post-2000) by Kathryn Stockett | AQA 7712
- Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates | AQA 7712
- The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak | AQA 7712 from 2025
- Wake by Anna Hope | AQA 7712 from 2025
- Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo | AQA 7712 from 2025
- Kala by Colin Walsh | AQA 7717 from 2025
- Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan | AQA 7717 from 2025
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold | AQA 7707
- Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer | AQA 7707
- The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale | AQA 7707
- When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson | AQA 7717
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie | AQA 7717
- Brighton Rock by Graham Greene | AQA 7717
- Harvest by Jim Crace | AQA 7717
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro | eduqas Lang & Lit
- Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell | eduqas Lang & Lit
- The Bone People by Keri Hulme | Edexcel 9EL0
- A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood | Edexcel 9EL0
- Enduring Love by Ian McEwan | Edexcel 9EL0
- Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys | Edexcel 9EL0
- The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri | Edexcel 9EL0
- Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie | Edexcel 9ET0
- The Cutting Season by Attica Locke | Edexcel 9ET0
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro | Edexcel 9ET0
- Beloved by Toni Morrison | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474
- The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters | Edexcel 9ET0
- Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf | Edexcel 9ET0 | OCR H474
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini | Edexcel 9ET0
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe | OCR H474
- Stuart: A Life Backward by Alexander Masters | OCR H474
- Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh | OCR H474
- The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson | OCR H474
- I am The Secret Footballer by Anon | OCR H474
- Stasiland by Anna Funder | OCR H474
- Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeannette Winterson | OCR H474
- The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz | OCR H474
- Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup | OCR H474
- What the Chinese Don’t Eat by Xinran | OCR H474
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck | OCR H472
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell | OCR H472
- The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid | OCR H472
- Call It Sleep by Henry Roth | OCR H472
- My Ántonia by Willa Cather | OCR H472
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton | OCR H472
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner | OCR H472
- Passing by Nella Larsen | OCR H472
- Native Son by Richard Wright | OCR H472
- Light in August by William Faulkner | OCR H472
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier | OCR H472
- Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy | OCR H472
- The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks | OCR H472
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley | OCR H472
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury | OCR H472
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess | OCR H472
- The Drowned World by J G Ballard | OCR H472
- Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing | OCR H472
- The Children of Men by P.D. James | OCR H472
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler | OCR H472
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy | OCR H472
- Women in Love by D H Lawrence | OCR H472
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston | OCR H472
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath | OCR H472
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison | OCR H472
- Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo | OCR H472
- Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth | OCR H472
- Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo | OCR H472
- Brick Lane by Monica Ali | OCR H472
- The Secret River by Kate Grenville | OCR H472
- Terrorist by John Updike | OCR H472
- Watching The Fire-Eater by Robert Minhinnick | WJEC English Lang and Lit
Poetry for A-Level
- Skirrid Hill (post-2000) (Seren) by Owen Sheers | AQA 7712 | WJEC English Lit | eduqas English Lit
- The Merchant’s Prologue and Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (Cambridge) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Poems selected by Patti Smith by William Blake (Vintage) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Selected Poems by Christina Rossetti (Penguin Classics) | eduqas English Lit | OCR H472 | WJEC English Lit
- Poems selected by Seamus Heaney by W. B. Yeats (Faber) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake | AQA 7717 | OCR H474
- Welsh Retrospective by Dannie Abse (Seren) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Poems selected by Simon Armitage by Ted Hughes (Faber) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Poems selected by Ted Hughes by Sylvia Plath (Faber) | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9EL0 | WJEC English Lit
- The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin (Faber) | eduqas English Lit | Edexcel 9EL0 | WJEC English Lit
- Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy (Picador) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Selected Poems by D.H. Lawrence (Penguin Classics, edited by James Fenton) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Field Work by Seamus Heaney (Faber) | eduqas English Lit | WJEC English Lit
- Up the Line to Death ed. Brian Gardner | AQA 7712
- Scars Upon My Heart ed. Catherine Reilly | AQA 7712
- The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry ed. George Walter | AQA 7712
- The Oxford Book of War Poetry ed. Jon Stallworthy | AQA 7712
- The War Poems of Wilfred Owen ed. Jon Stallworthy | AQA 7712
- Feminine Gospels (post-2000) by Carol Ann Duffy | AQA 7712
- Selected Poems 2013 Edition by Tony Harrison | AQA 7712
- New Selected Poems 1966–1987 by Seamus Heaney | AQA 7712
- Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes | AQA 7712
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath | AQA 7712
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | AQA 7717
- The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer | Edexcel 9EL0
- Poems selected by Tom Paulin by Thomas Hardy (Faber) | eduqas English Lit
- Selected Poems by T.S. Eliot (Faber) | eduqas English Lit
- Metaphysical Poetry editor Colin Burrow | Edexcel 9EL0
- The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot | Edexcel 9EL0
- The New Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry editor: Jonathan Wordsworth | Edexcel 9EL0
- Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti | Edexcel 9EL0
- North by Seamus Heaney | Edexcel 9EL0
- The Complete Poems by Emily Dickinson | OCR H474
- Pepper Seed by Malika Booker | OCR H474
- If They Come For Us by Fatimah Asghar | OCR H474
- Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy | OCR H474
- Breaking Silence by Jacob Sam-La Rose | OCR H474
- Selected Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | OCR H472
- Selected Poems by Edward Thomas | WJEC English Lit
- Collected Poems by Alun Lewis | WJEC English Lit
- Making the Beds for the Dead by Gillian Clarke | WJEC English Lit
- Selected Poems by John Donne (Penguin Classics) | WJEC English Lit
- Paradise Lost Book IX by John Milton (Oxford) | WJEC English Lit
Additional resources
- OCR has a free set of resources for teaching diverse texts at A-level.
- See our rundown of set texts for GCSE.
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