About Discovering Literature

Discovering Literature is a free digital resource designed to enrich the study and enjoyment of set texts for teachers, students and lifelong learner. Through original sources and expert interpretation, the site explores more than 1,000 years of literary history, encompassing modules on medieval, Renaissance, Restoration, Romantic, Victorian, 20th- and 21st-century literature.

In 2023 the Library experienced a significant cyber-attack that disrupted many of our services. Currently only a limited number of our Discovering Literature resources are available via the above Padlet platform. We are working to restore full functionality and launch more resources.

Prior to the cyber-attack, users could access a wealth of manuscripts and rare materials by writers from Shakespeare, William Blake, Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, Charles Dickens and the Brontës to Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter, Hanif Kureishi, Andrea Levy, James Berry and Grace Nichols.

The site also provided access to a rich range of contextual sources including letters, notebooks, newspapers, photographs, posters, playbills, broadside ballads, sketchbooks, magazines, pamphlets and dictionaries.

A bank of over a thousand articles examined a variety of vivid themes and genres, from popular culture in Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha of Suburbia and Juliet’s eloquence in Romeo and Juliet, to Gothic motifs, references to Empire in the poetry of John Agard, sounds in The Waste Land, or the subversion of fairy tales in Angela Carter’s stories.

And the site featured films shot in literary locations such as the Brontë Parsonage and the Charles Dickens Museum, as well as teachers’ notes that provide curated pathways through the material, with ideas for object-based learning and in-depth analysis.

Discovering Literature received over 6 million unique users per year.

Widening participation

We are continuing to work on widening the diversity of Discovering Literature, responding to the needs of Secondary teachers and students with a focus on literature by ethnically diverse authors. We are currently developing content on authors studied at Key Stage 3 and/or on current GCSE and A Level exam syllabi, such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Imtiaz Dharker and Chinua Achebe, as well as pieces relating to 20th-century drama and theatre, such as Black British theatre from the 1980s and the work of New Earth Theatre.

Acknowledgements

Discovering Literature has been supported since its inception by Dr Naim Dangoor CBE, Dangoor Education.

The project was also generously supported by the British Library Trust and the British Library Patrons.

Further development of the project was supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation; Evalyn Lee; Peter Bacon; Mark Pigott KBE, KStJ; The American Trust for the British Library; The John S Cohen Foundation; Andor Charitable Trust; The Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust; Luci Baines Johnson; Ian Turpin; The Friends of the British Library; Patricia G. and Jonathan S. England – British Library Innovation Fund; Eccles Charitable Trust.