The course

English Literature: Victorian Literature, Art and Culture (MA)

This specialised pathway within the MA in English Literature offers you the opportunity to develop your studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture in the midst of the outstanding Victorian architecture of our Egham campus. Led by experts from Royal Holloway’s field-leading Centre for Victorian Studies, the pathway introduces the key cultural forms, genres, and narratives that emerged during the Victorian period (1837-1901), an era characterised by industrialisation, globalisation, and dynamic social, political, environmental, and technological developments that continue to structure the world that we live in today.

You will explore canonical Victorian texts, including by authors such as Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Arthur Conan Doyle, and George Eliot, alongside other important nineteenth-century writings and artworks that may be less familiar to you. This combination will allow you to explore significant events and ideas from diverse perspectives, from the heart of Dickensian London to colonial outposts in India, Australia, and the Arctic; from the painters of fashionable life to the panic surrounding the Whitechapel murders; from nineteenth-century periodicals to Neo-Victorian re-imaginings of the past.

Our modules examine nineteenth-century literary and artistic works – novels, poetry, short fiction, criticism, paintings, visual culture, and life-writing – that engage with Victorianism within Britain and from other perspectives beyond national and imperial boundaries.

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 the nineteenth century. 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 museums and archives.

The Centre for Victorian Studies holds on-campus research lectures, events, and workshops throughout the academic year. As students of University of London, you can also participate in events across the city. Your registration includes membership of the Institute of English Studies at Senate House (London WC1). Staff from the English Department convene seminars and reading groups there, such as the London Nineteenth Century Studies seminar.

We offer a wide range of postgraduate scholarships to help with funding your studies. We especially encourage eligible applicants to apply for one of the following:

Bedford Society Scholarship - £8,100 tuition fee reduction for Home or international students with, or expected to achieve, a First Class degree or equivalent.

Professor Barbara Raw Masters Scholarships for English - £10,000 scholarship for Home or international students with, or expected to achieve, at least a 2:1 or equivalent.

From time to time, we make changes to our courses to improve the student and learning experience. If we make a significant change to your chosen course, we’ll let you know as soon as possible.

Course structure

Core Modules

To qualify for this pathway, students must take the Cultural Keywords skills module, three optional modules, at least two of which must be on Victorian topics, and must write a dissertation on a topic in Victorian studies, to be agreed with their supervisor. Students must also complete an academic integrity course and a one-day course on research methods and materials.

This module investigates some of the common keywords used regularly and perhaps often unconsciously in literary and cultural studies and around which whole discourses have emerged. This module explores how the meaning of chosen keywords evolves over time, place, language, and culture, using a cultural studies approach. It aims to build students’ methodological skills by developing a reflexive and critical understanding of what words ‘do’ and how we use them. Materials used to explore the keywords will be drawn from a transnational corpus of literary, historical, philosophical and creative works and will make connections across languages, cultures, times, and geographic regions, developing skills in comparative analysis and cross-cultural awareness.
Using the skills learned during the taught parts of your MA, you will carry out your own independent research project. You will write a thesis of around 15,000 words on a topic of your choice which critically reflects upon established scholarship and provides original insight and independent judgements.
This module will describe the key principles of academic integrity, focusing on university assignments. Plagiarism, collusion and commissioning will be described as activities that undermine academic integrity, and the possible consequences of engaging in such activities will be described. Activities, with feedback, will provide you with opportunities to reflect and develop your understanding of academic integrity principles.
This module is designed to introduce you to a number of key topics related to the methods of postgraduate research, and to some of the resources and materials that will be useful to your studies.

Optional Modules

There are a number of optional course modules available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course modules that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new modules may be offered or existing modules may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.

This module will introduce you to the theories and methods of a variety of humanities disciplines through an in-depth study of the literature, history, geography, and visual culture of nineteenth-century London. You will be asked to reflect critically on your own approach to the material studied, through engagement with both primary materials and a variety of recent secondary sources.
This module aims to equip you with a systematic understanding of the scope and range of the mid nineteenth-century novel in the context of Victorian publishing, reading and critical practices. We study a range of novels in depth, and discuss recent critical approaches to each text in order to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the critical techniques and discourses that will be applicable to your own advanced scholarship in the assessed essay and final dissertation.
This module aims to equip you with a systematic understanding of the scope and range of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement in the context of Victorian art criticism, attitudes to gender and poetics. The first five-week block concentrates on poetry and the visual arts in the first decade of the movement; the second five-week block deals with the second generation of Pre-Raphaelites and their links with Aestheticism.
This module explores the relationship between Victorian literature and the ‘climates’ of the British Empire: its ecologies, social systems, aesthetics, politics, and histories of slavery, resource extraction, wealth, and violence. The module encourages students to reflect on the imbrication of Empire into a seemingly ‘domestic’ canon of Victorian literature and culture to rethink what (or where) we mean by the term ‘Victorian’, and to bring our analysis of the nineteenth century into the present day discussing how we continue to grapple with the legacies of nineteenth-century colonisation.

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 the core MA English Literature module and one other course 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 one 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 a week 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 receive formal written feedback on written and oral assessments throughout the two terms and can see staff individually during their office hours. In addition to scheduled seminars, all students on the programme are invited and encouraged to attend optional extracurricular activities, such as archival handling and curatorial workshops, academic walking tours of London, and research seminars organised by the Centre for Victorian Studies. All taught courses are examined by shorter mid-term assessments and one final essay of 5,000 words. Students will submit their final essays during the January and May assessment periods.

The dissertation, to be completed over the summer period, will be a piece of original written work of up to 12,000 words (excluding bibliography and appendices). The topic of the dissertation will be agreed between the student and their academic supervisor. Dissertations are submitted at the end of the programme in the first week of September. Students may also be required to complete an unassessed research proposal and bibliography during the summer term.

Entry requirements

2:2

UK Lower Class Honours degree (2:2) or equivalent in a related subject.

Candidates with professional qualifications or relevant professional experience in an associated area will also be considered.

Academic writing samples, could be an extract from a dissertation or two shorter essays, showing the ability to analyse literature.

International & EU requirements

English language requirements

IELTS: 7.0 overall. Writing 7.0. No other subscore lower than 5.5.
Pearson Test of English: 69 overall. Writing 69. No other subscore lower than 51.
Trinity College London Integrated Skills in English (ISE): ISE IV.
Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) grade C.
TOEFL iBT: 97 overall, with Reading 18 Listening 17 Speaking 20 Writing 26.
Duolingo: 130 overall, 135 in Literacy, 135 in Production and no sub-score below 100.

Your future career

The Department has an impressive record for placing graduates in academic jobs and in prominent position outside academia. In the field of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies alone, our postgraduates have recently secured positions at the Universities of Edinburgh, Sussex and Leeds, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the National University of Ireland. Recent postgraduates in America literature, modern and contemporary literature and theory have secured prestigious appointments in London.

The English Department also prepares postgraduates for successful careers in a variety of the other areas, such as:

teaching
writing and journalism
administration
marketing

Fees, funding & scholarships

Home (UK) students tuition fee per year*: £11,600

EU and international students tuition fee per year**: £26,100

Other essential costs***: There are no single associated costs greater than £50 per item on this course.

How do I pay for it? Find out more about funding options, including loans, grants, scholarships and bursaries.

* and ** These tuition fees apply to students enrolled on a full-time basis in the academic year 2025/26. Students studying on the standard part-time course structure over two years are charged 50% of the full-time applicable fee for each study year.

Royal Holloway reserves the right to increase all postgraduate tuition fees annually. Be aware that tuition fees can rise during your degree (if longer than one year’s duration), and that this also means that the overall cost of studying the course part-time will be slightly higher than studying it full-time in one year. The annual increase for continuing students who start their degree in 2025/26 will be 5%.  For further information, see the  fees and funding , and terms and conditions.

** This figure is the fee for EU and international students starting a degree in the academic year 2025/26. Find out more

*** These estimated costs relate to studying this particular degree at Royal Holloway during the 2025/26 academic year, and are included as a guide. Costs, such as accommodation, food, books and other learning materials and printing, have not been included.