A generation of Open University teaching materials appears to provide the model for these books. Each is designed to provide a critical introduction to a literary topic or genre for students “at advanced level”, but what is meant by advanced level shifts uncertainly from book to book and indeed within the individual texts.

Although there is a uniform and systematic teaching structure common to the whole series, the style and content are formal and academic, and differ in their allowances for the critical inexperience and limited reading background of most sixth-formers.

The Victorian Novel makes almost no concessions. It provides a compendium of useful support material for the teacher, but is chiefly designed for self-study and distance learning on the part of motivated adult learners. On the other hand, given appropriate guidance from the teacher, Satire and Shakespeare and Jacobean Tragedy could encourage, stimulate and challenge the most able student groups in schools.

Each book is split into four main sections. The first introduces the topic and the main critical issues that it raises, especially the historical, cultural, and literary contexts - the situation of both writer and reader - that determine how texts can be read.

The second elaborates these contextual questions as an approach to the third section, an anthology of relevant extracts.

Last, there are chapters comparing critical approaches and giving advice to students on their writing.

Much the best and most useful of these four books is Post-Colonial Literature. Before GCSE, all students should have come across a range of texts in English from other cultures, and begun to understand how literature reflects a multicultural society in Britain and is produced across the world in the wake of a colonial past. In higher education, post-colonial criticism and theory are firmly established, as is feminist criticism, as an important critical discourse in their own right.

There is a need for well-designed intermediate material which can bridge the gap for students between introductory encounters and advanced academic study. Christopher O’Reilly‘s book does this. It is a balanced, clear and thoughtful presentation which teachers and students will find very helpful. A particularly well-chosen set of extracts from the literatures of India, Africa, South Africa and the Caribbean supports O’Reilly‘s exploration of many important questions.

This book certainly has a place in schools and could be a centre-piece for courses. The others are marginal resources where accessible presentation is often hindered by intimidating content.

Peter Hollindale