Routledge A Level English Guides equip students with the skills they need to explore, evaluate, and enjoy English. Books in the series are built around the various skills specified in the assessment objectives (AOs) for all AS and A2 Level English courses. Focusing on the AOs most relevant to their topic, the books help students to develop their knowledge and abilities through analysis of lively texts and contemporary data. Each book in the series covers a different example of language and literary study, and offers accessible explanations, examples, exercises, a glossary of key terms, and suggested answers.

Richard Wright's "Native Son" (1940) is one of the most violent and revolutionary works in the American canon. Controversial and compelling, its account of crime and racism remain the source of profound disagreement both within African-American culture and throughout the world. This guide to Wright's provocative novel offers: an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of "Native Son"; a critical history, surveying the many interpretations of the text from publication to the present; a selection of reprinted critical essays on "Native Son", by James Baldwin, Hazel Rowley, Antony Dawahare, Claire Eby and James Smethurst...

Lord Byron (1788-1824) was a poet and satirist, as famous in his time for his love affairs and questionable morals as he was for his poetry. Looking beyond the scandal, Byron leaves us a body of work that proved crucial to the development of English poetry and provides a fascinating counterpoint to other writings of the Romantic period.
Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Byron and seeking not only a guide to his works but also a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds them.

As a woman in an illegal marriage, publishing under a male pseudonym, George Eliot was one of the most successful yet controversial writers of the Victorian period. Today she is considered a key figure for women’s writing and her novels, including The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, are commonly ranked as literary classics.
Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of George Eliot and seeking not only a guide to her works but also a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds them.

On publication Arundhati Roy's first novel The God of Small Things (1997) rapidly became an international bestseller, winning the Booker Prize and creating a new space for Indian literature and culture within the arts, even as it courted controversy and divided critical opinion.
Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of The God of Small Things and seeking not only a guide to the novel, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Roy's text.