Extensive list of approved authors issued

The biggest addition to the new English curriculum is a long list of books and authors from which secondary school teachers must choose at least some titles.

Primary teachers are offered even more suggestions, but they will not be required to use those texts.

At present, the curriculum expects children to be introduced to pre-20th century work, but no authors or works are mentioned other than the Bible, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and the Bronte sisters.

The new proposals argue that secondary school is the right time for children to be introduced to their literary heritage, including some authors from other cultures.

Children aged between 11 and 14 will, 'as a minimum', read:

one play by Shakespeare;

drama 'appropriate for this age range';

some fiction published before 1900;

a range of fiction by other 'reputable writers';

two poets published before 1900;

three other 'major poets'.

Between 14 and 16 they must read the following:

one play by Shakespeare;

one play by 'a reputable dramatist' other than Shakespeare;

some fiction, 'at least one example of which' should be pre-1900;

two poets published before 1900;

and three other 'significant and influential' poets.

Across that age range (11 to 16) pupils should read Shakespeare plays chosen from at least two of three categories: comedies, tragedies and histories.

DRAMA:

Examples for 11 to 14-year-olds include Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, Pygmalion by G B Shaw, The Granny Project by Anne Fine and Roses of Eyam by D Taylor.

Between 14 and 16 pupils must read at least one play by one of the following authors: Harold Brighouse, Arthur Miller, Bill Naughton, J B Priestley, G B Shaw, R B Sheridan, Arnold Wesker, Thornton Wilder, Oliver Goldsmith, R C Sherriff, George Farquhar, Oscar Wilde, Robert Bolt, Peter Shaffer, Sean O'Casey, J M Synge, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett and Henrik Ibsen.

FICTION:

Between 11 and 14 pupils should read a range from the following, including some written pre-1900 (texts are example): R L Stevenson (Treasure Island), Mark Twain (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), Louisa M Alcott (Little Women), Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), Thomas Hardy (Wessex Tales), Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol), George Orwell, Stan Barstow, John Steinbeck, H G Wells, H E Bates, William Golding, J R R Tolkien, Nina Bawden, Alan Garner, Leon Garfield, Rosemary Sutcliff, Ursula le Guin, Penelope Lively, Jan Mark, Rukshana Smith, Michelle Magorian, Beverly Naidoo, Anne Holm, Berlie Doherty, Joan Lingard, Katherine Paterson, Philipa Pearce, Rosa Guy, Marjorie Darke, Gwyn Thomas.

Between 14 and 16 pupils should read some of the following, including at least one written before 1900 (texts are examples): Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels), George Eliot (Silas Marner), Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities), Thomas Hardy (The Mayor of Casterbridge), Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights), Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone), Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage), Graham Greene, D H Lawrence, H G Wells, H E Bates, William Golding, George Orwell, L P Hartley, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hemingway, Harper Lee, Laurie Lee, Ray Bradbury, Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Mildred Taylor, John Wyndham, Doris Lessing, Susan Hill, Joseph Conrad, E M Forster, Richard Hughes, Winifred Holtby, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

POETRY

Between 11 and 14 pupils should study at least five of the following, including at least two published before 1900: Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, W H Auden, T S Eliot, Robert Graves, R S Thomas, D H Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, Dylan Thomas, Grace Nichols, Gillian Clarke, Vernon Scannell, Edwin Muir, Elizabeth Jennings, Charles Causley, John Betjeman, Leslie Norris, Wendy Cope, James Berry, Anne Stevenson, William Blake, S T Coleridge, Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson.

Between 14 and 16 they should study poems by at least five of the following, including two pre-1900: Blake, Coleridge, Thomas Gray, Tennyson, William Wordsworth, Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Herrick, Matthew Arnold, Robert Burns, Robert Bridges, Christina Rossetti, George Herbert, John Donne, Dickinson, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Clare, Robert Frost, Heaney, Philip Larkin, Wilfred Owen, R S Thomas, Auden, W B Yeats, T S Eliot, Louis MacNeice, Brian Patten, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, Dannie Abse, Norman MacCaig, Edward Thomas.

For infant pupils (aged five to seven) the proposals say that children should learn to re-read favourite texts, learn favourite poems by heart, re- tell stories, choose their own books, and review their reading with their teacher.

Suggestions include nursery rhymes, poetry from anthologies such as Singing in the Sun, edited by Jill Bennett, or Poems for Seven-year-olds and Under edited by Helen Nicoll, and poems from collections such as Complete Poems for Children by James Reeves, Hot Dog and Other Poems by Kit Wright and Come On Into My Tropical Garden by Grace Nichols. A wide range of picture story books are also recommended - most of which are already in wide use in primary schools.

For junior pupils (8 to 11) the curriculum recommends verse, modern fiction, classic poetry, long-established writers, and work from other cultures.

Verse suggestions: Kit Wright, Ogden Nash, Brian Patten, James Reeves, Charles Causley, Michael Rosen, Ted Hughes, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Allan Ahlberg, Gareth Owen, and anthologies such as A Third Poetry Book edited by John Foster, The Golden Treasury of Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer, A Child's Garden of Verses edited by R L Stevenson and Poems for Over Ten-Year-Olds by Kit Wright. Examples of modern fiction writers are: Ian Serraillier, E B White, Betsy Byars, Rumer Godden, Gene Kemp, Russell Hoban, Rosemary Sutcliff, Jenny Nimmo, Dick King-Smith, Joan Aiken T H White, Leon Garfield, Susan Cooper, Philippa Pearce, Richard Adams, Clive King, Jill Paton Walsh, Alan Garner, Judith Kerr, Roald Dahl, Jill Murphy, Helen Cresswell. Recommended classic poetry: Sea Fever by John Masefield; The Wreck of the Hesperus, HW Longfellow; The Jumblies, Edward Lear; The Listeners, Walter de la Mare; You Are Old, Father William, Lewis Carroll; Macavity, the Mystery Cat, T S Eliot; The Highwayman, Alfred Noyes; It Was Long Ago, Eleanor Farjeon; and Tarantella, Hilaire Belloc. Long-established fiction examples: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Just William, Swallows and Amazons, The Wind in the Willows, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Winnie the Pooh, The Jungle Book, The Railway Children, The Little House on the Prairie, What Katy Did, The Borrowers.