Black History Month

Black British Writing

Think about what you understand by the idea of our English literary heritage. Whose names and faces come to mind when you hear these terms? Shakespeare? Dickens? Keats?

Whichever authors you picture as stalwarts of the literary canon, do they have any physical characteristics in common? Are they men? Are they white? Are they dead? The answer may not always be yes to all of these questions, but we would be willing to bet that it is more often than it is not.

And perhaps we say, so what? The fact that Dickens was a white man does not mean that his personal experiences and literary representations of 19th-century life speak for every other white man of the time, let alone the myriad other individuals going about their business in Victorian Britain! Yet as much as these canonical authors are the creators of some of our greatest works of British literature, and rightly studied and celebrated, they also become imbued with more significance than that. They become (or personify) a defining quality of what ‘greatness’ and ‘literature’ mean, and ultimately what ‘Britishness’ means.

Each Friday in October, we'll be releasing a new blog post looking at the different eras of black British writing and highlighting the key literary moments and authors who have contributed to the British Literary heritage. 

We'll also be creating free downloadable booklets each week for you to share with colleagues and students.