Teaching nineteenth-century literature can be an incredibly rewarding experience, resulting in lessons which are exciting and engaging and enable amazing levels of student progress. This essential handbook guides teachers through the key events of the period, offering theoretical approaches and a wealth of practical ideas for teaching nineteenth-century fiction and poetry in the secondary classroom. Supporting and inspiring teachers as they introduce nineteenth-century texts to their students and nurture their interest and enthusiasm for the genre, Teaching Nineteenth-Century Literature provides a grounding in the major historical events of the nineteenth century, describes pedagogical approaches to teaching fiction and poetry, and offers step-by-step guidance on the use of literary resources. Chapters offer advice on overcoming the particular challenges of the genre, including unwieldy plots, complex vocabulary and unfamiliar sentence structures, and illustrate how texts from the period can be made fully accessible to even the youngest pupils. With a range of detailed activities, photocopiable lesson plans, case studies and extracts for use in the classroom, teachers will be able to quickly and easily build a scheme of work that is stimulating and beneficial for children of varying abilities. Equipping teachers with the knowledge, understanding and resources they need to teach nineteenth-century literature in an engaging, inspiring and intellectually stimulating way, this practical and accessible text will be an invaluable resource for secondary school English teachers, students and trainees.

Teaching nineteenth-century literature can be an incredibly rewarding experience, resulting in lessons which are exciting and engaging and enable amazing levels of student progress. This essential handbook guides teachers through the key events of the period, offering theoretical approaches and a wealth of practical ideas for teaching nineteenth-century fiction and poetry in the secondary classroom. Supporting and inspiring teachers as they introduce nineteenth-century texts to their students and nurture their interest and enthusiasm for the genre, Teaching Nineteenth-Century Literature provides a grounding in the major historical events of the nineteenth century, describes pedagogical approaches to teaching fiction and poetry, and offers step-by-step guidance on the use of literary resources. Chapters offer advice on overcoming the particular challenges of the genre, including unwieldy plots, complex vocabulary and unfamiliar sentence structures, and illustrate how texts from the period can be made fully accessible to even the youngest pupils. With a range of detailed activities, photocopiable lesson plans, case studies and extracts for use in the classroom, teachers will be able to quickly and easily build a scheme of work that is stimulating and beneficial for children of varying abilities. Equipping teachers with the knowledge, understanding and resources they need to teach nineteenth-century literature in an engaging, inspiring and intellectually stimulating way, this practical and accessible text will be an invaluable resource for secondary school English teachers, students and trainees.

This book brings together the experiences of Anglo-American teachers and discusses some of the challenges which face teachers of nineteenth-century fiction, suggesting practical ways in which these might start to be overcome by considering the constantly changing canon, issues related to course design and the possibilities offered by film and ICT.

Jennifer Travis and Jessica DeSpain present a long-overdue collection of theoretical perspectives and case studies aimed at teaching nineteenth-century American literature using digital humanities tools and methods. Scholars foundational to the development of digital humanities join educators who have made digital methods central to their practices. Together they discuss and illustrate how digital pedagogies deepen student learning. The collection's innovative approach allows the works to be read in any order. Dividing the essays into five sections, Travis and DeSpain curate conversations on the value of project-based, collaborative learning; examples of real-world assignments where students combine close, collaborative, and computational reading; how digital humanities aids in the consideration of marginal texts; the ways in which an ethics of care can help students organize artifacts; and how an activist approach affects debates central to the study of difference in the nineteenth century.

American publishing in the long nineteenth century was flooded with readers, primers, teaching-training manuals, children’s literature, and popular periodicals aimed at families. These publications attest to an abiding faith in the power of pedagogy that has its roots in transatlantic Romantic conceptions of pedagogy and literacy. The essays in this collection examine the on-going influence of Romanticism in the long nineteenth century on American thinking about education, as depicted in literary texts, in historical accounts of classroom dynamics, or in pedagogical treatises. They also point out that though this influence was generally progressive, the benefits of this social change did not reach many parts of American society. This book is therefore an important reference for scholars of Romantic studies, American studies, historical pedagogy and education.

Both a historical recovery and a critical rethinking of the functions and practices of textbooks, Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States argues for an alternative understanding of our rhetorical traditions. The authors describe how the pervasive influence of nineteenth-century literacy textbooks demonstrate the early emergence of substantive instruction in reading and writing. Tracing the histories of widespread educational practices, the authors treat the textbooks as an important means of cultural formation that restores a sense of their distinguished and unique contributions. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, few people in the United States had access to significant school education or to the materials of instruction. By century’s end, education was a mass—though not universal—experience, and literacy textbooks were ubiquitous artifacts, used both in home and in school by a growing number of learners from diverse backgrounds. Many of the books have been forgotten, their contributions slighted or dismissed, or they are remembered through a haze of nostalgia as tokens of an idyllic form of schooling. Archives of Instruction suggests strategies for re-reading the texts and details the watersheds in the genre, providing a new perspective on the material conditions of schooling, book publication, and emerging practices of literacy instruction. The volume includes a substantial bibliography of primary and secondary works related to literacy instruction at all levels of education in the United States during the nineteenth century.

Tracing the segmentation of the literary marketplace in 19th century America, this book analyses the implications of the subdivided literary field for readers, writers, and literature itself.