The Essential Books that you will need for Upsc English Optional and UGC Net English

There is no short cut and there is no replacement for hard labor. One must work hard to achieve success. Hard work also requires right tools, and in case of exams tools are books. Right books are very necessary for exam preparation, without correct books one cannot really prepare for exams well.
Fortunately, there are not many books which you must read for UGC NET English optional and UPSC English Literature optional, most books are same and they overlap.

The basic bare minimum books that you require for UPSC and UGC NET are as follows.

The essential books that overlap .

For history of English literature choose one of the following, the one by Edward Albert is Concise while one by Arthur Compton and David Daiches are larger. All of them are great, those one as per your needs.

•    History of English Literature by Edward Albert
•    The Routledge history of literature in English
•    A Critical History of English Literature by david Daiches
•    A History of English Literature by Arthur Compton
•    An Outline History of English Literature by William Henry Hudson.
•    The Short Oxford History of English Literature by Andrew Sanders 

For literary theory and Critical analysis, choose at least one usually people start with Peter Barry, it is a great book.

•    An Introduction to English Criticism by B. Prasad
•    Beginning Theory by Peter Barry
•    A Background to the study of English Literature by B.Prasad.
•    Contemporary Critical Theory by Patricia Waugh
•    Literary Theory - A History of Literary Criticism and Theory by M A R Habib
•    Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism to Ecocriticism Pramod K. Nayyar's 

Besides this you should also have a thorough understanding of Indian English diaspora, people usually choose Indian writing in English by Iyengar as bare minimum.

•    History of Indian Literature in English Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
•    Indian English Literature - A History of English Literature by M K Naik
•    Indian Writing in English by K R Srinivasa Iyengar
You must have thorough understanding of literary terms, get one by M.H Abrahams as starting point.
•    A Glossary of Literary Terms by M.H. Abrams
•    A Handbook of Literary Terms By Geoffrey Harpman 
•    Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory by Ja Cudon
Besides you should also use Wikipedia and other websites to clarify doubts, enough material is available online.

You should also get the following study materials if possible.

•  Ignou's Study material BA and MA
• School of Open Learning (SOL), University of Delhi (DU) study material for B.A

Specific Books and Additional books, For UPSC:-

• get atleast, books published by Wordview publications for specific texts to study critical texts and essays.
• If you cannot find anything, get your hads on Ramji Lal or Narayan series for Specific text to study critical texts and essays.
• If you can afford it, or if you have access to good library, nothing beats the Norton Critical Edition for essays.
• Old question paper is must.
• Read the actual text througly and then read the critical essays.
• For essays you can read  go to  websites enotes, sparknotes, jastor

Specific Books and Additional books, For UGC Net.

• Get Old question paper.
•  Get Arihant, Upkar or Trueman's book on english literature, mind this, these books have some errors, verify.
• Get a lot of practice set, practice is only key to sucess.

 I hope that this article will help aspirants and was helpful.

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