We’re excited to announce the launch of the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group, an online group for everyone who is interested in reading and discussing the classics. The Oxford World’s Classics social media channels will provide a forum for conversation around the chosen book, and every three months we will choose a new work of classic literature for the group to read. The editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of the book will provide literary context, discussion questions, and lead an online question-and-answer session around the book.
We’re starting our first season of the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group with Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s classic love story that incorporates themes such as social class, death and the afterlife, and the supernatural. The setting, a remote farmhouse on the moors of Northern England, is bleak, harsh, wild, and unpredictable, reflecting many of the novel’s characters. Helen Small, Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Wuthering Heights, will be leading the Reading Group this season.
If you have a classic that you’ve always wanted to read, let us know and we’ll consider it for next season. In this video, Oxford University Press staff from offices all over the world talk about classic books they’ve always wanted to read but haven’t yet:
You can follow along, and join in the conversation by following us on Twitter and Facebook, and by using the hashtag #OWCreads.
Heading image: Old books. CC0 via Pixabay.
And can I follow or join in the reading group conversation if I use neither facebook or twitter (but I do use tumblr)?
[…] Oxford University Press announced their World’s Classics Reading Group. […]
I’d like to second Peter’s comment. Can we use Tumblr to join the conversation?
Hi Peter and Amy,
You can indeed follow along on Tumblr as well. Check the Oxford Academic (OUP) Tumblr at http://oupacademic.tumblr.com or follow the Oxford World’s Classics tag specifically: http://oupacademic.tumblr.com/search/oxford+world's+classics.
Best,
Alice, OUPblog Editor
Hi Alice. Thanks for that. But I’m perhaps being a bit thick. I know I can “follow along” (I’ve been doing so for some time – and very good it is too) but how precisely do I “join in the conversation” on Tumblr, without jumping out of it into this blog (which I’m happy to do), where, I would hope the “conversation” would be also available? Or is this another facebook/twitter takeover which all major and would-be major institutions seem to have fallen for (e.g. I recently found I could not get a “free book” on joining the British Humanist Association without also having a facebook account to “like”)?
Presumably the online discussion led by the book’s editor will be based on this blog? I hope it is because I’d like to follow it and maybe have something to say if it gets into the works of James Joyce.
[…] out more about the Oxford World’s Classics reading group, and the title of the first book under discussion, Wuthering Heights by Emily […]
How about Ulysses? I’ve been threatening to read it for years. #OWCreads