This course looks at the nineteenth and twentieth century novel in both Britain and Ireland in terms of historical context and literary technique. It examines social conditions in the nineteenth century and the importance of class in the novels of Charles Dickens; the relations between Britain and Ireland and questions of colonial and post-colonial literature in the works of James Joyce and Roddy Doyle; women writers and the literary canon through the novels of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf; and contemporary multicultural Britain as it is represented by Hanif Kureishi.