Tutor information
Octavia Cox
Dr Octavia Cox completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford, has taught and lectured at the University of Oxford, the University of Nottingham, and elsewhere, and has published various peer-reviewed chapters and articles. Her first monograph, Alexander Pope and Romantic Poetics, is forthcoming. She is currently researching a book provisionally titled Jane Austen and Genre.
Courses
Some of the great writers of the Victorian period were women. Find out how they portrayed women's issues and lives in such compelling fiction.
Many readers enjoy Austen's novels, but what makes them so special and enduring? Learn to analyse Austen's characteristic style and techniques and thus gain an enhanced appreciation of her art.
This course will focus on works by four of the era's major figures - Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy - identifying how the century's main preoccupations find substance in the work of its greatest writers.
Many readers enjoy Austen's novels, but what makes them so special and enduring? Learn to analyse Austen's characteristic style and techniques and thus gain an enhanced appreciation of her art.
How did three sisters living apparently secluded, eventless lives write such original, passionate and dramatic literature? This course is for anyone who has read or would like to read the work of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë.
Many readers enjoy Austen's novels, but what makes them so special and enduring? Learn to analyse Austen's characteristic style and techniques and thus gain an enhanced appreciation of her art.
How did three sisters living apparently secluded, eventless lives write such original, passionate and dramatic literature? This course is for anyone who has read or would like to read the work of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë.
The Brontë sisters wrote passionate otherworldly novels that nevertheless addressed contemporary issues for Victorian women. Discover how they interwove 'Gothic' and 'Realism' making them crucial figures in the development of the novel genre.
The 'novel' genre was given its name because it was new and innovative. But what was novel about novels? How did they come about? And why were they immediately so popular? This course considers how and why the novel began.
This course dives deep into Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility (1811), analysing and contextualising key elements of the novel.
Have you ever been moved by a poem and wondered, 'how did the author do that?' This course offers an introduction to the foundations of poetry, exploring rhythm, rhyme and structure from both practical and theoretical perspectives.