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Introduction
1. Exam overview
1.1 The new digital format
1.2 Scoring your exam
1.3 Basic test taking strategies
1.4 Tips for time management
1.5 List of literary works
2. Literary devices
3. Literary movements
4. Close reading techniques
5. The multiple choice section
6. Tackling the essays
Wrapping up
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1.5 List of literary works
Achievable AP English Literature
1. Exam overview
Our AP English Literature and Composition course is currently in development and is a work-in-progress.

List of literary works

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Overview of literary works

The College Board doesn’t provide a required reading list or a guaranteed set of works that will appear on the exam. Instead, it offers a broad list of poets and authors you can use to guide your reading. Below is a shortened version of that list.

You’ll want to recognize these names. It’s also recommended that you select at least one or two authors from each category to read closely outside of class. On the exam, you’re expected to comprehend and analyze writing at the level represented by these literary creators.

Fiction

  • Chinua Achebe
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Isabel Allende
  • Rudolfo Anaya
  • Margaret Atwood
  • Jane Austen
  • James Baldwin
  • Charlotte Brontë
  • Emily Brontë
  • Octavia E. Butler
  • Raymond Carver
  • John Cheever
  • Sandra Cisneros
  • Joseph Conrad
  • Daniel Defoe
  • Charles Dickens
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • George Eliot
  • Louise Erdrich
  • William Faulkner
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • E. M. Forster
  • Yaa Gyasi
  • Mohsin Hamid
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • Khaled Hosseini
  • Zora Neale Hurston
  • Kazuo Ishiguro
  • James Joyce
  • Jack Kerouac
  • Porochista Khakpour
  • Barbara Kingsolver
  • Joy Kogawa
  • Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Margaret Laurence
  • Chang-rae Lee
  • Ian McEwan
  • Herman Melville
  • Toni Morrison
  • Bharati Mukherjee
  • Vladimir Nabokov
  • Katherine Anne Porter
  • Sir Walter Scott
  • Amy Tan
  • Mark Twain
  • John Updike
  • Alice Walker
  • Edith Wharton
  • Virginia Woolf
  • Richard Wright

Poetry

  • W. H. Auden
  • Amiri Baraka
  • John Berryman
  • Elizabeth Bishop
  • William Blake
  • Edward Kamau Brathwaite
  • Gwendolyn Brooks
  • Robert Browning
  • George Gordon, Lord Byron
  • Geoffrey Chaucer
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • E.E. Cummings
  • Emily Dickinson
  • Rita Dove
  • T.S. Eliot
  • Robert Frost
  • Allen Ginsberg
  • George Herbert
  • Garrett Hongo
  • Langston Hughes
  • John Keats
  • Philip Larkin
  • Denise Levertov
  • John Milton
  • Frank O’Hara
  • Sylvia Plath
  • Edgar Allen Poe
  • Ezra Pound
  • Sonia Sanchez
  • William Shakespeare
  • Ntozake Shange
  • Gary Snyder
  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • Walt Whitman
  • William Wordsworth
  • William Butler Yeats

Drama

  • Aeschylus
  • Edward Albee
  • Amiri Baraka
  • Samuel Beckett
  • Anton Checkhov
  • Athol Fugard
  • Lorraine Hansberry
  • Lillian Hellman
  • David Henry Hwang
  • Henrik Ibsen
  • David Mamet
  • Arthur Miller
  • Molière
  • Eugene O’Neill
  • Suzan-Lori Parks
  • Harold PInter
  • William Shakespeare
  • George Bernard Shaw
  • Sam Shepard
  • Neil Simon
  • Sophocles
  • Luis Valdez
  • Oscar Wilde
  • Tennessee Williams
  • August Wilson

Expository prose

  • Joseph Addison
  • Gloria Anzaldua
  • Matthew Arnold
  • James Baldwin
  • James Boswell
  • Jesús Colón
  • Joan Didion
  • Frederick Douglass
  • W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • William Hazlitt
  • bell hooks
  • Samuel Johnson
  • Charles Lamb
  • Thomas Macaulay
  • Mary McCarthy
  • John Stuart Mill
  • George Orwell
  • Michael Pollan
  • Richard Rodriguez
  • Edward Said
  • Lewis Thomas
  • Henry David Thoreau
  • E. B. White
  • Virginia Woolf

Fiction

  • Know key authors from diverse backgrounds and time periods
  • Read deeply from at least 1-2 authors in this category
  • Be prepared to analyze works at this level of complexity

Poetry

  • Familiarize with major poets across eras and styles
  • Select and study poems from at least 1-2 poets
  • Recognize important poetic forms and voices

Drama

  • Identify significant playwrights from classical to modern periods
  • Read and analyze at least 1-2 plays
  • Understand dramatic structure and themes

Expository Prose

  • Know influential essayists and nonfiction writers
  • Read selections from at least 1-2 authors
  • Be able to analyze argumentative and reflective prose styles
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List of literary works

Overview of literary works

The College Board doesn’t provide a required reading list or a guaranteed set of works that will appear on the exam. Instead, it offers a broad list of poets and authors you can use to guide your reading. Below is a shortened version of that list.

You’ll want to recognize these names. It’s also recommended that you select at least one or two authors from each category to read closely outside of class. On the exam, you’re expected to comprehend and analyze writing at the level represented by these literary creators.

Fiction

  • Chinua Achebe
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Isabel Allende
  • Rudolfo Anaya
  • Margaret Atwood
  • Jane Austen
  • James Baldwin
  • Charlotte Brontë
  • Emily Brontë
  • Octavia E. Butler
  • Raymond Carver
  • John Cheever
  • Sandra Cisneros
  • Joseph Conrad
  • Daniel Defoe
  • Charles Dickens
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • George Eliot
  • Louise Erdrich
  • William Faulkner
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • E. M. Forster
  • Yaa Gyasi
  • Mohsin Hamid
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • Khaled Hosseini
  • Zora Neale Hurston
  • Kazuo Ishiguro
  • James Joyce
  • Jack Kerouac
  • Porochista Khakpour
  • Barbara Kingsolver
  • Joy Kogawa
  • Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Margaret Laurence
  • Chang-rae Lee
  • Ian McEwan
  • Herman Melville
  • Toni Morrison
  • Bharati Mukherjee
  • Vladimir Nabokov
  • Katherine Anne Porter
  • Sir Walter Scott
  • Amy Tan
  • Mark Twain
  • John Updike
  • Alice Walker
  • Edith Wharton
  • Virginia Woolf
  • Richard Wright

Poetry

  • W. H. Auden
  • Amiri Baraka
  • John Berryman
  • Elizabeth Bishop
  • William Blake
  • Edward Kamau Brathwaite
  • Gwendolyn Brooks
  • Robert Browning
  • George Gordon, Lord Byron
  • Geoffrey Chaucer
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • E.E. Cummings
  • Emily Dickinson
  • Rita Dove
  • T.S. Eliot
  • Robert Frost
  • Allen Ginsberg
  • George Herbert
  • Garrett Hongo
  • Langston Hughes
  • John Keats
  • Philip Larkin
  • Denise Levertov
  • John Milton
  • Frank O’Hara
  • Sylvia Plath
  • Edgar Allen Poe
  • Ezra Pound
  • Sonia Sanchez
  • William Shakespeare
  • Ntozake Shange
  • Gary Snyder
  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • Walt Whitman
  • William Wordsworth
  • William Butler Yeats

Drama

  • Aeschylus
  • Edward Albee
  • Amiri Baraka
  • Samuel Beckett
  • Anton Checkhov
  • Athol Fugard
  • Lorraine Hansberry
  • Lillian Hellman
  • David Henry Hwang
  • Henrik Ibsen
  • David Mamet
  • Arthur Miller
  • Molière
  • Eugene O’Neill
  • Suzan-Lori Parks
  • Harold PInter
  • William Shakespeare
  • George Bernard Shaw
  • Sam Shepard
  • Neil Simon
  • Sophocles
  • Luis Valdez
  • Oscar Wilde
  • Tennessee Williams
  • August Wilson

Expository prose

  • Joseph Addison
  • Gloria Anzaldua
  • Matthew Arnold
  • James Baldwin
  • James Boswell
  • Jesús Colón
  • Joan Didion
  • Frederick Douglass
  • W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • William Hazlitt
  • bell hooks
  • Samuel Johnson
  • Charles Lamb
  • Thomas Macaulay
  • Mary McCarthy
  • John Stuart Mill
  • George Orwell
  • Michael Pollan
  • Richard Rodriguez
  • Edward Said
  • Lewis Thomas
  • Henry David Thoreau
  • E. B. White
  • Virginia Woolf
Key points

Fiction

  • Know key authors from diverse backgrounds and time periods
  • Read deeply from at least 1-2 authors in this category
  • Be prepared to analyze works at this level of complexity

Poetry

  • Familiarize with major poets across eras and styles
  • Select and study poems from at least 1-2 poets
  • Recognize important poetic forms and voices

Drama

  • Identify significant playwrights from classical to modern periods
  • Read and analyze at least 1-2 plays
  • Understand dramatic structure and themes

Expository Prose

  • Know influential essayists and nonfiction writers
  • Read selections from at least 1-2 authors
  • Be able to analyze argumentative and reflective prose styles

More from Exam overview

  • The new digital format
  • Scoring your exam
  • Basic test taking strategies
  • Tips for time management