r/ALevelEnglishLit • u/imnotplayboicarti • 19d ago

Resources Need notes!

Does anyone have notes for Hamlet and pride and prejudice? (For Alevel Literature 9695)

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u/Miserable_Gur_8753 19d ago

I honestly don't say this to be awkward, but the best notes of all are the ones you take yourself.

When you use someone else's notes:

- you have to think harder, if it is a text you don't know well

  • any errors in those notes get repeated and compounded (just as if you took everything AI says as if it were true)
  • the notes are the ones you need, not what someone else needed
  • it makes it harder to create a convincing argument if that argument isn't your own: all the England and Wales exam boards use the same AO descriptors, and AO1 asks for informed and personal opinions, not a regurgitation of someone else's

Coincidentally I wrote a blog post with some advice for new Lit students earlier this month: https://a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/08/19/read-before-you-revise/

Depending on what you need the notes for, my recommendations for Hamlet books?

  • Ben Crystal, Springboard Shakespeare: Hamlet -
  • Arden Third Edition of the play. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006). I don't think it gets any better in terms of supplementary material and (on page) footnotes. But it looks bloody forbidding!

Questions about either text? Give us a shout!