Junior Cycle English prescribed texts 2024 to 2027

Junior Cycle English in Ireland prescribes its novels, plays, films and poetry by cohort, so the pupils who started first year in September 2024 and sit the examination in 2027 work from Circular 0051/2024, and later cohorts from the new list in Circular 0038/2025. Schools choose from the prescribed novels and drama, and Higher Level candidates must study one Shakespeare play. The books above are the novels and plays on the 2027 list that we catalogue.

The list is where the Irish and American canons meet: Of Mice and Men and The Outsiders sit beside Sense and Sensibility and Jekyll and Hyde, with le Carré's Call for the Dead and Elmore Leonard's Hombre as the genre picks and The Old Man and the Sea as the shortest classic a thirteen-year-old is asked to read. For the collector the standouts are The Old Man and the Sea (Scribner's, 1952, first printing with the "A" and the seal), Call for the Dead (Gollancz, 1961, John le Carré's first book and a very expensive first in jacket), Of Mice and Men (Covici-Friede, 1937) and Jekyll and Hyde (Longmans, 1886), with Sense and Sensibility (Egerton, 1811, "By a Lady") the rare-book-room entry.

A school copy of any of these is a reprint worth a few euro. Each row links to the book's page, where the first edition is identified against two sources, its points are listed and a value band appears once we hold recorded sales of that printing.