Leaving Certificate English prescribed texts 2026

The Leaving Certificate prescribes its English texts two years ahead by circular, and the 2026 list (Circular 0016/2024) is the one sixth-years are sitting this June. Higher and Ordinary Level candidates study one single text in depth, three texts for the comparative study (from the novels, memoirs, plays and films on the list), and the prescribed poets. The books above are every prose and drama title on the official list that we catalogue; the films and the poetry selections are prescribed too but are not books with first editions, and a few titles (Sive, Young Skins, Girl on an Altar, Notes from a Coma, Elena Knows, The Cove, Once Before I Go, Colder Than Here, A Boy in the Water) are not yet in our catalogue.

The 2026 list is a strong one for collectors. Dracula was published by Constable in 1897 in yellow cloth lettered in red and a first edition is a five-figure book; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (T. C. Newby, 1848, three volumes, "by Acton Bell") is rarer still; Rebecca (Gollancz, 1938) is among the most collected twentieth-century British firsts; The Big Sleep (Knopf, 1939) is the same for American crime fiction. At the other end, Small Things Like These (Faber, 2021) and Hamnet (Tinder Press, 2020) are modern firsts that can still be bought for the price of a hardback, and both are worth buying signed.

Each row links to the book's page with the first edition identified against two sources, its points where known and a value band once we hold recorded sales. A school copy of any of these is a reprint worth a few euro; the pages show what the first printing looks like.