Hamnet is Maggie O’Farrell’s reimagining of the family behind Shakespeare’s most famous play: a marriage, a son who dies of plague in 1596, and the grief that, four years later, becomes Hamlet. This Student Textbook takes Higher Level students through the whole novel and toward the Single Text question on Paper 2.

• An introduction to the author and the novel, including why Shakespeare is never named
• A walk through the action in reading order, with the two timelines kept clear
• Full character studies, from Agnes at the centre to the nameless father at the edge, the children and supporting characters
• The key relationships and how they shift
• The central themes traced across the text
• A treatment of how the novel is told: the braided structure, the present-tense narration, the plague interlude
• Guidance on building a personal response
• A full exam section with sample essays, a practice-question bank and a master quotation bank

It is the student-facing companion to the Complete Teaching Pack. Where the Teaching Pack is what you run the class from, this is the book students read and revise from. A one-off teacher purchase, licensed for you to copy for your own students.

Higher Level; designed for use alongside the student’s own copy of the novel.