The Dark Romantic ✦ A Home PhD

For the girl who read Wuthering Heights at fourteen and never really recovered.

Thousands of you commented "PHD" for my free syllabus. That was the reading list. This is the course: the lectures, the close readings, the exam, all of it, built into one Notion workspace you can live in for twelve weeks.

Inside the PhD:

• Six units, 800 years: medieval ballads → the Romantic revival → the Gothic → the Russians → the Pre-Raphaelites → the modern heirs (yes, Hozier)

• The lecture: why each moment mattered, in plain English, no academic fog

• The close reading: one text per unit, line by line

• Seminar questions, with the answers hidden in toggles so you can check yourself

• Write like them: an exercise in each era's form. Make it a poem, a letter, a story or a song

• The field guide: what to read, look at and listen to next

• The Reading List, Commonplace Book and Lexicon: track every work and keep every line that haunts you

• The Qualifying Exam and a Capstone, so you finish like an actual candidate

This is for you if you want to:

• Know what's actually happening in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings on your Pinterest board

• Be a student again, minus the tuition

• Give your taste a lineage, not just a vibe

• Steal from Keats properly for your own writing

What it asks of you:

A notebook, a library card and about four hours a week. Every anchor text is free online. What you're paying for is the thread that ties 800 years together, so you don't spend months building it yourself. It costs less than one new hardback.

How you'll get it:

• It's a Notion template, delivered to your inbox the second you check out

• Click Duplicate and it's yours, in your own free Notion account (desktop or app)

• Week one starts whenever you do