This is a contextualising study of the initial framing and subsequent shaping of 'English Literature' as an academic discipline and value-system. Normally studied in self-contained terms, the goal here is to place both the origins and the current identity of English Literature in broader thematic, institutional, national and disciplinary contexts, and so to explore the discipline’s capacity to continue to occupy a defining place at the heart of the Humanities. The study is divided into three parts. The first covers the inaugural period at the end of the nineteenth century, and the networks of educational influence that gave shape to the discipline as a course of university study. The second part extends a similar questioning of origins to other distinctive national contexts: South Africa, India, and the United States. The final part is located in the present moment and questions the evolving shape of the Humanities, and role of English Studies within this family of disciplines. No simple prescriptions are offered as to future pathways, the goal being of an evaluative rather than a prescriptive nature. It is our hope that the study will give density to our understanding of the discipline’s complex and changing identity by situating it in three-dimensional context, combining disciplinary breadth with chronological depth.