English studies today aren't always about literature and language. But then, they never were.

English as an academic discipline was established toward the end of the nineteenth century when it took over from greats - the study of Greek and Latin. Traditionally, ancient texts - plays, poetry and prose - were studied in schools and universities, not just for their literary qualities, but also for their moral value. The theory was that reading Caesar's account of his campaigns in the Gallic Wars, or the poetry of Homer, would stiffen sinews, reinforce moral competence and instill crucial concepts of compassion and commitment. So, following on from that principle, the argument was that reading Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth could do the same.

Then came Modernism, Leavis and the New Criticism - the words on the page were what mattered, and never mind the context. Then came Structuralism and Theory - never mind the words on the page, what mattered were the underlying patterns or how the text related to the arguments of Marx or Foucault. Moral, social and cultural questions were done away with. Literature was supposed to be about nothing but itself.

But just recently there has been a change. Literature - and the study of English literature - is once more being used on the old model as a means of educating, as in the Latin, educare - "to lead out". In the last ten years or so all the main examining boards who are licensed by the government regulatory body, the Qualifications Curriculum Agency (QCA), have routinely begun to set contemporary novels as set texts for GCSE, AS and A-level exams, or else to suggest such works as appropriate choices for course work where the students are free to decide what it is that they wish to study.

It's easy to see why. If a student is reading Ian McEwan's Enduring Love or Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, then they are reading about the way that society works now, and they may go on to think about politics, relations between men and women, conventional hierarchies and social pressures as they are now.

So far so good. But how are teachers to teach these books when, by definition, they are so new that there is no body of received opinion or accessible factual resources on which to draw? This was how we came to have the idea for Vintage Living Texts. I am a University teacher, my colleague works in a school. We realised that there is currently very little available to help teachers and students who want to work with contemporary novels. And yet, at the same time, the examining boards are looking for a diversity of readings - intertextual, plural, complementary and comparative. Teachers in all kinds of school want to work in this way and with these kinds of materials, but practically speaking, they often don't have the time or the resources to set out on this journey on their own.

With Vintage Living Texts we ask questions rather than provide answers, and we make suggestions rather than prescriptions. We know that teachers can come up with their own answers given the right direction and that students can work out what's going on given the barest encouragement. We know too that - in many ways - the old idea of education as a leading out into the most intelligent, engaged and discerning ways of thinking about the world and our individual places in the world, is something that can be done through the reading of the literature that is happening now. We want students and teachers to be part of that. And Vintage Living Texts will give them the resources that they need.