Excellence in Literature

Excellence in Literature is Janice Campbell's five-year high-school literature and composition curriculum, the program a substantial share of classical, Charlotte Mason, and rigorous-college-prep homeschool families use to carry English 9 through 12. It is an unusual product: written by one person, sold as a PDF or a printed workbook, and widely trusted in circles that do not typically agree on much else.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Literature-based / classical / reader-response with analytical writing
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (Campbell writes from a Christian perspective; reading list is academic)
Grades	9-12 (five levels spanning four years of high-school English credit)
Formats	Print workbook, PDF, bundled honors-edition upgrades
Cost tier	Budget (exceptional value for a full-year English credit)
Parent intensity	3 (moderate, student-driven with parent feedback on essays)
ESA-common	Yes, widely on marketplaces that accept general curriculum
Accredited	No (but the material is college-prep and recognized as such)
Established	First edition circa 2009; current editions revised through the 2020s
Website	excellenceinliterature.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Reading list and essay demands are genuinely college-prep
Ease of teaching	4	Designed for student independence; parent is editor, not instructor
Content quality	5	Thoughtful, careful, written by someone who has taught high-school lit for decades
Flexibility	4	Five levels combinable in multiple sequences; honors add-ons available
Value for money	5	Full year of high-school English for approximately $35-$60 per level
Worldview scope	4	Usable across traditions; Christian framing present but not dominant in assignments
Visual/design	3	Text-heavy, clean, unadorned; designed for reading rather than browsing
Support resources	4	Author's blog, evaluator list, online community, optional writing-feedback service

Who the publisher is

Excellence in Literature is the imprint of Janice Campbell, a longtime homeschool educator, author, and speaker who graduated her own four sons from her high-school program and has taught literature and composition in homeschool and co-op settings for more than three decades. Campbell also writes about homeschooling and small-business topics under her Everyday Education umbrella. The Excellence in Literature materials began as a series she developed for her own family and grew into a published curriculum as the demand became obvious at convention speaking engagements.

The program is a single-author, direct-to-consumer operation. Campbell sells through her website and a small network of homeschool retailers; there is no corporate publisher behind the imprint. This matters editorially because the materials carry one voice throughout, a student working English 1 through English 4 is reading instructions from the same author, with consistent expectations, consistent feedback rubrics, and consistent literary sensibility. Few high-school curricula achieve this.

Campbell writes from a Christian perspective, which surfaces in the author's occasional commentary and in some context pages, but the reading lists are broadly canonical rather than specifically Christian. A student works through Shakespeare, Homer, Austen, Dickens, Hawthorne, Wharton, Orwell, and Achebe, not through Christian-publisher-authored analogs. Campbell's worldview shapes how she thinks about literature and what she says about why literature matters; it does not determine what the student reads or what the essay assignments ask. Classical, Charlotte Mason, Catholic, mainline Protestant, Jewish, and secular homeschool families use the program with minimal adaptation.

The core pedagogy

Excellence in Literature is structured around an old and sound educational idea: a student who reads nine substantial literary works across a school year, writes thoughtfully about each, and engages with historical and biographical context around each work has received a serious high-school English credit. Campbell organizes each level around exactly that, nine module units, each anchored by a "Focus Text" (the primary work) and a "Context Resources" layer (criticism, biography, historical framing), culminating in a "Performance Assessment" that is typically an analytical essay of 1,500-2,500 words.

Scope across the five levels is sequenced to build sophistication: Introduction to Literature (Level 1) establishes analytical reading and essay structure; Literature and Composition (Level 2) adds rhetorical awareness; American Literature (Level 3), British Literature (Level 4), and World Literature (Level 5) move into national and global traditions with greater depth and independence expected. Families typically use Introduction in ninth grade and two or three of the national/world levels across tenth through twelfth, assembling four credits of high-school English from the five-level catalog.

Signature mechanics: (1) Focus-Text / Context-Resources / Performance Assessment structure. Every module follows the same architecture, which makes the program easy to adapt across a school year. (2) Student-independent design. A motivated tenth- or eleventh-grader can work Excellence in Literature largely without lesson-by-lesson parent direction, checking in for essay feedback at the end of each module. This is the single biggest reason the program is widely adopted: it frees the parent from daily literature instruction. (3) Honors-track upgrades. Several levels include optional add-ons (additional reading, research paper, extended writing) that produce honors-level transcripts for high-achieving students. (4) Essay feedback as the primary assessment. Campbell provides evaluation rubrics and maintains a list of optional third-party evaluators for families who want external grading.

A day in the life

An eleventh-grader working Excellence in Literature Level 3 (American Literature) spends approximately four to six hours per week on English credit. On Monday she begins a new module. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, say, by reading the module introduction (twenty minutes), reviewing the Focus Text reading schedule (five minutes), and beginning the novel. Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons she reads forty to sixty pages per day. Thursday she reads the assigned Context Resources, a biographical sketch, a brief historical-political framing piece, a short critical essay, totaling about forty-five minutes. Friday she drafts her essay outline from the module's assessment prompt.

The following week she continues reading (Monday through Wednesday), drafts the essay (Thursday), and revises (Friday), with the final essay due at the end of module week two. Her parent reviews the essay against the Excellence in Literature rubric, provides written feedback on argument structure, evidence use, and mechanics, and the student revises one final time. The parent's active teaching time across a two-week module runs perhaps ninety minutes total, a pre-reading conversation at the start, a mid-point check-in, and the essay-feedback session. Across a nine-module year, a student produces nine substantial analytical essays, reads approximately nine full-length canonical works, and engages with roughly forty context-layer readings.

What they do exceptionally well

Coherent architecture across four years. A student who works Levels 1 through 4 across ninth through twelfth grade has read more than thirty-five canonical works and written more than thirty-five analytical essays, with progressive sophistication in the rubric and consistent voice from the author. Few high-school English programs, homeschool or classroom, produce that kind of coherent through-line.

Genuine college-prep writing output. The essay load is serious. A student graduating from Level 4 or Level 5 with essays scored against Campbell's rubric is producing college-entry-level analytical prose. Families whose children go on to competitive admissions find the program's writing output credible as documented work in a portfolio or for Common Application supplements.

Student-independent without being thin. The program is among a small number of high-school English options that a capable student can actually work through mostly independently, with parent involvement concentrated at the essay-feedback phase. Families with multiple high-school students or with parents who themselves do not have strong literature backgrounds find this particularly useful.

What they do poorly

Visual design is modest. The workbook format is clean and readable, but the materials are text-heavy and unadorned, no photographs, no color, no trade-book production values. Campbell has made deliberate editorial choices in this direction (the money is in the content, not the packaging), which serves the student who reads rather than browses but may feel dated to families coming from publisher-polished alternatives.

Honors upgrades require parent judgment to deploy. The honors-track add-ons produce strong transcript entries, but Campbell's guidance on when and how to apply them is scattered across her blog, the preface of each level, and the author's speaking engagements. A family buying the base product and not reading the surrounding material may underuse the feature.

Not a grammar program. Excellence in Literature assumes a student has solid grammar, mechanics, and sentence-level writing skills coming in. Families whose ninth-grader has not had a structured grammar sequence in middle school will find Campbell's essay feedback productive but the mechanics gap unaddressed; a separate grammar or writing-mechanics program is needed.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Excellence in Literature if: you are a classical, Charlotte Mason, or rigorous college-prep family looking to carry high-school English with canonical reading and analytical essays; you have a motivated student who can work independently across two-week modules; you value a single consistent author voice across four years; you want documented essay output for college applications; your child has a solid grammar and mechanics foundation already.

• Skip Excellence in Literature if: you want a program that teaches grammar, vocabulary, and literature together in an integrated package; your student is not yet reading at grade level and needs scaffolded entry to analytical reading; you prefer a video-based or teacher-led high-school English; you want a specifically Christian reading list with biblical worldview commentary on each work; your student finds text-heavy materials unmotivating and needs visual or multimedia reinforcement.

Cost honest assessment

Per the Excellence in Literature product pages as of April 2026, individual levels retail at approximately $35-$60 for the workbook or PDF (PDFs are lower-cost), with occasional bundle pricing across levels. A family purchasing all five levels for sequential use across a student's high-school career spends approximately $175-$275 total, covering four or five full credits of high-school English.

Compared to Sonlight American Literature (roughly $180-$250 for a single-year package including books), Veritas Press Omnibus III-IV (roughly $200-$450 per year plus book purchases), or Memoria Press Literature Guides (roughly $25-$40 per title across a year), Excellence in Literature is the most inexpensive of the serious college-prep options. The economics change meaningfully if a family already owns or library-borrows the literature titles; if not, add $60-$120 per year in book purchases.

A realistic all-in family budget for Excellence in Literature plus book acquisition runs $100-$200 per year of high-school English, across which the program itself is the smallest line.

ESA eligibility notes

Excellence in Literature is approved on most state ESA marketplaces where general-education curriculum is accepted, including Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students, West Virginia's Hope Scholarship, and Utah Fits All. Campbell's Christian framing in the author's commentary has not historically triggered religious-materials restrictions because the assignments themselves are academic and tradition-neutral. Families on marketplaces with more restrictive vendor processes may need to submit the PDF or print purchase as a book-equivalent line item. Campbell's site offers direct purchase rather than a dedicated ESA vendor workflow; families submit reimbursement through their state program.

Alternatives

• Memoria Press Classical Literature, a family would choose Memoria Press over Excellence in Literature for a more structured, guided study-guide approach rooted specifically in the classical tradition with emphasis on Greek and Latin classics.
• Progeny Press Literature Guides, a family would choose Progeny Press over Excellence in Literature for explicit Christian-worldview commentary on each literary work, aimed at families wanting theological engagement with the reading.
• Lightning Literature and Composition (Hewitt Homeschooling), a family would choose Lightning Literature over Excellence in Literature for a more structured grammar-and-composition integrated format that combines literature study with explicit writing instruction.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Excellence in Literature product pages, syllabus overviews, sample module spreads, and author biography at excellenceinliterature.com. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy's published review of the program and the HSLDA high-school curriculum directory. Prices and program details verified April 2026.