All too often lost in the pressure and intensity of the current practice of English teachers and literacy educators is due acknowledgement of the continuing importance of history. This paper brings together two concerns: the work of Margaret Meek Spencer as a key figure in the history of English teaching, reading pedagogy and literacy education, and the value of curriculum inquiry as a resource for re-focusing and renewing the field. In that context, the paper introduces a particular notion of literature as curriculum, working first with one of Meek's most generative texts and then linking with another key figure in English curriculum history, James Moffett, to outline what is possible when the relationship between literature and curriculum is richly reconceptualised.