The NCERT Class 11 English book Hornbill is the main reader for Class 11 English, and this page has all ten of its chapters — the official PDF of each, and what is actually inside them.
Even if you have the Hornbill PDF open, this page is a convenient index of what the textbook actually contains: the printed page range of each reading chapter (The Portrait of a Lady opens at page 1, Silk Road ends at page 69), the exercise blocks that close every reading text — Understanding the text, Talking about the text, Thinking about language, Working with words, and Things to do, with Noticing form in several chapters — and the activities scattered through the book, including two in Discovering Tut and one each in Sub-titling and Essay-writing.
The book is split in two: six reading chapters (pp. 1–69) and four writing skill units that follow them. That shape decides how you study it, and the rest of this page shows you why.
Download the official Hornbill chapter PDFs
Every file in the table below is NCERT’s own PDF, hosted on ncert.nic.in — the same official source as the opening chapter, The Portrait of a Lady — so what you download is always the board’s file, never a rehosted copy.
| Ch. | Chapter | Pages | Official PDF |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Portrait of a Lady | 11 | |
| 2 | “We’re Not Afraid to Die… if We Can All Be Together” | 9 | |
| 3 | Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues | 14 | |
| 4 | The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement's Role | 8 | |
| 5 | The Adventure | 14 | |
| 6 | Silk Road | 13 | |
| 7 | Writing Skills | 7 | |
| 8 | Summarising | 4 | |
| 9 | Sub-titling | 3 | |
| 10 | Essay-writing | 5 |
The Class 11 English book PDF at a glance
- 10 chapters — six reading texts (Chapters 1–6) and four writing units (Chapters 7–10)
- 10 official chapter PDFs, all hosted on NCERT’s own site, ncert.nic.in
- 88 printed pages across the ten files
- 4 activities in the whole book — two in Chapter 3 (Discovering Tut), one in Sub-titling, one in Essay-writing
- 0 numbered syllabus sections — Hornbill’s chapters run by exercise blocks instead of numbered headings
The two halves of the book work differently. The comparison below shows where the practice in each half actually sits.
| Half of the book | Chapters | How each chapter is built | Where the practice sits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reading half | 1–6 | Each prose text closes with the recurring exercise blocks — Understanding the text, Talking about the text, Thinking about language, Working with words, Things to do, with Noticing form in some chapters. | Verified exercise-question counts run from 6 to 14 per reading chapter. |
| Writing half | 7–10 | Skill-led units — note-making, summarising, sub-titling, essay-writing — built around worked model passages. | Practice comes from activities and model passages, not end-of-chapter questions. |
The class 11 English chapters, and what each one contains
| Ch. | Chapter | Sections | Activities | Figures | Questions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Portrait of a Lady | — | — | — | 9 |
| 2 | “We’re Not Afraid to Die… if We Can All Be Together” | — | — | — | 7 |
| 3 | Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues | — | 2 | — | 6 |
| 4 | The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement's Role | — | — | — | 7 |
| 5 | The Adventure | — | — | — | 14 |
| 6 | Silk Road | — | — | — | 13 |
| 7 | Writing Skills | — | — | — | — |
| 8 | Summarising | — | — | — | — |
| 9 | Sub-titling | — | 1 | — | — |
| 10 | Essay-writing | — | 1 | — | — |
Across all ten chapters of Hornbill, the book is not organised under numbered syllabus headings. Instead, the prose chapters are followed by a familiar set of exercise blocks — “Understanding the text,” “Talking about the text,” “Thinking about language,” “Working with words,” and “Things to do” — while the poems close with blocks such as “Think it out” or “Understanding the poem.”
The last column counts end-of-chapter questions, and it is verified for the six reading chapters only. The four writing units’ question capture was partial, so no totals are claimed for them — the honest limit of the data we hold.
Chapter 1: The Portrait of a Lady (pp. 1-11)
A son’s account of his grandmother’s slow ageing and his own growing distance from her, this opening chapter is built on personal narrative, memory, and loss — and it closes with the paired poem ‘A Photograph’ and its ‘Think it out’ exercise.
Chapter 2: “We’re Not Afraid to Die… if We Can All Be Together” (pp. 12-20)
A family sailing a small ship through a Southern Ocean storm becomes a study of courage, leadership, and adventure narrative — how ordinary people hold together when the sea turns against them.
Chapter 3: Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues (pp. 21-34)
When archaeology meets forensics, a CT scan of Tutankhamun’s mummy is read for what evidence can and cannot reveal — one of the book’s two 14-page chapters, the only reading chapter with activities (2), and it closes with the poem ‘The Laburnum Top’.
Chapter 4: The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role (pp. 35-42)
An essay on the Green Movement, sustainable development, and the state of the environment, this chapter is the book’s clearest model of building a case in prose, and it closes with a poem section whose exercise is ‘Understanding the poem’.
Chapter 5: The Adventure (pp. 43-56)
A history professor steps into an alternate history of a famous battle, which makes this speculative fiction story the chapter to discuss free will versus determinism and the role of chance in history.
Chapter 6: Silk Road (pp. 57-69)
A travelogue of the journey across Tibet towards Mount Kailash, this chapter teaches observational writing — what the eye notes, what the traveller feels — on the road to a pilgrimage, and it closes with the poem ‘Father to Son’.
Chapter 7: Writing Skills
The book’s first writing unit teaches formal note-making through one worked passage in five numbered steps, Step 1 to Step 5; it sits in the book after Silk Road (which ends on p. 69) and before Summarising (which begins on p. 77).
Chapter 8: Summarising (pp. 77-80)
Summarising is taught by example here — how to find the main idea and condense a passage into a shorter form, demonstrated on the model texts ‘Green Sahara’ and ‘The Great Desert Where Hippos Once Wallowed’.
Chapter 9: Sub-titling (pp. 81-83)
At 3 pages, sub-titling is the shortest unit: writing short headings that show a text’s structure, practised on ‘A new deal for old cities’ and ‘Urban Decay’ with one activity to complete.
Chapter 10: Essay-writing (pp. 84-88)
The closing unit treats essay structure itself — introduction, argument, conclusion — through the model essay ‘The Importance of Games’, a passage-analysis exercise, and one final activity.
Study pages for the Hornbill chapters
Each Hornbill chapter gets its own study page here as it is indexed. The block below links the chapters that are ready, and keeps the rest unlinked until they are published.
| Ch. | Chapter page |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Portrait of a Lady (coming soon) |
| 2 | “We’re Not Afraid to Die… if We Can All Be Together” (coming soon) |
| 3 | Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues (coming soon) |
| 4 | The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement's Role (coming soon) |
| 5 | The Adventure (coming soon) |
| 6 | Silk Road (coming soon) |
| 7 | Writing Skills (coming soon) |
| 8 | Summarising (coming soon) |
| 9 | Sub-titling (coming soon) |
| 10 | Essay-writing (coming soon) |
How to use the Class 11 English book
- Read the six reading chapters in order — The Portrait of a Lady, “We’re Not Afraid to Die… if We Can All Be Together”, Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues, The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role, The Adventure, Silk Road.
- Attempt the exercise blocks straight after each reading. The questions live in the recurring blocks (Understanding the text, Talking about the text, and the rest), not in a separate question bank at the back of the book.
- Treat the three paired poems — A Photograph, The Laburnum Top, Father to Son — as short second texts, each with its own set of questions.
- Use the four writing units (Writing Skills, Summarising, Sub-titling, Essay-writing) as skill work: follow the steps, do the activities, and compare your output with the model passages.
One caution: textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical — check the current official syllabus before deciding what to revise. For the other books in this class, start from the Class 11 hub.
Related NCERT book pages
If you are working across the whole shelf, begin at the NCERT books by class root, or go straight to the all Class 11 NCERT books hub to see which other textbooks sit alongside Hornbill.
Sources and data verification
This listing is maintained for the 2026-27 academic session using the NCERT textbook information available to us. NCERT remains the authority for confirming the latest edition.
- Where the details come from: The chapter titles, printed page ranges, exercise-block headings, and activity and question counts listed here are all taken directly from the pages of the NCERT Class 11 English textbook Hornbill.
- What this page covers, and what it does not: it covers all 10 chapters, their page ranges, the recurring exercise-block structure, and activity and question counts where extraction succeeded. It does not index this book’s diagrams (they print without captions, so no figure index appears), and question capture for the four writing units was partial.
- Session: this listing is maintained for the current academic session using the NCERT information available to us.
- Authority: NCERT settles textbooks, editions and PDFs; CBSE settles curriculum, syllabus and examinations.
Reference: NCERT Class 11 English (Hornbill) textbook, official edition on ncert.nic.in. Section titles quoted from the textbook; page references are to the official PDFs.
FAQs about the Hornbill book
How many chapters are there in the NCERT Class 11 English book Hornbill?
There are 10 chapters in all — six reading texts (Chapters 1–6) and four writing skill units (Chapters 7–10), covering 88 printed pages. The six reading chapters each close with their own exercise blocks; there is no separate question bank at the end of the book.
Is the Hornbill book PDF free and official?
Yes. Every chapter file in the table above is hosted directly on ncert.nic.in, NCERT’s official site, and costs nothing to download. The file codes run kehb101–kehb106 for the reading chapters and kehb111–kehb114 for the writing units.
Which Hornbill chapter is about the Green Movement and the environment?
Chapter 4, The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role (pp. 35–42), is the essay on the Green Movement, sustainable development and the state of the planet. It is the chapter to study for how Hornbill builds an argument in prose.
Which chapters in Hornbill are the writing skills sections?
The four writing units are Writing Skills (note-making), Summarising, Sub-titling and Essay-writing, and they sit at the end of the book after Silk Road. They are practised through activities and model passages rather than end-of-chapter questions.
Where are the answers to the Hornbill exercise questions?
The exercise blocks in Hornbill are discussion questions, and the textbook does not print a separate answer key for them. Use the text itself to support each answer, and have your teacher check your reading — that is the reliable check for this book.