British literature 20th century

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British literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel
Islands. This includes literatures from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland andWales. By far the
largest part of British literature has been written in the English language, with English
literature developing into a global phenomenon, because of its use in the former colonies of Britain.
In addition the story of British literature involves writings in Anglo-Norman, Anglo-
Saxon, Cornish, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Latin, Manx, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and other
languages. Literature in Northern Ireland includes writings in English, Irish and Ulster Scots. Irish
writers have played an important part in the development of literature in England and Scotland, but
though the whole of Ireland was politically part of the United Kingdom between January 1801 and
December 1922, it is controversial to describe Irish literature as British. For some this includes works
by authors from Northern Ireland.
Definitions of 'British literature' are bound up with historical shifts of British identity. Changing
consciousness of English national identity, Scottish national identity, Welsh nationalism, and the
effects of British imperialism have altered interpretations of how the literatures of Britain have
interacted. In addition the impact of Irish nationalism, that led to the partition of the island of
Ireland in 1921, means that literature of the Republic of Ireland is not British, although the identity of
literature from Northern Ireland, as part of the literature of the United Kingdom, may fall within the
overlapping identities of Irish and British literature, where "the naming of the territory has always
been, in literary, geographical or historical contexts, a politically charged activity". [1]
Welsh literature in English (previously called Anglo-Welsh literature) is the works written in the
English language by Welsh writers, especially if their subject matter relates to Wales. It has been
recognised as a distinctive entity only since the 20th century. The need for a separate identity for this
kind of writing arose because of the parallel development of modern Welsh-language literature.[2]
The use of the label Celtic fringe as applied to non-English, or traditionally non-English-speaking
areas, has been criticized as a colonial attitude to marginalise these cultures, and the literatures of
Ireland, Scotland and Wales is being studied through the methodology of postcolonialism.
[3]
 However, Britain's legacy survives around the world, as a shared history of British presence and
cultural influence in the Commonwealth of Nations has produced a substantial body of writing in
English and many other languages.[4][5]

Old British and late medieval literature: 449–1500[edit]

Latin literature[edit]
Main article: Anglo-Latin literature
Chroniclers such as Bede (672/3–735), with his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum,
and Gildas (c. 500–570), with his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, were figures in the
development of indigenous Latin literature, mostly ecclesiastical, in the centuries following the
withdrawal of the Roman Empire around the year 410.
Adomnán's (627/8–704) most important work is the Vita Columbae, a hagiography of Columba, and
the most important surviving work written in early medieval Scotland. It is a vital source for
knowledge of the Picts, as well as an insight into the life of Iona Abbey and the early medieval Gaelic
monk. The vita of Columba contains a story that has been interpreted as the first reference to
the Loch Ness Monster.
Written just after or possibly contemporarily with Adomnán's Vita Columbae, the Vita Sancti
Cuthberti (c. 699–705) is the first piece of Northumbrian Latin writing and the earliest piece of
English Latin hagiography.[6]
The Historia Brittonum composed in the 9th century is traditionally ascribed to Nennius. It is the
earliest source which presents King Arthur as a historical figure, and is the source of several stories
which were repeated and amplified by later authors.
Latin continued in use as a language of learning long after the Reformation had established the
vernaculars as liturgical languages for the élites. In Scotland, Latin as a literary language thrived into
the 17th century as Scottish writers writing in Latin were able to engage with their audiences on an
equal basis in a prestige language without feeling hampered by their less confident handling of
English.[7]
Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More (1478–1535) published in 1516.
The book, written in Latin, is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its
religious, social and political customs.
New Atlantis is a utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), published in Latin (as Nova
Atlantis) in 1624 and in English in 1627. In this work, Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human
discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind. The novel depicts
the creation of a utopian land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendour, piety and
public spirit" are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of the mythical Bensalem. The plan
and organisation of his ideal college, Salomon's House (or Solomon's House), envisioned the
modern research university in both applied and pure sciences.
Scotsman George Buchanan (1506–1582) was the Renaissance writer from Great Britain who had
the greatest international reputation, being considered the finest Latin poet since classical times. [8] As
he wrote mostly in Latin, his works travelled across Europe as did he himself.
Amongst poets who wrote poems in Latin in the 17th century were George Herbert (1593–1633)
(who also wrote poems in Greek), and John Milton (1608–74).
Philosopher Thomas Hobbes' Elementa Philosophica de Cive (1642–1658) was in Latin. However,
things were changing and by about 1700 the growing movement for the use of national languages
(already found earlier in literature and the Protestant religious movement) had reached academia,
and an example of the transition is Isaac Newton's writing career, which began in New Latin and
ended in English: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in Latin Opticks, 1704, in English.
Early Celtic literature[edit]
Gaelic language and literature from Ireland became established in the West of Scotland between the
4th and 6th centuries. Until the development of Scottish Gaelic literature with a distinct identity, there
was a shared literary culture between Gaelic-speaking Ireland and Scotland. The literary Gaelic
language used in Scotland that was inherited from Irish is sometimes known as Classical Gaelic.
The Hiberno-Scottish mission from the 6th century spread Christianity and established monasteries
and centres of writing. Gaelic literature in Scotland includes a celebration, attributed to the Irish
monk Adomnán, of the Pictish King Bridei's (671–93) victory over the Northumbrians at the Battle of
Dun Nechtain (685).Pictish, the now extinct Brythonic language spoken in Scotland, has left no
record of poetry, but poetry composed in Gaelic for Pictish kings is known. By the 9th century, Gaelic
speakers controlled Pictish territory and Gaelic was spoken throughout Scotland and used as
a literary language. However, there was great cultural exchange between Scotland and Ireland, with
Irish poets composing for Scottish or Pictish patrons, and Scottish poets composing for Irish patrons.
[9]
 The Book of Deer, a 10th-century Latin Gospel Book with early-12th-century additions in Latin, Old
Irish and Scottish Gaelic, is noted for containing the earliest surviving Gaelic writing from Scotland.

In Medieval Welsh literature the period before 1100 is known as the period of Y Cynfeirdd ("The
earliest poets") or Yr Hengerdd ("The old poetry"). It roughly dates from the birth of the Welsh
language until the arrival of the Normans in Wales towards the end of the 11th century. Y
Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of
the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation,
died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth in c. AD 600. It is
traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin, and survives only in one manuscript, known as the Book of
Aneirin. The poem is recorded in a manuscript of the second half of the 13th century, and it has
been dated to anywhere between the 7th and the early 11th centuries. The text is partly written
in Middle Welsh orthography and partly in Old Welsh. The early date would place its oral
composition to soon after the battle, presumably in the Hen Ogledd ("Old North") in what would have
been the Cumbric variety of Brythonic.[10][11] Others consider it the work of a poet in medieval Wales,
composed in the 9th, 10th or 11th century. Even a 9th-century date would make it one of the oldest
surviving Welsh works of poetry.
The name Mabinogion is a convenient label for a collection eleven prose stories collated from
two medieval Welsh manuscripts known as theWhite book of Rhydderch (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) (c.
1350) and the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest) (1382–1410). They are written in Middle
Welsh, the common literary language between the end of the eleventh century and the fourteenth
century. They include the four tales that form Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi ("The Four Branches of the
Mabinogi"). The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early
medieval historical traditions. While some details may hark back to older Iron Age traditions, each of
these tales is the product of a highly developed medieval Welsh narrative tradition, both oral and
written. Lady Charlotte Guest in the mid-19th century was the first to publish English translations of
the collection, popularising the name "Mabinogion" at the same time.
No Cornish literature survives from the Primitive Cornish period (c. 600–800 AD). The earliest written
record of the Cornish language, dating from the 9th century, is a gloss in a Latin manuscript of
the Consolation of Philosophy, which used the words ud rocashaas. The phrase means "it (the mind)
hated the gloomy places".[12][13]
Old Norse literature[edit]
Main article: Old Norse literature
From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Vikings and Norse settlers and their descendents colonised parts
of what is now modern Scotland. Some Old Norse poetry survives relating to this period.
The Orkneyinga saga (also called the History of the Earls of Orkney) is a historical narrative of the
history of the Orkney Islands, from their capture by the Norwegian king in the ninth century onwards
until about 1200.[14] 20th-century poet George Mackay Brown was influenced by the saga, notably for
his 1973 novel Magnus. The IcelandicNjáls saga includes actions taking place in Orkney and Wales.
Besides these Icelandic sagas a few examples, sometimes fragmentary, of Norse poetry composed
in Scotland survive.[7] Among the runic inscriptions at Maeshowe is a text identified as irregular verse.
[15]
 Scandinavian cultural contacts in the Danelaw also left legacies in literature.Höfuðlausn or the
"Head's Ransom" is a skaldic poem attributed to Egill Skalla-Grímsson in praise of king Eirik
Bloodaxe in the kingdom of Northumbria.
Old English literature: c.658–1100[edit]
Main article: Old English literature

First page facsimile ofBeowulf

Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses the surviving literature written in Old
English in Anglo-Saxon England, in the period after the settlement of the Saxons and other
Germanic tribes in England, as the Jutes and the Angles, c.450, after the withdrawal of the Romans,
and "ending soon after the Norman Conquest" in 1066; that is, c. 1100–50. [16] These works include
genres such as epic poetry, hagiography,sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles,
riddles, and others.[17] In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period.[18]The earliest
surviving work of literature in Old English is Cædmon's Hymn, which was probably composed
between 658-680.
Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous: [17] twelve are known by name from Medieval
sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works to us today with any
certainty: Cædmon, Bede, Alfred the Great, and Cynewulf. Cædmon is the earliest English poet
whose name is known. Cædmon's only known surviving work is Cædmon's Hymn, probably dating
from the late 7th century. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is,
with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest
attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained
poetry in a Germanic language. The Wanderer is an Old English poem preserved only in an
anthology known as the Exeter Book, a manuscript dating from the late 10th century. It counts 115
lines of alliterative verse. As often the case in Anglo-Saxon verse, the composer and compiler are
anonymous, and within the manuscript the poem is untitled. The Wanderer conveys the meditations
of a solitary exile on his past glories as a warrior in his lord's band of retainers, his present hardships
and the values of forbearance and faith in the heavenly Lord.
The epic poem Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national
epic status in England, despite not being set in England. A hero of the Geats, Beowulf battles
three antagonists: Grendel, Grendel's mother, and a Dragon. The only surviving manuscript is
theNowell Codex. The precise date of the manuscript is debated, but most estimates place it close to
the year 1000.
Chronicles contained a range of historical and literary accounts; one notable example is the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle. This is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-
Saxons. Nine manuscripts survive in whole or in part, though not all are of equal historical value and
none of them is the original version. The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of
Alfred's reign in the 9th century, while the most recent was written at Peterborough Abbey in 1116.
Almost all of the material in theChronicle is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest are dated at 60
BC (the annals' date for Caesar's invasions of Britain), and historical material follows up to the year
in which the chronicle was written, at which point contemporary records begin. These manuscripts
collectively are known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Battle of Maldon is the name given to an Old English poem of uncertain date celebrating the
real Battle of Maldon of 991, at which the Anglo-Saxons failed to prevent a Vikinginvasion. Only 325
lines of the poem are extant; both the beginning and the ending are lost.
The Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity after their arrival in England. A popular poem, The
Dream of the Rood, was inscribed upon the Ruthwell Cross. Judith is a retelling of the story found in
the Latin Bible's Book of Judith of the beheader of the Assyrian general Holofernes. The Old English
Martyrology is a Mercian collection of hagiographies. Ælfric of Eynsham was a prolific 10th-century
writer of hagiographies and homilies.
Old English poetry falls broadly into two styles or fields of reference, the heroic Germanic and the
Christian. The most popular and well-known understanding of Old English poetry continues to
be alliterative verse. The system is based upon accent, alliteration, the quantity of vowels, and
patterns of syllabic accentuation. It consists of five permutations on a base verse scheme; any one
of the five types can be used in any verse. The system was inherited from and exists in one form or
another in all of the olderGermanic languages.
Several Old English poems are adaptations of late classical philosophical texts. The longest is a
10th-century translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy contained in theCotton
manuscript Otho A.vi.[19] The Metres of Boethius are a series of Old English alliterative poems
adapted from the Latin metra of the Consolation of Philosophy soon after the prose translation.
Late medieval literature: 1100–1500[edit]
The linguistic diversity of the islands in the medieval period, with each of the languages producing
literatures at various times which contributed to the rich variety of artistic production, made British
literature distinctive and innovative. [20]
Latin literature circulated among the educated classes. Gerald of Wales's most distinguished works
are those dealing with Wales and Ireland, with his two late-12th-century books in Latin on his
beloved Wales the most important: Itinerarium Cambriae and Descriptio Cambriae which tell us
much about Welsh history and geography.
Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, the development of Anglo-Norman literature in the Anglo-
Norman realm introduced literary trends from Continental Europe such as the chanson de geste.
However, the indigenous development of Anglo-Norman literature was precocious in comparison to
continental Oïl literature: Geoffrey Gaimar produced the earliest rhymed chronicle; Benedeit, the
earliest adventure narrative inspired by Celtic sources; Jordan Fantosme, the earliest eyewitness
historiography; Philippe de Thaun, the earliest scientific literature. [20]
Religious literature continued to enjoy popularity. Hagiographies continued to be written, adapted
and translated: for example, The Life of Saint Audrey, Eadmer's contemporary biography of Anselm
of Canterbury, and the South English Legendary.
The Roman de Fergus was the earliest piece of non-Celtic vernacular literature to come from
Scotland. As the Norman nobles of Scotland assimilated to indigenous culture they commissioned
Scots versions of popular continental romances, for example: Launcelot o the Laik andThe Buik o
Alexander.
While chroniclers such as William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon attempted to weave such
historical information they had access to into coherent narratives, other writers took more creative
approaches to their material.[21]
Geoffrey of Monmouth was one of the major figures in the development of British history and the
popularity for the tales of King Arthur. He is best known for his chronicle Historia Regum
Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) of 1136, which spread Celtic motifs to a wider audience,
including accounts of Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, wizard Merlin, and sword Caliburnus (named
as Excalibur in some manuscripts of Wace).
Culhwch and Olwen is a Welsh tale about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors, and is the
longest of the surviving Welsh prose tales. It is perhaps the earliest extant Arthurian tale and one of
Wales' earliest extant prose texts.
The 12th-century poet Wace (c. 1110[22] – after 1174[23]), who was born in Jersey and brought up in
mainland Normandy, is considered the founder of Jersey literature and contributed to the
development of the Arthurian legend in British literature. His Brut showed the interest of Norman
patrons in the mythologising of the new English territories of the Anglo-Norman realm by building on
Geoffrey of Monmouth's History, and introduced King Arthur's Round Table to literature. His Roman
de Rou placed the Dukes of Normandy within an epic context.[21]
The Prophecy of Merlin is a 12th-century poem written in Latin hexameters by John of Cornwall,
which he claimed was based or revived from a lost manuscript in the Cornish language. Marginal
notes on Cornish vocabulary are among the earliest known writings in the Cornish language. [24]
At the end of the 12th century, Layamon's Brut adapted Wace to make the first English language
work to discuss the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It was also the first
historiography written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba is a short chronicle of the Kings of Alba. It was written in Hiberno-
Latin but displays some knowledge of contemporary Middle Irish orthographyand probably put
together in the early 13th century by the man who wrote de Situ Albanie. The original text was
without doubt written in Scotland, probably in the early 11th century, shortly after the reign
of Kenneth II, the last reign it relates. It is possible that more Middle Irish literature was written in
medieval Scotland than is often thought, but has not survived because the Gaelic literary
establishment of eastern Scotland died out before the 14th century. Thomas Owen Clancy has
argued that the Lebor Bretnach, the so-called "Irish Nennius", was written in Scotland, and probably
at the monastery in Abernethy, but this text survives only from manuscripts preserved in Ireland.
[25]
 Other literary work that has survived includes that of the prolific poet Gille Brighde Albanach.
About 1218, Gille Brighde wrote a poem—Heading for Damietta—on his experiences of the Fifth
Crusade.[26] The major corpus of Medieval Scottish Gaelic poetry, The Book of the Dean of
Lismore was compiled by the brothers James and Donald MacGregor in the early decades of the
sixteenth century. Beside Scottish Gaelic verse it contains a large number of poems composed in
Ireland as well verse and prose in Scots and Latin. The subject matter includes love poetry, heroic
ballads and philosophical pieces. It also is notable for containing poetry by at least four women. [27]
Early English Jewish literature developed after the Norman Conquest with Jewish settlement in
England. Berechiah ha-Nakdan is known chiefly as the author of a 13th-century set of over a
hundred fables, called Mishle Shualim, (Fox Fables), which are derived from both Berachyah's own
inventions and some borrowed and reworked from Aesop's fables, the Talmud, and the Hindus.
[28]
 The collection also contains fables conveying the same plots and morals as those of Marie de
France. The development of Jewish literature in mediaeval England ended with the Edict of
Expulsion of 1290.
Matthew Paris (c. 1200 – 1259), a Benedictine monk, wrote a number of works in the 13th century.
Some were written in Latin, some in Anglo-Norman or French verse.
In the later medieval period a new form of English now known as Middle English evolved. This is the
earliest form which is comprehensible to modern readers and listeners, albeit not easily. Middle
English Bible translations, notably Wycliffe's Bible, helped to establish English as a literary
language. Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle
English that were made under the direction of, or at the instigation of, John Wycliffe. They appeared
over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. [29]These Bible translations were the chief inspiration
and chief cause of the Lollard movement, a pre-Reformation movement that rejected many of the
distinctive teachings of theRoman Catholic Church. In the early Middle Ages, most Western
Christian people encountered the Bible only in the form of oral versions of scriptures, verses and
homilies in Latin (other sources were mystery plays, usually conducted in the vernacular, and
popular iconography). Though relatively few people could read at this time, Wycliffe's idea was to
translate the Bible into the vernacular, saying "it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that
tongue in which they know best Christ's sentence". [30] Although unauthorised, the work was popular
and Wycliffite Bible texts are the most common manuscript literature in Middle English and over 250
manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible survive.
Romances appear in English from the 13th century, with King Horn and Havelock the Dane, based
on Anglo-Norman originals such as the Romance of Horn.[20]
Piers Plowman (written c. 1360–1387) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman (William's Vision of Piers
Plowman) is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in
unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus" (Latin for "step"). Piers is
considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature along
with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during the Middle Ages.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late-14th-century Middle English alliterative romance. It is one
of the better-known Arthurian stories, of an established type known as the "beheading game".
Developing from Welsh, Irish and English tradition Sir Gawain highlights the importance of honour
and chivalry. It is an important poem in the romance genre, which typically involves a hero who goes
on a quest that tests his prowess. "Preserved in the same manuscript with Sir Gawayne were three
other poems, now generally accepted as the work of its author. These are two alliterative poems of
moral teaching, Patience and Purity, and an intricate elegiac poem, Pearl. The author of Sir
Gawayne and the other poems is frequently referred to as 'the Pearl Poet.' " [31] The English dialect of
these poems from the Midlands is markedly different from that of the London-based Chaucer and
though influenced by French in the scenes at court in Sir Gawain, there are in the poems also has
many dialect words, often of Scandinavian origin, that belonged to northwest England. [32]

Geoffrey Chaucer, father of English literature

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered
the greatest English poet of the Middle Agesand was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's
Corner of Westminster Abbey. Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess,
the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer is best known
today for The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories written in Middle English (mostly written
in verse although some are in prose), that are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group
of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas
Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard
Inn at Southwark on their return. Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of
the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were
French and Latin. The first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in
Chaucer's Parlement of Foules of 1382.[33]
The multilingual nature of the audience for literature in the 14th century can be illustrated by the
example of John Gower (c. 1330 – October 1408). A contemporary of William Langland and a
personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer, Gower is remembered primarily for three major works,
the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in Anglo-
Norman, Latin and, Middle English respectively, which are united by common moral and political
themes.[34]
Women writers were also active, such as Marie de France in the 12th century and Julian of
Norwich in the early 14th century. Julian'sRevelations of Divine Love (circa 1393) is believed to be
the first published book written by a woman in the English language. [35] Margery Kempe (c. 1373 –
after 1438) is known for writing The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the
first autobiography in the English language, which chronicles, to some extent, her
extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites in Europe and Asia.
Dafydd ap Gwilym (c. 1315/1320 – c. 1350/1370), is regarded as one of the leading Welsh poets
and amongst the great poets of Europe in the Middle Ages. His main themes were love and nature.
The influence of wider European ideas of courtly love, as exemplified in the troubadour poetry
of Provençal, is seen as a significant influence on his poetry. He was an innovative poet who was
responsible for popularising the metre known as the "cywydd" and first to use it for praise. But
perhaps his greatest innovation was to make himself the main focus of his poetry. By its very nature,
most of the work of the traditional Welsh court poets kept their own personalities far from their
poetry, whereas Dafydd ap Gwilym's poems are full of his own feelings and experiences.
Since at least the 14th century, poetry in English has been written in Ireland and by Irish writers
abroad.
From c. 1100 until c. 1600 Welsh poetry can be divided roughly into two distinct periods: the period
of the Poets of the Princes (Beirdd y Tywysogion, also called Y Gogynfeirdd) who worked before the
loss of Welsh independence in 1282 and the Poets of the Nobility (Beirdd yr Uchelwyr) who worked
from 1282 until the period of the English incorporation of Wales in the 16th century. The earliest
poem in English by a Welsh poet (Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdwal's Hymn to the Virgin[36]) dates from about
1470. The Latin and English poemFlen flyys written around 1475, is chiefly famous for containing in
coded form the first known written usage in English of a particular profane term in the English
language. Acywydd attributed to Tudur Penllyn (fl. c. 1420 – 1490) is written in alternate Welsh and
English sections, and depicts the poet attempting to seduce an unwilling Englishwoman, exploiting
their mutual incomprehension for comic effect.[37]
Among the earliest Lowland Scots literature is Barbour's Brus (14th
century). Whyntoun's Kronykil and Blind Harry's Wallace date from the 15th century. From the 13th
century much literature based around the royal court in Edinburgh and from the 14th century at
the University of St Andrews, which was founded early in that century. Major writers from the 15th
century include Henrysoun, Dunbar, Douglas and Lyndsay. The works of Chaucer had an influence
on Scottish writers. Robert Henryson's (c. 1460–1500) most famous work is the narrative poem The
Testament of Cresseid, which imagines a tragic fate for Cressida, in the medieval story of Troilus
and Criseyde, which was left untold in Geoffrey Chaucer's version. [38] Henryson's cogent
psychological drama makes the poem a major works of northern renaissance literature. The poem
was written in Middle Scots; a modern English translation by Seamus Heaney was published in
2004. For the Scottish Literary Renaissance in the mid-twentieth century, Dunbar was a touchstone.
Many tried to imitate his style, and "high-brow" subject matter, such as Hugh
MacDiarmid and Sydney Goodsir Smith. As MacDiarmid himself said, they had to go "back to
Dunbar".[39] Gavin Douglas (c. 1474 – September 1522) was a Scottish bishop, makar and translator.
Although he had an important political career, it is for his poetry that he is now chiefly remembered.
His principal pioneering achievement was the Eneados (1553), a full and faithful vernacular
translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first successful example of its kind in any Anglic language.
[40]
 Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, (also spelled Lindsay) (c. 1490 – c. 1555) was a Scottish poet
whose works reflect the spirit of the Renaissance.
In the Cornish language Passhyon agan Arloedh ("The Passion of our Lord"), a poem of 259 eight-
line verses written in 1375, is one of the earliest surviving works of Cornish literature. The most
important work of literature surviving from the Middle Cornish period is An Ordinale Kernewek ("The
Cornish Ordinalia"), a 9000-line religious drama composed around the year 1400. The longest single
surviving work of Cornish literature is Bywnans Meriasek (The Life of Meriasek), a play dated 1504,
but probably copied from an earlier manuscript.
Le Morte d'Arthur, is Sir Thomas Malory's 15th-century compilation of some French and English
Arthurian romances, was among the earliest books printed in England, printed byCaxton in 1485. It
was popular and influential in the later revival of interest in the Arthurian legends.
Medieval drama
Main article: Medieval theatre
In the Middle Ages, drama in the vernacular languages of Europe may have emerged from religious
enactments of the liturgy. Mystery plays were presented on the porch of the cathedrals or by strolling
players on feast days. Miracle and mystery plays, along with moralities and interludes, later evolved
into more elaborate forms of drama, such as was seen on the Elizabethan stages. Another form of
medieval theatre was the mummers' plays, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris
dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. These
were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled from town to town performing these for
their audiences in return for money and hospitality.
Mystery plays and miracle plays (sometimes distinguished as two different forms,[41] although the
terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays
in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in
churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They developed from the 10th to the 16th
century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century before being rendered obsolete by
the rise of professional theatre. The name derives from mystery used in its sense of miracle,[42] but an
occasionally quoted derivation is from misterium, meaning craft, a play performed by the craft guilds.
[43]

There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays from the
late medieval period; although these collections are sometimes referred to as "cycles," it is now
believed that this term may attribute to these collections more coherence than they in fact possess.
The most complete is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants. They were performed in the city
of York, from the middle of the fourteenth century until 1569. There are also the Towneley plays of
thirty-two pageants, once thought to have been a true 'cycle' of plays and most likely performed
around the Feast of Corpus Christi probably in the town of Wakefield, England during the late Middle
Ages until 1576. TheLudus Coventriae (also called the N Town plays" or Hegge cycle), now
generally agreed to be a redacted compilation of at least three older, unrelated plays, and
the Chester cycle of twenty-four pageants, now generally agreed to be an Elizabethan reconstruction
of older medieval traditions. Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays
in Cornish known as the Ordinalia.
These biblical plays differ widely in content. Most contain episodes such as the Fall of Lucifer,
the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, the Nativity,
the Raising of Lazarus, the Passion, and the Resurrection. Other pageants included the story
of Moses, the Procession of the Prophets, Christ's Baptism, theTemptation in the Wilderness, and
the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. In given cycles, the plays came to be sponsored by the
newly emerging Medieval craft guilds.[44][45]
Having grown out of the religiously based mystery plays of the Middle Ages, the morality play is
a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment, which represented a shift towards a
more secular base for European theatre. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes",
a broader term given to dramas with or without a moraltheme.[46] Morality plays are a type
of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to
prompt him to choose a Godly life over one of evil. The plays were most popular in Europe during
the 15th and 16th centuries.
The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman) (c. 1509–19), usually referred to simply
as Everyman, is a late-15th-century English morality play. Like John Bunyan's allegory Pilgrim's
Progress, Everyman (1678) examines the question of Christian salvation through the use of
allegorical characters. The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who represents
all mankind. In the course of the action, All the characters are also allegorical, each personifying an
abstract idea such as Fellowship, (material) Goods, and Knowledge and the conflict between good
and evil is dramatised by the interactions between characters.

The Renaissance: 1500–1660[edit]

The English Renaissance and the Renaissance in Scotland date from the late 15th century to the
early 17th century. Italian literary influences arrived in Britain: the sonnet form was introduced into
English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century, and developed by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,
(1516/1517 – 1547), who also introduced blank verseinto England, with his translation
of Virgil's Aeneid in c. 1540.[47] Chaucerian, classical and French literary language continued to
influence Scots literature up until the Reformation, and Latin remained an important literary language
in Scotland in the 17th century, long after its literary importance in England had waned. The
Complaynt of Scotland shows the interplay of language and ideas between the kingdoms of
Scotland and England in the years leading up to the 1603 Union of the Crowns. During theJacobean
debate on the Union, a tradition of prophetic literature going back to the Prophetiae Merlini was
invoked. The Whole Prophesie of Scotland of 1603 treated Merlin's prophecies as authoritative. [48] Sir
William Alexander, writing in praise of King James, invoked the prophetic tradition and dated it to
300 years before the king's birth (the middle of the 13th century). This timing tied it to the Scottish
writer, Thomas the Rhymer. The use of "Great Britain" as a title of the kingdom as united by James
was considered to reference Brutus of Troy, of the Anglo-Welsh traditional foundation myth. A
mythological consonance was seen by some at the time between what were different traditions. [49]
The spread of printing affected the transmission of literature across Britain and Ireland. The first
book printed in English, William Caxton's own translation of Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, was
printed abroad in 1473, to be followed by the establishment of the first printing press in England in
1474. The establishment of a printing press in Scotland under royal patent from James IV in 1507
made it easier to disseminate Scottish literature. [50] The first printing press in Ireland followed later in
1551. Although the first book in Welsh to be printed was produced by John Prise in 1546, restrictions
on printing meant that only clandestine presses, such as that of Robert Gwyn who published Y
Drych Cristionogawl in 1586/1587, could operate in Wales until 1695. The first legal printing press to
be set up in Wales was in 1718 by Isaac Carter.[36] The first printed work in Manx dates from 1707: a
translation of a Prayer Book catechism in English by Bishop Thomas Wilson. Printing arrived even
later in other parts of Britain and Ireland: the first printing press in Jersey was set up by Mathieu
Alexandre in 1784.[51] The earliest datable text in Manx (preserved in 18th-century manuscripts), a
poetic history of the Isle of Man from the introduction of Christianity, dates to the 16th century at the
latest.

Thomas More book Utopia, illustration of imaginary island, 1516

Sir Thomas More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to the ideal, imaginary island nation
whose political system he described inUtopia, written in Latin and published in 1516.
In the late fifteenth century, Scots prose began to develop as a genre and to demonstrate classical
and humanist influences[52] as theRenaissance reached Scotland. The first complete surviving work
includes John Ireland's The Meroure of Wyssdome (1490).[53] There were also prose translations of
French books of chivalry that survive from the 1450s, including The Book of the Law of Armys and
the Order of Knychthode and the treatise Secretum Secretorum, an Arabic work believed to be
Aristotle's advice to Alexander the Great.[54]
The landmark work in the reign of James IV of Scotland was Gavin Douglas's Eneados, the first
complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglian language, finished in 1513. Its reception
however was overshadowed by the Flodden defeat that same year, and the political instability that
followed in the kingdom.
Scotsman George Buchanan (1506–1582) was the Renaissance writer from Britain (and Ireland)
who had the greatest international reputation, being considered the finest Latin poet since classical
times.[8] As he wrote mostly in Latin, his works travelled across Europe as did he himself. His Latin
paraphrases of the Hebrew Psalms (composed while Buchanan was imprisoned by the Inquisition in
Portugal) remained in print for centuries and were used into the 19th century for the purposes of
studying Latin. His two original plays, Jepthes andBaptistes, are the earliest extant plays of
substance written by a Scot and were influential on the development of French and Portuguese
drama.[7]
Elizabethan and Jacobean eras: 1558–1625[edit]
Main articles: Elizabethan literature and Jacobean era literature
The overlapping Elizabethan era (1558–1603: the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England)
and Jacobean era (1567–1625: the reign of King James VI of Scotland, who also inherited the crown
of England in 1603 as James I) saw the development of Britishness in literature. Since 1541,
monarchs of England had also styled their Irish territory as aKingdom, while Wales became more
closely integrated into the Kingdom of England under Henry VIII. In anticipation of James VI's
expected inheritance of the English throne, court masques in England were already developing the
new literary imagery of a united "Great Britain", sometimes delving into Roman and Celtic sources.
[55]
 William Camden'sBritannia, a county-by-county description of Great Britain and Ireland, was an
influential work of chorography: a study relating landscape, geography, antiquarianism, and
history.Britannia came to be viewed as the personification of Britain, in imagery that was developed
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

William Shakespeare's career straddled the change of Tudor andStuart dynasties and encompassed English
history and the emerging imperial idea of the 17th century
In the later 16th century, English poetry was characterised by elaboration of language and extensive
allusion to classical myths. Edmund Spenser (1555–99) was the author of The Faerie Queene, an
epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. The works of Sir
Philip Sidney (1554–1586) a poet, courtier and soldier, include Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of
Poetry, and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Poems intended to be set to music as songs,
such as by Thomas Campion, became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in
households (see English Madrigal School). Jane Lumley (1537–1578) was the first person to
translate Euripides into English. Her translation of Iphigeneia at Aulis is the first known dramatic
work by a woman in English.[56]
During the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and then James I (1603–25), in the late 16th and early
17th century, a London-centred culture, that was both courtly and popular, produced great poetry
and drama. The English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a conspicuous community of
Italian actors had settled in London. The linguist and lexicographer John Florio (1553–1625), whose
father was Italian, was a royal language tutor at the Court of James I, and a possible friend and
influence on William Shakespeare, had brought much of the Italian language and culture to England.
He was also the translator of Montaigne into English. The earliest Elizabethan plays
include Gorboduc(1561), by Sackville and Norton, and Thomas Kyd's (1558–94) revenge
tragedy The Spanish Tragedy (1592). Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish
Tragedy established a new genre in English literature theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy.
Its plot contains several violent murders and includes as one of
its characters a personification of Revenge. The Spanish Tragedy was often referred to, or parodied,
in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,
and Christopher Marlowe. Many elements of The Spanish Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-
play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in
Shakespeare's Hamlet. Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical Ur-
Hamlet that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for Hamlet.
William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed.
Shakespeare was not a man of letters by profession, and probably had only some grammar school
education. He was neither a lawyer, nor an aristocrat as the "university wits" that had monopolised
the English stage when he started writing. But he was very gifted and versatile, and he surpassed
"professionals" as Robert Greene who mocked this "shake-scene" of low origins. Shakespeare wrote
plays in a variety of genres, includinghistories, tragedies, comedies and the late romances, or
tragicomedies. His early classical and Italianate comedies, like A Comedy of Errors, containing tight
double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of
his greatest comedies.[57] A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and
comic lowlife scenes.[58] Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic Merchant of Venice, can
be problematic because of how it portrays Shylock, a vengeful Jewish moneylender. [59] The wit and
wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,[60] the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively
merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. [61] After the
lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the
histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. His characters become more
complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and
achieves the narrative variety of his mature work.[62] This period begins and ends with two
tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love,
and death;[63] and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel
Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama. [64] In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the
so-called "problem plays", Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends
Well, as well as a number of his best known tragedies, including Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King
Lear and Anthony and Cleopatra.[65] The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal
errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. [66] In his final period,
Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major
plays:Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince
of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the
1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. [67] Some
commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on
Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. [68] Shakespeare
collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIIIand The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably
with John Fletcher.[69]
Shakespeare also popularised the English sonnet which made significant changes to Petrarch's
model. A collection of 154 by sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love,
beauty and mortality, were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.:
Never before imprinted. (although sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the
1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim). The first 17 poems, traditionally called the procreation
sonnets, are addressed to a young man urging him to marry and have children to immortalise his
beauty by passing it to the next generation. [70] Other sonnets express the speaker's love for a young
man; brood upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man for
preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's mistress; and pun on the poet's
name. The final two sonnets are allegorical treatments of Greek epigrams referring to the "little love-
god" Cupid.
Other important figures in Elizabethan theatre include Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), Thomas
Dekker (c. 1572 – 1632), John Fletcher (1579–1625) and Francis Beaumont(1584–1616). Marlowe's
subject matter is different from Shakespeare's as it focuses more on the moral drama of
the renaissance man than any other thing. Marlowe was fascinated and terrified by the new frontiers
opened by modern science. Drawing on German lore, he introduced the story of Faust to England in
his play Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), a scientist and magician who is obsessed by the thirst of
knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its limits. He acquires supernatural
gifts that even allow him to go back in time and wed Helen of Troy, but at the end of his twenty-four
years' covenant with the devil he has to surrender his soul to him. Beaumont and Fletcherare less-
known, but they may have helped Shakespeare write some of his best dramas, and were popular at
the time. One of Beaumont and Fletcher's chief merits was that of realising how feudalism and
chivalry had turned into snobbery and make-believe and that new social classes were on the rise.
Beaumont's comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), satirises the rising middle class and
especially of those nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much
literature at all.

Title page of Bartholomew Fair: A Comedy.

After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was the leading literary
figure of the Jacobean era. Jonson's aesthetics hark back to the Middle Ages and his characters
embody the theory of humours. According to this contemporary medical theory, behavioural
differences result from a prevalence of one of the body's four "humours" (blood, phlegm, black bile,
and yellow bile) over the other three; these humours correspond with the four elements of the
universe: air, water, fire, and earth. However, the stock types of Latin literature were an equal
influence.[71] Jonson therefore tends to create types or caricatures. However, in his best work,
characters are "so vitally rendered as to take on a being that transcends the type". [72] He is a master
of style, and a brilliant satirist. Jonson's famous comedyVolpone (1605 or 1606) shows how a group
of scammers are fooled by a top con-artist, vice being punished by vice, virtue meting out its reward.
Other major plays by Jonson are Epicoene (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew
Fair (1614).
A popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the revenge play, which had been popularised
earlier in the Elizabethan era by Thomas Kyd (1558–94), and then subsequently developed by John
Webster (1578–1632) in the 17th century. Webster's most famous plays are The White Devil (1612)
and The Duchess of Malfi (1613). Other revenge tragedies include The Changeling written
by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Atheist's Tragedyby Cyril Tourneur, first published in
1611, Christopher Marlow's The Jew of Malta, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois by George
Chapman, The Malcontent (c. 1603) of John Marston and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.
Besides Hamlet, other plays of Shakespeare's with at least some revenge elements, are Titus
Andronicus, Julius Caesar andMacbeth.
The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry, a closet drama written by Elizabeth Tanfield
Cary (1585–1639) and first published in 1613, was the first original play in English known to have
been written by a woman. Elizabeth Melville (1582[?] – 1640) is the earliest known Scottish woman
writer to have her work appear in print.[73] Melville first published Ane Godlie Dreame,
a Calvinist dream-vision poem which describes the religious experience of a woman active in
the Scottish Reformation, in 1603 in Scots, and then translated it into English, probably the following
year.[74]
George Chapman (?1559-?1634) was a successful playwright who produced comedies (his
collaboratiion on Eastward Hoe led to his brief imprisonment in 1605 as it offended the King with
its anti-Scottish sentiment), tragedies (most notably Bussy D'Ambois) and court masques (The
Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn), but who is remembered chiefly for his
translation in 1616 of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into English verse. This was the first ever complete
translation of either poem into the English language. The translation had a profound influence on
English literature and inspired the sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer from John Keats.
The highly popular tale of the Trojan War had previously only been available to English readers only
in Medieval epic retellings, such as Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye.
David Lyndsay's Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (1552), is a surviving example of a Scots
dramatic tradition in the period that has otherwise largely been lost. James Wedderburn is recorded
as having written anti-Catholic tragedies and comedies in Scots around 1540 before being forced to
flee into exile. Although the propaganda value of drama in the Scottish Reformation was important,
the Kirk hardened its attitude to such public entertainments. In 1599 James VI had to intervene to
overturn a prohibition on attending performances by a visiting theatre troupe from England. Scottish
drama did not succeed in becoming a popular artform in the face of religious opposition and the
absence of King and court after 1603. As with drama in England, only a small proportion of plays
written and performed were actually published, and the smaller production in Scotland meant that a
much less significant record of Scottish drama remains to us.[8] The ribald verse play in
Scots, Philotus,[75] is known from an anonymous edition published in London in 1603. [76]
At the end of the 16th century, James VI of Scotland founded the Castalian Band, a group
of makars and musicians in the court, based on the model of the Pléiade in France. The courtier and
makar Alexander Montgomerie was a leading member. Ane Schort Treatise conteining some Reulis
and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis poesie is a treatise to describe and propose the
ideal standard for poets, written in 1584 by the 19-year-old James VI of Scotland and first published
in Edinburgh. However this Scottish cultural centre was lost after the 1603 Union of the
Crowns when James shifted his court to London. From 1603, London was the unrivalled cultural
capital of Britain and Ireland.
Petrarchan and English influence also spread to Scotland, where William Drummond of
Hawthornden's pastoral poetry evoked a stable, ordered classicism in contrast to what he criticised
as a desire by poets to transform everything with "metaphysical Ideas and Scholastical Quiddities".
[77]
 This has been taken as the earliest labelling of Metaphysical poets. Drummond of Hawthornden
has been described as the "most accomplished poet to write in English in seventeenth-century
Scotland".[7]
The Renaissance in Wales was marked by humanism and scholarship. The Welsh language, its
grammar and lexicography, was studied for the first time and biblical studies flourished. Welsh
writers such as John Owen and William Vaughan wrote in Latin or English to communicate their
ideas outside Wales, but the humanists were unsuccessful in opening the established practices of
professional Welsh poets to Renaissance influences. [36] From the Reformation until the 19th century
most literature in the Welsh language was religious in character. Morgan Llwyd's Llyfr y Tri
Aderyn ("The Book of the Three Birds") (1653) took the form of a dialogue between an eagle
(representing secular authority, particularly Cromwell); a dove (representing the Puritans); and a
raven (representing the Anglican establishment).
While historically Welsh literature in English might be said to begin with the fifteenth-century
bard Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdwal, well into the nineteenth century English was spoken by few in Wales.
The only significant Welsh poet in this period writing in English was George Herbert (1593–1633)
from Montgomeryshire, though some see him as clearly belonging to the English tradition. [78]

Francis Bacon

Drama in Wales as a literary tradition dates to morality plays from north-east Wales in the second
half of the 15th century. The development of Renaissance theatre in England did not have great
influence in Wales as the gentry found different forms of artistic patronage. One surviving example of
Welsh literary drama is Troelus a Chresyd, an anonymous adaptation from poems by Henrysoun
and Chaucer dating to around 1600. With no urban centres to compare to England to support regular
stages, morality plays and interludes continued to circulate in inn-yard theatresand fairs,
supplemented by visiting troupes performing English repertoire. [36]
Philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) wrote the utopian novel New Atlantis, and coined the
phrase "Knowledge is Power". Francis Godwin's 1638 The Man in the Moone recounts an imaginary
voyage to the moon and is now regarded as the first work of science fiction in English literature.[79]
Besides Shakespeare the major poets of the early 17th century included the Metaphysical
poets John Donne (1572–1631) and George Herbert(1593–1633). Influenced by
continental Baroque, and taking as his subject matter both Christian mysticism and eroticism,
Donne's metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a
mosquito, to reach surprise effects. For example, in "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", one of
Donne's Songs and Sonnets, the points of a compass represent two lovers, the woman who is
home, waiting, being the centre, the farther point being her lover sailing away from her. But the
larger the distance, the more the hands of the compass lean to each other: separation makes love
grow fonder. The paradox or the oxymoron is a constant in this poetry whose fears and anxieties
also speak of a world of spiritual certainties shaken by the modern discoveries of geography and
science, one that is no longer the centre of the universe.
The Reformation and vernacular literature[edit]
At the Reformation, the translation of liturgy and Bible into vernacular languages provided new
literary models.
The Book of Common Prayer and the Authorized King James Version of the Bible have been hugely
influential. The King James Bible, one of the biggest translation projects in the history of English up
to this time, was started in 1604 and completed in 1611. It represents the culmination of a tradition
of Bible translation into English from the original languages that began with the work of William
Tyndale (previous translations into English had relied on the Vulgate). It became the standard Bible
of the Church of England, and some consider it one of the greatest literary works of all time.
The earliest surviving examples of Cornish prose are Pregothow Treger (The Tregear Homilies) a
set of 66 sermons translated from English by John Tregear 1555–1557.
In 1567 William Salesbury's Welsh translations of the New Testament and Book of Common prayer
were published. William Morgan's translation of the whole Bible followed in 1588 and remained the
standard Welsh Bible until well into the 20th century.
The first Irish translation of the New Testament was begun by Nicholas Walsh, Bishop of Ossory,
continued by John Kearney (Treasurer of St Patrick's, Dublin), his assistant, andDr. Nehemiah
Donellan, Archbishop of Tuam, and finally completed by William O'Domhnuill (William Daniell,
Archbishop of Tuam in succession to Donellan). Their work was printed in 1602. [80] The work of
translating the Old Testament was undertaken by William Bedell (1571–1642), Bishop of Kilmore,
who completed his translation within the reign ofCharles the First. However, it was not published
until 1685, in a revised version by Narcissus Marsh (1638–1713), Archbishop of Dublin.[81][82]
The Book of Common Order was translated into Scottish Gaelic by Séon Carsuel (John
Carswell), Bishop of the Isles, and printed in 1567. This is considered the first printed book in
Scottish Gaelic though the language resembles classical Irish. [83] The Irish translation of the Bible
dating from the Elizabethan period was in use in Scotland until the Bible was translated into Scottish
Gaelic.[84] James Kirkwood (1650–1709) promoted Gaelic education and attempted to provide a
version of William Bedell's Bible translations into Irish, edited by his friend Robert Kirk (1644–1692),
which failed, though he did succeed in publishing a Psalter in Gaelic (1684). [85][86]
The Book of Common Prayer was translated into French by Jerseyman Jean Durel, later Dean of
Windsor, and published for use in the Channel Islands in 1663 as Anglicanism was established as
the state religion after the Stuart Restoration.
The Book of Common Prayer and Bible were translated into Manx in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The printing of prayers for the poor families was projected by Thomas Wilson in a memorandum of
Whit-Sunday 1699, but was not carried out until 30 May 1707, the date of issue of his Principles and
Duties of Christianity ... in English and Manks, with short and plain directions and prayers, 1707.
This was the first book published in Manx, and is often styled the Manx Catechism. The Gospel of
St. Matthew was translated, with the help of his vicars-general in 1722 and published in 1748 under
the sponsorship of his successor as bishop, Mark Hildesley. The remaining Gospels and the Acts
were also translated into Manx under his supervision, but not published. Hildesley printed the New
Testament and the Book of Common Prayer, translated, under his direction, by the clergy of the
diocese, and the Old Testament was finished and transcribed in December 1772, at the time of the
bishop's death.[87] The Manx Bible established a standard for written Manx. A tradition of
Manx carvals, religious songs or carols, developed. Religious literature was common, but secular
writing much rarer.
The late Renaissance or Caroline period: 1625–1660 [edit]
Main article: Caroline era

Samuel Pepys, took the diarybeyond mere business transaction notes, into the realm of the personal

The Metaphysical poets continued writing in this period. Both John Donne and George Herbert died
after 1625, but there was a second generation of metaphysical poets, consisting of Andrew
Marvell (1621–1678), Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637–1674) and Henry Vaughan(1622–1695).
Another important group of poets at this time were the Cavalier poets. They were an important group
of writers, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the Wars of the Three
Kingdoms (1639–51). (King Charles reigned from 1625 and was executed 1649). The best known of
the Cavalier poets are Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling.
They "were not a formal group, but all were influenced" by Ben Jonson.[88] Most of the Cavalier poets
were courtiers, with notable exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick was not a courtier, but his style
marks him as a Cavalier poet. Cavalier works make use of allegory and classical allusions, and are
influence by Latin authors Horace, Cicero, and Ovid.[89]
John Milton (1608–74) is one of the greatest English poets, who wrote at a time of religious flux and
political upheaval. He is generally seen as the last major poet of the English Renaissance, though
his major epic poems were written in the Restoration period, including. Paradise Lost(1671). Among
the important poems Milton wrote during this period are L'Allegro, 1631; Il Penseroso,
1634; Comus (a masque), 1638; andLycidas, (1638). His later major works are: Paradise Regained,
1671; Samson Agonistes, 1671. Milton's works reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for
freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in
English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his
celebrated Areopagitica (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among
history's most influential and impassioned defences of free speech and freedom of the press. William
Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author", [90] and he remains generally
regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language". [91]

John Milton. His religiousepic poem Paradise Lost was published in 1667.

Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660), a Scottish Royalist, translated Rabelais' Gargantua and

Pantagruel into English, a translation that has achieved its "own creative identity", [8] and has been
described as "the greatest Scottish translation since Gavin Douglas's Eneados".[7] According to
legend, Urquhart died in a fit of laughter on receiving news of the Restoration of Charles II. [8]

Neoclassicism: 1660–1798[edit]
This period is also described as the Neoclassical age or Age of reason.
The Restoration: 1660–1700[edit]
Main articles: Restoration literature and Restoration comedy
The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 launched a fresh start for literature, both in celebration of
the new worldly and playful court of the king, and in reaction to it. Theatres in England reopened
after having been closed during the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell, Puritanism lost its momentum,
and the bawdy "Restoration comedy" became a recognisable genre. In addition, women were
allowed to perform on stage for the first time. The Mercurius Caledonius, founded in Edinburgh in
1660 by the playwright Thomas Sydserf, was Scotland's first newspaper.[92] Sydserf was behind the
establishment in Edinburgh of the first regular theatre in Scotland, and his 1667 play Tarugo's Wiles:
or, The Coffee-House, based on a Spanish play, was produced in London to amazement that a Scot
could write such excellent English. He was also among the first to translate Cyrano de Bergerac into
English; his Σεληναρχία, or the Government of the World in the Moon (1659).[7] Scottish poet John
Ogilby, who was the first Irish Master of the Revels, had established the Werburgh Street Theatre,
the first theatre in Ireland, in the 1630s. It was closed by the Puritans in 1641. The Restoration of the
monarchy in Irelandenabled Ogilby to resume his position as Master of the Revels and open the
first Theatre Royal in Dublin in 1662 in Smock Alley. In 1662 Katherine Philips went to Dublin where
she completed a translation of Pierre Corneille's Pompée, produced with great success in 1663 in
the Smock Alley Theatre, and printed in the same year both in Dublin and London. Although other
women had translated or written dramas, her translation of Pompey broke new ground as the first
rhymed version of a French tragedy in English and the first English play written by a woman to be
performed on the professional stage. Aphra Behn (one of the women writers dubbed "The fair
triumvirate of wit") was a prolific dramatist and one of the first English professional female writers.
Her greatest dramatic success was The Rover (1677).

Aphra Behn

Behn's depiction of the character Willmore in The Rover and the witty, poetry-reciting rake Dorimant
in George Etherege's The Man of Mode(1676) are seen as a satire on John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of
Rochester (1647–1680), an English libertine poet, and a wit of the Restoration court. His
contemporary Andrew Marvell described him as "the best English satirist", and he is generally
considered to be the most considerable poet and the most learned among the Restoration wits.
[93]
 His A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind is assumed to be a Hobbesian critique ofrationalism.
  Rochester's poetic work varies widely in form, genre, and content. He was part of a "mob of
[94]

gentlemen who wrote with ease",[95] who continued to produce their poetry in manuscripts, rather than
in publication. As a consequence, some of Rochester's work deals with topical concerns, such as
satires of courtly affairs in libels, to parodies of the styles of his contemporaries, such as Sir Charles
Scroope. He is also notable for his impromptus, [96] Voltaire, who spoke of Rochester as "the man of
genius, the great poet", admired his satire for its "energy and fire" and translated some lines into
French to "display the shining imagination his lordship only could boast". [97]
John Dryden (1631–1700) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who
dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in
literary circles as the Age of Dryden. He established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English
poetry by writing successful satires, religious pieces, fables, epigrams, compliments, prologues, and
plays with it; he also introduced the alexandrine and triplet into the form. In his poems, translations,
and criticism, he established a poetic diction appropriate to the heroic couplet. Dryden's greatest
achievements were in satiric verse in works like the mock-heroic MacFlecknoe (1682). W. H.
Audenreferred to him as "the master of the middle style" that was a model for his contemporaries
and for much of the 18th century.[98] The considerable loss felt by the English literary community at
his death was evident from the elegies that it inspired. [99] Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was heavily
influenced by Dryden, and often borrowed from him; other writers in the 18th century were equally
influenced by both Dryden and Pope.
Iain Lom (c. 1624 – c. 1710) was a Royalist Scottish Gaelic poet appointed poet laureate in Scotland
by Charles II at the Restoration. He delivered a eulogy for the coronation, and remained loyal to the
Stuarts after 1688, opposing the Williamites and later, in his vituperative Oran an Aghaidh an
Aonaidh, the 1707 Union of the Parliaments.[8] Though Ben Jonson had been poet laureate to James
I in England, this was not then a formal position and the formal title of Poet Laureate, as a royal
office, was first conferred by letters patent on John Dryden in 1670. The post then became a regular
British institution.
Diarists John Evelyn (1620–1706) and Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) depicted everyday London life
and the cultural scene of the times. Their works are among the most importantprimary sources for
the Restoration period in England, and consists of eyewitness accounts of many great events, such
as the Great Plague of London (1644–5), and the Great Fire of London (1666). Cín Lae Uí
Mhealláin is an account of the Irish Confederate Wars which "reflected the Ulster Catholic point of
view" written by Tarlach Ó Mealláin. James Melville's diary is written in a vigorous, fresh style, and is
especially direct in its descriptions of Scottish contemporaries and an original authority for the
period, written with much naïveté, and revealing an attractive personality.
Described as "an account of the progress of the Confederate war from the outbreak of rebellion in
1641 until February 1647" its text "reflected the Ulster Catholic point of view."
The publication of The Pilgrim's Progress (Part I:1678; 1684), established the Puritan preacher John
Bunyan (1628–88) as a notable writer. Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is anallegory of personal
salvation and a guide to the Christian life. Bunyan writes about how the individual can prevail against
the temptations of mind and body that threaten damnation. The book is written in a straightforward
narrative and shows influence from both drama and biography, and yet it also shows an awareness
of the grand allegorical tradition found in Edmund Spenser.
Nicholas Boson (1624–1708) wrote three significant texts in Cornish, Nebbaz gerriau dro tho
Carnoack (A Few Words about Cornish) between 1675 and 1708; Jowan Chy-an-Horth, py, An try
foynt a skyans (John of Chyannor, or, The three points of wisdom), published by Edward Lhuyd in
1707, though written earlier; and The Dutchess of Cornwall's Progress, partly in English, now known
only in fragments. The first two are the only known surviving Cornish prose texts from the 17th
century.[100]
In Scotland, after the 17th century, anglicisation increased, though Lowland Scots was still spoken
by the vast majority of the population, and Scottish Gaelic by a minority. At the time, many of the
oral ballads from the borders and the North East were written down. Writers of the period
include Robert Sempill (c. 1595 – 1665), Lady Wardlaw and LadyGrizel Baillie.
The Augustan age: 1700–1750[edit]
Main articles: Augustan literature and Augustan prose
The late 17th, early 18th century (1689–1750) in English literature is known as the Augustan Age.
Writers at this time "greatly admired their Roman counterparts, imitated their works and frequently
drew parallels between" contemporary world and the age of the Roman emperor Augustus (27 AD –
BC 14)[101] (see Augustan literature (ancient Rome) ). Some of the major writers in this period
were John Dryden (1631–1700), Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), William Congreve, (1670–
1729), Joseph Addison (1672–1719), Richard Steele (1672–1729), Alexander Pope (1688–
1744), Henry Fielding (1707–54), Samuel Johnson (1709–84).
The "invention of British literature"[edit]

Portrait of Tobias Smollett.

The Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707 to form a single Kingdom of Great
Britain and the creation of a joint state by the Acts of Union had little impact on the literature of
England nor on national consciousness among English writers. The situation in Scotland was
different: the desire to maintain a cultural identity while partaking of the advantages offered by the
English literary market and English literary standard language led to what has been described as the
"invention of British literature" by Scottish writers. English writers, if they considered Britain at all,
tended to assume it was merely England writ large; Scottish writers were more clearly aware of the
new state as a "cultural amalgam comprising more than just England". [102] James Thomson's "Rule
Britannia!" is an example of the Scottish championing of this new national and literary identity. With
the invention of British literature came the development of the first British novels, in contrast to the
English novel of the 18th century which continued to deal with England and English concerns rather
than exploring the changed political, social and literary environment. [102] Tobias Smollett (1721–71)
was a Scottish pioneer of the British novel, exploring the prejudices inherent within the new social
structure of Britain through comic picaresque novels. His The Adventures of Roderick
Random (1748) is the first major novel written in English to have a Scotsman as hero, [102] and the
multinational voices represented in the narrative confront Anglocentric prejudices only two years
after the Battle of Culloden. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) brings together characters
from the extremes of Britain to question how cultural and linguistic differences can be
accommodated within the new British identity, and influenced Charles Dickens.[103] Richard
Cumberland wrote patriotic comedies depicting characters taken from the "outskirts of the empire,"
and intended to vindicate the good elements of the Scots, Irish, and colonials from English prejudice.
[104]
 His most popular play, "The West Indian" (1771) was performed in North America and the West
Indies. It was the first English language play known to have been staged in Jersey (on 5 May 1792).;
[105]
 Boden translated it into German, and Goethe acted in it at the Weimar court.[104]
Prose, including the novel[edit]
Main article: Augustan prose
In prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed by the development of the English
essay. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator established the form of the British
periodical essay, inventing the pose of the detached observer of human life who can meditate upon
the world without advocating any specific changes in it. Periodical essays bloomed into journalistic
writings; such as Samuel Johnson's "Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput", titled to
disguise the actual proceeding of parliament as it was illegal for any Parliamentary Reports to be
reproduced in print. However, this was also the time when the English novel, first emerging in the
Restoration, developed into a major art form. Daniel Defoe turned from journalism and writing
criminal lives for the press to writing fictional criminal lives with Roxana and Moll Flanders.
Edward Cave created the first general-interest magazine in 1731 with The Gentleman's Magazine.
He was the first to use the term "magazine" on the analogy of a military storehouse of varied
material. The Daily Courant, first published on 11 March 1702 in Fleet Street, was the first British
daily newspaper. The News Letter is one of Northern Ireland's main daily newspapers and is the
oldest English language general daily newspaper still in publication in the world, having first been
printed in 1737.[106][107] The Press and Journal is a daily regional newspaper serving the northern
counties of Scotland including the cities of Aberdeen and Inverness. Established in 1747, it is
Scotland's oldest daily newspaper.[108] (see also History of British newspapers)
John Newbery made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market, and
he published his most popular story The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes in 1765.
The English pictorial satirist and editorial cartoonist William Hogarth (1697–1764) has been credited
with pioneering Western sequential art. His work ranged from realisticportraiture to comic strip-like
series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Much of his work satirises contemporary politics
and customs.[109]
A seminal book in piracy, A General History of the Pyrates 1724, was published in London, and
contained biographies of several notorious English pirates such as Blackbeardand Calico Jack.[110]

Daniel Defoe's 1719 castaway novel Robinson Crusoe, with Crusoe standing over Man Friday after freeing him
from the cannibals

The English novel has generally been seen as beginning with Daniel Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722),[111] though John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)
and Aphra Behn's, Oroonoko (1688) are also contenders, while earlier works such as Sir Thomas
Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and even the "Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have been
suggested.[112] The rise of the novel as an important literary genre is generally associated with the
growth of the middle class in England. Other major 18th-century British novelists areSamuel
Richardson (1689–1761), author of the epistolary novels Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740)
and Clarissa (1747–48); Henry Fielding(1707–54), who wrote Joseph Andrews (1742) and The
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749).

Jonathan Swift's distinctive satirical style has given rise to the adjective "Swiftian"

Anglo-Irish literature achieved an ambiguous independence in the 18th century with the emergence
of writers such as Jonathan Swift,[1] whose important early novel Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended
1735) is both a satire of human nature, as well as a parody of travellers' tales like Robinson Crusoe.
[113]

Drama in the Augustan age[edit]

See also: Restoration Comedy
Although documented history of Irish theatre began at least as early as 1601, the earliest Irish
dramatists of note were William Congreve (1670–1729), one of the most interesting writers
of Restoration comedies and author ofThe Way of the World (1700) and playwright, George
Farquhar (?1677–1707), The Recruiting Officer (1706).Anglo-Irish drama in the 18th century also
includes Charles Macklin (?1699–1797), and Arthur Murphy (1727–1805).[1]
The age of Augustan drama was brought to an end by the censorship established by the Licensing
Act 1737. After 1737, authors with strong political or philosophical points to make would no longer
turn to the stage as their first hope of making a living, and novels began to have dramatic structures
involving only normal human beings, as the stage was closed off for serious authors. Prior to the
Licensing Act 1737, theatre was the first choice for most wits. After it, the novel was. [citation needed]
Poetry in the Augustan age[edit]
Main article: Augustan poetry
The most outstanding poet of the age is Alexander Pope (1688–1744), whose major works
include: The Rape of the Lock (1712; enlarged in 1714); a translation of the Iliad(1715–20); a
translation of the Odyssey (1725–26); The Dunciad (1728; 1743). Since his death, Pope has been in
a constant state of re-evaluation. His high artifice, strict prosody, and, at times, the sheer cruelty of
his satire were an object of derision for the Romantic poets, and it was not until the 1930s that his
reputation was revived. Pope is now considered the dominant poetic voice of his century, a model of
prosodic elegance, biting wit, and an enduring, demanding moral force. [114] The Rape of the
Lock and The Dunciad are masterpieces of the mock-epic genre.[115]

Ellis Wynne's Gweledigaetheu y Bardd Cwsc ('Visions of the Sleeping Bard'), first published in

London in 1703, is regarded as a Welsh language classic. It is generally said that no better model
exists of such 'pure' idiomatic Welsh, before writers had become influenced by English style and
method.
A mover in the classical revival of Welsh literature in the 18th century was Lewis Morris, one of the
founders in 1751 of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, a Welsh literary society in London—at
that time the most important centre of Welsh publishing.[36] He set out to counter the trend among
patrons of Welsh literature to turn towards English culture. A writer himself, he circulated prose and
poetry in Welsh composed by himself and, to the extent they were satirical, influenced by Swift. He
attempted to recreate a classic school of Welsh poetry with his support forGoronwy Owen and other
Augustans. Goronwy Owen, when young, had written poetry in Welsh and Latin and returned to the
classical tradition in 1751 with the intention of establishing new ideals for Welsh poetry: no longer
fawning on patrons but adopting the manner of Horace to express Christian behaviour. His plans for
a Miltonic epic were never achieved, but influenced the aims of eisteddfodau competitions through
the 19th century.[116]
In the Scots-speaking areas of Ulster there was traditionally a considerable demand for the work of
Scottish poets, often in locally printed editions. These included Alexander Montgomerie's The
Cherrie and the Slae in 1700, over a decade later an edition of poems by Sir David Lindsay, and
nine printings of Allan Ramsay's The Gentle shepherd between 1743 and 1793.
The Habbie stanza was developed as a Scottish poetic form.
The Scottish Gaelic Enlightenment figure Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair compiled the first secular
book in Scottish Gaelic to be printed: Leabhar a Theagasc Ainminnin (1741), a Gaelic-English
glossary. The second secular book in Scottish Gaelic to be published was his poetry collection Ais-
Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich (The Resurrection of the Ancient Scottish Language). His
lexicography and poetry was informed by his study of old Gaelic manuscripts, an antiquarian interest
which also influenced the orthography he employed. As an observer of the natural world of Scotland
and a Jacobite rebel, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair was the most overtly nationalist poet in
Gaelic of the 18th century. His Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich was reported to have been
burned in public by the hangman in Edinburgh.[7] He was influenced by James Thomson's The
Seasons as well as by Gaelic "village poets" such as Iain Mac Fhearchair (John MacCodrum). As
part of the oral literature of the Highlands, few of the works of such village poets were published at
the time, although some have been collected since.[7]
Scottish Gaelic poets produced laments on the Jacobite defeats of 1715 and 1745. Mairghread
nighean Lachlainn and Catriona Nic Fhearghais are among woman poets who reflected on the
crushing effects on traditional Gaelic culture of the aftermath of the Jacobite uprisings. A consequent
sense of desolation pervaded the works of Scottish Gaelic writers such as Dughall Bochanan which
mirrored many of the themes of the graveyard poets writing in England.[7] A legacy of Jacobite verse
was later compiled (and adapted) by James Hogg in his Jacobite Reliques (1819).
The first printed Jèrriais literature appears in the first newspapers following the introduction of the
printing press at the end of the 18th century. The earliest identified dated example of printed poetry
in Jèrriais is a fragment by Matchi L'Gé (Matthew Le Geyt 1777–1849) dated 1795.
The roots of Romanticism: 1750–1798[edit]

Robert Burns inspired many vernacular writers across Britain and Ireland with works such asAuld Lang Syne, A
Red, Red Rose and Halloween.

The second half of the 18th century is sometimes called the "Age of Johnson". Samuel
Johnson (1709–1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author who made lasting
contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor
andlexicographer. Johnson has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in
English history".[117] He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the
whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).[118] His early works include the
poems "London" and "his most impressive poem" "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749).[119] Both
poems are modelled on Juvenal's satires.[119] After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the
English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-reaching effect onModern English and has
been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship." [120] This work brought
Johnson popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years
later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. [121] His later works included essays,
an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays (1765), and the widely read
taleRasselas (1759). In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to
Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1786).
Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent
English Poets (1779–81), a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century
poets. Through works such as the "Dictionary, his edition of Shakespeare, and his Lives of the
Poets in particular, he helped invent what we now call English Literature". [119]
The second half of the 18th century saw the emergence of three major Irish authors Oliver
Goldsmith (1728–1774), Richard Brinsley Sheridan(1751–1816) and Laurence Sterne (1713–68).
Goldsmith settled in London in 1756, where he published the novel The Vicar of Wakefield(1766), a
pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770) and two plays, The Good-Natur'd Man 1768 and She
Stoops to Conquer 1773. This latter was a huge success and is still regularly revived. Sheridan was
born in Dublin into a family with a strong literary and theatrical tradition. The family moved to
England in the 1750s. His first play, The Rivals 1775, was performed at Covent Garden and was an
instant success. He went on to become the most significant London playwright of the late 18th
century with plays like The School for Scandal and The Critic. Both Goldsmith and Sheridan reacted
against the sentimental comedy of the 18th-century theatre, writing plays closer to the style
of Restoration comedy.[122] Sterne published his famous novel Tristram Shandy in parts between
1759 and 1767.[123]
The sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility is a genre which developed during the second half
of the 18th century. It celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of
sentiment, sentimentalism, and sensibility. Sentimentalism, which is to be distinguished from
sensibility, was a fashion in both poetry and prose fiction beginning in the eighteenth century in
reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan Age. Sentimental novels relied on emotional response,
both from their readers and characters. They feature scenes of distress and tenderness, and the plot
is arranged to advance emotions rather than action. The result is a valorisation of "fine feeling,"
displaying the characters as a model for refined, sensitive emotional effect. The ability to display
feelings was thought to show character and experience, and to shape social life and relations.
[124]
 Among the most famous sentimental novels in English are Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or
Virtue Rewarded (1740), Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Laurence Sterne's Tristram
Shandy (1759–67), Sentimental Journey (1768), Henry Brooke's The Fool of Quality (1765–
70), Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771) and Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800).
[125]

Another novel genre also developed in this period. In 1778, Frances Burney (1752–1840)

wrote Evelina, one of the first novel's of manners.[126] Social behaviour in public and private settings
accounts for much of the plot of Evelina. This is mirrored in other novels that were particularly
popular at the beginning of the 19th century, especially those ofJane Austen. Fanny Burney's novels'
indeed "were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen".[127]
The period of intellectual and scientific accomplishments in Scotland in the latter part of the 18th
century has been called the Scottish Enlightenment. Important early works wereDavid Hume's
(1711–76) Treatise on Human Nature (1738) and Essays, Moral and Political (1741). Adam
Smith (1723–90) was another important philosopher in Scotland at this time, author of the first
modern work of economics, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).
Smith is cited as the "father of modern economics" and is still among the most influential thinkers in
the field of economics today.[128] Scottish Common Sense Realism is another important school of
philosophy that originated in the ideas of Scottish philosophers Thomas Reid (1710–96), Adam
Ferguson (1723–1816) and Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) during the 18th-century Scottish
Enlightenment. Scottish philosophy was dominated by Scottish Common Sense Realism, which
shared some characteristics with Romanticism, and it would be a major influence on the
development of one of the most important offshoots of Romanticism in New
England, Transcendentalism, particularly in the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82).[129]
The Encyclopædia Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh. In part, it
was conceived in reaction to the French Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond
d'Alembert (published 1751–1772), which had been inspired by Chambers's Cyclopaedia (first
edition 1728). The Britannica was primarily a Scottish enterprise; it is one of the most enduring
legacies of the Scottish Enlightenment. [130]
The demand for the works of Scottish poets in the Scots-speaking areas of Ulster continued in the
second half of the 18th century with nine printings of Allan Ramsay's The Gentle shepherd between
1743 and 1793, and an edition of Robert Burns' poetry in 1787, the same year as the Edinburgh
edition, followed by reprints in 1789, 1793 and 1800. Among other Scottish poets published in Ulster
were James Hogg and Robert Tannahill. In 1780, Dumfries poet John Mayne makes note of pranks
at Halloween; "What fearfu' pranks ensue!", as well as the supernatural associated with the
night, "Bogies" (ghosts).[131] Robert Burns' 1785 poem Halloween is recited by Scots at Halloween,
and Burns was influenced by Mayne's composition. [131][132]
Some 60 to 70 volumes of Ulster rhyming weaver poetry were published between 1750 and 1850,
the peak being in the decades 1810 to 1840. These weaver poets, such asJames Orr (1770–1816),
looked to Scotland for their cultural and literary models and were not simple imitators but clearly
inheritors of the same literary tradition following the same poetic and orthographic practices; it is not
always immediately possible to distinguish traditional Scots writing from Scotland and Ulster.
The graveyard poets were a number of pre-Romantic English poets, writing in the 1740s and later,
whose works are characterised by their gloomy meditations on mortality, "skulls and coffins, epitaphs
and worms" in the context of the graveyard.[133] To this was added, by later practitioners, a feeling for
the 'sublime' and uncanny, and an interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry. [134] They
are often considered precursors of the Gothic genre. [135] The poets include; Thomas Gray (1716–71),
whose Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) is "the best known product of this kind of
sensibility";[136] William Cowper (1731–1800); Christopher Smart (1722–71); Thomas
Chatterton (1752–70); Robert Blair (1699–1746), author of The Grave (1743), "which celebrates the
horror of death";[137] and Edward Young (1683–1765), whose The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on
Life, Death and Immortality (1742–45), is another "noted example of the graveyard genre". [138] Other
precursors of Romanticism are the poets James Thomson(1700–48) and James
Macpherson (1736–96), the Gothic novel and the novel of sensibility.[139] Significant foreign influences
were the Germans Goethe, Schiller and August Wilhelm Schlegel and French philosopher and
writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78).[140] Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the
Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) is another important influence.[141] The
changing landscape, brought about by the industrial and agricultural revolutions, with the expansion
of the city and depopulation of the countryside, was another influences on the growth of the
Romantic movement in Britain. The poor condition of workers, the new class conflicts and the
pollution of the environment, led to a reaction against urbanism and industrialisation and a new
emphasis on the beauty and value of nature.

Also foreshadowing Romanticism was Gothic fiction, in works such as Horace Walpole's 1764
novel The Castle of Otranto. The Gothic fictiongenre combines elements of horror and romance. The
pioneering gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the gothic villain which
later developed into the Byronic hero. Her most popular and influential work, The Mysteries of
Udolpho (1794), is frequently cited as the archetypal Gothic novel. Vathek (1786) by William
Beckford, and The Monk (1796) by Matthew Lewis, were other notable early works in both the gothic
and horror genres. Iolo Morganwg, founder of the Gorsedd, first came to public notice in 1789 when
he produced Barddoniaeth Dafydd ab Gwilym, a collection of the poetry of the 14th-century Dafydd
ap Gwilym. Included in this edition was a large number of previously unknown poems by Dafydd that
he claimed to have discovered; these poems are regarded as Williams' first literary forgeries.[142] In
1794 he published some of his own poetry, which was later collected in the two-volume Poems, Lyric
and Pastoral. Essentially his only genuine work, it proved quite popular. [142]
Although William Williams Pantycelyn was claimed by Saunders Lewis as the first poet of the
Romantic movement, and Iolo Morganwg's antiquarian enthusiasms fed an appetite elsewhere for
Romantic ideas, a true movement of Romanticism in Welsh literature only developed in the 19th
century when it overlapped with Aestheticism.[36]
James Macpherson (1736–96) was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation.
Claiming to have found poetry written by the ancient bard Ossian, he published translations that
acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of
the Classical epics.Fingal, written in 1762, was speedily translated into many European languages,
and its appreciation of natural beauty and treatment of the ancient legend has been credited more
than any single work with bringing about the Romantic movement in European, and especially in
German literature, through its influence on Johann Gottfried von Herderand Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe.[143] It was also popularised in France by figures that included Napoleon.[144] Eventually it
became clear that the poems were not direct translations from the Gaelic, but flowery adaptations
made to suit the aesthetic expectations of his audience. [145] Both Robert Burns (1759–96) and Walter
Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced by the Ossian cycle.
Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he
became a cultural icon in Scotland. As well as writing poems, Burns also collectedfolk songs from
across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was
published in 1786. Among poems and songs of Burns that remain well known across the world are,
"Auld Lang Syne"; "A Red, Red Rose"; "A Man's A Man for A' That"; "To a Louse"; "To a Mouse";
"The Battle of Sherramuir"; "Tam o' Shanter" and "Ae Fond Kiss".
The importance of translation in spreading the influence of English literature to other cultures of the
islands can be exemplified by the abridged Manx version of Paradise Lost byJohn Milton published
in 1796 by Thomas Christian. The influence also went the other way as Romanticism discovered
inspiration in the literatures and legends of the Celtic countries of the islands. The Ossian hoax
typifies the growth of this interest.
The interest in Celtic bards such as the supposed Ossian inspired a reaction in England that saw
Shakespeare being termed "the Bard" or the "Bard of Avon". [7] The 1769Shakespeare Jubilee was an
example of what was derisively called bardolatry as Shakespeare was held up as an example of
transcendent genius, the ideal of the Romantic poet.

19th-century literature[edit]
Romanticism: 1798–1837[edit]
Main articles: Romanticism § English literature and Romanticism in Scotland

William Blake's "The Tyger", published in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a work of Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the
end of the 18th century. Various dates are given for the Romantic period in British literature, but here
the publishing of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is taken as the beginning, and the crowning of Queen
Victoria in 1837 as its end, even though, for example, William Wordsworth lived until 1850
and William Blake published before 1798. The writers of this period, however, "did not think of
themselves as 'Romantics' ", and the term was first used by critics of the Victorian period. [146]
The Romantic period was one of major social change in England, because of the depopulation of the
countryside and the rapid development of overcrowded industrial cities, that took place in the period
roughly between 1750 and 1850. The movement of so many people in England was the result of two
forces: the Agricultural Revolution, that involved the Enclosure of the land, drove workers off the
land, and the Industrial Revolution which provided them employment, "in the factories and mills,
operated by machines driven by steam-power".[147] Indeed Romanticism may be seen in part as a
reaction to the Industrial Revolution,[148] though it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and
political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, as well a reaction against the scientific rationalisation of
nature.[149] The French Revolution was an especially important influence on the political thinking of
many of the Romantic poets.[150]
The landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so that it the Romantics, especially
perhaps Wordsworth, are often described as 'nature poets'. However, the longer Romantic 'nature
poems' have a wider concern because they are usually meditations on "an emotional problem or
personal crisis".[151]

William Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of theRomantic
Age

The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) was one of the first of the English
Romantic poets. Largely disconnected from the major streams of the literature of the time, Blake was
generally unrecognised during his lifetime, but is now considered a seminal figure in the history of
both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. Considered mad by contemporaries for his
idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity,
and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. Among his most important
works are Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) "and profound and difficult
'prophecies' " such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The First Book of
Urizen (1794), Milton (1804–?11), and "Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion" (1804–?20).
[152]

After Blake, among the earliest Romantics were the Lake Poets, a small group of friends,
including William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Robert
Southey (1774–1843) and journalist Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859). However, at the time Walter
Scott(1771–1832) was the most famous poet. Scott achieved immediate success with his long
narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, followed by the full epic poem Marmion in 1808.
Both were set in the distant Scottish past.[153]
The early Romantic Poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is
marked by the first romantic manifesto in English literature, the "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads (1798). In
it Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the
"real language of men" and which avoids the poetic diction of much 18th-century poetry. Here,
Wordsworth gives his famous definition of poetry, as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful
emotions recollected in tranquility" which "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." The
poems in Lyrical Ballads were mostly by Wordsworth, although Coleridge contributed the long "Rime
of the Ancient Mariner", a tragic ballad about the survival of one sailor through a series of
supernatural events on his voyage through the south seas which involves the slaying of an
albatross. Coleridge is also especially remembered for "Kubla Khan", "Frost at Midnight", "Dejection:
an Ode", "Christabel" and his major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially
on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to
English-speaking culture.[154] Coleridge and Wordsworth, along with Thomas Carlyle, were a major
influence, through Emerson, on American transcendentalism.[155] Among Wordsworth's most
important poems, are "Michael", "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", "Resolution
and Independence", "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" and the
long, autobiographical, epic The Prelude. The Prelude was begun in 1799 but published
posthumously in 1850.
Robert Southey (1774–1843) was another of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30
years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame has been long eclipsed by that of his
contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His most enduring
contribution to literary history is perhaps the children's classic, The Story of the Three Bears, the
basis of the original Goldilocks story. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) was an English essayist,
best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821),[156] an autobiographical account of
his laudanum and its effect on his life. William Hazlitt (1778–1830), friend of both Coleridge and
Wordsworth, is another important essayist at this time, though today he is best known for his literary
criticism, especially Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817–18).[157]

Lord Byron

The second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron (1788–1824), Percy Bysshe

Shelley (1792–1822) and John Keats (1795–1821). Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-
century satirists and was, perhaps the least 'romantic' of the three, preferring "the brilliant wit
of Popeto what he called the 'wrong poetical system' of his Romantic contemporaries". [158] Byron
achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe with works exploiting the violence and
drama of their exotic and historical settings. Goethe called Byron "undoubtedly the greatest genius of
our century".[159] However, despite the success of Childe Harold and other works, Byron was forced to
leave England for good in 1816 and seek asylum on the Continent, because, among other things, of
his alleged incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. [160] Between 1819 and 1824 Byron
published his unfinished epic satire Don Juan, which, though initially condemned by the critics, "was
much admired by Goethe who translated part of it"[161]
Though John Keats shared Byron and Shelley's radical politics, "his best poetry is not political".
[162]
 but is especially noted for its sensuous music and imagery, along with a concern with material
beauty and the transience of life.[163] Among his most famous works are: "The Eve of St Agnes", "Ode
to Psyche", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on
Melancholy", "To Autumn" and the incomplete Hyperion, a 'philosophical' poem in blank verse, which
was "conceived on the model of Milton's Paradise Lost ".[164] Keats has always been regarded as a
major Romantic "and his stature as a poet has grown steadily through all changes of fashion". [165] In
1882, Swinburne wrote in the Encyclopædia Britannicathat "the Ode to a Nightingale, [is] one of the
final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages". [166] More recently critic Helen
Vendler stated the odes "are a group of works in which the English language find ultimate
embodiment".[167] Keats' letters "are among the finest in English" and important "for their discussion of
his aesthetic ideas", including 'negative capability' ".[168]
Percy Shelley, famous for his association with Keats and Byron, was the third major romantic poet of
the second generation. Generally regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language,
Shelley is perhaps best known for poems such as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a
Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud, The Masque of Anarchy and Adonaïs, an elegy
written on the death of Keats. Shelley's early profession of atheism, in the tract "The Necessity of
Atheism", led to his expulsion from Oxford[169]and branded him as a radical agitator and thinker,
setting an early pattern of marginalisation and ostracism from the intellectual and political circles of
his time. His close circle of admirers, however, included the most progressive thinkers of the day,
including his future father-in-law, philosopher William Godwin. A work like Queen Mab (1813) reveal
Shelley, "as the direct heir to the French and British revolutionary intellectuals of the 1790s.
[170]
 Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including
important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
[171]
 Shelley's influential poem The Masque of Anarchy (1819) calls for nonviolence in protest and
political action. It is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest.
[172]
 Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance was influenced and inspired by Shelley's verse, and
Gandhi would often quote the poem to vast audiences. [173]

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797–1851) is remembered as the author of Frankenstein (1818), an important Gothic

novel, as well as being an early example of science fiction. [174] The plot of this is said to have come
from a waking dream she had, in the company of Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori,
following a conversation about galvanism and the feasibility of returning a corpse or assembled body
parts to life, and on the experiments of the 18th-century natural philosopher and poet Erasmus
Darwin, who was said to have animated dead matter. [175] Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the
company also amused themselves by reading German ghost stories, prompting Byron to suggest
they each write their own supernaturaltale.
Another important poet in this period was John Clare (1793–1864), Clare was the son of a farm
labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and
his lamentation for the changes taking place in rural England. [176] Between 1820 and 1841 Clare
published for collections of poems. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th
century and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. [177] His
biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has
ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the
alienated and unstable self".[178]
George Crabbe (1754–1832) was an English poet who, during the Romantic period, wrote "closely
observed, realistic portraits of rural life [...] in the heroic couplets of theAugustan age".[179] Lord
Byron who was an admirer of Crabbe's poetry, described him as "nature's sternest painter, yet the
best".[180] Modern critic Frank Whitehead has said that "Crabbe, in his verse tales in particular, is an
important–indeed, a major–poet whose work has been and still is seriously
undervalued."[181] Crabbe's works include The Village (1783), Poems (1807), The Borough (1810),
and his poetry collections Tales (1812) and Tales of the Hall (1819).

Jane Austen

Major novelists in this period were the Englishwoman Jane Austen (1775–1817) and the
Scotsman Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), while Gothic fictionof various kinds also flourished. Austen's
works satirise the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the
transition to 19th-century realism.[182] Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the
dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. [183] Austen
brings to light the hardships women faced, who usually did not inherit money, could not work and
where their only chance in life depended on the man they married. She reveals not only the
difficulties women faced in her day, but also what was expected of men and of the careers they had
to follow. This she does with wit and humour and with endings where all characters, good or bad,
receive exactly what they deserve. Austen's work brought her little personal fame and only a few
positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane
Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become accepted as a major
writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the
emergence of a Janeite fan culture. Austen's works include Pride and Prejudice(1813) Sense and
Sensibility (1811), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815) and Persuasion (1818).

Sir Walter Scott, 1822

The most important British novelist at the beginning of the early 19th century was Sir Walter Scott,
who was not only a highly successful British novelist, but "the greatest single influence on fiction in
the 19th century [...] [and] a European figure". [184] Scott's novel writing career was launched in 1814
with Waverley, often called the first historical novel, and was followed byIvanhoe. The Waverley
Novels, including The Antiquary, Old Mortality, The Heart of Midlothian, and whose subject is
Scottish history, are now generally regarded as Scott's masterpieces. [185] He was one of the most
popular novelist of the era and his historical romances inspired a generation of painters, composers,
and writers throughout Europe, including Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn and J. M. W. Turner.
His novels also inspired many operas, of which the most famous are Lucia di Lammermoor (1835)
by Donizetti and Bizet's, La jolie fille de Perth, The Fair Maid of Perth (1867).[186] However, Austen is
today widely read and the source for films and television series, while Scott is neglected.
Ewen MacLachlan (Gaelic: Eoghan MacLachlainn) (1775–1822) was a Scots poet of this period who
translated the first eight books of Homer'sIliad into Scottish Gaelic. He also composed and published
his own Gaelic Attempts in Verse (1807) and Metrical Effusions (1816), and contributed greatly to
the 1828 Gaelic–English Dictionary.
Victorian literature: 1837–1901[edit]
See also: Victorian literature
Victorian fiction[edit]
The novel[edit]
It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English.
[187]
 Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers.
[188]
 Monthly serialising of fiction encouraged this surge in popularity, due to a combination of the rise
of literacy, technological advances in printing, and improved economics of distribution. [189] Charles
Dickens' Pickwick Papers, was published in twenty parts between April 1836 and November 1837.
[190]
 Both Dickens and Thackeray frequently published this way.[191] However, the standard practice of
publishing three volume editions continued until the end of the 19th century. [192] Circulating libraries,
that allowed books to be borrowed for an annual subscription, were a further factor in the rising
popularity of the novel.
Although London, as imperial capital, was the pre-eminent centre for literature and publishing, the
pluricentric nature of British culture and the growing sophistication of provincial towns and cities as
rapid industrialisation progressed meant that literature developed in the provinces. The Lake Poets
(William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge), the Brontës, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell are all
figures who strengthened the provincial trend in the literature of England, examining questions of
Englishness at the same time as other writers throughout Britain and Ireland were exploring the
conflicts of their own non-English identities.[193] This was in many ways a reaction to rapid
industrialisation, and the social, political and economic issues associated with it, and was a means of
commenting on abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not
profiting from England's economic prosperity. [194] Stories of the working class poor were directed
toward middle class to help create sympathy and promote change. An early example is Charles
Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837–38). Other significant early example of this genre are Sybil, or The Two
Nations, a novel by Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) andCharles Kingsley's (1819–75) Alton
Locke (1849).
Charles Dickens (1812–70) emerged on the literary scene in the late 1830s and soon became
probably the most famous novelist in the history of British literature. One of his most popular works
to this day is A Christmas Carol (1843). Dickens fiercely satirised various aspects of society,
including the workhouse in Oliver Twist, the failures of the legal system in Bleak House, the
dehumanising effect of money in Dombey and Son and the influence of the philosophy
of utilitarianism in factories, education etc., in Hard Times. However some critics have suggested
that Dickens' sentimentality blunts the impact of his satire. [195] In more recent years Dickens has been
most admired for his later novels, such as Dombey and Son (1846–48), Bleak House (1852–53)
and Little Dorrit (1855–57), Great Expectations (1860–1), and Our Mutual Friend (1864–65).[196] An
early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63), who during the Victorian period
ranked second only to him, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for Vanity
Fair (1847). In that novel he satirises whole swaths of humanity while retaining a light touch. It
features his most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp.
The Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, were other significant novelists in the 1840s and
1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they were first published but were subsequently
accepted as classics. They had written compulsively from early childhood and were first published,
at their own expense, in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The
following year the three sisters each published a novel. Charlotte Brontë's (1816–55) work was Jane
Eyre, which is written in an innovative style that combines naturalism with gothic melodrama, and
broke new ground in being written from an intensely first-person female perspective. [197] Emily
Brontë's (1818–48) novel was Wuthering Heights and, according to Juliet Gardiner, "the vivid sexual
passion and power of its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled
reviewers,"[198]and led the Victorian public and many early reviewers to think that it had been written
by a man.[199] Even though it received mixed reviews when it first came out, and was often
condemned for its portrayal of amoral passion, the book subsequently became an English literary
classic.[200] The third Brontë novel of 1847 was Anne Brontë's (1820–49) Agnes Grey, which deals
with the lonely life of a governess. Anne Brontë's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), is
perhaps the most shocking of the Brontës' novels. In seeking to present the truth in literature, Anne's
depiction of alcoholism and debauchery was profoundly disturbing to 19th-century sensibilities.
[201]
 Charlotte Brontë's Shirley was published in 1849, Villette in 1853, and The Professor in 1857.
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65) was also a successful writer and her first novel, Mary Barton, was
published anonymously in 1848. Gaskell's North and South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial
north of England with the wealthier south. Even though her writing conforms to Victorian
conventions, Gaskell usually frames her stories as critiques of contemporary attitudes, and her early
works focused on factory work in southeast Lancashire. She always emphasised the role of women,
with complex narratives and dynamic female characters.[202]
Anthony Trollope's (1815–82) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English
novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works are set in the imaginary west country
county of Barsetshire, including The Warden (1855) and Barchester Towers (1857). Trollope's
novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England. Henry
James suggested that Trollope's greatest achievement was "great apprehension of the real", and
that "what made him so interesting, came through his desire to satisfy us on this point". [203]
George Eliot's (Mary Ann Evans (1819–80) first novel Adam Bede was published in 1859, and she
was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especiallyMiddlemarch 1871-2), are
important examples of literary realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian
literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines
they often depict, that has led to comparisons with Tolstoy.[204] While her reputation declined
somewhat after her death,[205] in the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics,
most notably by Virginia Woolf, who called Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for
grown-up people".[206]Various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have also introduced her
to a wider readership.[207]
George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for his novels The Ordeal of Richard
Fevered (1859) and The Egotist (1879). "His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th century
but then seriously declined.[208]
Victor Hugo spent 18 years in exile in the Channel Islands, 1852–1870. He completed Les
Misérables in Guernsey and Les Travailleurs de la mer was written and set in Guernsey and has
been described as "the finest British novel written in French". [209] Hugo used some of Guernsey
poet George Métivier's work as material in his novels.[210]

H. G. Wells studying in London, taken circa 1890

An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is
seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy(1840–1928). A Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot,
he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William
Wordsworth.[211] Charles Darwin is another important influence on Thomas Hardy.[212] Like Charles
Dickens he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a
declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life, and regarded himself primarily
as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898, so that initially he gained fame as the
author of such novels as, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of
Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles(1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). He ceased
writing novels following adverse criticism of this last novel. In novels such as The Mayor of
Casterbridge and Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hardy attempts to create modern works in the genre
of tragedy, that are modelled on the Greek drama, especially Aeschylus and Sophocles, though in
prose, not poetry, fiction, not a play, and with characters of low social standing, not nobility.
[213]
 Another significant late-19th-century novelist is George Robert Gissing (1857–1903), who
published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known novel is New Grub Street (1891). Also
in the late 1890s, the first novel of Polish-born immigrantJoseph Conrad, (1857–1924), an important
forerunner of modernist literature, was published. Conrad's Heart of Darkness was published in
1899, a symbolic story within a story, or frame narrative, about the journey to the Belgian Congo by
an Englishman called Marlow. This was followed by Lord Jim in 1900.

J. M. Barrie, 1890

Ulster Scots was used in the narrative by Ulster novelists such as W. G. Lyttle (1844–1896). By the
middle of the 19th century the Kailyard school of prose had become the dominant literary genre,
overtaking poetry. This was a tradition shared with Scotland which continued into the early 20th
century.[214] The Scottish authors; Robert Louis Stevenson, William Alexander, Sir James M. Barrie,
and George MacDonald, also wrote in Lowland Scots or used it in dialogue.
The Welsh novel in English starts with "The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shon Catti" (1828) by
T. J. Ll. Prichard, and novelists following him developed two important genres: the industrial
novel and the rural romance. Serial fiction in Welsh had been appearing from 1822 onwards, but the
work to be recognisable as the first novel in Welsh was William Ellis Jones' 1830 "Y Bardd, neu y
Meudwy Cymreig". This was a moralistic work, as were many of the productions of the time. The first
major novelist in the Welsh language was Daniel Owen (1836–1895), author of works such asRhys
Lewis (1885) and Enoc Huws (1891).[36]
The first novel in Scottish Gaelic was John MacCormick's Dùn-Àluinn, no an t-Oighre 'na
Dhìobarach, which was serialised in the People's Journal in 1910, before publication in book form in
1912. The publication of a second Scottish Gaelic novel, An t-Ogha Mòr by Angus Robertson,
followed within a year.[215]
The short story[edit]
There are early European examples of short stories published separately between 1790 and 1810,
but the first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries
around the same period.[216] The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic
tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative" "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791).
[217]
 Major novelists like Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens also wrote some short stories.
Literary magazines first began to appear in the early part of the 19th century, mirroring an overall
rise in the number of books, magazines and scholarly journals being published at that time.
Critics Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham and Sydney Smith founded the Edinburgh Review in 1802.
Other British reviews of this period included the Westminster Review (1824), The Spectator (1828)
and Athenaeum (1828).
Welsh writers in English have favoured the short story form over the novel for two main reasons: in a
society lacking sufficient wealth to support professional writers, the amateur writer was able to spare
time only for short bursts of creativity; and, like poetry, it concentrated linguistic delight and
exuberance. However, the genre did not develop in these writers much beyond its origin in rural
sketches. Satire was avoided, and, since the main market was London publishers, the short stories
tended to focus on the eccentricities (as seen from a metropolitan viewpoint) of Welsh life. [36]
Somerville and Ross's Some Experiences of an Irish RM (1899) and its successors also played on
popular provincial stereotypes.
The short story in Welsh only developed as a serious literary form in the early years of the 20th
century, as writers absorbed European and American models and moved on from the moralistic
parables that were typical of the Nonconformist press that had grown up in the 19th century. Daniel
Owen's last book Straeon y Pentan ("Tales of the hearth", 1895) served as the pattern for the short
story form that became a codified part of the competitions at the National Eisteddfod at the start of
the 20th century.[36]
Ulster Scots regularly appeared in Ulster newspaper columns such as those of "Bab M'Keen" from
the 1880s.[218]
Philippe Le Sueur Mourant's Jèrriais tales of Bram Bilo, an innocent abroad in Paris, were an
immediate success in Jersey in 1889 and went through a number of reprintings. [219]
Genre fiction[edit]

Bram Stoker

Important developments occurred in genre fiction in this era.

Sir John Barrow's descriptive 1831 account of the Mutiny on the Bounty immortalised the Royal
Navy ship HMS Bounty and her people. The legend of Dick Turpin was popularised when the 18th-
century English highwayman's exploits appeared in the novel Rookwood in 1834.
Although pre-dated by John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River in 1841, the history of the
modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin withGeorge MacDonald, the influential author of The
Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet who also
wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Wilkie Collins' epistolary
novel The Moonstone (1868), is generally considered the first detective novel in the English
language, while The Woman in White is regarded as one of the finest sensation novels. H. G.
Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like The Time
Machine (1895), and The War of the Worlds (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian
England by Martians, and Wells is seen, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a
major figure in the development of the science fiction genre. He also wrote realistic fiction about the
lower middle class in novels like Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr Polly (1910).
Penny dreadful publications were an alternative to mainstream works, and were aimed at working
class adolescents, introducing the infamousSweeney Todd. The premier ghost story writer of the
19th century was the Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu. His works include the macabre mystery
novel Uncle Silas 1865, and his Gothic novella Carmilla 1872, tells the story of a young woman's
susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire. The vampire genre fiction began with John
William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819). This short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and
his poem The Giaour. An important later work is Varney the Vampire (1845), where many standard
vampire conventions originated: Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the neck of his
victims, and has hypnotic powers and superhuman strength. Varney was also the first example of
the "sympathetic vampire", who loathes his condition but is a slave to it. [220] Bram Stoker, yet another
Irish writer, was the author of seminal horror work Dracula and featured as its primary antagonist the
vampire Count Dracula, with the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing his arch-enemy. Dracula has
been attributed to a number of literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, gothic
novel and invasion literature.

Sir Arthur Conan Doylewas born in Scotland of Irish parents but his Sherlock Holmes stories have typified a
fog-filled London for readers worldwide

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant London-based "consulting detective", famous
for his intellectual prowess, skilful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning and forensic skills
to solve difficult cases. Holmes' archenemy Professor Moriarty, is widely considered to be the first
true example of a supervillain, while Sherlock Holmes has become a by-word for a detective. Conan
Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes, from 1880 up to 1907, with a
final case in 1914. All but four Conan Doyle stories are narrated by Holmes' friend, assistant, and
biographer, Dr John H. Watson.
The Lost World literary genre was inspired by real stories of archaeological discoveries by imperial
adventurers. H. Rider Haggard wrote one of the earliest examples, King Solomon's Mines in 1885.
Contemporary European politics and diplomatic manoeuvrings informed Anthony Hope's
swashbuckling Ruritanian adventure novels The Prisoner of Zenda 1894, and Rupert of Hentzau,
1898.
F. Anstey's comic novel Vice Versa 1882, sees a father and son magically switch bodies.
Satirist Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat 1889, is a humorous account of a boating holiday
on the river Thames. Grossmith brothers George & Weedon's Diary of a Nobody 1892, is also
considered a classic work of humour.

Lewis Carroll

Literature for children developed as a separate genre. Some works become internationally known,
such as those of Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the
Looking-Glass. Adventure novels, such as those of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94), are
generally classified as for children. Stevenson'sStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886),
depicts the dual personality of a kind and intelligent physician who turns into a psychopathic monster
after imbibing a drug intended to separate good from evil in a personality. HisKidnapped (1886) is a
fast-paced historical novel set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and Treasure
Island 1883, is the classicpirate adventure. At the end of the Victorian era and leading into the
Edwardian era, Beatrix Potter was an author and illustrator, best known for her children's books,
which featured animal characters. In her thirties, Potter published The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902.
Potter eventually went on to publish 23 children's books and become a wealthy woman. Another
classic of the period is Anna Sewell's animal novel Black Beauty.
In the latter years of the 19th century, precursors of the modern picture book were illustrated books
of poems and short stories produced by English illustrators Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane,
and Kate Greenaway. These had a larger proportion of pictures to words than earlier books, and
many of their pictures were in colour. Some British artists made their living illustrating novels and
children's books, include Arthur Rackham, Cicely Mary Barker, W. Heath Robinson, Henry J.
Ford, John Leech, and George Cruikshank.
Victorian poetry[edit]

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The leading poets during the Victorian period were Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), Robert
Browning (1812–89), Elizabeth Barrett Browning(1806–61), and Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The
poetry of this period was heavily influenced by the Romantics, but also went off in its own directions.
Particularly notable was the development of the dramatic monologue, a form used by many poets in
this period, but perfected by Browning. Literary criticism in the 20th century gradually drew attention
to the links between Victorian poetry and modernism. [221]
Tennyson was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign. He was
described by T. S. Eliot, as "the greatest master of metrics as well as melancholia", and as having
"the finest ear of any English poet since Milton".[222] Browning main achievement was indramatic
monologues such as "My Last Duchess", "Andrea del Sarto" and "The Bishop Orders his Tomb",
which were published in his two-volume Men and Women in 1855. In his introduction to the Oxford
University Press edition of Browning's Poems 1833–1864, Ian Jack comments, that Thomas
Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound and T S Eliot "all learned from Browning's exploration of the
possibilities of dramatic poetry and of colloquial idiom". [223] Tennyson was also a pioneer in the use of
the dramatic monologue, in "The Lotus-Eaters" (1833), "Ulysses" (1842), and '"Tithonus" (1860).
[224]
 While Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the wife of Robert Browning she had established her
reputation as a major poet before she met him. Her most famous work is the sequence of 44
sonnets "Sonnets from the Portuguese" published in Poems (1850).[225] Matthew Arnold's reputation
as a poet has declined in recent years and he is best remembered now for his critical works,
like Culture and Anarchy (1869), and his 1867 poem "Dover Beach". This poem depicts a
nightmarish world from which the old religious verities have receded. It is sometimes held up as an
early, if not the first, example of the modern sensibility. The influence of William Wordsworth, both in
ideas and in diction, is unmistakable in Arnold's best poetry, and Arnold has been seen as a bridge
between Romanticism and Modernism, because of his use of symbolic landscapes was typical of the
Romantic era, while his sceptical and pessimistic perspective was typical of the Modern era. [citation needed]
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was a poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was
later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the
movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.[226] Rossetti's art was
characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. [227] Poetry and image are closely entwined
in Rossetti's work and he frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures. He also illustrated
poems by his sister Christina Rossetti such as Goblin Market.
While Arthur Clough (1819–61) was a more minor figure of this era, he has been described as "a fine
poet whose experiments in extending the range of literary language and subject were ahead of his
time".[228]
George Meredith (1828–1909) is remembered for his innovative collection of poems Modern
Love (1862).[208]

George Métivier (1790–1881), Guernsey's "national poet"

George Métivier published Rimes Guernesiaises, a collection of poems in Guernésiais and French in

1831 and Fantaisies Guernesiaises in 1866. Métivier's poems had first appeared in newspapers
from 1813 onward, but he spent time in Scotland in his youth where he became familiar with the
Scots literary tradition although he was also influenced by Occitan literature. The first printed
anthology of Jèrriais poetry, Rimes Jersiaises, was published in 1865.
In the second half of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French Symbolism. The
moral earnestness of the 1840s and 1850s expressed in the industrial novel sparked a reaction
against the idea that art should advance a moral agenda. Aestheticism responded with a concern for
formal values, virtuoso manipulation of a wide range of poetic forms, both established and revived,
and open disrespect for Christian doctrines and sexual respectability. Algernon Charles Swinburne's
1866 collection Poems and Ballads revived classical metres and evoked extreme sexual passion. A
major innovation of Aesthetic writing was the importance of the poem or prose poem composed in
response to a work of visual art, blurring the distinction between art criticism and ekphrasis.[229] Two
groups of poets emerged in the 1890s: the Yellow Book poets who adhered to the tenets of
Aestheticism, including Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club group, that
included Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and William Butler Yeats. Irishman Yeats went on to
become an important modernist in the 20th century. Also in the 1890s A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
published at his own expense A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of 63 poems, because he could not find a
publisher. At first selling slowly, it rapidly became a lasting success, and its appeal to English
musicians had helped to make it widely known before World War I, when its themes struck a
powerful chord with English readers. The poems' wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English
countryside, in spare language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian and
Edwardian taste. Housman wrote most of them while living in Highgate, London, before ever visiting
that part of Shropshire(about thirty miles from his birthplace), which he presented in an idealised
pastoral light, as his 'land of lost content'. [230] Though A. E. Housman was born in the Victorian era
and first published in the 1890s, his poetry only really became known in the 20th century. He
published a further highly successful collection, Last Poems, in 1922, while a third volume, More
Poems, was published posthumously in 1936.[231] A Shropshire Lad has been in print continuously
since May 1896.
The nonsense verse of Edward Lear, along with the novels and poems of Lewis Carroll, is regarded
as a precursor of surrealism.[232] In 1846 Lear published A Book of Nonsense, a volume of limericks
that went through three editions and helped popularise the form. In 1865 The History of the Seven
Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple was published, and in 1867 his most famous piece of
nonsense, The Owl and the Pussycat, which he wrote for the children of his patron Edward Stanley,
13th Earl of Derby. Many other works followed. Lewis Carroll wrote the poems "The Hunting of the
Snark" and "Jabberwocky".
Denys Corbet published collections of Guernésiais poems Les Feuilles de la Forêt (1871) and Les
Chànts du draïn rimeux (1884), and also brought out an annual poetry anthology 1874–1877, similar
to Augustus Asplet Le Gros's annual in Jersey 1868–1875. [219]

Ulster Scots poetry,Robert Huddlestone (1814–1887) in paving, Writers' Square, Belfast

Increased literacy in rural and outlying areas and wider access to publishing through, for example,
local newspapers encouraged regional literary development as the 19th century progressed. Some
writers in lesser-used languages and dialects of the islands gained a literary following outside their
native regions, for example William Barnes (1801–86) in Dorset, George Métivier (1790–1881)
in Guernsey and Robert Pipon Marett (1820–84) in Jersey.[219]
Writers of comic verse included the dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator W. S. Gilbert (1836–
1911), who is best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer
Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzanceand
one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado.[233]
The so-called "Cranken Rhyme" produced by John Davey of Boswednack, one of the last people
with some traditional knowledge of the language,[234] may be the last piece of traditional Cornish
literature.
John Ceiriog Hughes desired to restore simplicity of diction and emotional sincerity and do for Welsh
poetry what Wordsworth and Coleridge did for English poetry.
Edward Faragher (1831–1908) has been considered the last important native writer of Manx. He
wrote poetry, reminiscences of his life as a fisherman, and translations of selected Aesop's Fables.
Victorian drama[edit]

Oscar Wilde, 1882

For much of the first half of the 19th century, drama in London and provincial theatres was restricted
by a licensing system to the Patent theatre companies, and all other theatres could perform only
musical entertainments (although magistrates had powers to license occasional dramatic
performances). By the early 19th century, however, music hall entertainments had become popular,
and provided a loophole in the restrictions on non-patent theatres in the genre of melodrama which
did not contravene the Patent Acts, as it was accompanied by music. The passing of the Theatres
Act 1843 removed the monopoly on drama held by the Patent theatres, enabling local authorities to
license theatres as they saw fit, and also restricted the Lord Chamberlain's powers to censor new
plays. The 1843 Act did not apply to Ireland where the power of the Lord Lieutenant to license patent
theatres enabled control of stage performance analogous to that exercised by the Lord Chamberlain
in Great Britain.[235]
Drama did not achieve importance as a genre in the 19th century until the end of the century, and
then the main figures were Irish-born. Irish playwright Dion Boucicault (1820–90), was an extremely
popular writer of comedies who achieved success on the London stage (London Assurance, 1841).
In the last decade of the century major playwrights emerged, including George Bernard
Shaw (1856–1950) (Arms and the Man, 1894) and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) (The Importance of
Being Earnest, 1895). Both these writers lived mainly in England and wrote in English, with the
exception of some works in French by Wilde.
The development of Irish literary culture was encouraged in the late 19th and early 20th century by
the Irish Literary Revival (see also TheCeltic Revival), which was supported by William Butler
Yeats (1865–1939), Augusta, Lady Gregory, and John Millington Synge (The Playboy of the
Western World, 1907). The Revival stimulated a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature. This
was a nationalist movement that also encouraged the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish,
as distinct from British culture. While drama was an important component of this movement, it also
included prose and poetry.
Ernest Rhys was seen as the leading Welsh member of the Celtic Revival and his poetry and
translations were held in high regard at the time, not least by Yeats. However posterity remembers
him best as the shaper and first editor of the Everyman's Library, which brought affordable classics
to a wide reading public.
20th century[edit]
The year 1922 marked a significant change in the relationship between Great Britain and Ireland,
with the setting up of the Irish Free State in the predominantly Catholic South, while the
predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom. This separation
also leads to questions as to what extent Irish writing prior to 1922 should be treated as a colonial
literature. There are also those who question whether the literature of Northern Ireland is Irish or
British. Nationalist movements in Britain, especially in Wales and Scotland, also significantly
influenced writers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The transformation of the British Empire into a Commonwealth of Nations has given rise to the
concept of British and Commonwealth literature used for literary prizes such as theBooker Prize.
[236]
 Questions of identity have been raised, notably in 1994 when James Kelman's How Late It Was,
How Late became the first (and only, as of 2012) Scottish novel to win the Booker Prize. [237] Simon
Jenkins, a columnist for The Times, called the award "literary vandalism." In his acceptance speech,
Kelman countered the criticism and decried its basis as suspect, making the case for the culture and
language of "indigenous" people outside of London. "...the gist of the argument amounts to the
following, that vernaculars, patois, slangs, dialects, gutter-languages etc. might well have a place in
the realms of comedy (and the frequent references to Billy Connolly or Rab C. Nesbittsubstantiate
this) but they are inferior linguistic forms and have no place in literature. And a priori any writer who
engages in the use of such so-called language is not really engaged in literature at all." [238]
Irish poetry and prose has redefined itself against British literature, and moves to political
independence in Scotland are leading to a redefinition of the relationship between English literature
and other literatures that have historically been defined in association with it. [236]
By the end of the twentieth century further political devolution had taken place in the UK, and both
Scotland and Wales now have their own parliaments, together with more control over their internal
matters, though far from full independence.
Modernism and cultural revivals: 1901–1945[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve
this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (June 2012)

The first section of Wyndham Lewis' Manifesto, Blast 1, 1914

From around 1910 the Modernist movement began to influence British literature. While their
Victorian predecessors had usually been happy to cater to mainstream middle-class taste, 20th-
century writers often felt alienated from it, so responded by writing more intellectually challenging
works or by pushing the boundaries of acceptable content.
Vorticism was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century,
[239]
 based in London but international in make-up and ambition. The movement was announced in
1914 in the first issue of BLAST, which contained its manifesto. It was co-founded and edited
by Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957), the English painter and author. His novels include Tarr (1918) and
the trilogy The Human Age (1928 and 1955) set in the afterworld.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, Welsh literature began to reflect the way the Welsh
language was increasingly becoming a political symbol. Two important literary nationalists
were Saunders Lewis (1893–1985) and Kate Roberts (1891–1985), both of whom began publishing
in the 1920s. Saunders Lewis was above all a dramatist. His earliest published play
was Blodeuwedd (The woman of flowers) (1923–25, revised 1948). Other notable plays
include Buchedd Garmon (The life of Germanus) (radio play, 1936) and several others after the war.
Lewis also published two novels, Monica (1930) and Merch Gwern Hywel (The daughter of Gwern
Hywel) (1964) and two collections of poems. In addition he was a historian, literary critic, and a
founder of the Welsh National Party in 1925 (later known asPlaid Cymru). Kate Roberts' first volume
of short stories, O gors y bryniau ("From the swamp of the hills"), appeared in 1925 but perhaps her
most successful book of short stories is Te yn y grug ("Tea in the heather") (1959), a series of stories
about children. As well as short stories Roberts also wrote novels, perhaps her most famous
being Traed mewn cyffion ("Feet in chains") (1936) which reflected the hard life of a slate quarrying
family. Kate Roberts' and Saunders Lewis's careers continued after World War II and they both were
among the foremost Welsh-language authors of the twentieth century.
First World War[edit]

A statue of Hedd Wyn inTrawsfynydd

The experiences of the First World War were reflected in the work of war poets such as Wilfred
Owen, Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg,Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon. Dòmhnall Ruadh
Chorùna was a Scottish Gaelic poet who served in the First World War, and as a war poet described
the use of poison gas in his poem Òran a' Phuinnsuin ("Song of the Poison"). His poetry is part
of oral literature, as he himself never learnt to read and write in his native language. Welsh
poet Hedd Wyn, who was killed in World War I although producing comparatively few war poems as
such,[36] was later the subject of an Oscar-nominated Welsh film. In Parenthesis, an epic
poem by David Jones first published in 1937, is a notable work of the literature of the First World
War, that was influenced by Welsh traditions, despite Jones being born in England. In non-fiction
prose T. E. Lawrence's (Lawrence of Arabia) autobiographical account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom of
the Arab Revolt against theOttoman Empire is important. Poetry reflecting life on the home-front was
also published; Guernésiais writer Thomas Henry Mahy's collectionDires et Pensées du Courtil
Poussin, published in 1922, contained some of his observational poems published in La Gazette de
Guerneseyduring the war.
The end of the First World War saw a decline in the quantity of poetry published in Jèrriais and
Guernésiais in favour of short-story-like newspaper columns in prose, some being collected in book
or booklet form – this being a common genre in the Norman mainland.
Poetry: 1901–1945[edit]

Thomas Hardy

Two Victorian poets who published little in the 19th century, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) and Gerard
Manley Hopkins (1844–89), have since come to be regarded as major poets. While Hardy first
established his reputation the late 19th century with novels, he also wrote poetry throughout his
career. However he did not publish his first collection until 1898, so that he tends to be treated as a
20th-century poet. Hardy lived well into the third decade of the twentieth century, an important
transitional figure between the Victorian era and the 20th century, but because of the adverse
criticism of his last novel, Jude the Obscure, in 1895, from that time Hardy concentrated on
publishing poetry.[240] Gerard Manley Hopkins's Poems were posthumously published in 1918
by Robert Bridges(1844–1930, Poet Laureate from 1913). Hopkins' poem "The Wreck of the
Deutschland", written in 1875, first introduced what Hopkins called "sprung rhythm."[241] As well as
developing new rhythmic effects, Hopkins "was also very interested in ways of rejuvenating poetic
language" and frequently "employed compound and unusual word combinations". [242] Several
twentieth-century poets, includingW. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and American Charles Wright,
"turned to his work for its inventiveness and rich aural patterning". [242]
Free verse and other stylistic innovations came to the forefront in this era, with which T. S. Eliot and
Ezra Pound were especially associated. T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was born American, migrated to
England in 1914, at the age of 25, and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.
He was "arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century." [243] He produced
some of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land" (1922)
and Four Quartets (1935–1942).[244] He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the
Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. [245] Eliot's friend Ezra
Pound (1885–1972), an American expatriate, made important contributions of British literature during
his residence in London. He was responsible for the publication in 1915 of Eliot's "The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock", but more important was the major editing that he did on the "The Waste Land". [246]
The Georgian poets like Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare (1873–1956), John Masefield (1878–
1967, Poet Laureate from 1930) maintained a more conservative approach to poetry by combining
romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism, sandwiched as they were between the Victorian era, with
its strict classicism, and Modernism, with its strident rejection of pure aestheticism. Edward
Thomas (1878–1917) is sometimes treated as another Georgian poet. [247]
A duality of character in the literature of Scotland came to be characterised as Caledonian
Antisyzygy—a self-imposed critical discourse about how to forge a model of homogeneous national
Scottish culture out of a heterogeneous patchwork of language communities and national loyalties.
[248]
 In the early 20th century in Scotland, a renaissance in the use of Lowland Scots occurred, its
most vocal figure being Hugh MacDiarmid whose A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), is widely
regarded as one of the most important long poems in 20th-century Scottish literature. [249] Other
contemporaries were Douglas Young, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Robert Garioch and Robert McLellan.
The revival produced verse and other literature, including the plays for which Robert McLellan is best
known.[250]
James Pittendrigh Macgillivray (1856–1938) and Lewis Spence (1874–1955) looked back to what
they regarded as a Golden Age of Middle Scots literature, partly as a political gesture to revive the
style that prevailed when Scotland was a sovereign nation under the Stuarts. Such experimentation
with archaising language for poetic effect did not found a new direction for literature in Scots, but
their willingness to play with Mediaeval poetic language had an influence by stimulating debate and
stimulating new ways of experimenting with Scots as a literary language. [251]
A somewhat diminished tradition of vernacular Ulster Scots poetry survived into the 20th century in
the work of poets such as Adam Lynn, author of the 1911 collection Random Rhymes frae
Cullybackey, John Stevenson (died 1932), writing as "Pat M'Carty", and John Clifford (1900–1983)
from East Antrim.[252]
With the revival of Cornish there have been newer works written in the language. In the first half of
the 20th century poetry was the focus of literary production in Cornish. The epic poem Trystan hag
Isolt by A. S. D. Smith (1883–1950) reworked the Tristan and Iseult legend. Peggy Pollard's 1941
play Beunans Alysaryn was modelled on the 16th-century saints' plays. John Hobson Matthews
wrote several poems, such as the patriotic "Can Wlascar Agam Mamvro" ("Patriotic Song of our
Motherland"). Robert Morton Nance(1873–1959) created a body of verse, such as "Nyns yu Marow
Myghtern Arthur" ("King Arthur is not Dead").
In the 1930s the Auden Group, sometimes called simply the Thirties poets, was an important group
of politically left-wing writers, that included W. H. Auden (1907–73), Louis MacNeice (1907–
63), Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–72, Poet Laureate from 1968), and Stephen Spender (1909–95). Auden
was a major poet who had a similar influence on subsequent poets as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot
had had on earlier generations.[253] Others associated with this group were novelist and
playwright Christopher Isherwood(1904–86), and sometimes, novelist Edward Upward (1903–2009),
and poet and novelist Rex Warner (1905–86).
The challenge of the modernist novel[edit]

Rudyard Kipling, 1912

While modernism was to become an important literary movement in the early decades of the new
century, there were also many fine writers who, like Thomas Hardy, were not modernists. Novelists
include: Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), who was also a successful poet; H. G. Wells (1866–
1946); John Galsworthy (1867–1933), (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1932), whose novels include The
Forsyte Saga (1906–21); Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) author of The Old Wives' Tale (1908); G. K.
Chesterton (1874–1936); E.M. Forster (1879–1970). The most popular British writer of the early
years of the 20th century was arguably Rudyard Kipling, a highly versatile writer of novels, short
stories and poems, and to date the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1907).
Kipling's works include The Jungle Books (1894–95), The Man Who Would Be King and Kim(1901),
while his inspirational poem "If—" (1895) is a national favourite and a memorable evocation
of Victorian stoicism, regarded as a traditional British virtue. Kipling's reputation declined during his
lifetime but more recently postcolonial studies has "rekindled an intense interest in his work, viewing
it as both symptomatic and critical of imperialist attitudes". [254] H. G. Wells was a highly prolific author
who is now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. [255] His most notable science fiction
works include The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The Island of
Doctor Moreau, all written in the 1890s. Other novels include Kipps (1905) and Mr Polly (1910).
Strongly influenced by his Christian faith,G. K. Chesterton was a prolific and hugely influential writer
with a diverse output. His best-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown, who appeared
only in short stories, while The Man Who Was Thursday published in 1908 is arguably his best-
known novel. Of his nonfiction, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1906) has received some of the
broadest-based praise. However, unlike these other authors, Forster's work is "frequently regarded
as containing both modernist and Victorian elements". [256] Forster's A Passage to India 1924,
reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier works such as A Room with a View (1908)
and Howards End (1910), examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England.

Virginia Woolf in 1927

Writing in the 1920s and 1930s Virginia Woolf was an influential feminist, and a major stylistic
innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique. Her novels include Mrs
Dalloway 1925, To the Lighthouse 1927, Orlando 1928, The Waves 1931, and A Room of One's
Own 1929, which contains her famous dictum; "A woman must have money and a room of her own if
she is to write fiction".[257] Woolf and E. M. Forster were members of the Bloomsbury Group, an
enormously influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists. [258]

Aldous Huxley

D. H. Lawrence, 1906

Other early modernists were Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957), whose novel Pointed Roof (1915), is

one of the earliest example of the stream of consciousness technique and D. H. Lawrence (1885–
1930), who wrote with understanding about the social life of the lower and middle classes, and the
personal life of those who could not adapt to the social norms of his time. Sons and Lovers 1913, is
widely regarded as his earliest masterpiece. There followedThe Rainbow 1915, though it was
immediately seized by the police. and its sequel Women in Love published 1920.[259] Lawrence
attempted to explore human emotions more deeply than his contemporaries and challenged the
boundaries of the acceptable treatment of sexual issues, most notably in Lady Chatterley's Lover,
which was privately published in Florence in 1928. However, the unexpurgated version of this novel
was not published until 1959. [259]
An important development, beginning really in the 1930s and 1940s, was a tradition of working class
novels that were actually written by writers who had a working-class background. Among these were
coal miner Jack Jones, James Hanley, whose father was a stoker and who also went to sea as a
young man, and other coal miner authors' Lewis Jones from South Wales and Harold
Heslop from County Durham.
An essayist and novelist, George Orwell's works are considered important social and political
commentaries of the 20th century, dealing with issues such as poverty in The Road to Wigan
Pier (1937) and Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), the exploration of colonialism
in Burmese Days (1934), and in the 1940s his satires of totalitarianism included Animal Farm (1945).
Orwell's works were often semi-autobiographical and in the case of Homage to Catalonia,
wholly. Malcolm Lowry published in the 1930s, but is best known for Under the
Volcano (1947). Evelyn Waugh satirised the "bright young things" of the 1920s and 1930s, notably
in A Handful of Dust, andDecline and Fall, while Brideshead Revisited 1945, has a theological basis,
aiming to examine the effect of divine grace on its main characters. [260] Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
published his famous dystopia Brave New World in 1932, the same year as John Cowper Powys's A
Glastonbury Romance. In 1938 Graham Greene's (1904–91) first major novel Brighton Rock was
published.
British drama: 1901–45[edit]
Irish playwrights George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) and J. M. Synge (1871–1909) were influential
in British drama. Shaw's career as a playwright began in the last decade of the nineteenth century,
while Synge's plays belong to the first decade of the twentieth century. Synge's most famous
play, The Playboy of the Western World, "caused outrage and riots when it was first performed" in
Dublin in 1907.[261] George Bernard Shaw turned the Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate
about important political and social issues, like marriage, class, "the morality of armaments and war"
and the rights of women.[262] In the 1920s and later Noël Coward (1899–1973) achieved enduring
success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works,
such as Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1930), Design for Living (1932), Present Laughter(1942)
and Blithe Spirit (1941), have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. In the 1930s W. H.
Auden and Christopher Isherwood co-authored verse dramas, of which The Ascent of F6 (1936) is
the most notable, that owed much to Bertolt Brecht. T. S. Eliot had begun this attempt to revive
poetic drama with Sweeney Agonistes in 1932, and this was followed by The Rock (1934), Murder in
the Cathedral (1935) and Family Reunion (1939). There were three further plays after the war.
Early 20th-century genre literature[edit]
Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands 1903, defined the spy novel.[citation needed]
Emma Orczy (Baroness Orczy)'s The Scarlet Pimpernel was originally a highly successful play in
1905. The novel The Scarlet Pimpernel was published soon after the play opened and was an
immediate success. Orczy gained a following of readers in Britain and throughout the world. The
popularity of the novel, which recounted the adventures of a member of the English gentry in
the French Revolutionary period, encouraged her to write a number of sequels for her "reckless
daredevil" over the next 35 years. The play was performed to great acclaim in France, Italy,
Germany and Spain, while the novel was translated into 16 languages. Subsequently, the story has
been adapted for television, film, a musical and other media. Her stories about Lady Molly of
Scotland Yard were an early example of a female detective as main character. Her character The
Old Man in the Corner was among the earliest armchair detectives to be created.
John Buchan wrote adventure novels Prester John (1910) and four telling the adventures of Richard
Hannay, of which the first, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) is the best known. Novels featuring a
gentleman adventurer were popular between the wars, exemplified by the series of H. C.
McNeile with Bulldog Drummond 1920, and Leslie Charteris, whose many books chronicled the
adventures of Simon Templar, alias The Saint.
The medieval scholar M. R. James wrote highly regarded ghost stories in contemporary settings.
In 1908, Kenneth Grahame wrote the children's classic The Wind in the Willows and
the Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell's first book Scouting for Boys was published. Classics of
children's literature include A. A. Milne's collection of books about a fictional bear he named Winnie-
the-Pooh, who inhabits Hundred Acre Wood. Prolific children's author Enid Blyton chronicled the
adventures of a group of young children and their dog in The Famous Five. T. H. White wrote
the Arthurian fantasy The Once and Future King, the first part being The Sword in the
Stone 1938. Mary Norton wrote The Borrowers, featuring tiny people who borrow from humans.
Inspiration for Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel The Secret Garden, was the Great Maytham Hall
Garden in Kent. Hugh Lofting created the character Doctor Dolittle who appears in a series of twelve
books, while Dodie Smith's The Hundred and One Dalmatians featured the villainous Cruella de Vil.

Agatha Christie

This was called the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Agatha Christie, a writer of crime novels, short
stories and plays, is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End
theatre plays. Christie's works, particularly those featuring the detectives Hercule Poirot orMiss
Marple, made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre.
Her most influential novels include The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 1926 (one of her most
controversial novels, its innovative twist ending had a significant impact on the genre), Murder on the
Orient Express 1934, Death on the Nile 1937 and And Then There Were None 1939. Other female
writers dubbed "Queens of crime" include Dorothy L. Sayers (gentleman detective, Lord Peter
Wimsey), Margery Allingham (Albert Campion – supposedly created as a parody of Sayers' Wimsey,
[263]
) and New Zealander Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn). Georgette Heyer created the historical
romance genre, and also wrote detective fiction.
A major work of science fiction, from the early 20th century, is A Voyage to Arcturus by Scottish
writer David Lindsay, first published in 1920. It combines fantasy, philosophy, and science fiction in
an exploration of the nature of good and evil and their relationship with existence. It has been
described by critic and philosopher Colin Wilson as the "greatest novel of the twentieth century",
[264]
 and was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.[265] Also J. R. R. Tolkien said he read
the book "with avidity", and praised it as a work of philosophy, religion, and morality. [266] It was made
widely available in paperback form when published as one of the precursor volumes to the Ballantine
Adult Fantasy series in 1968.

J. R. R. Tolkien

From the early 1930s to late 1940s, an informal literary discussion group associated with the English
faculty at the University of Oxford, were the "Inklings". Its leading members were the
major fantasy novelists; C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis is known for The Screwtape
Letters1942, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy, while Tolkien is best known as the
author of The Hobbit 1937, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
Second World War[edit]
It was anticipated that the outbreak of war in 1939 would produce a literary response equal to that of
the First World War. The Times Literary Supplement went so far as to pose the question in 1940:
"Where are the war-poets?"[267]
Keith Douglas (1920–1944) was noted for his war poetry during World War II and his wry memoir of
the Western Desert Campaign, Alamein to Zem Zem. He was killed in action during the invasion of
Normandy. Alun Lewis (1915–1944), born in South Wales, was one of the best-known English-
language poets of the war[268] Alun Llywelyn-Williams wrote in Welsh from the soldier's viewpoint, and
R. Meirion Roberts from the viewpoint of a chaplain. Caradog Prichard's 'Rwyf Innau'n Filwr
Bychan (1943), a journal in Welsh, provided an account of military life from a supporter of the war,
although a minority of Welsh nationalist writers produced works in opposition to the war. [36]
Sidney Keyes was the most important and prolific of the Second World War poets. [267] David
Gascoyne, a surrealist poet of the 1930s, developed Christian imagery, while Edith Sitwell's Still
Falls the Rain evoked the Blitz. Denton Welch (1915–1948) produced minutely observed portraits of
the English countryside during the war.
Fair Stood the Wind for France was a 1944 novel by H. E. Bates who was commissioned into
the RAF solely to write short stories as the Air Ministry realised that the populace was less
concerned with facts and figures about the war than it was with reading about those who were
fighting it.
Put Out More Flags (1942) by Evelyn Waugh is set during the "Phoney War", and follows the
wartime activities of characters introduced in Waugh's earlier satirical novels .
The German military occupation of the Channel Islands 1940–1945 encouraged increased use of the
vernacular languages among those who remained in the islands, but the German censorship
permitted little original writing to be published. Within the restrictions, Les Chroniques de Jersey, the
only surviving French language newspaper in the Islands, republished considerable quantities of
older Jèrriais literature for purposes of morale and the assertion of identity. The post-Liberation
social changes meant, however, that vernacular literature in the Channel Islands has never regained
the situation it had enjoyed previously.
The Second World War has remained a theme in British literature. Later works of note
include: Atonement, Ian McEwan's Booker Prize shortlisted 2001 novel; Charlotte Gray, a 1999
novel by Sebastian Faulks; and Empire of the Sun, J. G. Ballard's 1984 novel drawing extensively on
his wartime experiences.
Late modernism: 1946–2000[edit]

George Orwell

Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939, [269] with regard to English literature,
"When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as
when the transition from Victorianism to modernism occurred". [270] In fact a number of modernists
were still living and publishing in the 1950s and 1960, including T. S. Eliot, Dorothy
Richardson and John Cowper Powys. Furthermore Northumberland poet Basil Bunting, born in
1901, published little until Briggflatts in 1965.

Saunders Lewis in 1936, depicted in Plaid Cenedlaethol Cymru's Coelcerth Rhyddid.

The attitude of the post-war generation of Welsh writers in English towards Wales differs from the
previous generation, in that they were more sympathetic to Welsh nationalism and to the Welsh
language. The change can be linked to the nationalist fervour generated by Saunders Lewis and
the burning of the Bombing School on the Lleyn Peninsula in 1936, along with a sense of crisis
generated by World War II. In poetry R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) was the most important figure
throughout the second half of the twentieth century, beginning with The Stones of the Field in 1946
and concluding with No Truce with the Furies (1995). R. S. Thomas was an Anglican priest who was
noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. In fiction the
major figure in the second half of the twentieth century was Emyr Humphreys (1919). Humphreys'
first novel The Little Kingdom was published in 1946; and during his long writing career he has
published over twenty novels, including a sequence of seven novels, The Land of the Living, which
surveys the political and cultural history of twentieth-century Wales. His most recent work is the
collection of short stories, The Woman in the Window (2009). Another Welsh novelist of the post-
Second-World-War era was Raymond Williams(1921–88). Born near Abergavenny, Williams
continued the earlier tradition of writing from a left-wing perspective on the Welsh industrial scene in
his trilogy: Border Country (1960), Second Generation (1964), and The Fight for Manod (1979).
Contemporary novelists in Welsh include Mihangel Morgan (1955– ) and Fflur Dafydd (1978– ).
A new writer after the war was the popular novelist in Welsh Islwyn Ffowc Elis (1924–2004) (also a
winner of the crown at the 1947 National Eisteddfod). He made his debut as a novelist in 1953
with Cysgod y Cryman (translated into English as Shadow of the Sickle). He produced novels in a
range of genres, including the first science fiction novel in Welsh.
Among British writers in the 1940s and 1950s was Dylan Thomas; Evelyn Waugh and W.H.
Auden continued publishing significant works. In 1947 Malcolm Lowry published Under the Volcano.
George Orwell's satire of totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published in 1949. An essayist
and novelist, Orwell's works are important social and political commentaries of the 20th century. One
of the most influential novels of the immediate post-war period was William Cooper's
naturalistic Scenes from Provincial Life, a conscious rejection of the modernist tradition.[271]
Graham Greene's works span the 1930s to the 1980s. He was a convert to Catholicism and his
novels explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. He combined serious
literary acclaim with broad popularity in novels such as Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the
Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948) and A Burnt-Out Case (1961), The Human
Factor (1978).
Other novelists writing in the 1950s and later were: Anthony Powell whose twelve-volume cycle of
novels A Dance to the Music of Time, is a comic examination of movements and manners, power
and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century; Kingsley Amis who
is best known for his academic satire Lucky Jim 1954; Nobel Prize laureate William
Golding whose allegorical novel Lord of the Flies 1954, shows how culture created by man fails,
using, as an example, a group of British schoolboys marooned on a deserted island who try to
govern themselves with disastrous results; Edward Blishen whose first best-selling book Roaring
Boys 1955, is an honest account of teaching in a London secondary modern school in the 1950s
(followed by a sequel This Right Soft Lot 1969), and whose most famous work is The God Beneath
the Sea, a children's novel based on Greek mythology, written in collaboration with Leon
Garfield and published in 1970 (illustrated by Charles Keeping with a sequel The Golden
Shadow1973); philosopher Iris Murdoch who was a prolific writer of novels dealing with sexual
relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious, including Under the Net 1954. Scottish
novelist Muriel Spark pushed the boundaries of realism: her first novel, The Comforters (1957)
concerns a woman who becomes aware that she is a character in a novel;The Ballad of Peckham
Rye (1960) has a character who, in line with a tradition of Scottish literature, is literally the devil
incarnate. The narrator of her most famous novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), at times
takes the reader briefly into the main action's distant future, to see the various fates that befall its
characters.
Anthony Burgess is especially remembered for his dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange 1962, set in
the not-too-distant future, which was made into a film (1971] by Stanley Kubrick. Mervyn
Peake (1911–68) published his Gothic fantasy Gormenghast trilogy between 1946 and 1959.
One of Penguin Books' most successful publications in the late 20th century was Richard
Adams's heroic fantasy Watership Down (1972). Evoking epic themes, it recounts theodyssey of a
group of rabbits seeking to establish a new home. John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's
Woman (1969) played with the nature of fiction, with its narrator who freely admits the fictive nature
of the story he relays, and its alternative endings.
Angela Carter (1940–1992) was a novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism,
and picaresque works. Writing from the 1960s until the 1980s, her novels include, The Infernal
Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman 1972, and Nights at the Circus 1984. Margaret Drabble (1939– )
is a novelist, biographer and critic, who published from the 1960s into the 21st century. Her older
sister, A. S. Byatt (1936– ) is best known for Possession 1990.
Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary 1996, and its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of
Reason 1999, chronicle the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single woman in London.
Since the 1970s a number of books of Jèrriais literature have been published, including two
collections of writings by George F. Le Feuvre: Jèrri Jadis and Histouaithes et Gens d'Jèrri.[272]
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page was published in 1981 after the death of its author G.B.
Edwards (1899–1976). Edwards rejected the Guernsey mainstream literary traditions of the sea,
heroic adventure, romance and exoticism. The author's use of Guernsey English and exploration of
a personal journey against a background of rapid social change in Guernsey were among factors
that led to the novel's high critical reception.[209]

Doris Lessing, Cologne, 2006

Salman Rushdie is among a number of post Second World War writers from former British colonies
who permanently settled in Britain. Rushdie achieved fame with Midnight's Children (1981), that was
awarded both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Booker Prize later that year, and was
named Booker of Bookers in 1993. His most controversial novel The Satanic Verses (1989) was
inspired in part by the life of Muhammad.Doris Lessing from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),
published her first novel The Grass is Singing in 1950, after immigrating to England. She initially
wrote about her African experiences. Lessing soon became a dominant presence in the English
literary scene, publishing frequently, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Other works by
her include a sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69), The Golden
Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and a sequence of five science fiction novels
the Canopus in Argos: Archives(1979–1983). V. S. Naipaul (1932– ) was another immigrant, born in
Trinidad, who wrote A House for Mr Biswas (1961) and A Bend in the River(1979). Naipaul won the
Nobel Prize in Literature. Also from the West Indies is George Lamming (1927– ) who wrote In the
Castle of My Skin(1953), while from Pakistan came Hanif Kureshi (1954–), a playwright,
screenwriter, filmmaker, novelist and short story writer. His novel The Buddha of Suburbia (1990)
won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel, and was also made into a BBC television
series. Kazuo Ishiguro (1954– ) was born in Japan, but his parents immigrated to Britain when he
was six.[273] Ishiguro wrote historical novels in the first-person narrative style. His works include, The
Remains of the Day 1989, Never Let Me Go 2005. Scotland has in the late 20th century produced
several important novelists, including James Kelman who like Samuel Beckett can create humour
out of the most grim situations. How Late it Was, How Late, 1994, won the Booker Prize that year; A.
L. Kennedy whose 2007 novel Day was named Book of the Year in the Costa Book Awards.[274] In
2007 she won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature;[275] Alasdair Gray whose Lanark: A
Life in Four Books (1981) is a dystopian fantasy set in his home town Glasgow.
Highly anglicised Lowland Scots is often used in contemporary Scottish fiction, for example, the
Edinburgh dialect of Lowland Scots used in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh to give a brutal depiction of
the lives of working class Edinburgh drug users.[276] But'n'Ben A-Go-Go is a 2000 cyberpunk novel
entirely in Scots by Matthew Fitt, notable for using as many of the different varieties of Scots as
possible, including many neologisms—imagining how Scots might develop by 2090. In Northern
Ireland, James Fenton's poetry, at times lively, contented, wistful, is written in contemporary Ulster
Scots.[214] The poet Michael Longley (born 1939) has experimented with Ulster Scots for the
translation of Classical verse, as in his 1995 collection The Ghost Orchid.[218] Philip Robinson's (born
1946) writing has been described as verging on "post-modern kailyard".[218] He has produced a trilogy
of novels, as well as story books for children, and two volumes of poetry. [277]
Martin Amis (1949) is one of the most prominent British novelists of the end of the 20th, beginning of
the 21st century. His best-known novels are Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). Pat
Barker (1943–) has won many awards for her fiction. English novelist and screenwriter Ian
McEwan (1948– ) is a highly regarded writer whose works includeThe Cement Garden (1978)
and Enduring Love (1997), which was made into a film. In 1998 McEwan won the Man Booker Prize
with Amsterdam. Atonement (2001) was made into an Oscar-winning film. This was followed
by Saturday (2005), and Solar (2010). McEwan was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 2011. Alex
Garland's works include The Beach1996, Giles Foden wrote The Last King of Scotland 1998,
and Joanne Harris's most notable work is Chocolat 1999.
A few novels have been published in Cornish since the last decades of the 20th century, including
Melville Bennetto's An Gurun Wosek a Geltya (The Bloody Crown of the Celtic Countries) in 1984;
subsequently Michael Palmer published Jory (1989) and Dyroans (1998).[278]
Drama after World War Two[edit]
An important cultural movement in the British theatre that developed in the late 1950s and early
1960s was Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama), art (the term itself derives from an
expressionist painting by John Bratby), novels, film, and television plays.[279] The term angry young
men was often applied members of this artistic movement. It used a style of social realism which
depicts the domestic lives of the working class, to explore social issues and political issues.
The drawing room plays of the post war period, typical of dramatists like Terence Rattigan and Noël
Coward were challenged in the 1950s by these Angry Young Men, in plays like John Osborne's Look
Back in Anger (1956).Arnold Wesker and Nell Dunn also brought social concerns to the stage. Again
in the 1950s the Theatre of the Absurd profoundly affected British dramatists, especially
IrishmanSamuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, which premiered in London in 1955 (originally En
attendant Godot, 1952). Among those influenced were Harold Pinter (1930–2008), (The Birthday
Party, 1958), and Tom Stoppard (1937– ) (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,1966).[280] Pinter's
works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia, while those of Stoppard are notable for
their high-spirited wit and the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles. [citation needed] Both Pinter
and Stoppard continued to have new plays produced into the 1990s.
The Theatres Act 1968 abolished the system of censorship of the stage that had existed in Great
Britain since 1737. In Jersey, public entertainment, including stage works, continues to be licensed
by the Bailiff (advised by the Bailiff's Panel for the Control of Public Entertainment). [281] The new
freedoms of the London stage were tested by Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain, first staged
at the National Theatre during 1980, and subsequently the focus of an unsuccessful private
prosecution in 1982.
Other playwrights whose careers began later in the century are: Caryl Churchill (Top Girls,
1982), Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular, 1972), Michael Frayn (1933–) playwright and
novelist, David Hare (1947– ), David Edgar (1948– ). Dennis Potter's most distinctive dramatic work
was produced for television.
Radio drama
During the 1950s and 1960s many major British playwrights either effectively began their careers
with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio. Most of playwright Caryl Churchill's early experiences
with professional drama production were as a radio playwright and, starting in 1962 with The Ants,
there were nine productions with BBC radio drama up until 1973 when her stage work began to be
recognised at the Royal Court Theatre.[282] Joe Orton's dramatic debut in 1963 was the radio play The
Ruffian on the Stair, which was broadcast on 31 August 1964. [283] Tom Stoppard's "first professional
production was in the fifteen-minute Just Before Midnight programme on BBC Radio, which
showcased new dramatists".[283] John Mortimer made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, with his
adaptation of his own novel Like Men Betrayed for the BBC Light Programme. But he made his
debut as an original playwright with The Dock Brief, starring Michael Hordern as a hapless barrister,
first broadcast in 1957 on BBC Radio's Third Programme, later televised with the same cast, and
subsequently presented in a double bill with What Shall We Tell Caroline? at the Lyric
Hammersmith in April 1958, before transferring to the Garrick Theatre. Mortimer is most famous
for Rumpole of the Bailey a British television series which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole,
an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients. It has been spun off into a series of
short stories, novels, and radio programmes.[284] Other notable radio dramatists included
novelist Angela Carter. Novelist Susan Hill also wrote for BBC radio, from the early 1970s.[285] Among
the most famous works created for radio, are Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1954), Harold
Pinter's A Slight Ache (1959) and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1954).[286]
Poetry after World War Two[edit]

Ted Hughes

While poets T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas were still publishing after 1945, new poets
started their careers in the 1950s and 1960s including Philip Larkin (1922–85) (The Whitsun
Weddings,1964) and Ted Hughes (1930–98, Poet Laureate from 1984) (The Hawk in the Rain,
1957). Northern Ireland has produced a number of significant poets, the most famous being Nobel
prize winner Seamus Heaney, however, Heaney regarded himself as Irish and not British. There are
many others who question whether the Literature of Northern Ireland is Irish or British. Others poets
from Northern Ireland include Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, James Fenton, Michael Longley,
and Medbh McGuckian.James Fenton's poetry, at times lively, contented, wistful, is written in
contemporary Ulster Scots. The poet Michael Longley (born 1939) has experimented with Ulster
Scots for the translation of Classical verse, as in his 1995 collection The Ghost Orchid.
As part of the Scottish Gaelic Renaissance, Sorley MacLean's (1911–96) work in Scottish Gaelic in
the 1930s gave new value to modern literature in that language. However, while "most of his most
important poetry had been written in the 1930s and 1940s, almost none of it was widely available"
until the publication of Reothairt is Contraight/Spring Tide and Neap Tide: Selected Poems 1932–72,
in 1977 and a Collected Poems in 1989. [287] Iain Crichton Smith (1928–98) was more prolific in
English but also produced much Gaelic poetry and prose, and also translated some of the work of
Sorley Maclean from Gaelic to English, as well as some of his own poems originally composed in
Gaelic. Much of his English language work was related to, or translated from, Gaelic equivalents.
Modern Gaelic poetry has been most influenced by Symbolism, transmitted via poetry in English,
and by Scots poetry. Traditional Gaelic poetry utilised an elaborate system of metres, which modern
poets have adapted to their own ends. George Campbell Hay looks back beyond the popular metres
of the 19th and 20th centuries to forms of early Gaelic poetry. Donald MacAuley's poetry is
concerned with place and community.[288] The following generation of Gaelic poets writing at the end
of the 20th century lived in a bilingual world to a greater extent than any other generation, with their
work most often accompanied in publication by a facing text in English. Such confrontation has
inspired semantic experimentation, seeking new contexts for words, and going as far as the
explosive and neologistic verse of Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh (1948– ).[289] Scottish Gaelic poetry has
been the subject of translation not only into English, but also into other Celtic languages: Maoilios
Caimbeuland Màiri NicGumaraid have been translated into Irish, and John Stoddart has produced
anthologies of Gaelic poetry translated into Welsh. [248]
In the 1960s and 1970s Martian poetry aimed to break the grip of 'the familiar', by describing
ordinary things in unfamiliar ways, as though, for example, through the eyes of a Martian. Poets
most closely associated with it are Craig Raine and Christopher Reid. Martin Amis, an important
novelist in the late twentieth and twentieth centuries, carried into fiction this drive to make the familiar
strange.[290] Another literary movement in this period was the British Poetry Revival, a wide-reaching
collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces performance, sound and concrete poetry.
Leading poets associated with this movement include J. H. Prynne, Eric Mottram, Tom
Raworth, Denise Riley and Lee Harwood. It reacted to the more conservative group called "The
Movement".
The Mersey Beat poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their work was a self-
conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the Beats. Many of their poems were written
in protest against the established social order and, particularly, the threat of nuclear war. Ted
Hughes was among poets whose work found roots in the speech patterns and dialects of Northern
England: other notable poets from the north of England include Tony Harrison (1937 – ), who
explores the medium of language and the tension between native dialect (in his case, that of
working-class Leeds) and acquired language, [248] and Simon Armitage.
In Welsh language poetry, Alan Llwyd came to prominence when he achieved the rare feat of
winning both the Crown and the Chair at the 1973 National Eisteddfod and then repeated the feat in
1976. He also wrote the script for the Oscar-nominated Welsh-language film Hedd Wyn (1992) about
the life of poet Hedd Wyn, who was killed in World War I.
In contemporary Cornish poetry, Tony Snell's work is heavily influenced by the early poetry of Wales
and Brittany, and it was he who adapted the Welsh traethodl to Cornish. The bard Pol Hodge is
another example of a poet writing in Cornish.
Amelia Perchard (1921–2012), one of Jersey's foremost contemporary writers, published many
poems and produced one-act plays.[291]
Geoffrey Hill (1932– ) has been considered to be among the most distinguished English poets of his
generation,[292] and on his 80th birthday was described in the House of Commons by Education
Secretary, Michael Gove, as the United Kingdom's "greatest living poet". [293] Although frequently
described as a "difficult" poet, Hill has retorted that poetry supposed to be difficult can be "the most
democratic because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing they are intelligent
human beings".[294] Charles Tomlinson (1927–) is another important English poet of an older
generation, though "since his first publication in 1951, has built a career that has seen more notice in
the international scene than in his native England; this may explain, and be explained by, his
international vision of poetry".[295] The critic Michael Hennessy has described Tomlinson as "the most
international and least provincial English poet of his generation". [296] His poetry has won international
recognition and has received many prizes in Europe and the United States, including the 1993
Bennett Award from the Hudson Review; the New Criterion Poetry Prize, 2002; the Premio
Internazionale di Poesia Ennio Flaiano, 2001; and the Premio Internazionale di Poesia Attilio
Bertolucci, 2004.[295]
Late 20th-century genre literature[edit]
In thriller writing, Ian Fleming created the character James Bond 007 in January 1952, while on
holiday at his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye. Fleming chronicled Bond's adventures in twelve novels,
including Casino Royale 1953, Live and Let Die 1954, Dr.
No 1958, Goldfinger 1959, Thunderball 1961, The Spy Who Loved Me 1962, and nine short story
works.
In contrast to the larger-than-life spy capers of Bond, John le Carré was an author of spy novels who
depicted a shadowy world of espionage and counter-espionage, and his best known novel The Spy
Who Came in from the Cold 1963, is often regarded as one of the greatest in the genre. Frederick
Forsyth writes thriller novels, including The Day of the Jackal 1971, The Odessa File 1972, The
Dogs of War 1974 and The Fourth Protocol 1984. Ken Follett writes spy thrillers, his first success
being Eye of the Needle 1978, followed by The Key to Rebecca 1980, as well as historical novels,
notably The Pillars of the Earth 1989, and its sequel World Without End 2007. Elleston Trevor is
remembered for his 1964 adventure story The Flight of the Phoenix, while the thriller novelist Philip
Nicholson is best known for Man on Fire. Peter George's Red Alert 1958, is a Cold War thriller.
War novels include Alistair MacLean thriller's The Guns of Navarone 1957, Where Eagles
Dare 1968, and Jack Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed 1975. Patrick O'Brian's nauticalhistorical
novels feature the Aubrey–Maturin series set in the Royal Navy, the first being Master and
Commander 1969.
The "father of Wicca" Gerald Gardner began propagating his own version of witchcraft in the 1950s.
Having claimed to have been initiated into the New Forest coven in 1939, Gardner published his
books Witchcraft Today 1954 and The Meaning of Witchcraft 1959, the foundational texts for the
religion of Wicca. Ronald Welch's Carnegie Medal winning novel Knight Crusader is set in the 12th
century and gives a depiction of the Third Crusade, featuring the Christian leader and King of
England Richard the Lionheart.
In crime fiction, the murder mysteries of Ruth Rendell and P. D. James are popular.
Nigel Tranter wrote historical novels of celebrated Scottish warriors; Robert the Bruce in The Bruce
Trilogy, and William Wallace in The Wallace 1975, works noted by academics for their accuracy.
Science fiction[edit]

Arthur C. Clarke

John Wyndham wrote post-apocalyptic science fiction, his most notable works being The Day of the
Triffids 1951, and The Midwich Cuckoos1957. George Langelaan's The Fly 1957, is a science fiction
short story. Science fiction novelist Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, is based on his
various short stories, particularly The Sentinel. His other major novels include Rendezvous with
Rama 1972, and The Fountains of Paradise 1979. Brian Aldiss is Clarke's contemporary. Michael
Moorcock, 1962) is a writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a
number of literary novels. He was involved with the 'New Wave' of science fiction writers "part of
whose aim was to invest the genre with literary merit" [297] Similarly J. G. Ballard (1930– ) "became
known in the 1960s as the most prominent of the 'New Wave' science fiction writers". [298] A later major
figure in science fiction is Iain M. Banks who created a fictional anarchist, socialist, and utopian
society the Culture. The novels that feature in it include Excession 1996, and Inversions 1998. He
also publishes mainstream novels, including the highly controversial The Wasp Factory in 1984.
Nobel prize winner Doris Lessing also published a sequence of five science fiction novels
the Canopus in Argos: Archives between 1979 and 1983.
Literature for children and young adults[edit]

Roald Dahl

J. K. Rowling, 2010

Roald Dahl rose to prominence with his children's fantasy novels, often inspired from experiences
from his childhood, with often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour. [299] Dahl was
inspired to write Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 1964, featuring the eccentric candymaker Willy
Wonka, having grown up near two chocolate makers in England who often tried to steal trade
secrets by sending spies into the other's factory. His other works include James and the Giant
Peach 1961, Fantastic Mr. Fox 1971, The Witches 1983, and Matilda 1988.
Boarding schools in literature are centred on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, and
are most commonly set in English boarding schools. Popular school stories from this period
include Ronald Searle's St Trinian's and his illustrations for Geoffrey Willans's Molesworth series,Jill
Murphy's The Worst Witch, the Jennings series by Anthony Buckeridge (1912–2004).
Ruth Manning-Sanders collected and retold fairy tales, and her first work A Book of Giants contains
a number of famous giants, notably Jack and the Beanstalk. Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising is a
five-volume fantasy saga set in England and Wales. Raymond Briggs' children's picture book The
Snowman 1978 has been adapted as an animation, shown every Christmas on British television,
and for the stage as a musical. TheReverend. W. Awdry and son Christopher's The Railway
Series features Thomas the Tank Engine. Margery Sharp's series The Rescuers is based on a
heroic mouse organisation. The third Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo published War Horse in
1982. The prolific children's author Dick King-Smith's novels include The Sheep-Pig 1984, and The
Water Horse. Diana Wynne Jones wrote the young adult fantasy novel Howl's Moving Castle in
1986. Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series begins with Stormbreaker 2000.
J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series is a sequence of seven novels that chronicle the
adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter. The series began with Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone in 1997 and ended with the seventh and final book Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows in 2007; becoming the best selling book-series in history. The series has been translated
into 67 languages,[300][301] placing Rowling among the most translated authors in history.[302] J.K.
Rowling took part in a sequence of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony which celebrated
British children's literature.[303]
Fantasy and horror[edit]

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is best known for his Discworld series of comic fantasy novels, that begins with The
Colour of Magic 1983, and includes Mort 1987, Hogfather 1996, and Night Watch 2002. Pratchett's
other most notable work is the 1990 novel Good Omens.
Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials comprises Northern Lights 1995, The Subtle
Knife 1997, and The Amber Spyglass 2000. It follows the coming-of-age of two children as they
wander through a series of parallel universes against a backdrop of epic events.
Neil Gaiman is a writer of science fiction, fantasy short stories and novels, whose notable works
include Stardust 1998, Coraline 2002, The Graveyard Book 2009, and The Sandman series.
Alan Moore's works include Watchmen, V for Vendetta set in a dystopian future UK, The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen, and From Hell, speculating on the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper.
Douglas Adams wrote the five-volume science fiction comedy series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy, and also wrote the humorous fantasy detective novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective
Agency.
Clive Barker horror novels include The Hellbound Heart 1986, and works in
fantasy, Weaveworld 1987, Imajica and Abarat 2002.

21st century literature[edit]

Neil Gaiman

Formerly an appointment for life, the appointment of the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom is now
made for a fixed term of 10 years, starting with Andrew Motion in 1999 as successor to Ted Hughes.
[304]
 Carol Ann Duffy succeeded Motion in the post in May 2009.[305] A position of nationallaureate,
entitled The Scots Makar, was established in 2004 by the Scottish Parliament. The first appointment
was made directly by the Parliament in that year when Edwin Morgan received the honour[306][307] The
post of National Poet of Wales (Welsh: Bardd Cenedlaethol Cymru) was established in May 2005.
[308]
 The post is an annual appointment with the language of the poet alternating between English and
Welsh.
In English literature, Zadie Smith's (1975– ) Whitbread Book Award winning novel White Teeth 2000,
mixes pathos and humour, focusing on the later lives of two war time friends in London. Hilary
Mantel's Booker Prize–winning novel Wolf Hall 2009, is set in the Tudor court of King Henry VIII. In
2012 Mantel became the first woman and the first British writer to win the Booker Prize twice, as the
second part of her historical trilogy Bring Up the Bodies was awarded the prize. In 2004, David
Mitchell's science fiction novel Cloud Atlas won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award.
Julian Barnes (1946– ) won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending. Three
of his earlier novels had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England,
England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005). He has also written crime fiction under the
pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. England, England explores English national identity, invented traditions,
the creations of myths and the authenticity of history and memory. [309] In 2011, Fifty Shades of
Grey by E. L. James set the record as the fastest selling paperback of all time. [310]

Christopher Whyte(Crisdean MhicIlleBhain) is a Scottish Gaelic poet, who won in 2002 a Saltire
SocietyResearch Book of the Year award for his edition of Sorley Maclean's Dàin do Eimhir

Contemporary writers in Scottish Gaelic include Aonghas MacNeacail, and Angus Peter

Campbell who, besides two Scottish Gaelic poetry collections, has produced two Gaelic novels: An
Oidhche Mus Do Sheol Sinn (2003) and Là a' Deanamh Sgeil Do Là (2004).
A collection of short stories P'tites Lures Guernésiaises (in Guernésiais with parallel English
translation) by various writers was published in 2006. [311]
In March 2006 Brian Stowell's Dunveryssyn yn Tooder-Folley (The vampire murders) was published
—the first full-length novel in Manx.[312]
There is some production of modern literature in Irish in Northern Ireland. Performance poet Gearóid
Mac Lochlainn exploits the creative possibilities for poetry of "creolised Irish" in Belfast speech. [313]
The perceived success and promotion of genre authors from Scotland provoked controversy in 2009
when James Kelman criticised, in a speech at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the
attention afforded to "upper middle-class young magicians" and "detective fiction" by the
"Anglocentric" Scottish literary establishment. John Byrne was supportive, saying that there was "a
danger of Scotland becoming known as the home of genre fiction". [314] This was a reaction to the
popularity of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and of Ian Rankin and other "Tartan Noir" authors.
The popularity of "Tartan Noir" has led to renewed interest in crime fiction set in Wales, attracting the
label "Welsh Noir",[315] and Northern Ireland, labelled as "Emerald Noir".[316]
The theatrical landscape has been reconfigured, moving from a single national theatre at the end of
the 20th century to four as a result of the devolution of cultural policy. [317] National theatre companies
were founded in Scotland and Wales as complements to the Royal National Theatrein
London: Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru (the Welsh language national theatre of Wales, founded
2003), National Theatre of Scotland (founded 2006), National Theatre Wales (the English language
national theatre company of Wales, founded 2009). Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru attempts to shape a
distinctive identity for drama in Welsh while also opening it up to outside linguistic and dramatic
influences.[318]

Translations[edit]
Translations are an important feature of the literatures of the regional languages of the islands, for
example: Alice in Wonderland has been translated into Manx as Contoyryssyn Ealish ayns Cheer ny
Yindyssyn by Brian Stowell (published in 1990), into Cornish as Alys in Pow an Anethow by Nicholas
Williams (published in 2009), into Ulster Scots as Alice's Carrànts in Wunnerlan by Ann Morrison-
Smyth, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was translated into Jèrriais, from the English version
by Edward FitzGerald, during the German Occupation by Frank Le Maistre, [319] and into Scots by Rab
Wilson (published in 2004). Reasons for translating into a lesser-used language range from demand
from a public wanting to experience a familiar work in a more familiar voice to a desire to raise the
status of the language by associating it with a recognised work of world literature. There is a paradox
in the necessary openness of writers to literature in widely used languages that leads them to
express national identity in a lesser-used language. [320]
Since the 1920s a significant quantity of poetry has been translated into Scots, but the amount of
prose translated lagged behind, with the exception of translations of classic plays undertaken since
the 1940s and of contemporary drama since the 1980s. [320] Alexander Hutchison has translated the
poetry of Catullus into Scots, and in the 1980s Liz Lochhead (1947 – ; Scots Makar since 2011[321])
produced a Scots translation of Tartuffe by Molière. The volume of translations rivals the production
of new literature.[320]
Translations have not been as important to the Scottish Gaelic literary tradition as to that in Scots,
but of those writers who have undertaken translations, George Campbell Hay and William Neill are
two noted exponents.[322]
Translations played an important rôle in mediaeval Welsh literature bringing chansons de geste into
popular literature and translations from Latin provided literary Welsh with new religious and
philosophical vocabulary and laid the basis for a new formal register. Literary translations through
the 19th and 20th centuries brought foreign influences to the attention of Welsh writers. [36]
Simon Armitage's Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (2007) harmonises the original author's
northern English dialect with his own.[323]

Literary institutions[edit]
Original literature continues to be promoted by institutions such as the Eisteddfod in Wales or
the Mod, in Scotland and by publishing organisations such as Ùr-sgeul, an independent publisher of
new Scottish Gaelic prose, and the Welsh Books Council. The Royal Society of Edinburgh includes
literature within its sphere of activity. Literature Walesis the Welsh national literature promotion
agency and society of writers,[324] which administers the Wales Book of the Year award. The imported
eisteddfod tradition in the Channel Islands encouraged recitation and performance, a tradition that
continues today.
Formed in 1949, the Cheltenham Literature Festival is the longest-running festival of its kind in the
world. The Hay Festival in Wales attracts wide interest, and the Edinburgh International Book
Festival is the largest festival of its kind in the world.
The Poetry Society publishes and promotes poetry, notably through an annual National Poetry
Day. World Book Day is observed in Britain and the Crown Dependencies on the first Thursday in
March annually.
Literary prizes[edit]
Main article: List of British literary awards
British recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature include Rudyard Kipling (1907), John
Galsworthy (1932), T. S. Eliot (1948), Bertrand Russell (1950), Winston Churchill (1953),William
Golding (1983), V. S. Naipaul (2001), Harold Pinter (2005) and Doris Lessing (2007).
Literary prizes for which writers from the United Kingdom are eligible include:

 Man Booker Prize

 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
 Carnegie Medal
  Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Awards)
 Orange Prize for Fiction
 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry

20th century in literature

See also: 20th century in poetry, 19th century in literature, 21st century in literature, list of years in
literature.
Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature produced during the 20th century. The range
of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) 1900 through the 1990s.
In terms of the Euro-American tradition, the main periods are captured in the bipartite
division, Modernist literature and Postmodern literature, flowering from roughly 1900 to 1940 and
1960 to 1990[1] respectively, divided, as a rule of thumb, by World War II. The somewhat malleable
term of contemporary literature is usually applied with a post-1960 cutoff point.
Although these terms (modern, contemporary and postmodern) are most applicable to Western
literary history, the rise of globalization has allowed European literary ideas to spread into non-
Western cultures fairly rapidly, so that Asian and African literatures can be included into these
divisions with only minor qualifications. And in some ways, such as in Postcolonial literature, writers
from non-Western cultures were on the forefront of literary development.
Technological advances during the 20th century allowed cheaper production of books, resulting in a
significant rise in production of popular literature and trivial literature, comparable to the development
in music. The division of "popular literature" and "high literature" in the 20th century is by no means
absolute, and various genres such as detectives or science fiction fluctuate between the two. Largely
ignored by mainstream literary criticism for the most of the century, these genres developed their
own establishments and critical awards; these include the Nebula Award (since 1965), the British
Fantasy Award (since 1971) or the Mythopoeic Awards (since 1971).
Towards the end of the 20th century, electronic literature developed as a genre due to the
development of hypertext and later the world wide web.
The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually throughout the century (with the exception of
1914, 1918, 1935 and 1940–1943), the first laureate (1901) being Sully Prudhomme. The New York
Times Best Seller list has been published since 1942.
The best-selling works of the 20th century are estimated to be Quotations from Chairman
Mao (1966, 900 million copies), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997, 120 million
copies), And Then There Were None (1939, 115 million copies) and The Lord of the Rings(1954/55,
100 million copies). The Lord of the Rings was also voted "book of the century" in various surveys.[2][3]
[4][5]
 Perry Rhodan (1961 to present) boasts as being the best-selling book series, with an estimated
total of 1 billion copies sold.

Contents
  [hide] 

 1 1901–18
 2 Interwar period
  3 World War II
 4 Postwar period
 5 Cold War period 1960–89
 6 1990s
 7 References
 8 See also

1901–18[edit]
Main articles: 1900s literature and 1910s literature
The Fin de siècle movement of the Belle Époque persisted into the 20th century, but was brutally cut
short with the outbreak of World War I (an effect depicted e.g. in Thomas Mann's The Magic
Mountain, published 1924). The Dada movement of 1916-1920 was at least in part a protest against
the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause
of the war; the movement heralded the Surrealism movement of the 1920s.
1900

 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (Poland, England)

Genre fiction

 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (USA)

1901

 Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (Germany)
 The Inheritors by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford (England)
 Kim by Rudyard Kipling (India, England)
Genre fiction

 The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel (Montserrat, England)

 The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells (England)
1902

 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

 The Immoralist by André Gide (France)
 The Wings of the Dove by Henry James (USA, England)
 The Grand Babylon Hotel by Arnold Bennett (England)
Genre fiction

 The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (Scotland)

  Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
Plays

 Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw (Ireland)

1903

 Romance by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford

 The Ambassadors by Henry James
 The Pit by Frank Norris (USA)
 In Wonderland by Knut Hamsun (Norway)
Genre fiction

 The Call of the Wild by Jack London (USA)

 The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers (England, Ireland)
1904

 The Golden Bowl by Henry James

 Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
 The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton (England)
Genre fiction

 The Food of the Gods by H. G. Wells

 The Sea-Wolf by Jack London
 Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson (Argentina, England)
Plays

 John Bull's Other Island by George Bernard Shaw

1905

 Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe aka Baron Corvo (England,

Italy)
 Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (England)
 Kipps by H. G. Wells
 The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (USA)
 The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton
1906
  The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (USA)
 The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil (Austria)
Genre fiction

 Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling

 Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie (Scotland)
 Time and the Gods by Lord Dunsany (Ireland, England)
 White Fang by Jack London
Plays

 The Aran Islands by John Millington Synge (Ireland)

1907

 The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

 The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster
Genre fiction

 The Listener and Other Stories by Algernon Blackwood (England) -

contains The Willows, one of the first 'cosmic horror' stories
 The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen (England)
Plays

 The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge

Poetry

 Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc (France, England)

1908

 The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

 A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
 The Iron Heel by Jack London
 Hell by Henri Barbusse (France, Russia)
 The Magician by Somerset Maugham (England, France) - based on
the author's meeting with Aleister Crowley
Genre fiction

 The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (England)

Poetry

 Personae by Ezra Pound (USA, England, Italy) - one of the first

examples of 'modernist' poetry
1909

 Martin Eden by Jack London

 Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells
 Three Lives by Gertrude Stein (USA, France)
Poetry

 Exultations by Ezra Pound
 Poems by William Carlos Williams (USA)
Plays

 The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium)

1910

 Howards End by E. M. Forster

 The Card by Arnold Bennett
 The History of Mr Polly by H. G. Wells
1911

 Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (England)

 In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield (England) - short
stories
 Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
 The White Peacock by D. H. Lawrence (England)
 Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser (USA)
Genre fiction

 Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie (Scotland)

1912

 The Trespasser by D. H. Lawrence

 Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (Germany)
Genre fiction
  Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (USA)
 The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
 Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (USA)
Plays

 Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

1913

 Petersburg by Andrei Bely (Russia)
 Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (France)
 Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier (France)
 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
 Chance by Joseph Conrad
Genre fiction

 A Prisoner in Fairyland by Algernon Blackwood - adapted into a

play, it later became the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Starlight
Express
 The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu by 'Sax Rohmer' (England)
Poetry

 Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire (Poland, France) - dada poems

 Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore
1914

 Dubliners by James Joyce (Ireland, France, Italy) - short stories

 The Prussian Officer and Other Stories  by D. H. Lawrence - short
stories
 The Vatican Cellars by André Gide
 Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
 The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (Czechoslovakia)
 Maurice by E. M. Forster - unpublished
 Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (Scotland, Greece)
 The Flying Inn by G. K. Chesterton
Poetry
  North of Boston by Robert Frost (USA)
1915

 The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

 The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
 The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
 Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
 Victory by Joseph Conrad
 Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson
 The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf (England)
 Vainglory by Ronald Firbank (England)
 Rashōmon by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Genre fiction

 The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (Scotland, Canada)

1916

 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence - initially banned, published in
1920
Genre fiction

 Greenmantle by John Buchan
Poetry

 Salt-Water Poems and Ballads by John Masefield (England)

 Mountain Interval by Robert Frost
1917

 Under Fire by Henri Barbusse (France, Russia)

 Walpurgis Night by Gustav Meyrink
 Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
 The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad
 Caprice by Ronald Firbank
Poetry
  Dulce et Decorum est and Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred
Owen (England) - published posthumously
 Prufrock and Other Observations by T. S. Eliot (USA, England)
1918

 Tarr by Wyndham Lewis (Canada, England)

 Man of Straw by Heinrich Mann (Germany)
Poetry

 Calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire - dada poetry

Non-fiction

 Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (England)

Interwar period[edit]
Main articles: 1920s literature and 1930s literature
Further information: Surrealism, Roaring Twenties, Modernist literature and Harlem Renaissance
The 1920s were a period of literary creativity, and works of several notable authors appeared during
the period. D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was a scandal at the time because of its
explicit descriptions of sex. James Joyce's novel, Ulysses, published in 1922 in Paris, was one of the
most important achievements of literary modernism.
1919

 Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

 Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
 Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (USA) - the first 'lost
generation' novel
 Valmouth by Ronald Firbank
 Bazaar-e-Husn by Premchand (publ. in Hindi as Seva-sadan)
Genre fiction

 Dope by Sax Rohmer - inspired by the true story of Limehouse

dope-dealer Brilliant Chang
 Dope Darling by Leda Burke (David Garnett) (England)
1920

 We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Czechoslovakia)
 Limbo by Aldous Huxley (England) - short stories
  The Lost Girl by D. H. Lawrence
 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald (USA)
 The London Venture by Michael Arlen (Armenia, England)
 Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger (Germany)
 A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (Scotland)
 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (USA)
 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (USA)
Plays

 Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (Italy)

 Beyond the Horizon and Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill - Pulitzer
prize winner
1921

 The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

 Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
 England, My England and Other Stories  by D. H. Lawrence - short
stories
 The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (England) - pentology, first
volume published in 1906
 My Life and Loves by Frank Harris (England, USA) - four volumes
of quasi-factual sex gossip, the fifth completed by Alex Trocchi
Plays

 Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw

 R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek - from which
the term 'robot' was coined
1922

 Ulysses by James Joyce
 Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
 Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust
 Croatian God Mars by Miroslav Krleža
 The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings (USA)
 Futility by William Gerhardie (Russia, England)
  The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
 Mortal Coils by Aldous Huxley - short stories
 Aaron's Rod by D. H. Lawrence Kim
 The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield - short stories
 Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (Germany, Switzerland)
 Peter Whiffle by Carl Van Vechten (USA)
 Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
 Lady into Fox by David Garnett
Poetry

 The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

1923

 Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo (Italy)

 The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek (Czechoslovakia)
 The Captive by Marcel Proust
 Kangaroo by D. H. Lawrence
 Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley
 Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos (USA)
 The Great American Novel by William Carlos Williams
 The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet (France)
 Aelita by Alexey Tolstoy (Russia)
Plays

 The Shadow of a Gunman by Seán O'Casey (Ireland)

Poetry

 New Hampshire by Robert Frost

 The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
1924

 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Germany)

 In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (USA) - short stories
 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
 Little Mexican by Aldous Huxley - short stories
  The Fox and The Captain's Doll by D. H. Lawrence - short stories
Genre fiction

 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (England)

Plays

 Juno and the Paycock by Seán O'Casey

 The Vortex by Noël Coward (England)
1925

 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

 The Trial by Franz Kafka (Czechoslovakia) - posthumous, first
English translation in 1930
 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - often described as the
epitome of the "Jazz Age" in American literature
 The Green Hat by Michael Arlen - perhaps the epitome of the jazz
age in British literature
 Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon (France)
 Albertine disparue by Marcel Proust
 Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
 In the American Grain by William Carlos Williams
 The Desert of Love by François Mauriac (France)
 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (USA)
 Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley
 St Mawr by D. H. Lawrence - short stories
 The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
 Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov (Russia)
Genre fiction

 Beau Geste by P. C. Wren (England)

Poetry

 The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot

Non-fiction
  The Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins (England) - introducing ley
lines
1926

 The Castle by Franz Kafka - posthumous, first English translation in

1932
 The Counterfeiters by André Gide
 The Sun Also Rises aka Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway
 Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars (France)
 Nigger Heaven by Carl Van Vechten
 Two or Three Graces by Aldous Huxley - short stories
 The Plumed Serpent by D. H. Lawrence
 The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft
Genre fiction

 Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne (England)
Poetry

 A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle by 'Hugh MacDiarmid' (Scotland)

Plays

 The Plough and the Stars by Seán O'Casey

Non-fiction

 Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (England, Arabia)

1927

 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

 Time Regained by Marcel Proust
 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
 Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway - short stories
 Vestal Fire by Compton Mackenzie
 Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann (England)
 Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
 The Rocking-Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence - short stories
Plays
  The Silver Tassie by Seán O'Casey
1928

 Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin (Germany)

 Nadja by André Breton (France)
 Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille (France)
 Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford - war tetralogy, first volume in
1926
 Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence - banned until 1963
 Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (England)
 Amerika by Franz Kafka - posthumous, first English translation in
1938
Plays

 Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill (USA) - Pulitzer prize winner

 Messrs. Glembay by Miroslav Krleža
Non-fiction

 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (Germany)

- recounts the horrors of World War I and also the deep detachment
from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front
1929

 Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau (France)

 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (USA)
 Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
 Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington (England)
 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (USA)
 Mario and the Magician by Thomas Mann (Germany)
 The Escaped Cock by D. H. Lawrence (England)
 The Defence by Vladimir Nabokov (Russia, France)
 Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys (England)
 The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley (England)
Non-fiction
  Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves (England)
 A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (England)
Genre fiction

 Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (USA) - the first hard-boiled

American detective novel
1930

 Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

 The Apes of God by Wyndham Lewis
 Brief Candles by Aldous Huxley - short stories
 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
 Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
 Angel Pavement by J. B. Priestley
 The Virgin and the Gypsy and Love Among the Haystacks by D. H.
Lawrence - short stories
Genre fiction

 Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon (England)

 The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (USA)
Poetry

 Whoroscope by Samuel Beckett (Ireland, France)

Plays

 Private Lives by Noël Coward

Non-fiction

 Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon (England) - 2

volumes, 1st in 1929
1931

 The Waves by Virginia Woolf

 Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (France)
Genre fiction

 The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett

  At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft
Plays

 Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill

 Cavalcade by Noël Coward
Non-fiction

 Axel's Castle by Edmund Wilson (USA)

 Music at Night by Aldous Huxley
1932

 The Return of Philip Latinowicz by Miroslav Krleža

 Journey to the End of Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (France)
 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (England)
 The Memorial by Christopher Isherwood (England)
 Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov (Russia, France)
 Light in August by William Faulkner
 A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
 Stamboul Train by Graham Greene (England)
 Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
 Radetzky March by Joseph Roth (Austria)
 Jew Boy by Simon Blumenfeld (England)
Poetry

 The Orators by W. H. Auden (England)

1933

 Man's Fate by André Malraux (France)

 Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood (England)
 Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West (USA)
 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Genre fiction

 Lost Horizon by James Hilton (England)

 Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (England)
Non-fiction
  Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (England)
 Texts and Pretexts by Aldous Huxley
 In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
1934

 Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (USA) - a groundbreaking

obscenity case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1961 allowed its
publication there
 Call It Sleep by Henry Roth (Austria, USA)
 Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
 Threepenny Novel by Bertolt Brecht (Germany)
 Despair by Vladimir Nabokov
 It's a Battlefield by Graham Greene
 A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
 20,000 Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton (England)
 Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys (Dominica, France, England)
 Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara (USA)
 A Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Scotland) - trilogy, first
volume published in 1932
Genre fiction

 The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (USA)

 Novel with Cocaine aka Cocain Romance by M. Ageyev (Russia)
Poetry

 18 Poems by Dylan Thomas (Wales)
Non-fiction

 Burmese Days by George Orwell

 Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway
1935

 Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

 Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley
 Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti (Bulgaria, Germany)
  A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell
 England Made Me by Graham Greene
 A House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen (Ireland)
 Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck (USA)
 Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell (USA) - trilogy, first volume
published in 1932
Genre fiction

 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (USA)

Poetry

 Collected Poems by Cecil Day-Lewis (Northern Ireland)

Plays

 Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets (USA)

1936

 Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

 Black Spring by Henry Miller
 U.S.A. by John Dos Passos
 Mephisto by Klaus Mann (Germany, USA)
 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
 Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
 Confession of a Murderer by Joseph Roth
 Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
 The Wessex Novels by John Cowper Powys (England) - tetrology,
1st vol published in 1927
 Godaan by Premchand
Poetry

 Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh by Miroslav Krleža

Genre fiction

 Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier (England)

 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (USA)
 A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
1937

 To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

 The Years by Virginia Woolf
 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
 Lions and Shadows by Christopher Isherwood
 The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell (UK, Egypt)
 Revenge for Love by Wyndham Lewis
 White Mule by William Carlos Williams
 Wide Boys Never Work by Robert Westerby (England, USA)
Genre fiction

 Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

 Night and the City by Gerald Kersh (England, USA)
 The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor  by Cameron McCabe (Ernest
Bornemann) (Germany, England)
 The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (England)
Non-fiction

 The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

 How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (Wales)
1938

 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre (France)
 Murphy by Samuel Beckett
 Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
 Man's Hope by André Malraux
 The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
 The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov
Genre fiction

 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

 Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Non-fiction
  Journey to a War by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
 Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
 Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly (England)
1939

 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

 Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
 The Banquet in Blitva by Miroslav Krleža
 At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (Ireland)
 Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
 After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley
 Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
 On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Jünger
 Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
 The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
 The Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth
 Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann
 The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene
 Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary (Ireland)
 Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
 Pal Joey by John O'Hara
Genre fiction

 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (USA)

 Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household (England)
 The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
 And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Poetry

 Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice (N Ireland)

 The Map of Love by Dylan Thomas
Plays

 This Happy Breed by Noël Coward

World War II[edit]
Further information: 1940s literature
1940

 Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (Hungary, England)

 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - published in
English 1966
 For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
 The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
 Native Son by Richard Wright (USA, France)
 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (USA)
 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas
 Owen Glendower by John Cowper Powys
 You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
 And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (Russia) - two
volumes, first published in 1934
Genre fiction

 Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler (England)

 Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Plays

 The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill

Non-fiction

 To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson

1941

 Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton

 Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers
 The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
Genre fiction

 Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

Non-fiction
  Grey Eminence by Aldous Huxley
1942

 The Stranger by Albert Camus (Algeria, France)

 Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet (France)
 Flight to Arras by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Plays

 The Flies by Jean-Paul Sartre

1943

 Arrival and Departure by Arthur Koestler

 The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
 The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (Austria) - trilogy, first
volume published 1930
Genre fiction

 Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

 The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (France)
Poetry

 Selected Poems by Keith Douglas (England)

Non-fiction

 Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre

 The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
1944

 The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary

 Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina) - short stories
 The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham
 Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley
Plays

 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (USA)

1945
  Animal Farm by George Orwell
 Watt by Samuel Beckett - published in 1953
 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
 Black Boy by Richard Wright
 Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson (England) - trilogy, first
volume in 1939
Genre fiction

 If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes (USA, France)

 The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis (N Ireland) - first volume
published in 1938
1946

 Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (South Africa)

 The Miracle of the Rose by Jean Genet
 Froth on the Daydream by Boris Vian (France)
 The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
Poetry

 Deaths and Entrances by Dylan Thomas

Plays

 The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan (England)

Non-fiction

 Alamein to Zem Zem by Keith Douglas

 Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson
1947

 The Plague by Albert Camus

 Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (England, Canada)
 Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov
 The Victim by Saul Bellow (Canada, USA)
 The Conformist by Alberto Moravia (Italy)
 The Middle of the Journey by Lionel Trilling (USA)
 Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
  Of Love and Hunger by Julian MacLaren-Ross (England)
 Funeral Rites by Jean Genet
 Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
Plays

 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Non-fiction

 The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (Netherlands)

1948

 The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (USA)

 Confessions of a Mask by 'Yukio Mishima' (Japan)
 The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
 The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal (USA)
 Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley
 Querelle of Brest by Jean Genet
Genre fiction

 No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase (England)

Plays

 The Browning Version by Terence Rattigan

Non-fiction

 The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (France — early feminist

study
1949

 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

 The Roads to Freedom by Jean-Paul Sartre - trilogy, first volume
published 1945
 The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet
 The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren (USA)
 The Train Was on Time by Heinrich Böll (Germany)
 The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges
  The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier (Mexico)
 The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
Genre fiction

 The Trouble with Harry by Jack Trevor Story (England)

 The Mating Season by P. G. Wodehouse
Plays

 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (USA)

Postwar period[edit]
Main article: 1950s literature
The intermediate postwar period separating "Modernism" from "Postmodernism" (1950s literature) is
the floruit of the beat generation and the classical science fiction of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C.
Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein. This period also saw the publication of Samuel Beckett's trilogy of
novels, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable, which enacted the dissolution of the self-
identical human subject and inspired later novelists such as Thomas Bernhard, John Banville,
and David Markson.
1950

 Scenes from Provincial Life by William Cooper (England) - the first

of the British 1950s 'kitchen sink' novels
Genre fiction

 A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (England, Australia)

 Strangers On a Train by Patricia Highsmith (USA)
Non-fiction

 The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno (Germany, USA)

1951

 Molloy by Samuel Beckett (Ireland, France)

 Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett (Ireland, France)
 The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (USA)
 Porius (A Romance of the Dark Ages) by John Cowper
Powys (England)
 The Grass Harp by Truman Capote (USA)
 Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar (France)
  The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq (France)
Non-fiction

 The Rebel by Albert Camus (France)

1952

 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (USA)

 Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor (USA)
 Go by John Clellon Holmes (USA) - the first Beat novel
 The Natural by Bernard Malamud (USA)
 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Genre fiction

 The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham (England)

 The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (USA)
Plays

 The Chairs by Eugène Ionesco (Romania, France)

1953

 The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett (Ireland, France)

 Junkie and Queer by William S. Burroughs (USA)
 Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin (USA, France)
 The Outsider by Richard Wright
 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
 Hurry on Down by John Wain (England) - the first 'angry young
man' novel
Genre fiction

 Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (England, Jamaica) - first James

Bond novel
 The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
 Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (England, Sri Lanka)
  Foundation by Isaac Asimov (USA) - trilogy, first volume published
in 1951
 Prelude to a Certain Midnight by Gerald Kersh
Plays

 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

1954

 Lord of the Flies by William Golding (England)

 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (England) - the most famous 'angry
young man' novel
 Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (England)
 Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan (France)
Genre fiction

 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (USA)

 Story of O by Pauline Réage (France)
Plays

 Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

 The Quare Fellow by Brendan Behan (Ireland)
Non-fiction

 The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

1955

 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
 One by David Karp (USA)
 The Quiet American by Graham Greene
 The Bread of Those Early Years by Heinrich Böll
 The Tree of Man by Patrick White (Australia)
 The Inheritors by William Golding
 The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet (France)
 The Genius and the Goddess by Aldous Huxley
 The Deer Park by Norman Mailer
 The Recognitions by William Gaddis (USA)
  Memed, My Hawk by Yaşar Kemal (Turkey)
Genre fiction

 The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, first volume in 1954

 The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Plays

 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

 Bus Stop by William Inge (USA)
Poetry

 The Less Deceived by Philip Larkin (England)

1956

 The Fall by Albert Camus

 Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
 The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon (Trinidad, England)
 A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren
Genre fiction

 The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (N Ireland) - seven

volumes, first in 1950
 Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
 The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith (England)
Plays

 Look Back In Anger by John Osborne (England) - the first 'angry

young man' play
Poetry

 Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg (USA)

Non-fiction

 Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley

1957

 On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Canada, USA)

  Young Adam by Alexander Trocchi (Scotland)
 Room at the Top by John Braine (England)
 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (Russia)
 Voss by Patrick White
 The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
 Second Thoughts by Michel Butor (France)
 Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
 Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
 Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Poland, USA) - short
stories, originally published in Yiddish years earlier
 Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (USA)
Genre fiction

 On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Plays

 The Room and The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter (England)

 Endgame by Samuel Beckett
 The Entertainer by John Osborne
 Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams
 The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Switzerland)
1958

 If This Is a Man by Primo Levi (Italy)

 Breakfast At Tiffany's by Truman Capote
 The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe (England)
 A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney (England)
 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
 The Bell by Iris Murdoch
 Fowlers End by Gerald Kersh
 Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
 Candy by Terry Southern (USA)
Genre fiction
  Exodus by Leon Uris (USA)
 Zimiamvian Trilogy by E. R. Eddison (England) - first volume in
1935
 Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans (England) and Ronald
Searle (England, France) - tetrology, first book in 1954
Plays

 Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett

 Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee Williams
Non-fiction

 The Theatre and Its Double by Antonin Artaud (France)

 Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
1959

 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass (Germany)

 Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
 The Last of the Just by André Schwarz-Bart (France)
 Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth (USA)
 Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau (France)
 In the Labyrinth by Alain Robbe-Grillet
 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner  by Alan Sillitoe
 Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse (England)
 The Long Day Wanes by Anthony Burgess (England) - trilogy, first
volume published in 1956
 The Magic Christian by Terry Southern
Genre fiction

 The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake (England) - first volume

in 1946
 The Getaway by Jim Thompson
Plays

 The Dumb Waiter and The Caretaker by Harold Pinter

 Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco
Cold War period 1960–89[edit]
Main articles: 1960s literature, 1970s literature, 1980s literature and Postmodern literature
Further information: Feminist literature
1960

 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (USA)

 The London Trilogy by Colin MacInnes (England) - first
volume, Absolute Beginners, published in 1957
 Cain's Book by Alexander Trocchi (UK, France, USA)
 This Sporting Life by David Storey (UK)
 A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene
 Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras (France)
 The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark (Scotland)
 The Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller (USA) - trilogy, first volume
published 1949
 The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (USA),
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

 The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques

Bergier (France) - the 1960s obsession with the occult starts here.
Published in English 1963
 A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. (USA)
1961

 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (USA)

 A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad, England)
 Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White
 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
 A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
 Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh - trilogy, first volume published
in 1952
 Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (USA)
 Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place by Malcolm
Lowry - posthumous
Genre fiction
  Solaris by Stanisław Lem (Poland)
 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (USA)
 The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (USA)
1962

 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr

Solzhenitsyn (Russia)
 A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed by Anthony
Burgess (England)
 Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
 Island by Aldous Huxley
 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe, England)
 The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
 The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell - first volume published
1957
 Big Sur by Jack Kerouac - the last of the Lost Generation at the end
of the Beat Generation
Genre fiction

 The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton (England) - first of the Harry

Palmer novels
Non-fiction

 Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (USA) - the first major popular study

on the deterioration of the environment
1963

 V. by Thomas Pynchon (USA)
 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (USA, England)
 The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (USA)
 The Collector by John Fowles (England)
 The Lowlife by Alexander Baron (England)
 Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (USA)
Genre fiction
  Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle (France)
 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (England)
 The Grifters by Jim Thompson
Non-fiction

 The Truce by Primo Levi)

1964

 Herzog by Saul Bellow
 A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
 Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby (USA)
 The Spire by William Golding (England)
 Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess
Genre fiction

 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (UK)

 The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick (USA)
 Little Big Man by Thomas Berger (USA)
Non-fiction

 Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan (Canada)

1965

 The Magus by John Fowles

 The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
 Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino (Italy)
 The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski (Poland, USA)
 Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush by Hunter Davies (England)
- the kitchen sink novel mutates into the swinging 1960s novel
Plays

 Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss (Germany, Sweden)

Poetry

 Briggflatts by Basil Bunting
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
  The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom
Wolfe (USA)
 The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley (USA)
1966

 A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)

 Alfie by Bill Naughton (England)
 The Comedians by Graham Greene
 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
 Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess
Genre fiction

 Pavane by Keith Roberts (England)
 The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

 Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw
Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter S. Thompson (USA)
 Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard
Fariña (USA)
1967

 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García

Márquez (Colombia)
 The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
 The Vendor of Sweets by R. K. Narayan (India)
 Poor Cow by Nell Dunn (England)
 A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Non-fiction

 In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin
Fiore
1968
  Cocksure by Mordecai Richler (Canada)
 Couples by John Updike (USA)
 The Public Image by Muriel Spark
 Lunar Caustic by Malcolm Lowry - posthumous
Non-fiction and quasi-fiction

 Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
 The Armies of the Night and Miami and the Siege of
Chicago by Norman Mailer
 Bomb Culture by Jeff Nuttall (England)
 Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (USA)
 The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda (USA)
1969

 Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

 The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
 A Void by Georges Perec (France)
 Passacaille by Robert Pinget (France)
 Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid by Malcolm Lowry -
posthumous
Genre fiction

 Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss

 The Final Programme by Michael Moorcock (England, USA)
 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (USA)
 The Godfather by Mario Puzo (Italy)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

 Papillon by Henri Charrière (France)
 The View Over Atlantis by John Michell (England)
1970

 Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

 Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
  October Ferry to Gabriola by Malcolm Lowry - posthumous
Genre fiction

 The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake (USA)

 Deliverance by James Dickey (USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

 The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (Australia, England)

 Groupie by Jenny Fabian (England)
 Playpower by Richard Neville (Australia, England)
 Revolt into Style by George Melly (England)
 Soledad Brother by George Jackson (USA) - prison letters
 Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver (USA)
1971

 In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad, England)

 M/F by Anthony Burgess
 Our Gang by Philip Roth
 The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (USA)
 Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins (USA)
 Being There by Jerzy Kosiński
Genre fiction

 The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (England)

Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

 The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander (Indonesia, Netherlands)

 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
1972

 The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela

Carter (England)
 Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
 G by John Berger (England, France)
 The Good for Nothing by Oğuz Atay (Turkey)
Genre fiction
  The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins (USA)
 Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach (USA)
 The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth
Poetry

 Crossing the Water and Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath

1973

 Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

 Crash by J. G. Ballard (England)
 Season of Anomy by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
 Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera (Czechoslovakia, France)
 Sweet Dreams by Michael Frayn (England)
 Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (USA)
 The Great American Novel by Philip Roth
Genre fiction

 Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss

1974

 The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

 The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle (USA)
 The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll
 Napoleon Symphony by Anthony Burgess
 Myra Breckinridge and Myron by Gore Vidal - first of pair published
in 1968
Genre fiction

 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

 Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald (USA)
Genre fiction

 Jaws by Peter Benchley (USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
  All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein (USA)
1975

 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

 The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies - first volume published
1970
 Dead Babies by Martin Amis (England)
 The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez
 The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury (England)
 The Periodic Table by Primo Levi - short stories
Genre fiction

 Watership Down by Richard Adams (England)

 The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh (USA)
 Shōgun by James Clavell (England, USA)
 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King (USA)
1976

 Ragtime by EL Doctorow (USA)
Genre fiction

 Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (USA)

Non-fiction and quasi-fiction

 Roots by Alex Haley
Drama

 Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka

1977

 The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef

Škvorecký (Czechoslovakia)
 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (USA)
1978

 Success by Martin Amis
  The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch
 Lanark: A Life in Four Books by Alasdair Gray (Scotland)
 Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec
 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
 Jake's Thing by Kingsley Amis
 The World According to Garp by John Irving (USA)
 1985 by Anthony Burgess
 Horatio Stubbs by Brian Aldiss - trilogy, first volume published in
1970
Genre fiction

 Rumpole of the Bailey by John Mortimer (England)

1979

 A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

 The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard
 Sophie's Choice by William Styron (USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction

 The White Album by Joan Didion

 The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (USA)
1980

 The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

 Pascali's Island by Barry Unsworth (England)
 Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
1981

 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (India, UK)

 The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan (England)
 The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas (England)
 Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond
Carver (USA) - short stories
Genre fiction
  The Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (USA)
 Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (England, Russia)
1982

 Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally (Australia)

 An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd (Ghana, Scotland)
 The Color Purple by Alice Walker (USA)
 A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
Genre fiction

 Prizzi's Honor by Richard Condon

1983

 Waterland by Graham Swift (England)
 Shame by Salman Rushdie
Genre fiction

 The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett (England) - first book of

the Discworld series
1984

 Money by Martin Amis
 Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney (USA)
 The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
 Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (England)
 Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
 Enderby by Anthony Burgess - tetrology, first volume published in
1963
 The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
Non-fiction

 Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard

1985

 White Noise by Don DeLillo (USA)

 Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (USA)
  Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (England)
 The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler (USA)
 Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd (England)
 Illywhacker by Peter Carey (Australia)
 The Kingdom of the Wicked by Anthony Burgess
Genre fiction

 L.A. Noir by James Ellroy (USA) - trilogy, first volume published

1984
 The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - (USA)
1986

 Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz (USA)

 The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
 An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan, UK)
Non-fiction

 Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African

Literature by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
1987

 The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

 The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
 Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
 The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Brasil)
Genre fiction

 Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow (USA)

1988

 Mother London by Michael Moorcock

 Libra by Don DeLillo
 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (Australia)
 Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Genre fiction
  Sprawl by William Gibson (Canada, USA) - trilogy, first volume
published 1984
1989

 London Fields by Martin Amis

 Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
 The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
 To the Ends of the Earth by William Golding - trilogy, first volume
published 1980
 The Book of Evidence by John Banville (Ireland)
 The Trick of It by Michael Frayn

1990s[edit]
Main article: 1990s literature

 The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

 Boris Akunin
 Slam poetry
1990

 The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (USA) - first volume published

1985
 The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
 Restoration by Rose Tremain (England)
 Possession by A. S. Byatt (England)
 The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi (England)
 Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi (England)
Genre fiction

 Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley (USA)

1996

 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (USA)

1997

 Underworld by Don DeLillo (USA)
  American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Genre fiction

 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K.

Rowling (England) - first in series

Art . Archaeology . Architecture . Literature . Music . Philosophy . Science +...

 20th century#Literature
 History of modern literature
 List of 20th-century writers
 Modern Library's selection of best 20th century novels
 Museum of Modern Literature, Germany
 Experimental literature
by language

 French literature of the 20th century

twentieth-century poetry

early 20th-century poets | imagists | modernists | poets of ww1 | objectivists | harlem

renaissance | formalist | oxford group | midwestern |confessional | new york group | black
mountain | beats & san francisco renaissance | nature & ecology | mid- & late-century
american | later african american | british

early 20th-century poets

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

imagist poets
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

H.D. (1886-1961)

modernists
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Mina Loy (1882-1966)

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

H.D. (1886-1961)

Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)

E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)

Hart Crane (1899-1932)

Laura Riding (1901-1991)

poets of world war 1

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

David Jones (1895-1974)

Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

poetry of world war 1

objectivist poets
Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976)

Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970)

Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978)

George Oppen (1908-1984)

harlem renaissance poets

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
Claude McKay (1889-1948)

Jean Toomer (1894-1967)

Melvin Tolson (1898-1966)

Sterling Brown (1901-1989)

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

The Harlem Renaissance

new criticism & formalist poets

John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)

Allen Tate (1899-1979)

Yvor Winters (1900-1968)

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)

Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

James Merrill (1926-1995)

oxford group
Cecil Day Lewis (1904-1972)

W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

Stephen Spender (1909-1995)

midwestern poets
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

James Wright (1927-1980)

Philip Levine (b. 1928)

confessional poets
John Berryman (1914-1972)

Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

W.D. Snodgrass (1926-2009)

Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

the new york group poets

Barbara Guest (1920-2006)

Kenneth Koch (1925-2002)

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)

John Ashbery (b. 1927)

Ted Berrigan (1934-1983)

black mountain school poets

Charles Olson (1910-1970)
Robert Duncan (1919-1988)

Paul Blackburn (1919-1971)

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

Robert Creeley (1926-2005)

Edward Dorn (1929-1999)

beats, san francisco renaissance & the left coast

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)

William Everson (1912-1994)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919)

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

Philip Whalen (1923-2002)

Bob Kaufman (1925-1986)

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

Gregory Corso (1930-2001)

Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) (b. 1934)

Anne Waldman (b. 1945)

about the beats

nature & ecology poets

A.R. Ammons (1926-2001)
Frost, Robert

Hall, Donald

Hughes, Ted

Merwin, W.S.

Oliver, Mary

Snyder, Gary

other mid- & late-century american poets

Bly, Robert (b. 1926)

Boyle, Kay

Brodsky, Joseph

Bronk, William

Collins, Billy

Dickey, James

Kunitz, Stanley

Ozick, Cynthia

Rich, Adrienne

Simic, Charles

Soto, Gary

Stafford, William

Wakoski, Diane

Walcott, Derek
later african american poets
Alexander, Elizabeth

Angelou, Maya

Baraka, Amiri

Brooks, Gwendolyn

Clifton, Lucille

Dove, Rita

Giovanni, Nikki

Harper, Michael

Hayden, Robert

Kaufman, Bob

Lorde, Audre

Walker, Alice

20th-century english, irish, and welsh poets

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Mina Loy (1882-1966)

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978)

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

David Jones (1895-1974)

Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

Stevie Smith (1902-1971)

Cecil Day Lewis (1904-1972)

W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

Stephen Spender (1909-1995)

Dylan Thomas (1915-1953)

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

Geoffrey Hill (b. 1932)

Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

Eavan Boland (b. 1944)

Paul Muldoon (b. 1951)

main page | 20th-century literature | about literaryhistory.com

Revised: 07/14/2014 18:01:56

1998-2014 LiteraryHistory.com
Drama in the Twentieth Century
 Edit 28 108…

Table of Contents
Trends
Realism and Myth
Poetic Realism
Women
Political Theatre and War
Types of Modern Drama
Realism
Social Realism
Avant Garde Theatre
Absurdist Drama
Dadaism
Symbolism/Aestheticism
Surrealism
Expressionism
Epic Theatre
Physical Advances
Architecture
Set
Lighting
Advances on the Continent and their Impact on British Drama
British Playwrights in the Twentieth Century
References
Contributors

Twentieth Century British Drama

Click on Picture to See Original
"Over time the desire to unsettle, to shock, even to alienate the audience became one
hallmark of modern drama." (Greenblatt 5)

Background

Twentieth Century British theatre is commonly believed to have started in Dublin, Ireland with the
foundation of the Irish Literary Theater by William B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J.M. Synge. (Greenblatt
1843) Their purpose was to provide a specifically Celtic and Irish venue that produced works that
“stage[d] the deeper emotions of Ireland.” (The Abbey's) The playwrights of the Irish Literary Theater
(which later became the Abbey Theater, as it is known today) were part of the literary revival and
included: Sean O’Casey, J.M. Synge, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, to name a few. In
England the well-made play genre was being rejected and replaced with actors and directors who were
committed to bringing both reform and a serious audience to the theatre by appealing to the younger,
socially conscious and politically alert crowd. In the plays by George Bernard Shaw, Harley Granville
Barker, W. Somerset Maugham, and John Galsworthy, characters emulated this new crowd, satirized
the well-made play characters, and created new stereotypes and new standards. (Chothia)

The early twentieth century denoted the split between 'frocks and frills' drama and serious works,
following in the footsteps of many other European countries. "In Britain the impact of these continental
innovations was delayed by a conservative theatre establishment until the late 1950s and 1960s when they
converged with the counter-cultural revolution to transform the nature of English language theatre." The
West End, England's Broadway, tended to produce the (Greenblatt 1844) musical comedies and well-
made plays, while smaller theatres and Irish venues took a new direction. The new direction was political,
satirical, and rebellious. Common themes in the new early 20th century drama were political, reflecting
the unease or rebellion of the workers against the state, philosophical, delving into the who and why of
human life and existence, and revolutionary, exploring the themes of colonization and loss of territory.
They explored common societal business practices (conditions of factories), new political ideologies
(socialism), or the rise of a repressed sector of the population (women).(Chothia) Industrialization also
had an impact on Twentieth century drama, resulting in plays lamenting the alienation of humans in an
increasingly mechanical world. Not only did Industrialization result in alienation; so did the wars.
Between the wars, two types of theatre reined. In the West End, the middle class attended popular,
conservative theatre dominated by Noël Coward and G.B. Shaw. "Commercial theatre thrived and at
Drury Lane large budget musicals by Ivor Novello and Noel Coward used huge sets, extravagant costumes
and large casts to create spectacular productions." (West End) After the wars, taboos were broken and
new writers, directors, and actors emerged with different views. Many played with the idea of reality,
some were radically political, others shunned naturalism and questioned the legitimacy of previously
unassailable beliefs. (Chothia) Towards the end of the century, the term 'theatre of exorcism' came into
use due to the amount of plays conjuring the past in order to confront and accept it. Playwrights towards
the end of the century count among their numbers: Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Andrew Lloyd
Webber, Brian Friel, Caryl Churchill, and Tom Stoppard. The last act of the century was a turn back
towards realism as well as the founding of Europe's first children's cultural center.

For a year-by-year breakdown between 1895 and 1937, please click here.

Trends

Realism and Myth

Sigmund Freud inspired an interest in myth and dreams as playwrights became familiar with his studies
of psychoanalysis. Along with the help of Carl Jung, the two psychiatrists influenced playwrights to
incorporate myths into their plays. This integration allowed for new opportunities for playwrights to
increase the boundaries of realism within their writing. As playwrights started to use myths in their
writing, a "poetic form of realism" was created. This form of realism deals with truths that are widespread
amongst all humans, bolstered by Carl Jung's idea of the collective unconscious.

Poetic Realism
Much of the poetic realism that was written during the beginning of the twentieth century focused on the
portrayals of Irish peasant life. John Millington Synge, W.B. Yeats, and Lady Gregory were but a few
writers to use poetic realism. Their portrayal of peasant life was often unappealing and many audiences
reacted cruelly. Many plays that are poetically realistic often have unpleasant themes running through
them, such as lust between a son and his step-mother or the murder of a baby to "prove" love. These plays
used myths as a surrogate for real life in order to allow the audience to live the unpleasant plot without
completely connecting to it. 

Women
The female characters progressed from the downtrodden, useless woman to an empowered, emancipated
woman. They were used to to pose subversive questions about the social order. Many female characters
portray the author's masculine attitudes about women and their place in society. As time passed, though,
females began gain empowerment. G.B. Shawbecame one of the first English playwrights to follow Ibsen's
influence and create roles of real women. Mrs. Warren, Major Barbara, and Pygmalion all have strong
female leads. Women first started voting in 1918. Later in the century, females (and males) were both
subjected to the alienation of society and routinely were not given names to suggest to the audience the
character's worth within the play.

Political Theatre and War

Political theatre uses the theatre to represent "how a social or political order uses its power to 'represent'
others coercively." It uses live performances and often shows the power of politics through "demeaning
and limiting" prejudices. Political theatre often represents many different types of groups that are often
stereotyped - "women, gay men, lesbians, ethnic and racial groups, [and] the poor." Political theatre is
used to express one's political ideas. Agitprop, a popular form of political theatre, even had its roots in the
1930s women's rights movement. Propaganda played a big role in political theater, whether it be in
support of a war or in opposition of political schemes, theater played a big role in influencing the public. 
The wars also affected the early theatre of the twentieth century. The consternation before WWI produced
the Dada movement, the predecessor to Surrealism and Expressionism. 

Types of Modern Drama

Realism
Realism, in theater, was meant to be a direct observation of human behavior. It began as a way to make
theater more useful to society, a way to hold a mirror up to society. Because of this thrust towards the
"real" playwrights started using more contemporary settings, backgrounds and characters. Where plays in
the past had, for the most part, used mythological or stereotypical characters, now they involved the lower
class, the poor, the rich; they involved all genders, classes and races. One of the main contributors to this
style was Henrik Ibsen.

Social Realism
Social Realism began showing up in plays during the 1930s. This realism had a political conscience behind
it because the world was in a depression. These plays painted a harsh picture of rural poverty. The drama
began to aim at showing governments the penalties of unrestrained capitalism and the depressions that
lax economies created. One of the main contributors to this style was G.B. Shaw.

Avant Garde Theatre

Dramatic truth couldn't be found in the tangibleness of realistic drama, but in symbols,
images, legends, myths, fantasies, and dreams" (Klaus)

Absurdist Drama
Absurdist Drama was existentialist theatre which put a direct perception of a mode of being above all
abstract considerations. It was also essentially a poetic, lyrical theatre for the expression of intuitions of
being through movement, situations and concrete imagery. Language was generally downplayed. (Barnet)
Symbolism, Dadaism and their offspring, Surrealism, Theatre of Cruelty, and Expressionism all fall into
this category.

Dadaism
Dadaism, or Dada, was a reaction against WWI. Like many of the movements, Dada included writing,
painting and poetry as well as theatre. Many Dadaists wrote manifestos detailing their beliefs, which
normally outlined their disgust in colonialism and nationalism and tried to be the opposite of the the
current aesthetics and values. The more Dada offended, the better. It was considered to be (by Dadaists),
the 'anti-art'. It rejected the values of society and turned everything on its head, preferring to disgust and
offend.

Symbolism/Aestheticism
In England, Symbolism was also known as Aestheticism. A very stylized format of drama, wherein dreams
and fantasies were common plot devices, Aestheticism was used by numerous playwrights from Yeats to
Pinter. The staging was highly stylized, usually using minimal set pieces and vague blocking. While the
playwrights who could be considered Aestheticists lived and worked at the beginning of the century, it
influenced all of the following styles.

Surrealism
Like Aestheticism, Surrealism has its base in the mystical. It developed the physicality of theatre and
downplayed words, hoping to influence its audiences through action. Other common characteristics of
surreal plays are unexpected comparisons and surprise. The most famous British playwright in the 20s
surrealist style is Samuel Beckett. Theatre of Crueltyis a subset of surrealism and was motivated by an
idea of Antonin Artaud. It argues the idea that theatre is a "representational medium" and tried to bring
current ideas and experiences to the audience through participation and "ritualistic theater experiments."
Artaud thought that theatre should present and represent equally. This type of theatre relies deeply on
metaphors and rarely included a description of how it could be performed. 

Expressionism
The term 'Expressionism' was first coined in Germany in 1911. (Michaelides) Expressionism also had its
hey-day during the 20s although it had two distinct branches. The branches had characters speaking in
short, direct sentences or in long, lyrical expanses. This type of theatre usually did not name the
characters and spend much time lamenting the present and warning against the future. Spiritual
awakenings and episodic structures were also fairly common.

Epic Theatre
Epic theater was created by Bertold Brecht who rejected realistic theatre. He found that such plays were
too picture-perfect. Epic Theatre is based on Greek Epic poetry. There are dramatic illusions such as
"stark, harsh lighting, blank stages, placards announcing changes of scenes, bands playing music onstage,
and long, discomfiting pauses" (Jacobus). Brecht believed that drama should be made within its audiences
and he thought that Epic Theatre drama would reinforce the realities that people were facing rather than
challenge them. Epic Theatre helped to preserve the social issues that they portrayed.

Physical Advances
To hear Yale University's Maynard Mack describe some differences between Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
and today's theatre, click HERE .
Cylindrical-shaped Globe Theatre

Architecture
In the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century, theatre architecture changed from hosting as
many audience members as possible without regarding their needs to creating better acoustical, visual,
and spatial arrangements for both actors and audience members. Whereas before, theatres were
cylindrical shaped, in the twentieth century fan-shaped auditoriums were favored. Audiences liked them
because of
Fan-shaped Olivier Theatre
 the clear sight-lines and favorable acoustics and actors liked them because the natural style of acting that
was becoming more popular was conducive to smaller venues. (Klaus)

There was also a renewed interest in the earlier forms of staging such as the thrust and arena stages
(theatre-in-the-round). The theatre that most audiences are used to are like the pictured Olivier Theate.
Everyone has basically the same view of the stage and the stage itself is viewed through the Proscenium
arch, which acts as a picture frame surrounding the stage and framing the play. The Proscenium arch may
be anything from a gilded, brightly lit masterpiece surrounding the curtain at the beginning of a show to
the simple black walls preventing you from seeing into the wings of the theatre. In a Proscenium theatre,
the action takes place either behind the Proscenium or slightly in front of it, on what is known as the
apron of a stage. (The piece closest to the audience and which the curtain generally does not hide.) In a
thrust theatre, the action takes place almost completely in front of the 'Proscenium arch', if indeed there is
one. The audience is seated on three sides of the stage and many of these types of theatres make great use
of entrances and exits by the hallways through the audience. An arena stage has audience seating on all
four sides and has four entrances/exits called vomitoria. (from the Latin 'vomitorium' meaning
(generally): [an audience] spews forth from them). In today's American culture, arena stages (and
vomitoria) are most commonly found as sports arena.

Found Space is another recycled theatrical convention. The term 'Found Space' refers to streets, personal
homes, a grocery store, anywhere that is not specifically designated as a theatre.

Set
The set in a theatre is the background upon which the story is told. It can be anything from a very detailed
box set (explained below) to absolutely nothing. The set can be physical platforms and walls or it can be
projections on sheets. 

The box set, or three walls designed to look like the interior of a house, complete with doors, windows and
furniture, figured prominently in most, if not all, of the plays performed in the modern realistic tradition
at the beginning of the 20th Century. (Klaus)

Lighting
Before the invention of the electric light bulb in 1879, theatres used either gas or carbon arc lamps. Both
gas and carbon arc lamps were 

1990 Light Board Example

prone to fires. Numerous theatres had switched to the carbon arc lamp during the 1840s, but since the
concept of the arc lamp is to send voltage through the open air, there was still a high chance of fire. The
Savoy in London was the first public building to operate completely on electricity. In 1882, a year after the
Savoy opened, the Munich Exposition displayed an electrified theatre, marking the beginning of a general
change-over to electricity-lit theatres. Existing theatres that already had gas lines repurposed them by
threading wires through the old gas lines and inserting a row of light bulbs in front of the gas jets.

Unfortunately, electricity had quite a few drawbacks. The set designers or scenographers (combination set
designer/costume designer) 
The Colonial's original dimmer, photo courtesy of K Bilotti

did not adapt to the new medium, creating sets that were unsuited to electric light placement. A second
drawback was that electricity itself was very dangerous and electricians were hard to find. It might not be
as dangerous as gas, but there was still the chance of fire. The front boards, also known as control panels
(see above), were live, with handles that could be in an 'on' or 'off' position. The 'on' position did not have
protection of any sort, and if the operator was not careful, he or she could die. In the photo to the left,
technology had advanced enough for fuses. The third drawback to electricity was that it required a lot of
power. Theatres often had to own the generators powering their theatres.

Gordon Craig, a British actor, director,producer, and scenic designer made invaluable contributions to
lighting. Instead of putting most of his lights at the foot of the stage (known as footlights or floaters), he
hung lighting instruments above the stage. He, along with Adolphe Appia of Switzerland, also realized the
dramatic potential of lighting, playing with color and form. Appia also established the first goals of stage
lighting in his books: La Mise en scène du drame Wagnérien or The Staging of the Wagnerian
 Drama and L'Oeuvre d'art vivant (1921) or The Living Work of Art. (Adolphe) (1895)

An American named Jean Rosenthal created the post of 'lighting designer' within the theatre world.
Before her career in the 1950s, either the master electrician or the set designer would light the play. After
her integral designs with the Martha Graham Dance Company and on Broadway, the position of Lighting
Designer was added to the production staff. Many designers today credit her with specific lighting
techniques and lovingly refer to her as the Mother of Stage Lighting. (Wild)

Advances on the Continent and their Impact on British

Drama
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s plays were first translated and performed in England in London,
1888. His startling Real-ist drama jumpstarted modern British drama. “His… serious drama based on
moral and social issues hung over what has been called ‘the minority theatre [the 'Off-Broadway of
England]’” (Smart). Ibsen and Frenchman André Antoine pioneered the era of naturalistic drama that
later snuck into England through writers in the early 20th Century.

In Germany after the Franco-Prussian War, Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, became the first modern
director. He enjoyed plays so much that he built a stage, hired actors, had scripts written, and (because he
financed it) told everyone what they should do. His productions eventually became the Meiningen
Ensemble and toured Europe and England extensively, profoundly altering the actor/director,
manger/director or writer/director mindset of the past.

In Russia, Constantin Stanislavski organized the ideas of the Duke of Saxe Meiningen and of André
Antoine into the Stanislavski Method of acting. Stanislavski brought the Eastern belief in dedication to the
trade (some Japanese actors spend 30 years developing their craft (Worthen)) to the Western world. The
Stanislavski Method states that the actor's primary goal is to be believed. It tells the actor that s/he must
use his or her own memories to evoke emotions. The Western world accepted this view and used this
method to teach it's actors for many 20th Century realist actors, although towards the 1990s this method
has fallen out of vogue.(American, Sawoski)

Antonin Artaud was a contemporary of Samuel Beckett's. He created what is known as the Theatre of
Cruelty.

British Playwrights in the Twentieth Century

 J. M. Barrie
 Samuel Beckett
 Caryl Churchill
 Noël Coward
 Brian Friel
 John Galsworthy
 W. Somerset Maugham
 Sean O'Casey
 Harold Pinter
 Peter Shaffer
 George Bernard Shaw
 Tom Stoppard
 John Millington Synge
 William B. Yeats