Modernism: Beginnings (c. 1901–1923) English literary modernism developed in the early twentieth century out of a general sense of disillusionment with
Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the idea of objective truth. The movement was influenced by the ideas of
Charles Darwin,
Ernst Mach,
Henri Bergson,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
James G. Frazer,
Karl Marx (, 1867), and the psychoanalytic theories of
Sigmund Freud, among others. The continental art movements of
Impressionism, and later
Cubism, were also important. Important literary precursors of modernism were:
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Walt Whitman,
Charles Baudelaire,
Arthur Rimbaud and
August Strindberg. A major British lyric poet of the first decades of the twentieth century was
Thomas Hardy. Though not a modernist, Hardy was an important transitional figure between the Victorian era and the twentieth century. A major novelist of the late nineteenth century, Hardy lived well into the third decade of the twentieth century, though he only published poetry in this period. Another significant transitional figure between Victorians and modernists, the late nineteenth-century novelist,
Henry James, continued to publish major novels into the twentieth century, including
The Golden Bowl (1904). Polish-born modernist novelist
Joseph Conrad published his first important works,
Heart of Darkness, in 1899 and
Lord Jim in 1900. However, the Victorian
Gerard Manley Hopkins's highly original poetry was not published until 1918, long after his death, while the career of another major modernist poet, Irishman
W. B. Yeats, began late in the Victorian era. Yeats was one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century English literature. But 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. During the early decades of the twentieth century, the
Georgian poets like Rupert Brooke, and
Walter de la Mare, maintained a conservative approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism. Another Georgian poet,
Edward Thomas, is one of the
First World War poets along with
Wilfred Owen,
Rupert Brooke,
Isaac Rosenberg, and
Siegfried Sassoon. Irish playwrights
George Bernard Shaw,
J.M. Synge and
Seán O'Casey were influential in British drama. Shaw's career 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. George Bernard Shaw turned the
Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate about important political and social issues. Novelists who are not considered modernists include
H. G. Wells,
John Galsworthy (
Nobel Prize in Literature, 1932) whose works include
The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921), and
E.M. Forster, though Forster's work is "frequently regarded as containing both modernist and Victorian elements". Forster's most famous work,
A Passage to India 1924, reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier novels examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of
Edwardian society in England. Carrying over from the nineteenth century,
Rudyard Kipling remained arguably the most popular British writer of the early years of the twentieth century. In addition to
W. B. Yeats, other important early modernist poets were the American-born poet
T.S. Eliot. Eliot became a British citizen in 1927 but was born and educated in America. His most famous works are: "
Prufrock" (1915),
The Waste Land (1922) and
Four Quartets (1935–1942). Amongst the novelists, after
Joseph Conrad, other important early modernists include
Dorothy Richardson, whose novel
Pointed Roof (1915), is one of the earliest examples of the
stream of consciousness technique, and
D.H. Lawrence, who published
The Rainbow in 1915—though it was immediately seized by the police—and
Women in Love in 1920. Then in 1922 Irishman
James Joyce's important modernist novel
Ulysses appeared.
Ulysses has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement". , 1918
Modernism continues (1923–1939) , 1927 Important British writers between the
World Wars, include the
Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, who began publishing in the 1920s, and novelist
Virginia Woolf, who was an influential
feminist, and a major stylistic innovator associated with the
stream-of-consciousness technique in novels like
Mrs Dalloway (1925) and
To the Lighthouse (1927).
T.S. Eliot had begun this attempt to revive poetic drama with
Sweeney Agonistes in 1932, and this was followed by others including three further plays after the war.
In Parenthesis, a modernist
epic poem based on author
David Jones's experience of World War I, was published in 1937. An important development, beginning in the 1930s and 1940s was a tradition of working class novels actually written by working-class background writers. 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 coal miners
Lewis Jones from
South Wales and
Harold Heslop from
County Durham.
Aldous Huxley published his famous
dystopia Brave New World in 1932, the same year as
John Cowper Powys's
A Glastonbury Romance.
Samuel Beckett published his first major work, the novel
Murphy in 1938. This same year
Graham Greene's first major novel
Brighton Rock was published. Then in 1939
James Joyce's published
Finnegans Wake, in which he creates a special language to express the consciousness of a dreaming character. It was also in 1939 that Yeats died. British poet
W.H. Auden was another significant modernist in the 1930s.
Late modernism and post–modernism (1940–2000) Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939, 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". In fact a number of modernists were still living and publishing in the 1950s and 1960, including
T.S. Eliot,
Dorothy Richardson, and
Ezra Pound. Furthermore,
Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published little until
Briggflatts in 1965 and
Samuel Beckett, born in Ireland in 1906, continued to produce significant works until the 1980s, though some view him as a
post-modernist. Among British writers in the 1940s and 1950s were poet
Dylan Thomas and novelist
Graham Greene whose works span the 1930s to the 1980s, while
Evelyn Waugh,
W.H. Auden continued publishing into the 1960s.
Anthony Powell began his 12 volume cycle
A Dance to the Music of Time in 1951 and continued writing and publishing it until the final volume appeared in 1975.
Postmodern literature is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is difficult to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature. Among postmodern writers are the Americans
Henry Miller,
William S. Burroughs,
Joseph Heller,
Kurt Vonnegut,
William Gaddis,
Hunter S. Thompson,
Truman Capote,
Thomas Pynchon, and
David Foster Wallace.
Novel In 1947
Malcolm Lowry published
Under the Volcano, while
George Orwell's satire of totalitarianism,
Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published in 1949. 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;
Nobel Prize laureate
William Golding's
allegorical novel
Lord of the Flies 1954, explores how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British schoolboys marooned on a deserted island;
Graham Greene's novels
The Heart of the Matter (1948) and
The End of the Affair (1951), used Catholicism to explore moral dilemmas in human relationships, continuing themes found in his earlier novels. Philosopher
Iris Murdoch was a prolific writer of novels throughout the second half of the 20th century, that deal especially with sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Scottish writer
Muriel Spark pushed the boundaries of realism in her novels.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), at times takes the reader briefly into the 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. During the 1960s and 1970s,
Paul Scott wrote his monumental series on the last decade of British rule in
India,
The Raj Quartet (1966–1975). Scotland has in the late 20th century produced several important novelists, including the writer of
How Late it Was, How Late,
James Kelman, who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most grim situations and
Alasdair Gray whose
Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) is a
dystopian fantasy set in a surreal version of
Glasgow called Unthank. Two significant Irish novelists are
John Banville and
Colm Tóibín.
Martin Amis,
Pat Barker,
Ian McEwan and
Julian Barnes are other prominent late twentieth-century British novelists.
Drama An important cultural movement in the British theatre which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was
Kitchen sink realism (or "kitchen sink drama"), a term coined to describe art, novels, film and
television plays. The term
angry young men was often applied to 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). Again in the 1950s, the
absurdist play
Waiting for Godot (1955), by Irish writer
Samuel Beckett profoundly affected British drama. The
Theatre of the Absurd influenced
Harold Pinter, (
The Birthday Party, 1958), whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia. Beckett also influenced
Tom Stoppard (
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, 1966). Stoppard's works are however also notable for their high-spirited wit and the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles in different plays. An important new element in the world of British drama, from the beginnings of radio in the 1920s, was the commissioning of plays, or the adaption of existing plays, by
BBC radio. This was especially important in the 1950s and 1960s (and from the 1960s for television). Many major British playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio, including
Caryl Churchill and
Tom Stoppard whose "first professional production was in the fifteen-minute
Just Before Midnight programme on BBC Radio, which showcased new dramatists".
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. Other notable radio dramatists included
Brendan Behan and novelist
Angela Carter. Among the most famous works created for radio are
Dylan Thomas's
Under Milk Wood (1954),
Samuel Beckett's
All That Fall (1957),
Harold Pinter's
A Slight Ache (1959) and
Robert Bolt's
A Man for All Seasons (1954).
Poetry Major poets like T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas were still publishing in this period. Though
W.H. Auden's career began in the 1930s and 1940s he published several volumes in the 1950s and 1960s. His stature in modern literature has been contested, but probably the most common critical view from the 1930s onward ranked him as one of the three major twentieth-century British poets, and heir to Yeats and Eliot. New poets starting their careers in the 1950s and 1960s include
Philip Larkin (
The Whitsun Weddings, 1964),
Ted Hughes (
The Hawk in the Rain, 1957),
Sylvia Plath (
The Colossus, 1960) and
Seamus Heaney (
Death of a Naturalist, 1966). Northern Ireland has also produced a number of other significant poets, including
Derek Mahon and
Paul Muldoon. 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. Another literary movement in this period was the
British Poetry Revival was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces
performance,
sound and
concrete poetry. 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
American Beats. Other noteworthy later twentieth-century poets are Welshman
R.S. Thomas,
Geoffrey Hill,
Charles Tomlinson and
Carol Ann Duffy.
Geoffrey Hill is considered one of the most distinguished English poets of his generation,
Charles Tomlinson 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.
Literature from the Commonwealth of Nations , Cologne, 2006. From 1950 on a significant number of major writers came from countries that had over the centuries been settled by the British, other than America which had been producing significant writers from at least the
Victorian period. There had of course been a few important works in English prior to 1950 from the then
British Empire. The
South African writer Olive Schreiner's famous novel
The Story of an African Farm was published in 1883 and
New Zealander Katherine Mansfield published her first collection of short stories,
In a German Pension, in 1911. The first major novelist, writing in English, from the
Indian sub-continent,
R. K. Narayan, began publishing in England in the 1930s, thanks to the encouragement of English novelist
Graham Greene.
Caribbean writer Jean Rhys's writing career began as early as 1928, though her most famous work,
Wide Sargasso Sea, was not published until 1966. South Africa's
Alan Paton's famous
Cry, the Beloved Country dates from 1948.
Doris Lessing from
Southern Rhodesia, now
Zimbabwe, was a dominant presence in the English literary scene, frequently publishing from 1950 on throughout the 20th century, and she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. at the 2016
Hay Festival, the UK's largest annual literary festival
Salman Rushdie is another post Second World War writers from the former British colonies who
permanently settled in Britain. Rushdie achieved fame with ''
Midnight's Children 1981. His most controversial novel The Satanic Verses 1989, was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. V. S. Naipaul, born in Trinidad, was another immigrant, who wrote among other things A Bend in the River'' (1979). Naipaul won the
Nobel Prize in Literature. From
Nigeria a number of writers have achieved an international reputation for works in English, including novelist
Chinua Achebe, as well as playwright
Wole Soyinka. Soyinka won the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1986, as did
South African novelist
Nadine Gordimer in 1995. Other South African writers in English are novelist
J. M. Coetzee (Nobel Prize 2003) and playwright
Athol Fugard.
Kenya's most internationally renowned author is
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o who has written novels, plays and short stories in English. Poet
Derek Walcott, from
St Lucia in the Caribbean, was another Nobel Prize winner in 1992. An
Australian Patrick White, a major novelist in this period, whose first work was published in 1939, won in 1973. Other noteworthy Australian writers at the end of this period are poet
Les Murray, and novelist
Peter Carey, who is one of only four writers to have won the
Booker Prize twice. Major Canadian novelists include
Carol Shields,
Lawrence Hill,
Margaret Atwood and
Alice Munro.
Carol Shields novel
The Stone Diaries won the 1995
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and another novel, ''
Larry's Party'', won the
Orange Prize in 1998.
Lawrence Hill's
Book of Negroes won the 2008
Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best Book Award, while
Alice Munro became the first Canadian to win the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro also received the
Man Booker International Prize in 2009. Amongst internationally known poets are
Leonard Cohen and
Anne Carson. Carson in 1996 won the
Lannan Literary Award for poetry. The foundation's awards in 2006 for poetry, fiction and nonfiction each came with $US 150,000.
American writers From 1940 into the 21st century, American playwrights, poets and novelists have continued to be internationally prominent.
Genre fiction in the twentieth century Many works published in the twentieth century were examples of
genre fiction. This designation includes the
crime novels,
spy novel,
historical romance,
fantasy,
graphic novel, and
science fiction. , 1940s
Agatha Christie was an important, and hugely successful, crime fiction writer who is best remembered for her 66
detective novels as well as her many short stories and successful plays for the
West End theatre. Along with
Dorothy L. Sayers,
Ngaio Marsh, and
Margery Allingham, Christie dominated the mystery novel in the 1920s and 1930s, often called "The Golden Age of Detective Fiction". Together, these four women writers were honored as "The Queens of Crime". Other recent noteworthy writers in this genre are
Ruth Rendell,
P.D. James and the Scot,
Ian Rankin.
Erskine Childers'
The Riddle of the Sands (1903), is an early example of
spy fiction.
John Buchan, a Scottish diplomat, and later the Governor General of Canada, is sometimes considered the inventor of the
thriller genre. His five novels featuring the heroic,
Richard Hannay, are among the earliest in the genre. The first Hannay novel,
The Thirty-Nine Steps, was made into a famous thriller movie by
Alfred Hitchcock. Hannay was the prototype for the even more famous fictional character,
James Bond 007, created by
Ian Fleming, and the protagonist in a long line of films. Another noted writer in the
spy novel genre was
John le Carré. , 2006 The novelist
Georgette Heyer created the
historical romance genre.
Emma Orczy's original play,
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), a "hero with a
secret identity", became a favourite of London audiences, playing more than 2,000 performances and becoming one of the most popular shows staged in England to that date. Among significant writers in the fantasy genre were
J. R. R. Tolkien, author of
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings.
C. S. Lewis author of
The Chronicles of Narnia, and
J. K. Rowling who wrote the highly successful
Harry Potter series.
Lloyd Alexander winner of the
Newbery Honor as well as the
Newbery Medal for his
The Chronicles of Prydain pentalogy is another significant author of
fantasy novels for younger readers. Like fantasy in the later decades of the 20th century, the genre of
science fiction began to be taken more seriously, and this was because of the work of writers such as
Arthur C. Clarke (
2001: A Space Odyssey) and
Michael Moorcock. Another prominent writer in this genre,
Douglas Adams, is particularly associated with the comic science fiction work, ''
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Mainstream novelists such
Doris Lessing and
Margaret Atwood also wrote works in this genre. Known for his macabre, darkly comic fantasy works for children,
Roald Dahl became one of the best selling authors of the 20th century, and his best-loved children's novels include
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
Matilda,
James and the Giant Peach,
The Witches,
Fantastic Mr Fox and
The BFG. Noted writers in the field of
comic books and
graphic novels include
Neil Gaiman and
Alan Moore.
Literary criticism in the twentieth century Literary criticism gathered momentum in the twentieth century. In this era prominent academic journals were established to address specific aspects of English literature. Most of these academic journals gained widespread credibility because of being published by university presses. The growth of universities thus contributed to a stronger connection between English literature and literary criticism in the twentieth century. == 21st century ==