British literature
Encyclopedia
British Literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man
and Channel Islands
. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin
, Welsh
, Scottish Gaelic, Scots
, Cornish
, Manx
, Jèrriais
, Guernésiais and other languages. Northern Ireland
has a literary tradition in English, Ulster Scots and Irish. Irish writers have also played an important part in the development of English-language literature.
Literature in the Celtic languages
of the islands is the oldest surviving vernacular literature
in Europe. The Welsh literary tradition stretches from the 6th century to the 21st century. The oldest Welsh literature does not belong to the territory we know as Wales today, but rather to northern England and southern Scotland. But though it is dated to be from the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, it has survived only in 13th- and 14th-century manuscript
copies.
rs such as Bede
, with his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
, and Gildas
, 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.
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.
Adomnán's 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
.
in all its branches. The Irish literature
that is best known outside the country is in English, but the Irish language
also has the most significant body of written literature, both ancient and recent, in any Celtic language, in addition to a strong oral tradition of legends and poetry.
The Ulster Cycle
written in the 12th century, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the Ulaid
in what is now eastern Ulster
and northern Leinster
, particularly counties Armagh
, Down
and Louth
. The stories are written in Old and Middle Irish, mostly in prose, interspersed with occasional verse passages. The language of the earliest stories is dateable to the 8th century, and events and characters are referred to in poems dating to the 7th.
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.
The stories of the Mabinogion
appear in either or both of two Medieval Welsh manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch
(Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) written ca. 1350, and the Red Book of Hergest
(Llyfr Coch Hergest) written about 1382–1410, although texts or fragments of some of the tales have been preserved in earlier 13th century and later manuscripts. Scholars agree that the tales are older than the existing manuscripts, but disagree over just how much older.
Gaelic literature in Scotland includes a celebration, attributed to the Irish monk Adomnán, of the Pictish King Bridei
's (671–93) victory of the Northumbrians at the Battle of Dun Nechtain (685).
The earliest form of English literature
developed after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England after the withdrawal of the Romans and is known as Old English
or Anglo-Saxon.
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 epic poem
Beowulf
is the most famous work in Old English. A hero of the Geats, Beowulf battles three antagonist
s: Grendel
, Grendel's mother
, and a Dragon
. The only surviving manuscript is the Nowell Codex
. The precise date of the manuscript is debated, but most estimates place it close to the year 1000.
Chronicle
s contained a range of historical and literary accounts; one notable example is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
which contains various heroic poems inserted throughout.
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 Mercia
n collection of hagiographies. Ælfric of Eynsham
was a prolific 10th century writer of hagiographies and homilies.
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.
Latin literature circulated among the educated classes. Gerald of Wales's most distinguished works are those dealing with Wales and Ireland, with his late 12th century two 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.
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 and The 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.
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 Jersey
poet Wace
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.
The Prophecy of Merlin
is a 12th-century poem written in Latin hexameter
s 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.
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
orthography
and 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.
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. 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
wrote a number of works in the 13th century. Some were written in Latin, some in Anglo-Norman
or French verse. His Chronica Majora
is an oft-cited historical source.
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 Wyclif's Bible
, helped to establish English as a literary language. 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
.
William Langland
's Piers Plowman
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
(most likely by the Pearl Poet
) during the Middle Ages. It is also the first allusion to a literary tradition of the legendary English archer
, swordsman, and outlaw
Robin Hood
.
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The most significant Middle English author was Geoffrey Chaucer
who was active in the late 14th century. Often regarded as the father of English literature
, Chaucer is widely credited as the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular
English language, rather than French or Latin. The Canterbury Tales
was Chaucer's magnum opus
, and a towering achievement of Western culture
. The first recorded association of Valentine's Day
with romantic love
is in Chaucer's Parlement of Foules
of 1382.
The multilingual audience for literature in the 14th century can be illustrated by the example of John Gower
, who wrote in Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman.
Women writers were also active, such as Marie de France in the 12th century and Julian of Norwich
in the early 14th century. Julian's Revelations of Divine Love
(circa 1393) is believed to be the first published book written by a woman in the English language. 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 pilgrimage
s to various holy sites in Europe and Asia.
Dafydd ap Gwilym
's 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 Dafydd's 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. Dafydd's work is 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. The earliest poem in English by a Welsh poet dates from about 1470. The Latin and English poem Flen 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.
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 the University of St Andrews
was produced by writers such as Henrysoun
, Dunbar
, Douglas
and Lyndsay
. The works of Chaucer had an influence on Scottish writers.
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, and was influential in the later revival of interest in the Arthurian legends.
Sir Thomas More coined the word "utopia
", a name he gave to the ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in Utopia
, written in Latin and published in 1516.
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. Another major work, David Lyndsay
's Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis
, later in the century, is a surviving example of a dramatic tradition in the period that has otherwise largely been lost. At the end of the 16th century, James VI of Scotland founded the Castalian Band
, a group of makar
s and musicians in the court, based on the model of the Pléiade in France. The courtier and makar Alexander Montgomerie
was a leading member. However this 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 the isles.
The English Renaissance
dated from the early 16th century to the early 17th century when the sonnet
form and other Italian literary influences arrived in English literature. The sonnet was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt
in the early 16th century.
In the later 16th century English poetry was characterised by elaboration of language and extensive allusion to classical myths. The most important poets of this period included Edmund Spenser
and Sir Philip Sidney
.
English Renaissance theatre
was among the most important literary achievements of the English Renaissance
. William Shakespeare
, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, wrote over 35 plays
in several genres, including tragedy
, comedy
and history
. Other major playwrights of the time included Ben Jonson
, Christopher Marlowe
, and Thomas Kyd
.
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.
Philosopher Sir Francis Bacon 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.
The prolific Jacobean playwright and poet Thomas Middleton
's The Revenger's Tragedy
, is an early example of illegitimacy in fiction
. Other Jacobean playwrights include John Fletcher
and John Webster
.
In 1616 George Chapman
completed his monumental translation of Homer
's Iliad
and Odyssey
into English verse, which were the first ever complete translations of either poem, both central to the Western Canon
, into the English language. The wildly popular tale of the Trojan War had until then been available to English readers only in Medieval epic retellings such as Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
.
English poets of the early 17th century are crudely classified by the division into Cavalier poet
s and metaphysical poets
, the latter being much concerned with religion. The division is therefore along a line approximating to secular/religious.
Major poets of the 17th century included John Donne
, Andrew Marvell
, and George Herbert
. Thomas Carew
was among poets who wrote country house poem
s. John Milton
's 1644 Areopagitica
, is an influential and impassioned philosophical defence of the principle of a right to freedom of speech
, written in opposition to licensing and censorship, as an eloquent defence of press freedom. Milton's religious epic Paradise Lost
was first published in 1667.
The position of Poet Laureate
was formalised during this period.
Diarists John Evelyn
and Samuel Pepys
depicted everyday London life and the cultural scene of the times. Their works are among the most important primary source
s for the English Restoration
period, and consists of eyewitness
accounts of many great events, such as the Great Plague of London
, and the Great Fire of London
.
The publication of The Pilgrim's Progress
in 1678, established the theologian John Bunyan
as a notable writer.
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 Blackbeard
and Calico Jack
.
The early 18th century is known as the Augustan Age of English literature. The poetry of the time was highly formal, as exemplified by the works of Alexander Pope
.
The English pictorial satirist
and editorial cartoonist
William Hogarth
emerged In the 18th century, who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art
. His work ranged from realistic
portraiture to comic strip
-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Much of his work poked fun at contemporary politics and customs; illustrations in such style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
Although documented history of Irish theatre
began at least as early as 1601, the earliest Irish dramatists of note were William Congreve, one of the most interesting writers of Restoration comedies
, and Oliver Goldsmith
and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
, two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage in the 18th century.
The Graveyard Poets
were a number of pre-Romantic English poets of the 18th century characterised by their gloomy meditations on mortality, 'skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms' in the context of the graveyard. 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. They are often considered precursors of the Gothic genre, and poets include; Thomas Gray
, William Cowper
, Christopher Smart
, Thomas Chatterton
, and Edward Young
.
The question of identifying the first novel in English
is a subject of academic discussion. The English novel
developed during the 18th century, partly in response to an expansion of the middle-class reading public. One of the major early works in this genre was the seminal castaway
novel Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
. The 18th century novel tended to be loosely structured and semi-comic. Henry Fielding
's Tom Jones
is considered a comic
masterpiece. Samuel Richardson
is known for his three epistolary novel
s: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded 1740, Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady
1748 and The History of Sir Charles Grandison
1753. Novelists from the mid-to-late 18th century include; Laurence Sterne
, Samuel Johnson
, and Tobias Smollett
, who influenced Charles Dickens
.
Although the epics of Celtic Ireland were written in prose and not verse, most people would probably consider that Irish fiction proper begins in the 18th century with the works of Jonathan Swift
, notably Gulliver's Travels
1726, and Oliver Goldsmith
, with his best known novel The Vicar of Wakefield
1766.
Edward Cave
created the first general-interest magazine with The Gentleman's Magazine
. He was the first to use the term "magazine" on the analogy of a military storehouse of varied material.
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.
Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto
, invented the Gothic fiction
genre, that combines elements of horror
and romance
. The pioneering gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe
introduced the brooding figure of the gothic villain
which 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 further notable early works in both the gothic and horror literary genres.
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.
The first book to be printed in Welsh was published in 1546. 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).
Chaucerian, classical and French literary language
continued to influence Scots literature up until the Reformation. 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 Union of the Crowns
.
The earliest surviving examples of Cornish prose are Pregothow Treger (The Tregear Homilies) a set of 66 sermon
s translated from English by John Tregear 1555–1557. 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.
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.
The first printed work in Manx dates from 1707: a translation of a Prayer Book catechism
in English by Bishop Thomas Wilson. The Book of Common Prayer
and Bible were translated into Manx in the 17th and 18th centuries. A tradition of carvals, religious songs or carols
, developed. Religious literature was common, but secular writing much rarer.
In Scotland, after the 17th century, anglicisation
increased, though Lowland Scots was still spoken by the vast majority of the population. 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 Lady Grizel Baillie
.
In the Scots
-speaking areas of Ulster
there was traditionally a considerable demand for the work of Scottish poets, often in locally printed editions. Alexander Montgomerie
's The Cherrie and the Slae in 1700, shortly over a decade later an edition of poems by Sir David Lindsay, 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). Robert Burns' 1785 poem Halloween
is recited by Scots at Halloween, and Burns was influenced by Mayne's composition.
In the 18th century, Scottish writers such as Ramsay, Robert Fergusson
, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott continued to use Lowland Scots. Scott introduced vernacular dialogue to his novels. The Habbie stanza was developed as a poetic form.
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
. 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.
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.
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 as James Orr
, 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 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
by John 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.
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
in Dorset, George Métivier
(1790–1881) in Guernsey
and Robert Pipon Marett
in Jersey. 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. Philippe Le Sueur Mourant
's tales of Bram Bilo, an innocent abroad in Paris, were an immediate success in Jersey in 1889 and went through a number of reprintings. Denys Corbet
published collections of 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.
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. Ulster Scots also regularly appeared in Ulster newspaper columns such as those of "Bab M'Keen" from the 1880s. Scottish authors; Robert Louis Stevenson
, William Alexander, J. M. Barrie
, and George MacDonald
, also wrote in Lowland Scots or used it in dialogue.
Ewen MacLachlan
translated the first eight books of Homer's Iliad
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.
The so-called "Cranken Rhyme
" produced by John Davey
of Boswednack
, one of the last people with some traditional knowledge of the language, may be the last piece of traditional Cornish literature. Later Cornish revivalists produced literary works: John Hobson Matthews wrote several poems, such as the patriotic "Can Wlascar Agam Mamvro" ("Patriotic Song of our Motherland"). Robert Morton Nance
created a body of verse, such as "Nyns yu Marow Myghtern Arthur" ("King Arthur is not Dead").
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. The first major novelist in the Welsh language was Daniel Owen
, author of works such as Rhys Lewis
(1885) and Enoc Huws
(1891).
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.
, prompted a new breed of writing known as Romanticism
. William Wordsworth
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
began the trend for bringing emotionalism and introspection to English literature, with a new concentration on the individual and the common man. The reaction to urbanism and industrialisation prompted poets to explore nature, for example the Lake Poets
. The third major Lake poet, Robert Southey
, enjoys lasting popularity, although perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the immortal children's classic, The Story of the Three Bears, the basis of the original Goldilocks story.
Around the same period, the iconoclastic printer William Blake
, largely disconnected from the major streams of elite literature of the time, was constructing his own highly idiosyncratic poetic creations, while the Scottish nationalist poet Robert Burns
was collecting and adapting the folk songs of Scotland
into a body of national poetry for his homeland.
The major "second generation" Romantic poets included George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
. They flouted social convention and often used poetry as a political voice. Amongst Lord Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty
and So, we'll go no more a roving
, in addition to narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
and Don Juan
. Another key poet of the Romantic movement was John Keats
, whose poems such as Ode to a Nightingale
expound on his aesthetic theory of negative capability
, and remain among the most celebrated by any author of the period. To Autumn
is the final work in a collection of poems known as "Keats's 1819 odes
". Percy Shelley
, famous for his association with Keats and Byron, was the third major romantic poet of the second generation. Critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language, Shelley is most famous for such widely anthologised verse works as Ozymandias
, and long visionary poems which include Prometheus Unbound. Shelley's groundbreaking poem The Masque of Anarchy
calls for nonviolence in protest and political action. It is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest
. Mahatma Gandhi
's passive resistance was influenced and inspired by Shelley's verse, and Gandhi would often quote the poem to vast audiences.
was writing highly polished novels about the life of the landed gentry, seen from a woman's point of view, and wryly focused on practical social issues, especially marriage and money. Austen's Pride and Prejudice
1813, is often considered the epitome of the romance
genre, and some of her other most notable works include Sense and Sensibility
, Mansfield Park
, Persuasion
and Emma
.
Walter Scott's
novel-writing career was launched in 1814 with Waverley
, often called the first historical novel, and was followed by Ivanhoe
. His popularity in England and further abroad did much to form the modern stereotype of Scottish culture. Other novels by Scott which contributed to the image of him as a Scottish patriot include Rob Roy
. Scott was the highest earning and most popular author up to that time.
Mary Shelley
is best known for her novel Frankenstein
1818, infusing elements of the Gothic novel and Romantic
movement. Frankenstein's chilling tale suggests modern organ transplants, tissue regeneration, that remind readers of the moral issues raised by today's medicine. Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man
is often identified as the first work of modern apocalyptic
fiction.
John William Polidori wrote The Vampyre
1819, creating the literary vampire genre. His short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem The Giaour
. Another major influence on vampire fiction is Varney the Vampire
1845, where many standard Vampire features originated – Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the neck of his victims, has hypnotic powers, superhuman strength, and was also the first example of the "sympathetic vampire", who loathes his condition but is a slave to it.
From the mid-1820s until the 1840s, fashionable novel
s depicting the lives of the upper class in an indiscreet manner, identifying the real people whom the characters were based, dominated the market. It was in the Victorian era
(1837–1901) that the novel became the leading form of literature in English. Most writers were now more concerned to meet the tastes of a large middle-class reading public than to please aristocratic patrons. The 1830s saw a resurgence of the social novel
, where sensationalised accounts and stories of the working class poor were directed toward middle class audiences to incite sympathy and action towards pushing for legal and moral change. Elizabeth Gaskell
's North and South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south.
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.
Charles Dickens
emerged on the literary scene in the 1830s, confirming the trend for serial publication. Dickens wrote vividly about London life and struggles of the poor, often, as in Oliver Twist
, employing a popular style which would prove accessible to readers of all classes. The festive tale A Christmas Carol
he called his "little Christmas book". Great Expectations
is a quest for maturity. A Tale of Two Cities
is set in London and Paris. Dickens early works are masterpieces of comedy, such as The Pickwick Papers
. Later his works became darker, without losing his genius for caricature.
The emotionally powerful works of the Brontë sisters
: Charlotte's Jane Eyre
, Emily's Wuthering Heights
and Anne's Agnes Grey
were released in 1847 after their search to secure publishers. William Makepeace Thackeray
's satirised British society in Vanity Fair 1847, while Anthony Trollope
's novels portrayed the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England.
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 with George MacDonald
, influential author of The Princess and the Goblin
and Phantastes
1858. William Morris
was a popular English poet who wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the 19th century.
Literature for children was published during the Victorian period, some of which has become globally well-known, such as the works of Lewis Carroll
, notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
, while Anna Sewell
wrote the classic animal novel Black Beauty
.
Wilkie Collins
epistolary novel
The Moonstone
1868, is often considered the first detective novel
in the English language. The Woman in White
is regarded as one of the finest sensation novels.
The novels of George Eliot
, such as Middlemarch
, were a milestone of literary realism
, and combine high Victorian literary
detail with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow confines they often depict. Novels of Thomas Hardy
and others, dealt with the changing social and economic situation of the countryside.
Penny dreadful
publications were an alternative to mainstream works, and were aimed at working class adolescents, introducing the infamous Sweeney Todd
. The premier ghost story
writer of the 19th century was 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. Bram Stoker
, author of seminal horror work Dracula
, 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 genre
s including vampire literature, horror fiction
, gothic novel and invasion literature
.
H. G. Wells
, who alongside Jules Verne, is referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction", invented a number of themes that are now classic in the science fiction genre. The War of the Worlds
1898, describing an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry, is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion
of Earth. The Time Machine
is generally credited with the popularisation of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term "time machine
" coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle.
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.
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
. One of the earliest and most influential books with the format that modern picture books retain is Beatrix Potter
's The Tale of Peter Rabbit
.
An important forerunner of modernist literature
, Joseph Conrad
wrote the novel Heart of Darkness
1899, a symbolic story within a story or frame narrative about an Englishman Marlow's foreign assignment, that is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon
.
Leading poetic figures of Victorian era include; Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
, Robert Browning
, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
, and Matthew Arnold
, whilst multi-disciplinary talents such as John Ruskin
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti
were also famous for their poetry. 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, most of his poems were in the form of dramatic monologues.
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Nonsense verse
, such as by Edward Lear
, taken with the work of Lewis Carroll, is regarded as a precursor of surrealism
. Writers of comic verse included W. S. Gilbert
, who produced the Bab Ballads
and the lyrics for the Savoy Operas.
Towards the end of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French Symbolism and Victorian poetry entered a decadent fin-de-siècle
phase. Two groups of poets emerged, the Yellow Book poets who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism
, including Algernon Charles Swinburne
, Oscar Wilde
and Arthur Symons
and the Rhymer's Club group that included Ernest Dowson
, Lionel Johnson
and William Butler Yeats
. Poetry of A. E. Housman
consisting of wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, grew in popularity in early 20th century.
In the 19th century, the Irish playwright Dion Boucicault
was an extremely popular writer of comedies. However, it was in the last decade of the century that the Irish theatre finally came of age with the emergence of George Bernard Shaw
and Oscar Wilde
. All of these writers lived mainly in England and wrote in English, with the exception of some works in French by Wilde.
The Celtic Revival
(c. 1890), was begun by William Butler Yeats
, Augusta, Lady Gregory
, John Millington Synge
, Seán O'Casey
, James Joyce
and others. The Revival stimulated new appreciation of traditional Irish literature. The movement also encouraged the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from British culture.
is a term used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers, notably Dylan Thomas
, especially if they either have subject matter relating to Wales or (as in the case of Anglo-Welsh poetry
in particular) are influenced by the Welsh language in terms of patterns of usage or syntax. 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 literature, i.e. literature in the Welsh language.
Scottish literature in the 19th century, following the example of Walter Scott, tended to produce novels that did not reflect the realities of life in that period.
Robert Louis Stevenson
's short novel Strange 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. His Kidnapped
is a fast-paced historical novel set in the aftermath of the '45 Jacobite Rising
, and Treasure Island
1883, is the classic pirate
adventure.
The Kailyard school
of Scottish writers presented an idealised version of society and brought elements of fantasy
and folklore
back into fashion. J. M. Barrie
created Peter Pan
, a boy who can fly, magically refuses to grow up in a never-ending childhood in Neverland
, is one example of this mix of modernity and nostalgia.
. The author of the classic novels Tess of the d'Urbervilles
and Far from the Madding Crowd
, Hardy concentrated on poetry after the harsh response to his last novel, Jude the Obscure
.
The most widely popular writer of the early years of the 20th century was arguably Rudyard Kipling
, a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems that were often based on his experiences in British India
. To date the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Kipling's novels include The Jungle Book
, The Man Who Would Be King
and Kim
, while his inspirational poem If—
is a national favourite. Like William Ernest Henley
's poem Invictus
that has inspired such people as Nelson Mandela
when he was incarcerated, If— is a memorable evocation of Victorian
stoicism
, regarded as a traditional British virtue. Erskine Childers
The Riddle of the Sands
1903, defined the spy novel. The Scarlet Pimpernel
1905, by Emma Orczy, is a precursor to the "disguised superhero". 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. John Buchan penned the adventure novel
The Thirty-Nine Steps
in 1915. The medieval scholar M. R. James
wrote highly regarded ghost stories in contemporary settings. Strongly influenced by his Christian faith, G. K. Chesterton
was a prolific and hugely influential writer with a diverse output.
From around 1910, the Modernist Movement
began to influence English literature. While their Victorian predecessors had usually been happy to cater to mainstream middle-class taste, 20th century writers such as James Joyce
often felt alienated from it, so responded by writing more intellectually challenging works or by pushing the boundaries of acceptable content.
Major poets of this period in Britain included the American-born T. S. Eliot
and Irishman W. B. Yeats
. Free verse
and other stylistic innovations came to the forefront in this era.
The experiences of the First World War were reflected in the work of war poet
s such as Wilfred Owen
, Rupert Brooke
, Isaac Rosenberg
, Edmund Blunden
and Siegfried Sassoon
. Following the Arab Revolt
, T. E. Lawrence
"Lawrence of Arabia" wrote his autobiographical account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom
.
Important novelists between the two World Wars include Irish writer James Joyce
, alongside English authors D. H. Lawrence
, Virginia Woolf
, E. M. Forster
, C. S. Forester
and P. G. Wodehouse
Joyce's complex works included Ulysses
, arguably the most important work of Modernist literature
, referred to as "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement". It is amongst other things an interpretation of the Odyssey
, its events taking place over one day in Dublin in June 1904. From the year of its publication in 1922 until 1939, Joyce worked on his final and probably least accessible work, Finnegans Wake
.
D. H. Lawrence
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 followed The Rainbow
1915, and its sequel Women in Love
1920. 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
1928.
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".
E. M. Forster
's A Passage to India
1924, reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier works such as A Room with a View
and Howards End
, examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England. Robert Graves
is best known for his 1934 novel I Claudius.
The popularity of novelists who wrote in a more traditional style, such as Nobel Prize
laureate John Galsworthy
, whose novels include The Forsyte Saga
, and Arnold Bennett
, author of The Old Wives' Tale
, continued in the interwar period. At the same time the Georgian poets
maintained a more conservative approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism, sandwiched between the Victorian era, with its strict classicism, and Modernism, with its strident rejection of pure aestheticism.
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
Aldous Huxley
's futuristic novel Brave New World
1932, anticipates developments in reproductive technology
and sleep-learning
that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurism. James Hilton
's Lost Horizon
1933, is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La
, the mythical utopian monastery in the mountains of Tibet. His other notable book is Goodbye Mr. Chips. Author and playwright Daphne Du Maurier
wrote the mystery novel Rebecca
in 1938, followed by short stories "The Birds
" and "Don't Look Now". W. Somerset Maugham
's most notable work is Of Human Bondage
, which is strongly autobiographical and is generally agreed to be his masterpiece. Novelist A. J. Cronin
often drew on his experiences practising medicine. The Citadel
1937, was groundbreaking in its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics, and is credited with laying a foundation for the introduction of the NHS in the UK a decade later.
Evelyn Waugh
satirised the "bright young things" of the 1920s and 1930s, notably in A Handful of Dust
, and Decline and Fall
, while his magnum opus Brideshead Revisited
1945, has a theological basis, aiming to examine the effect of divine grace on its main characters.
Classics of children's literature include of 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 the novelist Dodie Smith
wrote The Hundred and One Dalmatians
featuring the villainous Cruella de Vil
.
Agatha Christie
was a crime writer of novels, short stories and plays, best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Christie's works, particularly featuring the detectives Hercule Poirot
or Miss Marple
, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre. Christie's novels include, Murder on the Orient Express
1934, Death on the Nile
1937 and And Then There Were None
1939. Another popular writer during the Golden Age of detective fiction was Dorothy L. Sayers
. The novelist Georgette Heyer
created the historical romance
genre.
The Auden Group
, sometimes called simply the Thirties poets, was a group of British and Irish writers active in the 1930s that included; W. H. Auden
, Louis MacNeice
, Cecil Day-Lewis
, Stephen Spender
, Christopher Isherwood
, and sometimes Edward Upward
and Rex Warner
.
One of the most significant English writers of this period was George Orwell
. An essayist and novelist, Orwell's works are considered among the most important social and political commentaries of the 20th century. Dealing with issues such as poverty in The Road to Wigan Pier
and Down and Out in Paris and London
, totalitarianism in Nineteen Eighty-Four
and Animal Farm
, and colonialism in Burmese Days
. Orwell's works were often semi-autobiographical and in the case of Homage to Catalonia
, wholly. Malcolm Lowry
is best known for Under the Volcano
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 his fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters
1942, 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
.
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. Kitchen sink realism
(or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art (the term itself derives from an expressionist painting by John Bratby
), novels, film and television play
s, whose authors were sometimes described as angry young men
. It used a style of social realism
which often depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons to explore social issues and political controversies. In drama of the post war period, the drawing room play
s typical of dramatists like Terence Rattigan
or Noel Coward
were challenged in the 1950s by the Angry Young Men
, exemplified by John Osborne
's iconic play Look Back in Anger
. Arnold Wesker
and Nell Dunn
also brought social concerns to the stage.
Nobel Prize
laureate William Golding
's allegorical
novel Lord of the Flies
1954, discusses how culture created by man fails, and uses as an example a group of British schoolboys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, but with disastrous results.
Graham Greene
's works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Notable for an ability to combine serious literary acclaim with broad popularity, his novels include Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory
, The Heart of the Matter
and The End of the Affair
.
Anthony Burgess
's dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange
1962, displays the prevention of the main character Alex
's exercise of his free will through the use of a classical conditioning
technique. Burgess creates a new speech in his novel that is the teenage slang of the not-too-distant future.
Comic novelist Kingsley Amis
is best known for his academic satire Lucky Jim
1954. Iris Murdoch
's novels dealt with sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious, as displayed in Under the Net
1954. Scottish writer Muriel Spark
pushed the boundaries of realism in her novels. Her first, 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.
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, 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 Follet 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.
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.
The leading poets of the middle and later 20th century included the traditionalist John Betjeman
, Philip Larkin
, Ted Hughes
and the Northern Irish
Catholic Seamus Heaney
, who lived in the Republic of Ireland for much of his later life. 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. This drive to make the familiar strange was carried into fiction by Martin Amis
.
The British Poetry Revival
was 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
. 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.
In crime fiction, the murder mysteries of Ruth Rendell
and P. D. James
are popular. Anthony Powell
's 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.
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 nautical
historical novels feature the Aubrey–Maturin series
set in the Royal Navy
, the first being Master and Commander
1969.
John Wyndham
wrote post-apocalyptic
science fiction, his most notable works being The Day of the Triffids
1951, and The Midwich Cuckoos
1957. George Langelaan
's The Fly 1957, is a science fiction short story, while Peter George's Red Alert 1958, is a Cold War thriller. Mervyn Peake
wrote the Gormenghast series
, a trilogy based in Gormenghast castle. Michael Moorcock
was the prime instigator of the science fiction "New Wave"
in 1964. John Fowles
' wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman
, with its narrator who freely admits the fictive nature of the story he relays, and its famous alternative endings, in 1969.
Roald Dahl
rose to prominence with his children's fantasy novels, often inspired from experiences from his childhood, that are notable for their often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour. 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.
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.
Angela Carter
's magical realism novels include, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
1972, and Nights at the Circus
1984.
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.
Richard Adams
wrote the heroic fantasy
Watership Down
in 1972. Evoking epic
themes, it recounts the odyssey of a group of rabbits seeking to establish a new home.
Salman Rushdie achieved notability 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. The Nobel laureate
V. S. Naipaul
wrote A Bend in the River
.
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 Jill Murphy
's The Worst Witch
.
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
. Novelist Susan Cooper
's The Dark Is Rising, is a five-volume fantasy saga set in and around England and Wales. Raymond Briggs
children's picture book The Snowman
1978, is shown every Christmas on British television in cartoon form and on the stage as a musical. The Reverend. W. Awdry and son Christopher
's The Railway Series
features Thomas the Tank Engine
. Margery Sharp
's most famous books are The Rescuers
series, 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
is noted for writing the young adult fantasy novel Howl's Moving Castle
1986.
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
.
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.
J. G. Ballard
's autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun
1984, is based on his boyhood experiences in a Shanghai internment camp.
Kazuo Ishiguro
wrote historical novels in the first-person narrative
style. His works include, The Remains of the Day
1989, Never Let Me Go 2005. A. S. Byatt
is best known for Possession 1990, with Sebastian Faulks
Birdsong
1993, and Louis de Bernières
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
1993. Irvine Welsh
's Trainspotting
1993, gives a brutal depiction of the lives of working class Edinburgh drug users.
Science fiction novelist Iain M. Banks created a fictional anarchist, socialist, and utopian society the Culture
, and novels that feature in it include Excession
1996, and Inversions 1998. Nick Hornby
's works include High Fidelity
1995, and About a Boy
1998, with Nicholas Evans
The Horse Whisperer
1995.
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 thirtysomething single woman in London. Alex Garland
's works include The Beach
1996, Giles Foden
wrote the Last King of Scotland 1998, and Joanne Harris
's most notable work is Chocolat
1999. Anthony Horowitz
's Alex Rider series
, begins with Stormbreaker
2000.
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Philip Pullman
is best known for the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials
, that comprises Northern Lights
1995, The Subtle Knife
1997, and The Amber Spyglass
2000. It is a coming-of-age story with many epic events. Neil Gaiman
is an esteemed 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
.
Ian McEwan
's Atonement
2001, refers to the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression, and alludes to the main characters' search for atonement in interwar England. His 2005 novel Saturday
, follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon.
Zadie Smith
's Whitbread Book Award
winning novel White Teeth
2000, mixes pathos and humour, focusing on the later lives of two wartime friends in London. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2003 by Mark Haddon
, is written in the first-person perspective
of a 15-year-old boy with autism living in Wiltshire. The first novel from Susanna Clarke
is the historical fantasy Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2004, that investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundary between reason and madness. Notable works of the 2007 Nobel Prize
recipient Doris Lessing
include, The Grass is Singing
, and The Golden Notebook
. Hilary Mantel
's Booker prize winning novel Wolf Hall
2009, is set in the Tudor
court of King Henry VIII
.
J. K. Rowling
's Harry Potter
fantasy series, is a collection of seven fantasy novels that chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard
Harry Potter
, the idea for which Rowling conceived whilst she was on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. The series begins with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
1997, and ends with the seventh and final book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2007.
In the 1950s, the bleak absurdist
play Waiting for Godot
, by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett
profoundly affected British drama. The Theatre of the Absurd
influenced playwrights of the later decades of the 20th century, including Harold Pinter
, whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia, and Tom Stoppard
. 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. Michael Frayn
is among other playwrights noted for their use of language and ideas.
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
. Carol Ann Duffy
succeeded Motion in the post in May 2009. A position of national laureate
, 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 The post of National Poet of Wales was established in May 2005. The post is an annual appointment with the language of the poet alternating between English and Welsh.
and Kate Roberts. Islwyn Ffowc Elis
was a popular novelist in Welsh (also a winner of the crown at the 1947 National Eisteddfod), who produced novels in a range of genres new to Welsh literature, such as science fiction in Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd
and Y Blaned Dirion. Contemporary novelists in Welsh include Mihangel Morgan
and Fflur Dafydd
.
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, A. S. D. Smith's epic poem Trystan hag Isolt reworked the Tristan and Iseult
legend. Peggy Pollard's 1941 play Beunans Alysaryn was modelled on the 16th-century saints' plays.
In the early 20th century in Scotland, a renaissance in the use of Lowland Scots
occurred, its most vocal figure being Hugh MacDiarmid
. Other contemporaries were Douglas Young
, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Robert Garioch
and Robert McLellan
. The revival produced verse and other literature, including the plays for which Robert McLellan is best known.
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.
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. For example, a collection of Thomas Henry Mahy
's Dires et Pensées du Courtil Poussin, was published in 1922. The imported eisteddfod tradition in the Channel Islands encouraged recitation
and performance, a tradition that continues today. The German military occupation of the Channel Islands
1940–1945 encouraged increased use of the vernacular languages among those who remained, 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 has never regained the situation it had enjoyed previously.
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. 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. As part of the Scottish Gaelic Renaissance
, Sorley MacLean
's work in Scottish Gaelic in the 1930s gave new value to modern literature in that language. Iain Crichton Smith
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. 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).
Highly anglicised Lowland Scots is often used in contemporary Scottish fiction, for example, the Edinburgh dialect of Lowland Scots in Trainspotting
by Irvine Welsh
. 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, whistful, 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. Philip Robinson's (born 1946) writing has been described as verging on "post-modern
kailyard". He has produced a trilogy of novels, as well as story books for children, and two volumes of poetry.
There is some production of modern literature in Irish
in Northern Ireland.
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. 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).
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.
A collection of short stories P'tites Lures Guernésiaises (in Guernésiais with parallel English translation) by various writers was published in 2006.
In March 2006 Brian Stowell
's Dunveryssyn yn Tooder-Folley (The vampire murders) was published – the first full-length novel in Manx.
Original literature continues to be promoted by institutions such as the Eisteddfod or the Mod
, and by publishing organisations such as Ùr-sgeul
and the Welsh Books Council
. In Welsh 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.
Translations are an important feature of the literatures of the regional language
s 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) and into Cornish as Alys in Pow an Anethow by Nicholas Williams
(published in 2009), 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, and into Scots by Rab Wilson (published in 2004). Alexander Hutchison has translated the poetry of Catullus
into Scots, and in the 1980s Liz Lochhead
produced a Scots translation of Tartuffe
by Molière
.
from the isles include Rudyard Kipling
(1907), W. B. Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw
(1925), John Galsworthy
(1932), T. S. Eliot
(1948), Bertrand Russell
(1950), Winston Churchill
(1953), Samuel Beckett
(1969), William Golding
(1983), Seamus Heaney
(1995), V. S. Naipaul
(2001), Harold Pinter
(2005) and Doris Lessing
(2007).
Literary prizes for which writers from the United Kingdom are eligible include:
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
and Channel Islands
Channel Islands
The Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...
. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, Scottish Gaelic, Scots
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
, Cornish
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
, Manx
Manx language
Manx , also known as Manx Gaelic, and as the Manks language, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, historically spoken by the Manx people. Only a small minority of the Island's population is fluent in the language, but a larger minority has some knowledge of it...
, Jèrriais
Jèrriais
Jèrriais is the form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. It has been in decline over the past century as English has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration...
, Guernésiais and other languages. Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
has a literary tradition in English, Ulster Scots and Irish. Irish writers have also played an important part in the development of English-language literature.
Literature in the Celtic languages
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
of the islands is the oldest surviving vernacular literature
Vernacular literature
Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin...
in Europe. The Welsh literary tradition stretches from the 6th century to the 21st century. The oldest Welsh literature does not belong to the territory we know as Wales today, but rather to northern England and southern Scotland. But though it is dated to be from the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, it has survived only in 13th- and 14th-century manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
copies.
Latin literature
ChronicleChronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
rs such as Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
, with his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a work in Latin by Bede on the history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict between Roman and Celtic Christianity.It is considered to be one of the most important original references on...
, and Gildas
Gildas
Gildas was a 6th-century British cleric. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christian church in the British Isles during this period. His renowned learning and literary style earned him the designation Gildas Sapiens...
, with his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae
De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae
De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae is a work by the 6th-century British cleric Gildas. It is a sermon in three parts condemning the acts of Gildas' contemporaries, both secular and religious, whom he blames for the dire state of affairs in sub-Roman Britain...
, were figures in the development of indigenous Latin literature
Latin literature
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...
, mostly ecclesiastical, in the centuries following the withdrawal of the Roman Empire.
The Historia Brittonum composed in the 9th century is traditionally ascribed to Nennius
Nennius
Nennius was a Welsh monk of the 9th century.He has traditionally been attributed with the authorship of the Historia Brittonum, based on the prologue affixed to that work, This attribution is widely considered a secondary tradition....
. It is the earliest source which presents King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
as a historical figure, and is the source of several stories which were repeated and amplified by later authors.
Adomnán's most important work is the Vita Columbae, a hagiography of Columba
Columba
Saint Columba —also known as Colum Cille , Colm Cille , Calum Cille and Kolban or Kolbjørn —was a Gaelic Irish missionary monk who propagated Christianity among the Picts during the Early Medieval Period...
, and the most important surviving work written in early medieval Scotland. It is a vital source for knowledge of the Picts
Picts
The Picts were a group of Late Iron Age and Early Mediaeval people living in what is now eastern and northern Scotland. There is an association with the distribution of brochs, place names beginning 'Pit-', for instance Pitlochry, and Pictish stones. They are recorded from before the Roman conquest...
, as well as an insight into the life of Iona Abbey
Iona Abbey
Iona Abbey is located on the Isle of Iona, just off the Isle of Mull on the West Coast of Scotland. It is one of the oldest and most important religious centres in Western Europe. The abbey was a focal point for the spread of Christianity throughout Scotland and marks the foundation of a monastic...
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
Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness Monster is a cryptid that is reputed to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, though its description varies from one account to the next....
.
Early Celtic literature
For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a large contribution to world literatureWorld literature
World literature refers to literature from all over the world, including African literature, American literature, Arabic literature, Asian literature, Australasian literature, Caribbean Literature, English literature, European literature, Indian literature, Latin American literature, Persian...
in all its branches. The Irish literature
Irish literature
For a comparatively small island, Ireland has made a disproportionately large contribution to world literature. Irish literature encompasses the Irish and English languages.-The beginning of writing in Irish:...
that is best known outside the country is in English, but the Irish language
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
also has the most significant body of written literature, both ancient and recent, in any Celtic language, in addition to a strong oral tradition of legends and poetry.
The Ulster Cycle
Ulster Cycle
The Ulster Cycle , formerly known as the Red Branch Cycle, one of the four great cycles of Irish mythology, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the Ulaid in what is now eastern Ulster and northern Leinster, particularly counties Armagh, Down and...
written in the 12th century, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the Ulaid
Ulaid
The Ulaid or Ulaidh were a people of early Ireland who gave their name to the modern province of Ulster...
in what is now eastern Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
and northern Leinster
Leinster
Leinster is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the east of Ireland. It comprises the ancient Kingdoms of Mide, Osraige and Leinster. Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the historic fifths of Leinster and Mide gradually merged, mainly due to the impact of the Pale, which straddled...
, particularly counties Armagh
County Armagh
-History:Ancient Armagh was the territory of the Ulaid before the fourth century AD. It was ruled by the Red Branch, whose capital was Emain Macha near Armagh. The site, and subsequently the city, were named after the goddess Macha...
, Down
County Down
-Cities:*Belfast *Newry -Large towns:*Dundonald*Newtownards*Bangor-Medium towns:...
and Louth
County Louth
County Louth is a county of Ireland. It is part of the Border Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Louth. Louth County Council is the local authority for the county...
. The stories are written in Old and Middle Irish, mostly in prose, interspersed with occasional verse passages. The language of the earliest stories is dateable to the 8th century, and events and characters are referred to in poems dating to the 7th.
In Medieval Welsh literature
Medieval Welsh literature
Medieval Welsh literature is the literature written in the Welsh language during the Middle Ages. This includes material from the fifth century, when Welsh was in the process of becoming distinct from the British language, to the works of the 16th century....
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
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
in Wales towards the end of the 11th century.
The stories of the Mabinogion
Mabinogion
The Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...
appear in either or both of two Medieval Welsh manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch
White Book of Rhydderch
The White Book of Rhydderch is one of the most notable and celebrated manuscripts in Welsh. Written in the middle of the fourteenth century it is the earliest collection of Welsh prose texts, though it also contains some examples of early Welsh poetry...
(Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) written ca. 1350, and the Red Book of Hergest
Red Book of Hergest
The Red Book of Hergest is a large vellum manuscript written shortly after 1382, which ranks as one of the most important medieval manuscripts written in the Welsh language. It preserves a collection of Welsh prose and poetry, notably the tales of the Mabinogion, Gogynfeirdd poetry...
(Llyfr Coch Hergest) written about 1382–1410, although texts or fragments of some of the tales have been preserved in earlier 13th century and later manuscripts. Scholars agree that the tales are older than the existing manuscripts, but disagree over just how much older.
Gaelic literature in Scotland includes a celebration, attributed to the Irish monk Adomnán, of the Pictish King Bridei
Bridei III of the Picts
King Bridei III was king of Fortriu and overking of the Picts between 671 and his death in 693....
's (671–93) victory of the Northumbrians at the Battle of Dun Nechtain (685).
Old English literature 449–1066
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
developed after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England after the withdrawal of the Romans and is known as Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
or Anglo-Saxon.
Cædmon
Cædmon
Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known. An Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals and was attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch during the abbacy of St. Hilda , he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream,...
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
Ruthwell Cross
The Ruthwell Cross is a stone Anglo-Saxon cross probably dating from the 8th century, when Ruthwell was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria; it is now in Scotland. Anglo-Saxon crosses are closely related to the contemporary Irish high crosses, and both are part of the Insular art tradition...
and Franks Casket
Franks Casket
The Franks Casket is a small Anglo-Saxon whalebone chest from the seventh century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in flat two-dimensional low-relief and with inscriptions mostly in Anglo-Saxon runes...
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
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
.
The epic poem
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
Beowulf
Beowulf
Beowulf , but modern scholars agree in naming it after the hero whose life is its subject." of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.It survives in a single...
is the most famous work in Old English. A hero of the Geats, Beowulf battles three antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
s: Grendel
Grendel
Grendel is one of three antagonists, along with Grendel's mother and the dragon, in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf . Grendel is usually depicted as a monster, though this is the subject of scholarly debate. In the poem, Grendel is feared by all but Beowulf.-Story:The poem Beowulf is contained in...
, Grendel's mother
Grendel's mother
Grendel's mother is one of three antagonists in the work of Old English literature of anonymous authorship, Beowulf . She is never given a name in the text....
, and a Dragon
Dragon
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
. The only surviving manuscript is the Nowell Codex
Nowell Codex
Cotton Vitellius A. xv is one of the four major Anglo-Saxon literature codices. It is most famous as the manuscript containing the unique copy of the epic poem Beowulf; in addition to this it contains a fragment of The Life of Saint Christopher, and the more complete texts Letters of Alexander to...
. The precise date of the manuscript is debated, but most estimates place it close to the year 1000.
Chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
s contained a range of historical and literary accounts; one notable example is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...
which contains various heroic poems inserted throughout.
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
Judith (poem)
The Old English poem "Judith" describes the beheading of Assyrian general Holofernes by Israelite Judith of Bethulia. Various other versions of the Holofernes-Judith tale exist. These include the Book of Judith, still present in the Roman Catholic Bible, and Abbot Ælfric's homily of the tale...
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
Old English Martyrology
The Old English Martyrology is a collection of over 230 hagiographies, probably compiled in Mercia, or by someone who wrote in the Mercian dialect of the Old English language, in the second half of the 9th century....
is a Mercia
Mercia
Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...
n collection of hagiographies. Ælfric of Eynsham
Ælfric of Eynsham
Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot, as well as a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric the Grammarian , Ælfric of Cerne, and Ælfric the Homilist...
was a prolific 10th century writer of hagiographies and homilies.
Late medieval literature
Latin literature circulated among the educated classes. Gerald of Wales's most distinguished works are those dealing with Wales and Ireland, with his late 12th century two 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
Anglo-Norman literature
Anglo-Norman literature is literature composed in the Anglo-Norman language developed during the period 1066–1204 when the Duchy of Normandy and England were united in the Anglo-Norman realm.-Introduction:...
in the Anglo-Norman realm introduced literary trends from Continental Europe
Continental Europe
Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....
such as the chanson de geste
Chanson de geste
The chansons de geste, Old French for "songs of heroic deeds", are the epic poems that appear at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, nearly a hundred years before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères and...
. However, the indigenous development of Anglo-Norman literature was precocious in comparison to continental Oïl literature: Geoffrey Gaimar
Geoffrey Gaimar
Geoffrey Gaimar , was an Anglo-Norman chronicler. Gaimar's most significant contribution to medieval literature and history is as a translator from Old English to Anglo-Norman. His L'Estoire des Engles translates extensive portions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as using Latin and French...
produced the earliest rhymed chronicle; Benedeit, the earliest adventure narrative inspired by Celtic sources; Jordan Fantosme
Jordan Fantosme
Jordan Fantosme was an Anglo-Norman historian, chronicler, and trouvère. He was a cleric and probably the spiritual chancellor of the Diocese of Winchester. His major work is an Anglo-Norman verse chronicle of the war between Henry II of England and his son Henry the Young King and William I of...
, the earliest eyewitness historiography; Philippe de Thaun, the earliest scientific literature.
Religious literature continued to enjoy popularity. Hagiographies
Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
continued to be written, adapted and translated: for example, The Life of Saint Audrey
The Life of Saint Audrey
La Vie Seinte Audree is a 4625-line hagiography detailing the life, death, and miracles of Saint Audrey, an Anglo-Saxon saint from Ely in Britain....
, Eadmer
Eadmer
Eadmer, or Edmer , was an English historian, theologian, and ecclesiastic. He is known for being a contemporary biographer of his contemporary archbishop and companion, Saint Anselm, in his Vita Anselmi, and for his Historia novorum in Anglia, which presents the public face of Anselm...
's contemporary biography of Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm of Canterbury , also called of Aosta for his birthplace, and of Bec for his home monastery, was a Benedictine monk, a philosopher, and a prelate of the church who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109...
, and the South English Legendary
South English Legendary
The South English Legendary is a Middle English hagiographic manuscript, best preserved in MS Harley 2277 and CCCC 145, which contain 92 narrative lives, extremely varied in length, usually including one of two prologues and often including a life of Christ and/or temporal items...
.
The Roman de Fergus
Roman de Fergus
The Roman de Fergus is an Arthurian romance written in Old French probably at the very beginning of the 13th century, by a very well educated author who named himself Guillaume li Clers...
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 and The Buik o Alexander.
While chroniclers such as William of Malmesbury
William of Malmesbury
William of Malmesbury was the foremost English historian of the 12th century. C. Warren Hollister so ranks him among the most talented generation of writers of history since Bede, "a gifted historical scholar and an omnivorous reader, impressively well versed in the literature of classical,...
and Henry of Huntingdon
Henry of Huntingdon
Henry of Huntingdon , the son of a canon in the diocese of Lincoln, was a 12th century English historian, the author of a history of England, Historia anglorum, "the most important Anglo-Norman historian to emerge from the secular clergy". He served as archdeacon of Huntingdon...
attempted to weave such historical information they had access to into coherent narratives, other writers took more creative approaches to their material.
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur...
was one of the major figures in the development of British history
English historians in the Middle Ages
Historians of England in the Middle Ages helped to lay the groundwork for modern historical historiography, providing vital accounts of the early history of England, Wales and Normandy, its cultures, and revelations about the historians themselves....
and the popularity for the tales of King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
. He is best known for his chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae
Historia Regum Britanniae
The Historia Regum Britanniae is a pseudohistorical account of British history, written c. 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It chronicles the lives of the kings of the Britons in a chronological narrative spanning a time of two thousand years, beginning with the Trojans founding the British nation...
(History of the Kings of Britain) of 1136, which spread Celtic motifs to a wider audience, including accounts of Arthur's father Uther Pendragon
Uther Pendragon
Uther Pendragon is a legendary king of sub-Roman Britain and the father of King Arthur.A few minor references to Uther appear in Old Welsh poems, but his biography was first written down by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae , and Geoffrey's account of the character was used in...
, wizard Merlin
Merlin
Merlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in the Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures...
, and sword Caliburnus (named as Excalibur
Excalibur
Excalibur is the legendary sword of King Arthur, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain. Sometimes Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are said to be the same weapon, but in most versions they are considered separate. The sword was...
in some manuscripts of Wace).
Culhwch and Olwen
Culhwch and Olwen
Culhwch and Olwen is a Welsh tale about a hero connected with Arthur and his warriors that survives in only two manuscripts: a complete version in the Red Book of Hergest, ca. 1400, and a fragmented version in the White Book of Rhydderch, ca. 1325. It is the longest of the surviving Welsh prose...
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.
Jersey
Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...
poet Wace
Wace
Wace was a Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy , ending his career as Canon of Bayeux.-Life:...
is considered the founder of Jersey literature and contributed to the development of the Arthurian legend in British literature. His Brut
Roman de Brut
Roman de Brut or Brut is a verse literary history of Britain by the poet Wace. Written in the Norman language, it consists of 14,866 lines....
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
Round Table
The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of...
to literature. His Roman de Rou
Roman de Rou
Roman de Rou is a verse chronicle by Wace in Norman covering the history of the Dukes of Normandy from the time of Rollo of Normandy to the battle of Tinchebray in 1106...
placed the Dukes of Normandy within an epic context.
The Prophecy of Merlin
Prophecy of Merlin
Prophecy of Merlin , sometimes called The Prophecy of Ambrosius Merlin concerning the Seven Kings, 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. The original manuscript is unique and...
is a 12th-century poem written in Latin hexameter
Hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...
s by John of Cornwall, which he claimed was based or revived from a lost manuscript in the Cornish language
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
. Marginal notes
Marginalia
Marginalia are scribbles, comments, and illuminations in the margins of a book.- Biblical manuscripts :Biblical manuscripts have liturgical notes at the margin, for liturgical use. Numbers of texts' divisions are given at the margin...
on Cornish vocabulary are among the earliest known writings in the Cornish language.
At the end of the 12th century, Layamon
Layamon
Layamon or Laghamon (ˈlaɣamon; in American English often modernised as ; ), occasionally written Lawman, was a poet of the early 13th century and author of the Brut, a notable English poem of the 12th century that was the first English language work to discuss the legends of Arthur and the...
'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
Chronicle of the Kings of Alba
The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, or Scottish Chronicle, is a short written chronicle of the Kings of Alba, covering the period from the time of Kenneth MacAlpin until the reign of Kenneth II . W.F...
is a short chronicle of the Kings of Alba
Alba
Alba is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. It is cognate to Alba in Irish and Nalbin in Manx, the two other Goidelic Insular Celtic languages, as well as similar words in the Brythonic Insular Celtic languages of Cornish and Welsh also meaning Scotland.- Etymology :The term first appears in...
. It was written in Hiberno-Latin
Hiberno-Latin
Hiberno-Latin, also called Hisperic Latin, was a learned sort of Latin literature created and spread by Irish monks during the period from the sixth century to the tenth century.-Vocabulary and Influence:...
but displays some knowledge of contemporary Middle Irish
Middle Irish language
Middle Irish is the name given by historical philologists to the Goidelic language spoken in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man from the 10th to 12th centuries; it is therefore a contemporary of late Old English and early Middle English...
orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
and probably put together in the early 13th century by the man who wrote de Situ Albanie
De Situ Albanie
De Situ Albanie is the name given to the first of seven Scottish documents found in the so-called Poppleton Manuscript, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris...
. The original text was without doubt written in Scotland, probably in the early 11th century, shortly after the reign of Kenneth II
Kenneth II of Scotland
Cináed mac Maíl Coluim was King of Scots...
, the last reign it relates.
Early English Jewish literature
Early English Jewish literature
English Jewish Literature:-Effects of restrictions:The increasing degradation of the political status of the Jews in the thirteenth century is paralleled by the scantiness of their literary output as compared with that of the twelfth...
developed after the Norman Conquest with Jewish settlement in England. Berechiah ha-Nakdan
Berechiah ha-Nakdan
Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, , commonly known as Berachya, was a Jewish exegete, ethical writer, grammarian, translator, poet, and philosopher...
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
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
's fables, the Talmud, and the Hindus. The collection also contains fables conveying the same plots and morals as those of Marie de France
Marie de France
Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II of England...
. The development of Jewish literature in mediaeval England ended with the Edict of Expulsion
Edict of Expulsion
In 1290, King Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from England. Lasting for the rest of the Middle Ages, it would be over 350 years until it was formally overturned in 1656...
of 1290.
Matthew Paris
Matthew Paris
Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire...
wrote a number of works in the 13th century. Some were written in Latin, some in Anglo-Norman
Anglo-Norman language
Anglo-Norman is the name traditionally given to the kind of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period....
or French verse. His Chronica Majora
Chronica Majora
The Chronica Majora is an important medieval illuminated manuscript chronicle by Matthew Paris, one of a number of redactions of his work on English history.It is currently in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It covers the period 1240-53...
is an oft-cited historical source.
In the later medieval period a new form of English now known as Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
evolved. This is the earliest form which is comprehensible to modern readers and listeners, albeit not easily. Middle English Bible translations
Middle English Bible translations
Middle English Bible translations covers the age of Middle English, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500. Aside from Wycliffe's Bible, this was not a fertile time for Bible translation...
, notably Wyclif's Bible
Wyclif's Bible
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...
, helped to establish English as a literary language. Romances appear in English from the 13th century, with King Horn
King Horn
King Horn is a Middle English chivalric romance dating back to the middle of the thirteenth century. It survives in three manuscripts: MS. Harleian 2253 at the British Museum, London; MS. Laud. Misc 108 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and MS. Gg. iv. 27. 2 at the Cambridge University Library. It...
and Havelock the Dane, based on Anglo-Norman originals such as the Romance of Horn
Romance of Horn
Romance of Horn is an Anglo-Norman literature romans d'aventure tale written around 1170 by an author apparently named "Thomas"....
.
William Langland
William Langland
William Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.- Life :The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin...
's Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus"...
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
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. In the poem, Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious warrior who is completely green, from his clothes and hair to his...
(most likely by the Pearl Poet
Pearl Poet
The "Pearl Poet", or the "Gawain Poet", is the name given to the author of Pearl, an alliterative poem written in 14th-century Middle English. Its author appears also to have written the poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Cleanness; some scholars suggest the author may also have...
) during the Middle Ages. It is also the first allusion to a literary tradition of the legendary English archer
Archery
Archery is the art, practice, or skill of propelling arrows with the use of a bow, from Latin arcus. Archery has historically been used for hunting and combat; in modern times, however, its main use is that of a recreational activity...
, swordsman, and outlaw
Outlaw
In historical legal systems, an outlaw is declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, this takes the burden of active prosecution of a criminal from the authorities. Instead, the criminal is withdrawn all legal protection, so that anyone is legally empowered to persecute...
Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
who was active in the late 14th century. Often regarded as the father of English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, Chaucer is widely credited as the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
English language, rather than French or Latin. The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told 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...
was Chaucer's magnum opus
Magnum opus
Magnum opus , from the Latin meaning "great work", refers to the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of a writer, artist, or composer.-Related terms:Sometimes the term magnum opus is used to refer to simply "a great work" rather than "the...
, and a towering achievement of Western culture
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
. The first recorded association of Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day
Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496...
with romantic love
Romantic love
Romance is the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional desires to connect with another person....
is in Chaucer's Parlement of Foules
Parlement of Foules
The "Parlement of Foules" is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer made up of approximately 700 lines. The poem is in the form of a dream vision in rhyme royal stanza and is interesting in that it is the first reference to the idea that St...
of 1382.
The multilingual audience for literature in the 14th century can be illustrated by the example of John Gower
John Gower
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
, who wrote in Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman.
Women writers were also active, such as Marie de France in the 12th century and Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich is regarded as one of the most important English mystics. She is venerated in the Anglican and Lutheran churches, but has never been canonized, or officially beatified, by the Catholic Church, probably because so little is known of her life aside from her writings, including the...
in the early 14th century. Julian's Revelations of Divine Love
Revelations of Divine Love
The Revelations of Divine Love is a book of Christian mystical devotions written by Julian of Norwich. It is believed to be the first published book in the English language to be written by a woman. At the age of thirty, 13 May 1373, Julian was struck with a serious illness...
(circa 1393) is believed to be the first published book written by a woman in the English language. Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe is known for dictating The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. This book chronicles, to some extent, her extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites in Europe and Asia, as well as her mystical conversations with God...
(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 pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
s to various holy sites in Europe and Asia.
Dafydd ap Gwilym
Dafydd ap Gwilym
Dafydd ap Gwilym , is regarded as one of the leading Welsh poets and amongst the great poets of Europe in the Middle Ages. 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. Dafydd ap Gwilym...
's main themes were love and nature. The influence of wider European ideas of courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
, as exemplified in the troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
poetry of Provençal
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
, is seen as a significant influence on Dafydd's poetry. He was an innovative poet who was responsible for popularising the metre known as the "cywydd
Cywydd
The cywydd is one of the most important metrical forms in Welsh traditional poetry.There are a variety of forms of the cywydd, but the word on its own is generally used to refer to the cywydd deuair hirion as it is by far the most common type.The first recorded examples of the cywydd date from the...
" 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. Dafydd's work is 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. The earliest poem in English by a Welsh poet dates from about 1470. The Latin and English poem Flen flyys
Flen flyys
Flen flyys is a poem, written in about 1475, that is chiefly famous for containing the first known written usage in English of the vulgar verb "fuck"...
written around 1475, is chiefly famous for containing in coded form the first known written usage in English of a particular profane term
Fuck
"Fuck" is an English word that is generally considered obscene which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. By extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed."Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb,...
in the English language.
Among the earliest Lowland Scots
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
literature is Barbour's Brus
The Brus
The Brus is a long narrative poem of just under 14,000 octosyllabic lines composed by John Barbour which gives a historic and chivalric account of the actions of Robert the Bruce and the Black Douglas in the Scottish Wars of Independence during a period from the circumstances leading up the English...
(14th century). Whyntoun
Andrew of Wyntoun
Andrew Wyntoun, known as Andrew of Wyntoun was a Scottish poet, a canon and prior of Loch Leven on St Serf's Inch and later, a canon of St...
's Kronykil and Blind Harry's
Blind Harry
Blind Harry , also known as Harry, Hary or Henry the Minstrel, is renowned as the author of The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, also known as The Wallace...
Wallace
The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace
The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, also known as The Wallace, is a long "romantic biographical" poem by the fifteenth century Scottish makar of the name Blind Harry probably at some time in the decade before 1488...
date from the (15th century). From the 13th century much literature based around the royal court in Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...
was produced by writers such as Henrysoun
Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots makars, he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renaissance at a time when the culture was on a cusp between medieval and renaissance sensibilities...
, Dunbar
William Dunbar
William Dunbar was a Scottish poet. He was probably a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie , where, too, it is hinted that he was a member of the noble house of Dunbar....
, Douglas
Gavin Douglas
Gavin Douglas 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, a full and faithful vernacular translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first...
and Lyndsay
David Lyndsay
Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, was a Scottish Lord Lyon and poet of the 16th century, whose works reflect the spirit of the Renaissance.-Biography:...
. The works of Chaucer had an influence on Scottish writers.
In the Cornish language
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
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
Ordinalia
The Ordinalia are three medieval mystery plays written in Cornish from the late fourteenth century. The three plays are Origo Mundi, , Passio Christi and Resurrexio Domini...
"), 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
Le Morte d'Arthur
Le Morte d'Arthur is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table...
, is Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur. The antiquary John Leland as well as John Bale believed him to be Welsh, but most modern scholars, beginning with G. L...
's 15th century compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances, was among the earliest books printed in England, and was influential in the later revival of interest in the Arthurian legends.
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
", a name he gave to the ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in Utopia
Utopia (book)
Utopia is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516...
, written in Latin and published in 1516.
The landmark work in the reign of James IV of Scotland
James IV of Scotland
James IV was King of Scots from 11 June 1488 to his death. He is generally regarded as the most successful of the Stewart monarchs of Scotland, but his reign ended with the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Flodden Field, where he became the last monarch from not only Scotland, but also from all...
was Gavin Douglas
Gavin Douglas
Gavin Douglas 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, a full and faithful vernacular translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first...
's Eneados
Eneados
The Eneados is a Middle Scots translation of Virgil's Aeneid, completed by Gavin Douglas in 1513. It is the first complete translation of any major work of classical antiquity into an Anglic language...
, the first complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglian language, finished in 1513. Its reception however was overshadowed by the Flodden
Battle of Flodden Field
The Battle of Flodden or Flodden Field or occasionally Battle of Branxton was fought in the county of Northumberland in northern England on 9 September 1513, between an invading Scots army under King James IV and an English army commanded by the Earl of Surrey...
defeat that same year, and the political instability that followed in the kingdom. Another major work, David Lyndsay
David Lyndsay
Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, was a Scottish Lord Lyon and poet of the 16th century, whose works reflect the spirit of the Renaissance.-Biography:...
's Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis
Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis
A Satire of the Three Estates is a satirical morality play in Middle Scots, written by makar Sir David Lyndsay. The play was first performed outside in the playing field in June 1552 during the Midsummer holiday in Cupar, Fifeshire where the action took place under Castle Hill...
, later in the century, is a surviving example of a dramatic tradition in the period that has otherwise largely been lost. At the end of the 16th century, James VI of Scotland founded the Castalian Band
Castalian Band
The Castalian Band was a group of Scottish Jacobean poets, or makars, which flourished between the 1580s and early 1590s in the court of James VI and was consciously modelled on the French example of the Pléiade. Its name is derived from the classical term Castalian Spring, a symbol for poetic...
, a group of makar
Makar
A makar is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard, often thought of as royal court poet, although the term can be more generally applied. The word functions in a manner similar to the Greek term which means both maker and poet...
s and musicians in the court, based on the model of the Pléiade in France. The courtier and makar Alexander Montgomerie
Alexander Montgomerie
Alexander Montgomerie , Scottish Jacobean courtier and poet, or makar, born in Ayrshire. He was one of the principal members of the Castalian Band, a circle of poets in the court of James VI in the 1580s which included the king himself. Montgomerie was for a time in favour as one of the king's...
was a leading member. However this cultural centre was lost after the 1603 Union of the Crowns
Union of the Crowns
The Union of the Crowns was the accession of James VI, King of Scots, to the throne of England, and the consequential unification of Scotland and England under one monarch. The Union of Crowns followed the death of James' unmarried and childless first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I of...
when James shifted his court to London
Stuart London
This article covers the history of London during the Stuart period from 1603 to 1714.-James I:The preparations for the coronation of King James I were interrupted by a severe plague epidemic, which may have killed over thirty thousand people...
. From 1603, London was the unrivalled cultural capital of the isles.
Elizabethan and Jacobean eras
English Renaissance
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th and early 16th centuries to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century; like most of northern...
dated from the early 16th century to the early 17th century when the sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
form and other Italian literary influences arrived in English literature. The sonnet was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt
Thomas Wyatt (poet)
Sir Thomas Wyatt was a 16th-century English lyrical poet credited with introducing the sonnet into English. He was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone in Kent – though his family was originally from Yorkshire...
in the early 16th century.
In the later 16th century English poetry was characterised by elaboration of language and extensive allusion to classical myths. The most important poets of this period included Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
and Sir Philip Sidney
Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
.
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...
was among the most important literary achievements of the English Renaissance
English Renaissance
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th and early 16th centuries to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century; like most of northern...
. William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, wrote over 35 plays
Shakespeare's plays
William Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. Traditionally, the 37 plays are divided into the genres of tragedy, history, and comedy; they have been translated into every major living language, in addition to being...
in several genres, including tragedy
Shakespearean tragedy
Shakespeare wrote tragedies from the beginning of his career. One of his earliest plays was the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus, which he followed a few years later with Romeo and Juliet. However, his most admired tragedies were written in a seven-year period between 1601 and 1608...
, comedy
Shakespearean comedy
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies."Comedy", in its Elizabethan usage, had a very different meaning from modern comedy...
and history
Shakespearean history
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. This categorisation has become established, although some critics have argued for other categories such as romances and problem plays. The histories were those plays based on...
. Other major playwrights of the time included Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
, Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...
, and Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....
.
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
, the translation of liturgy
Liturgy
Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
and Bible into vernacular languages provided new literary models. The Book of Common Prayer
Book of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
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
English translations of the Bible
The efforts of translating the Bible from its original languages into over 2,000 others have spanned more than two millennia. Partial translations of the Bible into languages of the English people can be traced back to the end of the 7th century, including translations into Old English and Middle...
from the original languages that began with the work of William Tyndale
William Tyndale
William Tyndale was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism towards the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther...
(previous translations into English had relied on the Vulgate
Vulgate
The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations...
). It became the standard Bible of the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
, and some consider it one of the greatest literary works of all time.
Philosopher Sir Francis Bacon wrote the utopian novel New Atlantis
New Atlantis
New Atlantis and similar can mean:*New Atlantis, a novel by Sir Francis Bacon*The New Atlantis, founded in 2003, a journal about the social and political dimensions of science and technology...
, and coined the phrase "Knowledge is Power
Knowledge is Power
The phrase scientia potentia est is a Latin maxim often claimed to mean "knowledge is power". It is commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon; however, there is no known occurrence of this precise phrase in Bacon's English or Latin writings. However, this phrase does appear in Thomas Hobbes' 1658...
". Francis Godwin
Francis Godwin
Francis Godwin was an English divine, Bishop of Llandaff and of Hereford.-Life:He was the son of Thomas Godwin, Bishop of Bath and Wells, born at Hannington, Northamptonshire...
's 1638 The Man in the Moone
The Man in the Moone
The Man in the Moone is a book by the English divine and bishop Francis Godwin . Apparently written in the late 1620s and published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym Domingo Gonsales, it contains the account of a "voyage of utopian discovery"...
recounts an imaginary voyage
Imaginary voyage
Imaginary voyage is a kind of narrative in which utopian or satirical representation is put into a fictional frame of travel account.- History :...
to the moon and is now regarded as the first work of science fiction
History of science fiction
The literary genre of science fiction is diverse. Since there is little consensus of definition among scholars or devotees, its origin is an open question. Some offer works like the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh as the primal text of science fiction...
in English literature.
The prolific Jacobean playwright and poet Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in...
's The Revenger's Tragedy
The Revenger's Tragedy
The Revenger's Tragedy is an English language Jacobean revenge tragedy, in the past attributed to Cyril Tourneur but is sometimes considered to be the work of Thomas Middleton by "Middletonians"...
, is an early example of illegitimacy in fiction
Illegitimacy in fiction
This is a list of fictional stories in which illegitimacy features as an important plot element. Passing mentions are omitted from this article. Many of these stories deal with the social pain and exclusion felt by illegitimate "natural children"....
. Other Jacobean playwrights include John Fletcher
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...
and John Webster
John Webster
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...
.
In 1616 George Chapman
George Chapman
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...
completed his monumental translation of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
into English verse, which were the first ever complete translations of either poem, both central to the Western Canon
Western canon
The term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
, into the English language. The wildly popular tale of the Trojan War had until then been available to English readers only in Medieval epic retellings such as Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye or Recueil des Histoires de Troye, is a French courtly romance written by Raoul Lefevre, chaplain to Philip III, Duke of Burgundy. Translated by William Caxton, and printed by him probably with Colard Mansion in 1473 or 1474 at Bruges. The work is now known...
.
English poets of the early 17th century are crudely classified by the division into Cavalier poet
Cavalier poet
Cavalier poets is a broad description of a school of English poets of the 17th century, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War. Much of their poetry is light in style, and generally secular in subject...
s and metaphysical poets
Metaphysical poets
The metaphysical poets is a term coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them, and whose work was characterized by inventiveness of metaphor...
, the latter being much concerned with religion. The division is therefore along a line approximating to secular/religious.
Major poets of the 17th century included John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
, Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a Church of England clergyman . As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert...
, and George Herbert
George Herbert
George Herbert was a Welsh born English poet, orator and Anglican priest.Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education that led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, Herbert excelled in...
. Thomas Carew
Thomas Carew
Thomas Carew was an English poet, among the 'Cavalier' group of Caroline poets.-Biography:He was the son of Sir Matthew Carew, master in chancery, and his wife, Alice daughter of Sir John Rivers, Lord Mayor of the City of London and widow of Ingpen...
was among poets who wrote country house poem
Country house poem
A country house poem is a poem in which the author compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. Such poems were popular in early 17th century England...
s. John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's 1644 Areopagitica
Areopagitica
Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England is a 1644 prose polemical tract by English author John Milton against censorship...
, is an influential and impassioned philosophical defence of the principle of a right to freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
, written in opposition to licensing and censorship, as an eloquent defence of press freedom. Milton's religious epic Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
was first published in 1667.
1660–1800
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
was formalised during this period.
Diarists John Evelyn
John Evelyn
John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist.Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February...
and Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
depicted everyday London life and the cultural scene of the times. Their works are among the most important primary source
Primary source
Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied....
s for the English Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
period, and consists of eyewitness
Witness
A witness is someone who has firsthand knowledge about an event, or in the criminal justice systems usually a crime, through his or her senses and can help certify important considerations about the crime or event. A witness who has seen the event first hand is known as an eyewitness...
accounts of many great events, such as the Great Plague of London
Great Plague of London
The Great Plague was a massive outbreak of disease in the Kingdom of England that killed an estimated 100,000 people, 20% of London's population. The disease is identified as bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through a flea vector...
, and the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
.
The publication of The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been...
in 1678, established the theologian John Bunyan
John Bunyan
John Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 29 August.-Life:In 1628,...
as a notable writer.
A seminal book in piracy, A General History of the Pyrates
A General History of the Pyrates
A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates is a 1724 book published in Britain, containing biographies of contemporary pirates. Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, it is the prime source for the biographies of many well known pirates...
1724, was published in London, and contained biographies of several notorious English pirates such as Blackbeard
Blackbeard
Edward Teach , better known as Blackbeard, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies....
and Calico Jack
Calico Jack
John Rackham , commonly known as Calico Jack, was an English pirate captain operating in the Bahamas during the early 18th century...
.
The early 18th century is known as the Augustan Age of English literature. The poetry of the time was highly formal, as exemplified by the works of Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
.
The English pictorial satirist
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
and editorial cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
emerged In the 18th century, who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art
Sequential art
Sequential art refers to the art form of using a train of images deployed in sequence to graphic storytelling or convey information. The best-known example of sequential art is comics, which are a printed arrangement of art and balloons, especially comic books and comic strips.The term is rarely...
. His work ranged from realistic
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
portraiture to comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Much of his work poked fun at contemporary politics and customs; illustrations in such style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
Irish theatre
The history of Irish theatre begins with the Gaelic Irish tradition. Much of the literature in that Celtic language was destroyed by conquest, except for a few manuscripts and fragments, such as the Book of Fermoy...
began at least as early as 1601, the earliest Irish dramatists of note were William Congreve, one of the most interesting writers of Restoration comedies
Restoration comedy
Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama...
, and Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
, two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage in the 18th century.
The Graveyard Poets
Graveyard poets
The "Graveyard Poets" were a number of pre-Romantic English poets of the 18th century characterised by their gloomy meditations on mortality, 'skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms' in the context of the graveyard. To this was added, by later practitioners, a feeling for the 'sublime' and uncanny,...
were a number of pre-Romantic English poets of the 18th century characterised by their gloomy meditations on mortality, 'skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms' in the context of the graveyard. To this was added, by later practitioners, a feeling for the 'sublime'
Sublime (philosophy)
In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...
and uncanny, and an interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry. They are often considered precursors of the Gothic genre, and poets include; Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
, William Cowper
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
, Christopher Smart
Christopher Smart
Christopher Smart , also known as "Kit Smart", "Kitty Smart", and "Jack Smart", was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout...
, Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry. He died of arsenic poisoning, either from a suicide attempt or self-medication for a venereal disease.-Childhood:...
, and Edward Young
Edward Young
Edward Young was an English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts.-Early life:He was the son of Edward Young, later Dean of Salisbury, and was born at his father's rectory at Upham, near Winchester, where he was baptized on 3 July 1683. He was educated at Winchester College, and matriculated...
.
The question of identifying the first novel in English
First novel in English
The following works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English.* Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, * William Baldwin, Beware the Cat,...
is a subject of academic discussion. The English novel
English novel
The English novel is an important part of English literature.-Early novels in English:A number of works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English. See the article First novel in English.-Romantic novel:...
developed during the 18th century, partly in response to an expansion of the middle-class reading public. One of the major early works in this genre was the seminal castaway
Castaway
A castaway is a person who is cast adrift or ashore. While the situation usually happens after a shipwreck, some people voluntarily stay behind on a deserted island, either to evade their captors or the world in general. Alternatively, a person or item can be cast away, meaning rejected or discarded...
novel Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
by Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
. The 18th century novel tended to be loosely structured and semi-comic. Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....
's Tom Jones
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. First published on 28 February 1749, Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel...
is considered a comic
Comic novel
A comic novel is a work of fiction in which the writer not only seeks to amuse the reader, but also to make the reader think about controversial issues, sometimes with subtlety and as part of a carefully woven narrative; sometimes, above all other considerations...
masterpiece. Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...
is known for his three epistolary novel
Epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...
s: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded 1740, Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady
Clarissa
Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, published in 1748. It tells the tragic story of a heroine whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her family, and is the longest real novelA completed work that has been released by a publisher in...
1748 and The History of Sir Charles Grandison
The History of Sir Charles Grandison
The History of Sir Charles Grandison, commonly called Sir Charles Grandison, is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson first published in February 1753. The book was a response to Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, which parodied the morals presented in Richardson's previous...
1753. Novelists from the mid-to-late 18th century include; Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
, Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , 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 and lexicographer...
, and Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...
, who influenced Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
.
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, notably Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...
1726, and Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
, with his best known novel The Vicar of Wakefield
The Vicar of Wakefield
The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel by Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It was written in 1761 and 1762, and published in 1766, and was one of the most popular and widely read 18th-century novels among Victorians...
1766.
Edward Cave
Edward Cave
Edward Cave was an English printer, editor and publisher. In The Gentleman's Magazine he created the first general-interest "magazine" in the modern sense....
created the first general-interest magazine with The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
. He was the first to use the term "magazine" on the analogy of a military storehouse of varied material.
John Newbery
John Newbery
John Newbery was an English publisher of books who first made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market. He also supported and published the works of Christopher Smart, Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson...
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
The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes
The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes is a little children's story published by John Newbery in London in 1765. The story popularized the phrase "goody two-shoes", often used to describe an excessively virtuous person.-Plot:...
in 1765.
Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
, invented the Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
genre, that combines elements of horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
and romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
. The pioneering gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe
Ann Radcliffe
Anne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...
introduced the brooding figure of the gothic villain
Villain
A villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters...
which developed into the Byronic hero
Byronic hero
The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
. Her most popular and influential work The Mysteries of Udolpho
The Mysteries of Udolpho
The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe, was published in four volumes on 8 May 1794 by G. G. and J. Robinson of London. The firm paid her £500 for the manuscript. The contract is housed at the University of Virginia Library. Her fourth and most popular novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho follows...
1794, is frequently cited as the archetypal Gothic novel. Vathek
Vathek
Vathek is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford...
1786 by William Beckford
William Thomas Beckford
William Thomas Beckford , usually known as William Beckford, was an English novelist, a profligate and consummately knowledgeable art collector and patron of works of decorative art, a critic, travel writer and sometime politician, reputed to be the richest commoner in England...
, and The Monk
The Monk
The Monk: A Romance is a Gothic novel by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796. It was written before the author turned 20, in the space of 10 weeks.-Characters:...
1796 by Matthew Lewis, were further notable early works in both the gothic and horror literary genres.
Non English-language literatures from the 16th century to the 19th century
Manx language
Manx , also known as Manx Gaelic, and as the Manks language, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, historically spoken by the Manx people. Only a small minority of the Island's population is fluent in the language, but a larger minority has some knowledge of it...
(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.
The first book to be printed in Welsh was published in 1546. From the Reformation until the 19th century most literature in the Welsh language was religious in character. Morgan Llwyd
Morgan Llwyd
Morgan Llwyd , was a Welsh Puritan preacher, poet and prose writer.- Biography :...
'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
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
establishment).
Chaucerian, classical and French literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
continued to influence Scots literature up until the Reformation. The Complaynt of Scotland
The Complaynt of Scotland
The Complaynt of Scotland is a book printed in 1549 and is an important work of the Scots language.The book is a continuation of the war of words between Scotland and England in the sixteenth century...
shows the interplay of language and ideas between the kingdoms of Scotland and England in the years leading up to the Union of the Crowns
Union of the Crowns
The Union of the Crowns was the accession of James VI, King of Scots, to the throne of England, and the consequential unification of Scotland and England under one monarch. The Union of Crowns followed the death of James' unmarried and childless first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I of...
.
The earliest surviving examples of Cornish prose are Pregothow Treger (The Tregear Homilies) a set of 66 sermon
Sermon
A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...
s translated from English by John Tregear 1555–1557. Nicholas Boson
Nicholas Boson
Nicholas Boson was a writer in, and preserver of, the Cornish language. He was born in Newlyn to a landowning and merchant family involved in the pilchard fisheries....
(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
Edward Lhuyd
Edward Lhuyd was a Welsh naturalist, botanist, linguist, geographer and antiquary. He is also known by the Latinized form of his name, Eduardus Luidius....
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.
Ellis Wynne
Ellis Wynne
Ellis Wynne was a Welsh clergyman and author of one of the most important and influential pieces of Welsh language literature....
'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.
The first printed work in Manx dates from 1707: a translation of a Prayer Book catechism
Catechism
A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...
in English by Bishop Thomas Wilson. The Book of Common Prayer
Book of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
and Bible were translated into Manx in the 17th and 18th centuries. A tradition of carvals, religious songs or carols
Carol (music)
A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and often with a dance-like or popular character....
, developed. Religious literature was common, but secular writing much rarer.
In Scotland, after the 17th century, anglicisation
Anglicisation
Anglicisation, or anglicization , is the process of converting verbal or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to an English speaker, or, more generally, of altering something such that it becomes English in form or character.The term most often refers to...
increased, though Lowland Scots was still spoken by the vast majority of the population. 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
Robert Sempill
Robert Sempill , Scottish ballad-writer, was in all probability a cadet of illegitimate birth of the noble house of Sempill or Semple.Very little is known of Sempill's life. He appears to have spent some time in Paris...
(c.1595–1665), Lady Wardlaw and Lady Grizel Baillie
Grizel Baillie
Lady Grisell Baillie was a Scottish songwriter.- Biography :The eldest daughter of Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, afterwards earl of Marchmont, Lady Grisell Baillie was born at Redbraes Castle, Berwickshire. When she was twelve years old, she carried letters from her father to Scottish patriot...
.
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...
-speaking areas of Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
there was traditionally a considerable demand for the work of Scottish poets, often in locally printed editions. Alexander Montgomerie
Alexander Montgomerie
Alexander Montgomerie , Scottish Jacobean courtier and poet, or makar, born in Ayrshire. He was one of the principal members of the Castalian Band, a circle of poets in the court of James VI in the 1580s which included the king himself. Montgomerie was for a time in favour as one of the king's...
's The Cherrie and the Slae in 1700, shortly over a decade later an edition of poems by Sir David Lindsay, nine printings of Allan Ramsay's The Gentle shepherd between 1743 and 1793, and an edition of Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
' 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
James Hogg
James Hogg was a Scottish poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English.-Early life:James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded...
and Robert Tannahill
Robert Tannahill
Robert Tannahill was a Scottish poet. Known as the 'Weaver Poet', his music and poetry is contemporaneous with that of Robert Burns.He was born at Castle Street in Paisley on 3 June 1774, the fourth son in a family of seven...
. In 1780, Dumfries
Dumfries
Dumfries is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth. Dumfries was the county town of the former county of Dumfriesshire. Dumfries is nicknamed Queen of the South...
poet John Mayne
John Mayne
John Mayne , was a Scottish poet born in Dumfries, South West Scotland. In 1780, his poem The Siller Gun appeared in its original form in Ruddiman's Magazine, published by Walter Ruddiman in Edinburgh. It is a humorous poem descriptive of an ancient custom in Dumfries of shooting for the "Siller...
makes note of pranks at Halloween; "What fearfu' pranks ensue!", as well as the supernatural associated with the night, "Bogies" (ghosts). Robert Burns' 1785 poem Halloween
Halloween (poem)
"Halloween" is a poem written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. First published in 1786, the poem is included in the Kilmarnock volume...
is recited by Scots at Halloween, and Burns was influenced by Mayne's composition.
In the 18th century, Scottish writers such as Ramsay, Robert Fergusson
Robert Fergusson
Robert Fergusson was a Scottish poet. After formal education at the University of St Andrews, Fergusson followed an essentially bohemian life course in Edinburgh, the city of his birth, then at the height of intellectual and cultural ferment as part of the Scottish enlightenment...
, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott continued to use Lowland Scots. Scott introduced vernacular dialogue to his novels. The Habbie stanza was developed as a poetic form.
Iolo Morganwg
Iolo Morganwg
Edward Williams, better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg , was an influential Welsh antiquarian, poet, collector, and literary forger. He was widely considered a leading collector and expert on medieval Welsh literature in his day, but after his death it was revealed that he had forged a...
, founder of the Gorsedd
Gorsedd
A gorsedd plural gorseddau, is a community or coming together of modern-day bards. The word is of Welsh origin, meaning "throne". It is occasionally spelled gorsedh , or goursez in Brittany....
, 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
Dafydd ap Gwilym
Dafydd ap Gwilym , is regarded as one of the leading Welsh poets and amongst the great poets of Europe in the Middle Ages. 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. 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
Literary forgery
Literary forgery refers to writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or a purported memoir presented as genuine.- History :The common, or popularly known, instance of literary forgery may involve for example the work of a...
. 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.
The first printed Jèrriais literature
Jèrriais literature
Jèrriais literature is literature in Jèrriais, the Norman dialect of Jersey in the Channel Islands.The literary tradition in Jersey is traced back to Wace, the 12th century Jersey-born poet, although there is little surviving literature in Jèrriais dating to before the introduction of the first...
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
Jèrriais
Jèrriais is the form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. It has been in decline over the past century as English has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration...
is a fragment by Matchi L'Gé (Matthew Le Geyt 1777–1849) dated 1795.
Some 60 to 70 volumes of Ulster rhyming weaver
Weaver Poets
Weaver Poets, Rhyming Weaver Poets and Ulster Weaver Poets were a collective group of poets belonging to an artistic movement who were both influenced by and contemporaries of Robert Burns and the Romantic movement.-Origins:...
poetry were published between 1750 and 1850, the peak being in the decades 1810 to 1840. These weaver poets, such as James Orr
James Orr (poet)
James Orr was a poet or rhyming weaver from Ulster also known as the Bard of Ballycarry, who wrote in English and Ulster Scots. He was the foremost of the Ulster Weaver Poets, and was writing contemporaneously with Robert Burns...
, 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 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
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
by John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
published in 1796 by Thomas Christian. The influence also went the other way as Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
discovered inspiration in the literatures and legends of the Celtic countries of the islands. The Ossian
Ossian
Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...
hoax typifies the growth of this interest.
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
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
William Barnes
William Barnes was an English writer, poet, minister, and philologist. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect and much other work including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages.-Life:He was born at Rushay in the parish of Bagber, Dorset, the son of...
in Dorset, George Métivier
George Métivier
George Métivier was a Guernsey poet dubbed the "Guernsey Burns", and sometimes considered the island's national poet. He wrote in Guernésiais, which is the indigenous language of the island. Among his poetical works are Rimes Guernesiaises published in 1831...
(1790–1881) in Guernsey
Guernsey
Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...
and Robert Pipon Marett
Robert Pipon Marett
Sir Robert Pipon Marett was a lawyer, journalist, poet, politician, and Bailiff of Jersey from 1880 until his death.He was born in St. Peter on 20 November 1820 and studied at the University of Caen and the Sorbonne...
in Jersey. 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. Philippe Le Sueur Mourant
Philippe Le Sueur Mourant
Philippe Le Sueur Mourant was a Jersey writer who wrote in Jèrriais and French.He was born in St Saviour in 1848 and spent most of his early life working in agriculture in Newfoundland and Lorient...
's tales of Bram Bilo, an innocent abroad in Paris, were an immediate success in Jersey in 1889 and went through a number of reprintings. Denys Corbet
Denys Corbet
Denys Corbet was a Channel Islands poet, Naïve painter, and school master. He was the second son of Pierre and Susanne who was born at La Turquie, Vale, Guernsey, Channel Island...
published collections of 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
Augustus Asplet Le Gros
Augustus Asplet Le Gros or Augustus Aspley Le Gros was a Norman language poet from Jersey and a Jurat of the Royal Court of Jersey.- Biography :...
's annual in Jersey 1868–1875.
Kailyard school
The Kailyard school of Scottish fiction was developed about the 1890s as a reaction against what was seen as increasingly coarse writing representing Scottish life complete with all its blemishes. It has been considered as being an overly sentimental representation of rural life, cleansed of real...
of prose had become the dominant literary genre, overtaking poetry. This was a tradition shared with Scotland which continued into the early 20th century. Ulster Scots also regularly appeared in Ulster newspaper columns such as those of "Bab M'Keen" from the 1880s. Scottish authors; Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
, William Alexander, J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
, and George MacDonald
George MacDonald
George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, George MacDonald inspired many authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. It was C.S...
, also wrote in Lowland Scots or used it in dialogue.
Ewen MacLachlan
Ewen MacLachlan
Ewen MacLachlan was a Scottish scholar and poet. He is noted for his translations of ancient classical literature into Gaelic, for his own Gaelic verse, and for his contribution to Gaelic dictionaries....
translated the first eight books of Homer's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
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.
The so-called "Cranken Rhyme
Cranken Rhyme
The "Cranken Rhyme" is a Cornish-language song known by John Davey, one of the last people with some knowledge of the tongue. It was recorded by J. Hobson Matthews in his History of St. Ives, Lelant, Towednack, and Zennor, and is probably the latest known traditional Cornish verse.Matthews records...
" produced by John Davey
John Davey (Cornish speaker)
John Davey or Davy was a Cornish farmer who was one of the last people with some traditional knowledge of the Cornish language. Jenner states that he level of his ability in the language is unclear, but was probably restricted to a few words and phrases...
of Boswednack
Boswednack
Boswednack is a village in the parish of Zennor near the north coast of the Penwith peninsula in Cornwall, United Kingdom....
, one of the last people with some traditional knowledge of the language, may be the last piece of traditional Cornish literature. Later Cornish revivalists produced literary works: John Hobson Matthews wrote several poems, such as the patriotic "Can Wlascar Agam Mamvro" ("Patriotic Song of our Motherland"). Robert Morton Nance
Robert Morton Nance
Robert Morton Nance was a leading authority on the Cornish language, nautical archaeologist, and joint founder of the Old Cornwall Society....
created a body of verse, such as "Nyns yu Marow Myghtern Arthur" ("King Arthur is not Dead").
John Ceiriog Hughes
John Ceiriog Hughes
John Ceiriog Hughes , was a Welsh poet and well-known collector of Welsh folk tunes. Sometimes referred to as the "Robert Burns of Wales"...
desired to restore simplicity of diction and emotional sincerity and do for Welsh poetry what Wordsworth and Coleridge did for English poetry. The first major novelist in the Welsh language was Daniel Owen
Daniel Owen
Daniel Owen was a Welsh novelist, generally regarded as the foremost Welsh-language novelist of the 19th century.-Early life:...
, author of works such as Rhys Lewis
Rhys Lewis
Rhys Lewis is a novel by Daniel Owen, written in the Welsh language and first published in 1885. Its full title is Hunangofiant Rhys Lewis, Gweinidog Bethel...
(1885) and Enoc Huws
Enoc Huws
Enoc Huws is a classic novel by Daniel Owen, written in the Welsh language and first published in 1891. It has been adapted for stage and television .-Plot summary:...
(1891).
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
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
's Fables.
19th century English language literature
Romanticism
Major political and social changes at the end of the 18th century, particularly the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, prompted a new breed of writing known as Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
began the trend for bringing emotionalism and introspection to English literature, with a new concentration on the individual and the common man. The reaction to urbanism and industrialisation prompted poets to explore nature, for example the Lake Poets
Lake Poets
The Lake Poets are a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England at the turn of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single "school" of thought or literary practice then known, although their works were uniformly disparaged by the Edinburgh Review...
. The third major Lake poet, Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
, enjoys lasting popularity, although perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the immortal children's classic, The Story of the Three Bears, the basis of the original Goldilocks story.
Around the same period, the iconoclastic printer William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
, largely disconnected from the major streams of elite literature of the time, was constructing his own highly idiosyncratic poetic creations, while the Scottish nationalist poet Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
was collecting and adapting the folk songs of Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
into a body of national poetry for his homeland.
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
. They flouted social convention and often used poetry as a political voice. Amongst Lord Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty
She Walks in Beauty
"She Walks in Beauty" is a poem written in 1814 by Lord Byron. One of Lord Byron’s most famous, it is a narrative poem that describes a woman of much beauty and elegance. The poem appears to be told from the view point of third person omniscient. There are no hints as to the identity of the...
and So, we'll go no more a roving
So, we'll go no more a roving
"So, we'll go no more a roving" is a poem, written by Lord Byron , and included in a letter to Thomas Moore on 28 February 1817. Moore published the poem in 1830 as part of Letters and Journals of Lord Byron....
, in addition to narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks...
and Don Juan
Don Juan (Byron)
Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire"...
. Another key poet of the Romantic movement was John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, whose poems such as Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to a Nightingale
"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written in May 1819 in either the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, or, as according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats House, Hampstead, London. According to Brown, a nightingale had built its nest...
expound on his aesthetic theory of negative capability
Negative Capability
Negative capability is the ability to perceive and to think more than any presupposition of human nature allows. It describes the capacity of human beings to reject the totalizing constraints of a closed context, and to both experience phenomenon free from any epistemological bounds as well as to...
, and remain among the most celebrated by any author of the period. To Autumn
To Autumn
"To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats . The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of Saint Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes"...
is the final work in a collection of poems known as "Keats's 1819 odes
John Keats's 1819 odes
In 1819, John Keats composed six odes in a short period of time that have become some of his most famous poems. They are united and ordered as a set by various critics to form a greater truth, each depending on the original order...
". Percy Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, famous for his association with Keats and Byron, was the third major romantic poet of the second generation. Critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language, Shelley is most famous for such widely anthologised verse works as Ozymandias
Ozymandias
"Ozymandias" is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818 in the January 11 issue of The Examiner in London. It is frequently anthologised and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem...
, and long visionary poems which include Prometheus Unbound. Shelley's groundbreaking poem The Masque of Anarchy
The Masque of Anarchy
The Mask of Anarchy is a political poem written in 1819 by Percy Bysshe Shelley following the Peterloo Massacre of that year...
calls for nonviolence in protest and political action. It is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
. Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
's passive resistance was influenced and inspired by Shelley's verse, and Gandhi would often quote the poem to vast audiences.
The 19th century novel
At the same time, Jane AustenJane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
was writing highly polished novels about the life of the landed gentry, seen from a woman's point of view, and wryly focused on practical social issues, especially marriage and money. Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England...
1813, is often considered the epitome of the romance
Romance novel
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...
genre, and some of her other most notable works include Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, is a British romance novel by Jane Austen, her first published work under the pseudonym, "A Lady." Jane Austen is considered a pioneer of the romance genre of novels, and for the realism portrayed in her novels, is one the most widely read writers in...
, Mansfield Park
Mansfield Park
Mansfield Park may mean:* Mansfield Park by Jane Austen* Mansfield Park , based on the novel, directed by Patricia Rozema, starring Frances O'Connor, Embeth Davidtz, and Sheila Gish in 1999...
, Persuasion
Persuasion (novel)
Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma, completing it in August 1816. She died, aged 41, in 1817; Persuasion was published in December that year ....
and Emma
Emma
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively 'comedy of manners' among...
.
Walter Scott's
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
novel-writing career was launched in 1814 with Waverley
Waverley (novel)
Waverley is an 1814 historical novel by Sir Walter Scott. Initially published anonymously in 1814 as Scott's first venture into prose fiction, Waverley is often regarded as the first historical novel. It became so popular that Scott's later novels were advertised as being "by the author of...
, often called the first historical novel, and was followed by Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe is a historical fiction novel by Sir Walter Scott in 1819, and set in 12th-century England. Ivanhoe is sometimes credited for increasing interest in Romanticism and Medievalism; John Henry Newman claimed Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages," while...
. His popularity in England and further abroad did much to form the modern stereotype of Scottish culture. Other novels by Scott which contributed to the image of him as a Scottish patriot include Rob Roy
Rob Roy (novel)
Rob Roy is a historical novel by Walter Scott. It is narrated by Frank Osbaldistone, the son of an English merchant who travels first to the North of England, and subsequently to the Scottish Highlands to collect a debt stolen from his father. On the way he encounters the larger-than-life title...
. Scott was the highest earning and most popular author up to that time.
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
is best known for her novel Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
1818, infusing elements of the Gothic novel and Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
movement. Frankenstein's chilling tale suggests modern organ transplants, tissue regeneration, that remind readers of the moral issues raised by today's medicine. Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man
The Last Man
The Last Man is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, which was first published in 1826. The book tells of a future world that has been ravaged by a plague. The novel was harshly reviewed at the time, and was virtually unknown until a scholarly revival beginning in the 1960s...
is often identified as the first work of modern apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
fiction.
John William Polidori wrote The Vampyre
The Vampyre
"The Vampyre" is a short story or novella written in 1819 by John William Polidori which is a progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction...
1819, creating the literary vampire genre. His short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem The Giaour
The Giaour
"The Giaour" is a poem by Lord Byron first published in 1813 and the first in the series of his Oriental romances. "The Giaour" proved to be a great success when published, consolidating Byron's reputation critically and commercially.-Background:...
. Another major influence on vampire fiction is Varney the Vampire
Varney the Vampire
Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood was a Victorian era serialized gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer . It first appeared in 1845–47 as a series of cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls". The story was published in book form in 1847...
1845, where many standard Vampire features originated – Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the neck of his victims, has hypnotic powers, superhuman strength, and was also the first example of the "sympathetic vampire", who loathes his condition but is a slave to it.
From the mid-1820s until the 1840s, fashionable novel
Fashionable novel
Fashionable novels, also called silver fork novels, were a 19th-century genre of English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class. They dominated the English literature market from the mid-1820s to the mid-1840s. They were often indiscreet, and on occasion "keys" would circulate that...
s depicting the lives of the upper class in an indiscreet manner, identifying the real people whom the characters were based, dominated the market. It was in the Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
(1837–1901) that the novel became the leading form of literature in English. Most writers were now more concerned to meet the tastes of a large middle-class reading public than to please aristocratic patrons. The 1830s saw a resurgence of the social novel
Social novel
Social novels, also known as social problem novels or realist fiction, originated in the 18th century but gained a popular following in the 19th century with the rise of the Victorian Era and in many ways was a reaction to industrialization, social, political and economic issues and movements...
, where sensationalised accounts and stories of the working class poor were directed toward middle class audiences to incite sympathy and action towards pushing for legal and moral change. Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
's North and South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south.
Sir John Barrow's descriptive 1831 account
The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of HMS Bounty
The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause and Consequences by Sir John Barrow is considered the classic account of the mutiny on the Bounty...
of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Mutiny on the Bounty
The mutiny on the Bounty was a mutiny that occurred aboard the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789, and has been commemorated by several books, films, and popular songs, many of which take considerable liberties with the facts. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against the...
immortalised the Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty
HMS Bounty
HMS Bounty , famous as the scene of the Mutiny on the Bounty on 28 April 1789, was originally a three-masted cargo ship, the Bethia, purchased by the British Admiralty, then modified and commissioned as His Majesty's Armed Vessel the...
and her people. The legend of Dick Turpin
Dick Turpin
Richard "Dick" Turpin was an English highwayman whose exploits were romanticised following his execution in York for horse theft. Turpin may have followed his father's profession as a butcher early in life, but by the early 1730s he had joined a gang of deer thieves, and later became a poacher,...
was popularised when the 18th century English highwayman
Highwayman
A highwayman was a thief and brigand who preyed on travellers. This type of outlaw, usually, travelled and robbed by horse, as compared to a footpad who traveled and robbed on foot. Mounted robbers were widely considered to be socially superior to footpads...
's exploits appeared in the novel Rookwood
Rookwood (novel)
Rookwood is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth published in 1834. It is a historical and gothic romance that describes a dispute over the legitimate claim for the inheritance of Rookwood Place and the Rookwood family name.-Background:...
in 1834.
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
emerged on the literary scene in the 1830s, confirming the trend for serial publication. Dickens wrote vividly about London life and struggles of the poor, often, as in Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...
, employing a popular style which would prove accessible to readers of all classes. The festive tale A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
he called his "little Christmas book". Great Expectations
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
is a quest for maturity. A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature....
is set in London and Paris. Dickens early works are masterpieces of comedy, such as The Pickwick Papers
The Pickwick Papers
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...
. Later his works became darker, without losing his genius for caricature.
The emotionally powerful works of the Brontë sisters
Brontë
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family associated with Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte , Emily , and Anne , are well-known as poets and novelists...
: Charlotte's Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...
, Emily's Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...
and Anne's Agnes Grey
Agnes Grey
Agnes Grey is the debut novel of English author Anne Brontë, first published in December 1847, and republished in a second edition in 1850. The novel follows Agnes Grey, a governess, as she works in several bourgeois families. Scholarship and comments by Anne's sister Charlotte Brontë suggest the...
were released in 1847 after their search to secure publishers. William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
's satirised British society in Vanity Fair 1847, while Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...
's novels portrayed the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England.
Although pre-dated by John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
's The King of the Golden River
The King of the Golden River
The King of the Golden River or The Black Brothers: A Legend of Stiria by John Ruskin was originally written in 1841 for the twelve-year-old Effie Gray, whom Ruskin later married. It was published in book form in 1851, and became an early Victorian classic which sold out three editions...
in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald
George MacDonald
George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, George MacDonald inspired many authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. It was C.S...
, influential author of The Princess and the Goblin
The Princess and the Goblin
The Princess and the Goblin is a children's fantasy novel by George MacDonald. It was published in 1872 by Strahan & Co.The sequel to this book is The Princess and Curdie....
and Phantastes
Phantastes
Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women is a fantasy novel written by George MacDonald, first published in London in 1858. It was later reprinted in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fourteenth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in April 1970.The story centres on the character...
1858. William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
was a popular English poet who wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the 19th century.
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
, while Anna Sewell
Anna Sewell
Anna Sewell was an English novelist, best known as the author of the classic novel Black Beauty.-Biography:Anna Mary Sewell was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England into a devoutly Quaker family...
wrote the classic animal novel Black Beauty
Black Beauty
Black Beauty is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she remained in her house as an invalid. The novel became an immediate bestseller, with Sewell dying just five months after its publication, long enough to see her first and only...
.
Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces...
epistolary novel
Epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...
The Moonstone
The Moonstone
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. The story was originally serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are considered Wilkie...
1868, is often considered the first detective novel
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
in the English language. The Woman in White
The Woman in White (novel)
The Woman in White is an epistolary novel written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, serialized in 1859–1860, and first published in book form in 1860...
is regarded as one of the finest sensation novels.
The novels of George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
, such as Middlemarch
Middlemarch
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her companion George Henry Lewes...
, were a milestone of literary realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
, and combine high Victorian literary
Victorian literature
Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria . It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century....
detail with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow confines they often depict. Novels of Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
and others, dealt with the changing social and economic situation of the countryside.
Penny dreadful
Penny Dreadful
A penny dreadful was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing an penny...
publications were an alternative to mainstream works, and were aimed at working class adolescents, introducing the infamous Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as then antagonist of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls and he was later introduced as an antihero in the broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and its film adaptation...
. The premier ghost story
Ghost story
A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has...
writer of the 19th century was Sheridan Le Fanu
Sheridan Le Fanu
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era....
. His works include the macabre mystery novel Uncle Silas
Uncle Silas
Uncle Silas is a Victorian Gothic mystery-thriller novel by the Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu. It is notable as one of the earliest examples of the locked room mystery subgenre...
1865, and his Gothic novella Carmilla
Carmilla
Carmilla is a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. First published in 1872, it tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla...
1872, tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire. Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
, author of seminal horror work Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
, featured as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula
Count Dracula
Count Dracula is a fictional character, the titular antagonist of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula and archetypal vampire. Some aspects of his character have been inspired by the 15th century Romanian general and Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler...
, with the vampire hunter
Vampire hunter
A vampire hunter or vampire slayer is a character in folklore and fiction who specializes in finding and destroying vampires, and sometimes other supernatural creatures....
Abraham Van Helsing
Abraham Van Helsing
Professor Abraham van Helsing is a protagonist from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula.Van Helsing is a Dutch doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "M.D., D.Ph., D.Litt., etc." The character is best known as a...
his arch-enemy. Dracula has been attributed to a number of literary genre
Literary genre
A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young-adult, or children's. They also must not be confused...
s including vampire literature, horror fiction
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
, gothic novel and invasion literature
Invasion literature
Invasion literature was a historical literary genre most notable between 1871 and the First World War . The genre first became recognizable starting in Britain in 1871 with The Battle of Dorking, a fictional account of an invasion of England by Germany...
.
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
, who alongside Jules Verne, is referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction", invented a number of themes that are now classic in the science fiction genre. The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds is an 1898 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells.The War of the Worlds may also refer to:- Radio broadcasts :* The War of the Worlds , the 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles...
1898, describing an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry, is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion
Alien invasion
The alien invasion is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrial life invades Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under a colonial system, harvest humans for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether.The...
of Earth. The Time Machine
The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 for the first time and later adapted into at least two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations. It indirectly inspired many more works of fiction...
is generally credited with the popularisation of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term "time machine
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
" coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle.
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
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
Archenemy
An archenemy, archfoe, archvillain or archnemesis is the principal enemy of a character in a work of fiction, often described as the hero's worst enemy .- Etymology :The word archenemy or arch-enemy originated...
Professor Moriarty
Professor Moriarty
Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character and the archenemy of the detective Sherlock Holmes in the fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Moriarty is a criminal mastermind, described by Holmes as the "Napoleon of Crime". Doyle lifted the phrase from a real Scotland Yard inspector who was...
, is widely considered to be the first true example of a supervillain
Supervillain
A supervillain or supervillainess is a variant of the villain character type, commonly found in comic books, action movies and science fiction in various media.They are sometimes used as foils to superheroes and other fictional heroes...
, while Sherlock Holmes has become a by-word for a detective. Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories
Short Stories
Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...
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
John Watson (Sherlock Holmes)
John H. Watson, M.D. , known as Dr. Watson, is a character in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson is Sherlock Holmes's friend, assistant and sometime flatmate, and is the first person narrator of all but four stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon.-Name:Doctor Watson's first...
.
The Lost World
Lost World (genre)
The Lost World literary genre is a fantasy or science fiction genre that involves the discovery of a new world out of time, place, or both. It began as a subgenre of the late-Victorian imperial romance and remains popular to this day....
literary genre was inspired by real stories of archaeological discoveries by imperial adventurers. H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...
wrote one of the earliest examples, King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party...
in 1885. Contemporary European politics and diplomatic manoeuvrings informed Anthony Hope
Anthony Hope
Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, better known as Anthony Hope , was an English novelist and playwright. Although he was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels, he is remembered best for only two books: The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau...
's swashbuckling Ruritanian adventure novels
Ruritanian Romance
A Ruritanian Romance is a story set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe, such as the Ruritania that gave the genre its name...
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Prisoner of Zenda is an adventure novel by Anthony Hope, published in 1894. The king of the fictional country of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus unable to attend his own coronation. Political forces are such that in order for the king to retain his crown his...
1894, and Rupert of Hentzau
Rupert of Hentzau
Rupert of Hentzau is a sequel by Anthony Hope to The Prisoner of Zenda, written in 1895, but not published until 1898.-Plot summary:...
, 1898.
F. Anstey's comic novel
Comic novel
A comic novel is a work of fiction in which the writer not only seeks to amuse the reader, but also to make the reader think about controversial issues, sometimes with subtlety and as part of a carefully woven narrative; sometimes, above all other considerations...
Vice Versa 1882, sees a father and son magically switch bodies. Satirist Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat.Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London...
's Three Men in a Boat
Three Men in a Boat
Three Men in a Boat ,The Penguin edition punctuates the title differently: Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog! published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K...
1889, is a humorous account of a boating holiday on the river Thames. Grossmith brothers George
George Grossmith
George Grossmith was an English comedian, writer, composer, actor, and singer. His performing career spanned more than four decades...
& Weedon
Weedon Grossmith
Walter Weedon Grossmith , better known as Weedon Grossmith, was an English writer, painter, actor and playwright, best known as co-author of The Diary of a Nobody with his famous brother, music hall comedian and Gilbert and Sullivan star, George Grossmith...
's Diary of a Nobody
Diary of a Nobody
The Diary of a Nobody, an English comic novel written by George Grossmith and his brother Weedon Grossmith with illustrations by Weedon, first appeared in the magazine Punch in 1888 – 89, and was first printed in book form in 1892...
1892, is also considered a classic work of humour.
In the latter years of the 19th century, precursors of the modern picture book
Picture book
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor and pencil.Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now...
were illustrated books of poems and short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
produced by English illustrators Randolph Caldecott
Randolph Caldecott
Randolph Caldecott was a British artist and illustrator, born in Chester. The Caldecott Medal was named in his honor. He exercised his art chiefly in book illustrations. His abilities as an artist were promptly and generously recognized by the Royal Academy. Caldecott greatly influenced...
, Walter Crane
Walter Crane
Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most prolific and influential children’s book creator of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of...
, and Kate Greenaway
Kate Greenaway
Catherine Greenaway , known as Kate Greenaway, was an English children's book illustrator and writer, who spent much of her childhood at Rolleston, Nottinghamshire. She studied at what is now the Royal College of Art in London, which at that time had a separate section for women, and was headed by...
. 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
Arthur Rackham
Arthur Rackham was an English book illustrator.-Biography:Rackham was born in London as one of 12 children. At the age of 18, he worked as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office and began studying part-time at the Lambeth School of Art.In 1892 he left his job and started working for The...
, Cicely Mary Barker
Cicely Mary Barker
Cicely Mary Barker was an English illustrator best known for a series of fantasy illustrations depicting fairies and flowers. Barker's art education began in girlhood with correspondence courses and instruction at the Croydon School of Art...
, W. Heath Robinson
W. Heath Robinson
William Heath Robinson was an English cartoonist and illustrator, best known for drawings of eccentric machines....
, Henry J. Ford
Henry J. Ford
-Gallery:Henry Justice Ford was a prolific and successful artist and illustrator, active from 1886 through to the late 1920s. Sometimes known as HJFord or Henry J Ford, he came to public attention when he provided the numerous beautiful illustrations for Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, which captured...
, John Leech, and George Cruikshank
George Cruikshank
George Cruikshank was a British caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his life. His book illustrations for his friend Charles Dickens, and many other authors, reached an international audience.-Early life:Cruikshank was born in London...
. One of the earliest and most influential books with the format that modern picture books retain is Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...
's The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother who puts him to bed after dosing him with camomile tea...
.
An important forerunner of modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
, Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
wrote the novel Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
1899, a symbolic story within a story or frame narrative about an Englishman Marlow's foreign assignment, that is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon
Western canon
The term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
.
Victorian poets
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
, Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...
, and Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
, whilst multi-disciplinary talents such as John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English 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,...
were also famous for their poetry. 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
Dramatic monologue
M. H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:-Types of monologues:One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue is the Romantic poets...
, a form used by many poets in this period, but perfected by Browning, most of his poems were in the form of dramatic monologues.
Nonsense verse
Nonsense verse is a form of light, often rhythmical verse, usually for children, depicting peculiar characters in amusing and fantastical situations. It is whimsical and humorous in tone and tends to employ fanciful phrases and meaningless made-up words. Nonsense verse is closely related to...
, such as by Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
, taken with the work of Lewis Carroll, is regarded as a precursor of surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
. Writers of comic verse included W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator 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...
, who produced the Bab Ballads
Bab Ballads
The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan...
and the lyrics for the Savoy Operas.
Towards the end of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French Symbolism and Victorian poetry entered a decadent fin-de-siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
phase. Two groups of poets emerged, the Yellow Book poets who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism
Aestheticism
Aestheticism was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design...
, including Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
and Arthur Symons
Arthur Symons
Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy...
and the Rhymer's Club group that included Ernest Dowson
Ernest Dowson
Ernest Christopher Dowson , born in Lee, London, was an English poet, novelist and writer of short stories, associated with the Decadent movement.- Biography :...
, Lionel Johnson
Lionel Johnson
Lionel Pigot Johnson was an English poet, essayist and critic. He was born at Broadstairs, and educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, graduating in 1890. He became a Catholic convert in 1891. He lived a solitary life in London, struggling with alcoholism and his repressed...
and William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
. Poetry of A. E. Housman
A. E. Housman
Alfred Edward Housman , usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900...
consisting of wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, grew in popularity in early 20th century.
Ireland
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
was an extremely popular writer of comedies. However, it was in the last decade of the century that the Irish theatre finally came of age with the emergence of George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
. All of these writers lived mainly in England and wrote in English, with the exception of some works in French by Wilde.
The Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...
(c. 1890), was begun by William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
, Augusta, Lady Gregory
Augusta, Lady Gregory
Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory , born Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of...
, John Millington Synge
John Millington Synge
Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre...
, Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
and others. The Revival stimulated new appreciation of traditional Irish literature. The movement also encouraged the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from British culture.
Wales
Anglo-Welsh literatureAnglo-Welsh literature
Anglo-Welsh literature and Welsh writing in English are terms used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers. It has been recognised as a distinctive entity only since the 20th century...
is a term used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers, notably Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
, especially if they either have subject matter relating to Wales or (as in the case of Anglo-Welsh poetry
Anglo-Welsh poetry
There is no clear definition of what constitutes Anglo-Welsh poetry, and the term tends to have been replaced by the broader "Welsh writing in English" or Welsh literature in English. It includes poetry written by Welsh people whose first language is English, but it also includes poetry by those...
in particular) are influenced by the Welsh language in terms of patterns of usage or syntax. 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 literature, i.e. literature in the Welsh language.
Scotland
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
's short novel Strange 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. His Kidnapped
Kidnapped (novel)
Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. Written as a "boys' novel" and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886, the novel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis...
is a fast-paced historical novel set in the aftermath of the '45 Jacobite Rising
Jacobite rising
The Jacobite Risings were a series of uprisings, rebellions, and wars in Great Britain and Ireland occurring between 1688 and 1746. The uprisings were aimed at returning James VII of Scotland and II of England, and later his descendants of the House of Stuart, to the throne after he was deposed by...
, and Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...
1883, is the classic pirate
Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
adventure.
The Kailyard school
Kailyard school
The Kailyard school of Scottish fiction was developed about the 1890s as a reaction against what was seen as increasingly coarse writing representing Scottish life complete with all its blemishes. It has been considered as being an overly sentimental representation of rural life, cleansed of real...
of Scottish writers presented an idealised version of society and brought elements of fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
and folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
back into fashion. J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
created Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
, a boy who can fly, magically refuses to grow up in a never-ending childhood in Neverland
Neverland
Neverland is a fictional world featured in the works of J. M. Barrie and those based on them. It is the dwelling place of Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys, and others...
, is one example of this mix of modernity and nostalgia.
English language literature since 1900
The major lyric poet of the first decades of the 20th century was Thomas HardyThomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
. The author of the classic novels Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British...
and Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership. Critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive...
, Hardy concentrated on poetry after the harsh response to his last novel, Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure, the last of Thomas Hardy's novels, began as a magazine serial and was first published in book form in 1895. The book was burned publicly by William Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield, in that same year. Its hero, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man who dreams of becoming a...
.
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems that were often based on his experiences in British India
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
. To date the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Kipling's novels include The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book is a collection of stories by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six...
, The Man Who Would Be King
The Man Who Would Be King
For the 1975 film based on this story, see The Man Who Would Be King "The Man Who Would Be King" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It is about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan...
and Kim
Kim (novel)
Kim is a picaresque novel by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published serially in McClure's Magazine from December 1900 to October 1901 as well as in Cassell's Magazine from January to November 1901, and first published in book form by Macmillan & Co. Ltd in October 1901...
, while his inspirational poem If—
If—
"If—" is a poem written in 1895 by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of Rewards and Fairies, Kipling's 1910 collection of short stories and poems...
is a national favourite. Like William Ernest Henley
William Ernest Henley
William Ernest Henley was an English poet, critic and editor, best remembered for his 1875 poem "Invictus".-Life and career:...
's poem Invictus
Invictus
"Invictus" is a short Victorian poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley .- Background :At the age of 12, Henley contracted tuberculosis of the bone. A few years later, the disease progressed to his foot, and physicians announced that the only way to save his life was to amputate directly...
that has inspired such people as Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
when he was incarcerated, If— is a memorable evocation of Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
, regarded as a traditional British virtue. Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers
Robert Erskine Childers DSC , universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands and an Irish nationalist who smuggled guns to Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard. He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish...
The Riddle of the Sands
The Riddle of the Sands
The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. It is an early example of the espionage novel, with a strong underlying theme of militarism...
1903, defined the spy novel. The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The story is a precursor to the "disguised superhero" tales such as Zorro and Batman....
1905, by Emma Orczy, is a precursor to the "disguised superhero". In 1908, Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows , one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films....
wrote the children's classic The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...
and the Scouts founder Robert Baden Powell's first book Scouting for Boys
Scouting for Boys
Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship is the first book on the Scout Movement, published in 1908. It was written and illustrated by Robert Baden-Powell, its founder...
was published. John Buchan penned the adventure novel
Adventure novel
The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...
The Thirty-Nine Steps
The Thirty-nine Steps
The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It first appeared as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine in August and September 1915 before being published in book form in October that year by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh...
in 1915. The medieval scholar M. R. James
M. R. James
Montague Rhodes James, OM, MA, , who used the publication name M. R. James, was an English mediaeval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge and of Eton College . He is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are regarded as among the best in the genre...
wrote highly regarded ghost stories in contemporary settings. Strongly influenced by his Christian faith, G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
was a prolific and hugely influential writer with a diverse output.
From around 1910, the Modernist Movement
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
began to influence English literature. While their Victorian predecessors had usually been happy to cater to mainstream middle-class taste, 20th century writers such as James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
often felt alienated from it, so responded by writing more intellectually challenging works or by pushing the boundaries of acceptable content.
Major poets of this period in Britain included the American-born T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
and Irishman W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
. Free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
and other stylistic innovations came to the forefront in this era.
The experiences of the First World War were reflected in the work of war poet
War poet
A War poet is a poet writing in time of and on the subject of war. The term, which is applied especially to those in military service during World War I, was documented as early as 1848 in reference to German revolutionary poet, Georg Herwegh.-Crimean War:...
s such as Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...
, Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke
Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier...
, Isaac Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg
Isaac Rosenberg was an English poet of the First World War who was considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets...
, Edmund Blunden
Edmund Blunden
Edmund Charles Blunden, MC was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong...
and Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...
. Following the Arab Revolt
Arab Revolt
The Arab Revolt was initiated by the Sherif Hussein bin Ali with the aim of securing independence from the ruling Ottoman Turks and creating a single unified Arab state spanning from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen.- Background :...
, T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...
"Lawrence of Arabia" wrote his autobiographical account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the autobiographical account of the experiences of British soldier T. E. Lawrence , while serving as a liaison officer with rebel forces during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks of 1916 to 1918....
.
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, alongside English authors D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
, C. S. Forester
C. S. Forester
Cecil Scott "C.S." Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith , an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen...
and P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
Joyce's complex works included Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
, arguably the most important work of Modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
, referred to as "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement". It is amongst other things an interpretation of the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
, its events taking place over one day in Dublin in June 1904. From the year of its publication in 1922 until 1939, Joyce worked on his final and probably least accessible work, Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
.
D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
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
Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.-Plot introduction and history:...
1913, is widely regarded as his earliest masterpiece. There followed The Rainbow
The Rainbow
The Rainbow is a 1915 novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, particularly focusing on the sexual dynamics of, and relations between, the characters....
1915, and its sequel Women in Love
Women in Love
Women in Love is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence published in 1920. It is a sequel to his earlier novel The Rainbow , and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an...
1920. 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
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
1928.
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
was an influential feminist, and a major stylistic innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique. Her novels include Mrs Dalloway
Mrs Dalloway
Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in post-World War I England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels....
1925, To the Lighthouse
To the Lighthouse
To the Lighthouse is a novel by Virginia Woolf. A novel set on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, it skilfully manipulates temporal and psychological elements....
1927, Orlando
Orlando: A Biography
Orlando: A Biography is an influential novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West, it is generally considered one of Woolf's most accessible novels...
1928, The Waves
The Waves
- External links :* The Waves, at wikilivres.info...
1931, and A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928...
1929, which contains her famous dictum; "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction".
E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
's A Passage to India
A Passage to India
A Passage to India is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time...
1924, reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier works such as A Room with a View
A Room with a View
A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the repressed culture of Edwardian England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century...
and Howards End
Howards End
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, which tells a story of class struggle in turn-of-the-century England. The main theme is the difficulties, troubles, and also the benefits of relationships between members of different social classes...
, examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England. Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
is best known for his 1934 novel I Claudius.
The popularity of novelists who wrote in a more traditional style, such as Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
laureate John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
, whose novels include The Forsyte Saga
The Forsyte Saga
The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by John Galsworthy. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of an upper-middle-class British family, similar to Galsworthy's own...
, and Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
, author of The Old Wives' Tale
The Old Wives' Tale
The Old Wives' Tale is a novel by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1908. It deals with the lives of two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, following their stories from their youth, working in their mother's draper's shop, into old age. It is generally regarded as one of...
, continued in the interwar period. At the same time the Georgian poets
Georgian poets
The Georgian poets were, by the strictest definition, those whose works appeared in a series of five anthologies named Georgian Poetry, published by Harold Monro and edited by Edward Marsh. The first volume contained poems written in 1911 and 1912. The poets included Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke,...
maintained a more conservative approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism, sandwiched between the Victorian era, with its strict classicism, and Modernism, with its strident rejection of pure aestheticism.
Novels featuring a gentleman adventurer were popular between the wars, exemplified by the series of H. C. McNeile
H. C. McNeile
Cyril McNeile MC was a British author, who published under the pen name Sapper.He was one of the most successful British popular authors of the Interwar period; his principal character was Bulldog Drummond.-Biography:Cyril McNeile was born in 1888 at Bodmin in Cornwall...
with Bulldog Drummond
Bulldog Drummond
Bulldog Drummond is a British fictional character, created by "Sapper", a pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeile , and the hero of a series of novels published from 1920 to 1954.- Drummond :...
1920, and Leslie Charteris
Leslie Charteris
Leslie Charteris , born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, was a half-Chinese, half English author of primarily mystery fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint."-Early life:Charteris was born to a Chinese father...
, whose many books chronicled the adventures of Simon Templar
Simon Templar
Simon Templar is a British fictional character known as The Saint featured in a long-running series of books by Leslie Charteris published between 1928 and 1963. After that date, other authors collaborated with Charteris on books until 1983; two additional works produced without Charteris’s...
, alias The Saint
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's futuristic novel Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
1932, anticipates developments in reproductive technology
Reproductive technology
Reproductive technology encompasses all current and anticipated uses of technology in human and animal reproduction, including assisted reproductive technology, contraception and others.-Assisted reproductive technology:...
and sleep-learning
Sleep-learning
Sleep-learning attempts to convey information to a sleeping person, typically by playing a sound recording to them while they sleep....
that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurism. James Hilton
James Hilton
James Hilton was an English novelist who wrote several best-sellers, including Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.-Biography:...
's Lost Horizon
Lost Horizon (novel)
Lost Horizon is a 1933 novel by English writer James Hilton. It is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La, a fictional utopian lamasery high in the mountains of Tibet.-Overview:...
1933, is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La
Shangri-La
Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. Hilton describes Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains...
, the mythical utopian monastery in the mountains of Tibet. His other notable book is Goodbye Mr. Chips. Author and playwright Daphne Du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...
wrote the mystery novel Rebecca
Rebecca (novel)
Rebecca is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. When Rebecca was published in 1938, du Maurier became – to her great surprise – one of the most popular authors of the day. Rebecca is considered to be one of her best works...
in 1938, followed by short stories "The Birds
The Birds (story)
"The Birds" is a famous novelette by Daphne du Maurier, first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree. It is the story of a farmhand, his family, and his community, who are attacked by flocks of seabirds who have organized themselves into avian suicide warriors. The story is set in...
" and "Don't Look Now". W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
's most notable work is Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had...
, which is strongly autobiographical and is generally agreed to be his masterpiece. Novelist A. J. Cronin
A. J. Cronin
Archibald Joseph Cronin was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known works are Hatter's Castle, The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years, all of which were adapted to film. He also created the Dr...
often drew on his experiences practising medicine. The Citadel
The Citadel (novel)
The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It is credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later...
1937, was groundbreaking in its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics, and is credited with laying a foundation for the introduction of the NHS in the UK a decade later.
Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
satirised the "bright young things" of the 1920s and 1930s, notably in A Handful of Dust
A Handful of Dust
A Handful of Dust is a novel by Evelyn Waugh published in 1934. It is included in Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels, and was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present....
, and Decline and Fall
Decline and Fall
Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928. It was Waugh's first published novel; an earlier attempt, entitled The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed by Waugh while still in manuscript form. Decline and Fall is based in part on Waugh's undergraduate years...
, while his magnum opus Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...
1945, has a theological basis, aiming to examine the effect of divine grace on its main characters.
Classics of children's literature include of A A Milne's collection of books about a fictional bear he named Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh , and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner...
, who inhabits Hundred Acre Wood
Hundred Acre Wood
The Hundred Acre Wood is the fictional land inhabited by Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in the Winnie-the-Pooh series of children's stories by author A. A. Milne...
. Prolific children's author Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton was an English children's writer also known as Mary Pollock.Noted for numerous series of books based on recurring characters and designed for different age groups,her books have enjoyed huge success in many parts of the world, and have sold over 600 million copies.One of Blyton's most...
chronicled the adventures of a group of young children and their dog in The Famous Five
The Famous Five (series)
The Famous Five is the name of a series of children's novels written by British author Enid Blyton. The first book, Five on a Treasure Island, was published in 1942....
. T. H. White
T. H. White
Terence Hanbury White was an English author best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King, first published together in 1958.-Biography:...
wrote the Arthurian fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
The Once and Future King
The Once and Future King
The Once and Future King is an Arthurian fantasy novel written by T. H. White. It was first published in 1958 and is mostly a composite of earlier works written in a period between 1938 and 1941....
, the first part being The Sword in the Stone
The Sword in the Stone
The Sword in the Stone is a novel by T. H. White, published in 1939, initially a stand-alone work but now the first part of a tetralogy The Once and Future King. A fantasy of the boyhood of King Arthur, it is a sui generis work which combines elements of legend, history, fantasy and comedy...
1938. Mary Norton
Mary Norton (author)
Mary Norton, née Pearson, was an English children's author. Her books include The Borrowers series.-Background:...
wrote The Borrowers
The Borrowers
The Borrowers, published in 1952, is the first in a series of children's fantasy novels by English author Mary Norton. The novel and its sequels are about tiny people who live in people's homes and "borrow" things to survive while keeping their existence unknown...
, featuring tiny people who borrow from humans. Inspiration for Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was an English playwright and author. She is best known for her children's stories, in particular The Secret Garden , A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy.Born Frances Eliza Hodgson, she lived in Cheetham Hill, Manchester...
's novel The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format starting in the autumn of 1910, and was first published in its entirety in 1911. It is now one of Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of English children's...
, was the Great Maytham Hall Garden
Great Maytham Hall
Great Maytham Hall, near Rolvenden, Kent, England, is a Grade II* listed country house. The gardens are famous for providing the inspiration for The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.-The house:...
in Kent. Hugh Lofting
Hugh Lofting
Hugh John Lofting was a British author, trained as a civil engineer, who created the character of Doctor Dolittle — one of the classics of children's literature.-Personal life:...
created the character Doctor Dolittle
Doctor Dolittle
Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting starting with the 1920 The Story of Doctor Dolittle. He is a doctor who shuns human patients in favour of animals, with whom he can speak in their own languages...
who appears in a series of twelve books, while the novelist Dodie Smith
Dodie Smith
Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith was an English novelist and playwright. Smith is best known for her novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Her other works include I Capture the Castle and The Starlight Barking....
wrote The Hundred and One Dalmatians
The Hundred and One Dalmatians
The Hundred and One Dalmatians, or the Great Dog Robbery is a 1956 children's novel by Dodie Smith. A sequel entitled The Starlight Barking continues from the end of the first novel....
featuring the villainous Cruella de Vil
Cruella de Vil
Cruella de Vil is a fictional character and the iconic villain in Dodie Smith's 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, Disney's 1961 animated film adaptation One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Disney's live-action film adaptations 101 Dalmatians and 102 Dalmatians. In all her incarnations,...
.
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
was a crime writer of novels, short stories and plays, best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Christie's works, particularly featuring the detectives Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
or Miss Marple
Miss Marple
Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in twenty short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective. She is one of the most famous...
, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre. Christie's novels include, Murder on the Orient Express
Murder on the Orient Express
Murder on the Orient Express is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on January 1, 1934 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year under the title of...
1934, Death on the Nile
Death on the Nile
Death on the Nile is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on November 1, 1937 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00.The book...
1937 and And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...
1939. Another popular writer during the Golden Age of detective fiction was Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
. The novelist Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer was a British historical romance and detective fiction novelist. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. In 1925 Heyer married George Ronald Rougier, a mining engineer...
created the historical romance
Historical romance
Historical romance is a subgenre of two literary genres, the romance novel and the historical novel.-Definition:Historical romance is set before World War II...
genre.
Auden Group
The Auden Group is the name given to a group of British and Irish writers active in the 1930s that included W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, and sometimes Edward Upward and Rex Warner...
, sometimes called simply the Thirties poets, was a group of British and Irish writers active in the 1930s that included; W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
, Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
, Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis CBE was an Irish poet and the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake...
, Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
, Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
, and sometimes Edward Upward
Edward Upward
Edward Falaise Upward was a British novelist and short story writer and, prior to his death, was believed to be the UK's oldest living author.-Biography:...
and Rex Warner
Rex Warner
Rex Warner was an English classicist, writer and translator. He is now probably best remembered for The Aerodrome , an allegorical novel whose young hero is faced with the disintegration of his certainties about his loved ones and with a choice between the earthy, animalistic life of his home...
.
One of the most significant English writers of this period was George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
. An essayist and novelist, Orwell's works are considered among the most important social and political commentaries of the 20th century. Dealing with issues such as poverty in The Road to Wigan Pier
The Road to Wigan Pier
The Road to Wigan Pier is a book by the British writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions amongst the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World...
and Down and Out in Paris and London
Down and Out in Paris and London
Down and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell , published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. The first part is a picaresque account of living on the breadline in Paris and the experience of casual...
, totalitarianism in Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
and Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...
, and colonialism in Burmese Days
Burmese Days
Burmese Days is a novel by British writer George Orwell. It was first published in the USA in 1934. It is a tale from the time of the waning days of British colonialism, when Burma was ruled as part of the Indian empire - " a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj." At its centre is John...
. Orwell's works were often semi-autobiographical and in the case of Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952. The American edition had a preface...
, wholly. Malcolm Lowry
Malcolm Lowry
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
is best known for Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano is a 1947 semi-autobiographical novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry . The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac , on the Day of the Dead.Surrounded by the helpless presences of his ex-wife, his...
Inklings
The Inklings was an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford, England, for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction, and encouraged the writing of fantasy...
". Its leading members were the major fantasy
High fantasy
High fantasy or epic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that is set in invented or parallel worlds. High fantasy was brought to fruition through the work of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, whose major fantasy works were published in the 1950s...
novelists; C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
and J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
. Lewis is known for his fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters
The Screwtape Letters
The Screwtape Letters is a satirical Christian apologetics novel written in epistolary style by C. S. Lewis, first published in book form in February 1942...
1942, The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages...
and The Space Trilogy
The Space Trilogy
The Space Trilogy, Cosmic Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy is a trilogy of science fiction novels by C. S. Lewis, famous for his later series The Chronicles of Narnia. A philologist named Elwin Ransom is the hero of the first two novels and an important character in the third.The books in the trilogy...
, while Tolkien is best known as the author of The Hobbit
The Hobbit
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald...
1937, The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
, and The Silmarillion
The Silmarillion
The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, who later became a noted fantasy writer. The Silmarillion, along with J. R. R...
.
One of the most influential novels of the immediate post-war period was William Cooper
William Cooper (novelist)
Harry Summerfield Hoff was an English novelist, writing under the name William Cooper.-Life:H.S.Hoff was born in Crewe, the son of elementary school teachers , and read natural sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge...
's naturalistic Scenes from Provincial Life, a conscious rejection of the modernist tradition. Kitchen sink realism
Kitchen sink realism
Kitchen sink realism is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men...
(or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art (the term itself derives from an expressionist painting by John Bratby
John Bratby
John Randall Bratby was an English painter who founded the kitchen sink realism style of art that was influential in the late 1950s....
), novels, film and television play
Television play
From the 1950s until the early 1980s, the television play was a popular television programming genre in the United Kingdom, with a shorter span in the United States. The genre was often associated with the social realist-influenced British drama style known as "kitchen sink realism", which depicted...
s, whose authors were sometimes described as angry young men
Angry young men
The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis.The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John...
. It used a style of social realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
which often depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons to explore social issues and political controversies. In drama of the post war period, the drawing room play
Drawing room play
A drawing room play is a type of play, developed during the Victorian period, in which the actions take place in a drawing room or which is designed to be reenacted in the drawing room of a home...
s typical of dramatists like Terence Rattigan
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...
or Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
were challenged in the 1950s by the Angry Young Men
Angry young men
The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis.The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John...
, exemplified by John Osborne
John Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
's iconic play Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger is a John Osborne play—made into films in 1959, 1980, and 1989 -- about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man , his upper-middle-class, impassive wife , and her haughty best friend . Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace...
. Arnold Wesker
Arnold Wesker
Sir Arnold Wesker is a prolific British dramatist known for his contributions to kitchen sink drama. He is the author of 42 plays, 4 volumes of short stories, 2 volumes of essays, a book on journalism, a children's book, extensive journalism, poetry and other assorted writings...
and Nell Dunn
Nell Dunn
-Early years:Dunn was born in London and educated at a convent, which she left at the age of fourteen. Although she came from an upper class background, in 1959 she moved to Battersea and made friends in the neighbourhood and worked for a time in a sweets factory...
also brought social concerns to the stage.
Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
laureate William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
's allegorical
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
novel Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results...
1954, discusses how culture created by man fails, and uses as an example a group of British schoolboys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, but with disastrous results.
Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
's works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Notable for an ability to combine serious literary acclaim with broad popularity, his novels include Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory
The Power and the Glory
The Power and the Glory is a novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often added to the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever , amen." This novel has also been published in the US under the name The...
, The Heart of the Matter
The Heart of the Matter
The Heart of the Matter , a novel by the English author Graham Greene, won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. During World War II, Greene worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in Sierra Leone, the setting for his novel...
and The End of the Affair
The End of the Affair
The End of the Affair is a novel by British author Graham Greene, as well as the title of two feature films that were adapted for the screen based on the novel....
.
Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
's dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
1962, displays the prevention of the main character Alex
Alex (A Clockwork Orange)
Alex is a fictional character in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange and the film adaptation, in which he is played by Malcolm McDowell. In this film adaption, Alex's surname is DeLarge, in relation to Alex's reference to himself as "Alexander the Large" in the novel. This, in itself, is an...
's exercise of his free will through the use of a classical conditioning
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a form of conditioning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov...
technique. Burgess creates a new speech in his novel that is the teenage slang of the not-too-distant future.
Comic novelist Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
is best known for his academic satire Lucky Jim
Lucky Jim
Lucky Jim is an academic satire written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction...
1954. Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
's novels dealt with sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious, as displayed in Under the Net
Under the Net
Under the Net was the first novel of Iris Murdoch, published in 1954. Set in London, it is the story of a struggling young writer, Jake Donaghue. Its mixture of the philosophical and the picaresque has made it one of Murdoch's most popular....
1954. Scottish writer Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
pushed the boundaries of realism in her novels. Her first, The Comforters
The Comforters
The Comforters is the first novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark, it drew on her own experiences as a recent convert to Catholicism and a three-month period when she suffered hallucinations whilst taking the appetite suppresent Dexedrine...
(1957) concerns a woman who becomes aware that she is a character in a novel; The Ballad of Peckham Rye
The Ballad of Peckham Rye
The Ballad of Peckham Rye is a novel written in 1960 by the Scottish author Muriel Spark.It tells the story of a devilish Scottish migrant, Dougal Douglas, who moves to Peckham in London and wreaks havoc amongst the lives of the inhabitants...
(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.
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
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
Casino Royale (novel)
Casino Royale is Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel. It paved the way for a further eleven novels by Fleming himself, in addition to two short story collections, followed by many "continuation" Bond novels by other authors....
1953, Live and Let Die
Live and Let Die (novel)
Live and Let Die is the second novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 5 April 1954, where the initial print run of 7,500 copies quickly sold out. As with Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale, Live and Let Die was broadly well received by the critics...
1954, Dr. No 1958, Goldfinger 1959, Thunderball 1961, and nine short story works. In contrast to the larger-than-life spy capers of Bond, John le Carré
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
was an author of spy novels
Spy fiction
Spy fiction, literature concerning the forms of espionage, was a sub-genre derived from the novel during the nineteenth century, which then evolved into a discrete genre before the First World War , when governments established modern intelligence agencies in the early twentieth century...
who depicted a shadowy world of espionage and counter-espionage, and his best known novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , by John le Carré, is a British Cold War spy novel that became famous for its portrayal of Western espionage methods as being morally inconsistent with Western democracy and values. The novel received critical acclaim at the time of its publication and became an...
1963, is often regarded as one of the greatest in the genre. Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
writes thriller novels, including The Day of the Jackal
The Day of the Jackal
The Day of the Jackal is a thriller novel by English writer Frederick Forsyth, about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French terrorist group of the early 1960s, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France....
1971, The Odessa File
The Odessa File
The Odessa File is a thriller by Frederick Forsyth, first published in 1972, about the adventures of a young German reporter attempting to discover the location of a former SS concentration-camp commander....
1972, The Dogs of War 1974 and The Fourth Protocol
The Fourth Protocol
The Fourth Protocol is a novel written by Frederick Forsyth and published in August 1984.-Explanation of the novel's title:The title refers to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which contained four secret protocols. The fourth, of the protocols, was meant to prohibit the non-conventional...
1984. Ken Follet writes spy thrillers, his first success being Eye of the Needle
Eye of the Needle
Eye of the Needle is a spy thriller novel written by British author Ken Follett. It was originally published in 1978 by the Penguin Group titled Storm Island. This novel was Follett's first successful, bestselling effort as a novelist, and it earned him the 1979 Edgar Award for Best Novel from the...
1978, followed by The Key to Rebecca
The Key to Rebecca
The Key to Rebecca is a novel by British author Ken Follett. Published in 1980 by Pan Books , it was a noted bestseller that achieved popularity both in the United Kingdom and worldwide...
1980, as well as historical novels, notably The Pillars of the Earth
The Pillars of the Earth
The Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel by Ken Follett published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. It is set in the middle of the 12th century, primarily during the Anarchy, between the time of the sinking of the White Ship and the...
1989, and its sequel World Without End 2007. Elleston Trevor
Elleston Trevor
Elleston Trevor was the pseudonym, and eventually legal name, of the British novelist Trevor Dudley-Smith , who also wrote as Adam Hall, Simon Rattray, Howard North, Roger Fitzalan, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith and Lesley Stone...
is remembered for his 1964 adventure story The Flight of the Phoenix
The Flight of the Phoenix
The Flight of the Phoenix is a 1964 novel by Elleston Trevor. The plot involves the crash of a transport aircraft in the middle of a desert and the survivors' desperate attempt to save themselves...
, while the thriller novelist Philip Nicholson is best known for Man on Fire.
The "father of Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
" Gerald Gardner
Gerald Gardner
Gerald Brousseau Gardner , who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an influential English Wiccan, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist. He was instrumental in bringing the Neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention in Britain and...
began propagating his own version of witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
in the 1950s. Having claimed to have been initiated into the New Forest coven
New Forest coven
The New Forest coven were a group of Neopagan witches or Wiccans who allegedly met around the area of the New Forest in southern England during the 1930s and 1940s...
in 1939, Gardner published his books Witchcraft Today
Witchcraft Today
In the book Gardner also repeats the claim, which had originated with Matilda Joslyn Gage, that 9 million victims were killed in the European witch-hunts." Current scholarly estimates of the number of people executed for witchcraft during this time period vary between about 40,000 and 100,000.The...
1954 and The Meaning of Witchcraft
The Meaning of Witchcraft
The Meaning of Witchcraft is a non-fiction book written by Gerald Gardner, the, known to many in the modern sense as the "Father of Wicca", based around his experiences with the religion of Wicca and the New Forest Coven...
1959, the foundational texts for the religion of Wicca. Ronald Welch
Ronald Welch
Ronald Welch was the pseudonym of British writer Ronald Oliver Felton TD. He took the name from his wartime regiment. He was for many years Headmaster of Okehampton Grammar School in Devon....
's Carnegie Medal
Carnegie Medal
The Carnegie Medal is a literary award established in 1936 in honour of Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and given annually to an outstanding book for children and young adults. It is awarded by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals...
winning novel Knight Crusader
Knight Crusader
Knight Crusader is a children's historical novel by Ronald Welch, first published in 1954. It is set primarily in the Crusader states of Outremer in the twelfth century and depicts the Battle of Hattin and the Third Crusade...
is set in the 12th century and gives a depiction of the Third Crusade
Third Crusade
The Third Crusade , also known as the Kings' Crusade, was an attempt by European leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin...
, featuring the Christian leader and King of England Richard the Lionheart.
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
, Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...
, Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
and the Northern Irish
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
Catholic Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
, who lived in the Republic of Ireland for much of his later life. In the 1960s and 1970s, Martian poetry
Martian poetry
Martian poetry was a minor movement in British poetry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Poets most closely associated with it are Craig Raine and Christopher Reid. The term Martianism has also been applied more widely to include fiction as well as to poetry. The word martianism is,...
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. This drive to make the familiar strange was carried into fiction by Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
.
The British Poetry Revival
British Poetry Revival
The British Poetry Revival is the general name given to a loose poetry movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival was a modernist-inspired reaction to the Movement's more conservative approach to British poetry.-Beginnings:...
was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces performance
Performance poetry
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution.-History:...
, sound
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
and concrete poetry
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
. Leading poets associated with this movement include J. H. Prynne
J. H. Prynne
Jeremy Halvard Prynne is a British poet closely associated with the British Poetry Revival.Prynne's early influences include Charles Olson and Donald Davie. His first book, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems was published in 1962; Prynne has excluded it from his canon...
, Eric Mottram
Eric Mottram
Eric Mottram was a teacher, critic, editor and poet who was one of the central figures in the British Poetry Revival.-Early life and education:...
, Tom Raworth
Tom Raworth
Tom Raworth is a London-born poet and visual artist who has published over forty books of poetry and prose since 1966. His works has been translated and published in many countries. Raworth is a key figure in the British Poetry Revival. He lives in Brighton, England.-Early life and work:Raworth...
, Denise Riley
Denise Riley
Denise Riley is an English poet and philosopher who began to be published in the 1970s. Her poetry is remarkable for its paradoxical interrogation of selfhood within the lyric mode. Her critical writings on motherhood, women in history, identity, and philosophy of language, are recognised as an...
and Lee Harwood
Lee Harwood
Lee Harwood is a poet associated with the British Poetry Revival.-Life:Travers Rafe Lee Harwood was born in Leicester to maths teacher Wilfred Travers Lee-Harwood and Grace Ladkin Harwood, who were then living in Chertsey, Surrey...
. The Mersey Beat poets
Liverpool poets
The Liverpool Poets are a number of influential 1960s poets from Liverpool, England, influenced by 1950s Beat poetry. They were involved in the 1960s Liverpool scene that gave rise to The Beatles, during a time when the city was termed by US beat poet Allen Ginsberg "the centre of the consciousness...
were Adrian Henri
Adrian Henri
Adrian Henri was a British poet and painter best remembered as the founder of poetry-rock group The Liverpool Scene and as one of three poets in the best-selling anthology The Mersey Sound, along with Brian Patten and Roger McGough. The trio of Liverpool poets came to prominence in that city's...
, Brian Patten
Brian Patten
-Background:Born near Liverpool's docks, he attended Sefton Park School in the Smithdown Road area of Liverpool, where he was noted for his essays and greatly encouraged in his work by Harry Sutcliffe his form teacher. He left school at fifteen and began work for The Bootle Times writing a column...
and Roger McGough
Roger McGough
Roger Joseph McGough CBE is a well-known English performance poet. He presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please and records voice-overs for commercials, as well as performing his own poetry regularly...
. 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.
In crime fiction, the murder mysteries of Ruth Rendell
Ruth Rendell
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....
and P. D. James
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL , commonly known as P. D. James, is an English crime writer and Conservative life peer in the House of Lords, most famous for a series of detective novels starring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh.-Life and career:James...
are popular. Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
's twelve-volume cycle of novels A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim...
, is a comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century.
War novels include Alistair MacLean
Alistair MacLean
Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers or adventure stories, the best known of which are perhaps The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare, all three having been made into successful films...
thriller's The Guns of Navarone
The Guns of Navarone (novel)
The Guns of Navarone is a 1957 novel about World War II by Scottish thriller writer Alistair MacLean that was made into a critically acclaimed film in 1961...
1957, Where Eagles Dare
Where Eagles Dare
Where Eagles Dare is a 1968 World War II action-adventure spy film starring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood and Mary Ure. It was directed by Brian G. Hutton and shot on location in Upper Austria and Bavaria....
1968, and Jack Higgins
Jack Higgins
Jack Higgins is the principal pseudonym of UK novelist Harry Patterson. Patterson is the author of more than 60 novels. As Higgins, most have been thrillers of various types and, since his breakthrough novel The Eagle Has Landed in 1975, nearly all have been bestsellers...
' The Eagle Has Landed
The Eagle Has Landed
The Eagle Has Landed is a book by Jack Higgins set during World War II. It first published in 1975. It was made into a film of the same name in 1976 starring Michael Caine...
1975. Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen...
's nautical
Sea story
-Description:The enclosed setting of life aboard a ship allows an author to portray a social world in miniature, with characters cut off from the outside world and forced to interact in cramped and stressful conditions....
historical novels feature the Aubrey–Maturin series
Aubrey–Maturin series
The Aubrey–Maturin series is a sequence of nautical historical novels—20 completed and one unfinished—by Patrick O'Brian, set during the Napoleonic Wars and centering on the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, who is also a physician,...
set in the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
, the first being Master and Commander
Master and Commander
Master and Commander is a historical naval novel by Patrick O'Brian. First published in 1969 , it is first in the Aubrey-Maturin series of stories of Captain Jack Aubrey and the naval surgeon Stephen Maturin. Closely based on the historical feats of Lord Cochrane, O'Brian's novel is set in the...
1969.
John Wyndham
John Wyndham
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer who usually used the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes...
wrote post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
science fiction, his most notable works being The Day of the Triffids
The Day of the Triffids
The Day of the Triffids is a post-apocalyptic novel published in 1951 by the English science fiction author John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, under the pen-name John Wyndham. Although Wyndham had already published other novels using other pen-name combinations drawn from his lengthy real...
1951, and The Midwich Cuckoos
The Midwich Cuckoos
The Midwich Cuckoos is a science fiction novel written by English author John Wyndham, published in 1957. It has been filmed twice as Village of the Damned in 1960 and 1995.-Plot summary:...
1957. George Langelaan
George Langelaan
George Langelaan was a British writer and journalist born in Paris, France. He is best known for his 1957 short story "The Fly", which was the basis for the 1958 and 1986 sci-fi film horror classics and a 2008 opera composed by Howard Shore.-Career:During World War II, Langelaan worked as a spy...
's The Fly 1957, is a science fiction short story, while Peter George's Red Alert 1958, is a Cold War thriller. Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...
wrote the Gormenghast series
Gormenghast series
The Gormenghast series comprises three novels by Mervyn Peake, featuring Castle Gormenghast, and Titus Groan, the title character of the first book.-Works in the series:...
, a trilogy based in Gormenghast castle. Michael Moorcock
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
was the prime instigator of the science fiction "New Wave"
New Wave (science fiction)
New Wave is a term applied to science fiction produced in the 1960s and 1970s and characterized by a high degree of experimentation, both in form and in content, a "literary" or artistic sensibility, and a focus on "soft" as opposed to hard science. The term "New Wave" is borrowed from the French...
in 1964. John Fowles
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
' wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant’s Woman , by John Fowles, is a period novel inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika, by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated into English in 1977...
, with its narrator who freely admits the fictive nature of the story he relays, and its famous alternative endings, in 1969.
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, fighter pilot and screenwriter.Born in Wales to Norwegian parents, he served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent, rising to the rank of Wing Commander...
rose to prominence with his children's fantasy novels, often inspired from experiences from his childhood, that are notable for their often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour. Dahl was inspired to write Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of the eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka....
1964, featuring the eccentric candymaker Willy Wonka
Willy Wonka
This article is about the fictional character. For the candy company, see, The Willy Wonka Candy Company.Willy Wonka is a fictional character in the 1964 Roald Dahl novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the film adaptations that followed. The book and the 1971 film adaption both vividly...
, 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
James and the Giant Peach
James and the Giant Peach is a popular children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The original first edition published by Alfred Knopf featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. However, there have been various reillustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael...
1961, Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fantastic Mr Fox is a children's novel written by British author Roald Dahl. It was published in 1970 by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S., with illustrations by Donald Chaffin. The book was later published with new illustrations by Jill Bennett, Tony Ross and Quentin...
1971, The Witches 1983, and Matilda
Matilda (novel)
Matilda is a children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. It was published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape in London, with illustrations by Quentin Blake. The story is about Matilda Wormwood, an extraordinary child with ordinary and rather unpleasant parents, who are contemptuous of their daughter's...
1988.
Nigel Tranter
Nigel Tranter
Nigel Tranter OBE was a Scottish historian and author.-Early life:Nigel Tranter was born in Glasgow and educated at George Heriot's School in Edinburgh. He trained as an accountant and worked in Scottish National Insurance Company, founded by his uncle. In 1933 he married May Jean Campbell Grieve...
wrote historical novels of celebrated Scottish warriors; Robert the Bruce in The Bruce Trilogy, and William Wallace
William Wallace
Sir William Wallace was a Scottish knight and landowner who became one of the main leaders during the Wars of Scottish Independence....
in The Wallace 1975, works noted by academics for their accuracy.
Angela Carter
Angela Carter
Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...
's magical realism novels include, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, published in the United States as The War of Dreams, is a 1972 novel by Angela Carter. This picaresque novel is heavily influenced by surrealism, Romanticism, critical theory, and other branches of Continental philosophy. Its style is an amalgam of...
1972, and Nights at the Circus
Nights at the Circus
Nights at the Circus is a novel by Angela Carter, first published in 1984 and that year's winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The novel focuses on the life and exploits of Fevvers, a woman who is – or so she would have people believe – a Cockney virgin, hatched from an egg...
1984.
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
's 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film...
, is based on his various short stories, particularly The Sentinel
The Sentinel (short story)
"The Sentinel" is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, which was expanded and modified into the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke expressed impatience with the common description of it as "the story on which 2001 is based." He was quoted as saying, it is like comparing "an acorn to...
. His other major novels include Rendezvous with Rama
Rendezvous with Rama
Rendezvous with Rama is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a cylindrical alien starship that enters Earth's solar system...
1972, and The Fountains of Paradise
The Fountains of Paradise
The Fountains of Paradise is a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning 1979 novel by Arthur C. Clarke. Set in the 22nd century, it describes the construction of a space elevator. This "orbital tower" is a giant structure rising from the ground and linking with a satellite in geostationary orbit at the...
1979. Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss
Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
is Clarke's contemporary.
Richard Adams
Richard Adams
Richard Adams was a non-conforming English Presbyterian divine, known as author of sermons and other theological writings.-Life:...
wrote the heroic fantasy
Heroic fantasy
Heroic fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy which chronicles the tales of heroes in imaginary lands. Unlike stories of sword and sorcery, heroic fantasy narratives tend to be intricate in plot, often involving many peoples, nations and lands. Grand battles and the fate of the world are common themes,...
Watership Down
Watership Down
Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, about a small group of rabbits. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language , proverbs, poetry, and mythology...
in 1972. Evoking epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
themes, it recounts the odyssey of a group of rabbits seeking to establish a new home.
Salman Rushdie achieved notability with Midnight's Children
Midnight's Children
Midnight's Children is a 1981 book by Salman Rushdie about India's transition from British colonialism to independence and the partition of India. It is considered an example of postcolonial literature and magical realism...
1981, that was awarded both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...
and Booker prize later that year, and was named Booker of Bookers
The Best of the Booker
The Best of the Booker is a special prize awarded in commemoration of the Booker Prize's 40th anniversary. Eligible books included the 41 winners of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1969...
in 1993. His most controversial novel The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters...
1989, was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. The Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
wrote A Bend in the River
A Bend in the River
A Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A Bend in the River #83 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century...
.
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
School story
The school story is a fiction genre centering on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, at its most popular in the first half of the twentieth century. While examples do exist in other countries, it is most commonly set in English boarding schools and mostly written in girls and boys sub...
from this period include Ronald Searle
Ronald Searle
Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI, is a British artist and cartoonist, best known as the creator of St Trinian's School. He is also the co-author of the Molesworth series....
's St Trinian's
St Trinian's School
St Trinian's is a fictional girls' boarding school, the creation of English cartoonist Ronald Searle, that later became the subject of a popular series of comedy films....
and Jill Murphy
Jill Murphy
Jill Murphy is a London-born English children's author, best known for The Worst Witch series and the Large Family picture books...
's The Worst Witch
The Worst Witch
The Worst Witch is a series of children's novels written and illustrated by Jill Murphy and published by Puffin Books. The first book was published in 1974. They have become some of the most outstandingly successful titles on the Young Puffin paperback list and have sold more than 4 million copies....
.
Ruth Manning-Sanders
Ruth Manning-Sanders
Ruth Manning-Sanders was a prolific British poet and author who was perhaps best known for her series of children's books in which she collected and retold fairy tales from all over the world. All told, she published more than 90 books during her lifetime. The dust jacket for A Book of Giants...
collected and retold fairy tales, and her first work A Book of Giants
A Book of Giants
A Book of Giants is a 1963 anthology of 13 fairy tales from Europe that have been collected and retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders. It is one in a long series of such anthologies by Manning-Sanders...
, contains a number of famous giants
Giant (mythology)
The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology.In various Indo-European mythologies,...
, notably Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk is a folktale said by English historian Francis Palgrave to be an oral legend that arrived in England with the Vikings. The tale is closely associated with the tale of Jack the Giant-killer. It is known under a number of versions...
. Novelist Susan Cooper
Susan Cooper
Susan Mary Cooper is an English author best known for The Dark Is Rising, an award-winning five-volume saga set in and around England and Wales. The books incorporate traditional British mythology, such as Arthurian and other Welsh elements with original material ; these books were adapted into a...
's The Dark Is Rising, is a five-volume fantasy saga set in and around England and Wales. Raymond Briggs
Raymond Briggs
Raymond Redvers Briggs is an English illustrator, cartoonist, graphic novelist, and author who has achieved critical and popular success among adults and children...
children's picture book The Snowman
The Snowman
The Snowman is a children's book by English author Raymond Briggs, published in 1978. In 1982, this book was turned into a 26-minute animated movie by Dianne Jackson for the fledgling Channel 4. It was first shown on Channel 4 late on Christmas Eve in 1982 and was an immediate success. The film was...
1978, is shown every Christmas on British television in cartoon form and on the stage as a musical. The Reverend. W. Awdry and son Christopher
Christopher Awdry
Christopher Awdry is an English author best known for his contributions to The Railway Series of books featuring Thomas the Tank Engine, which was started by his father, the Rev. W. Awdry. He has also produced children's books based on a number of other railways, as well as non-fiction articles...
's The Railway Series
The Railway Series
The Railway Series is a set of story books about a railway system located on the fictional Island of Sodor. There are 42 books in the series, the first being published in 1945. Twenty-six were written by the Rev. W. Awdry, up to 1972. A further 16 were written by his son, Christopher Awdry; 14...
features Thomas the Tank Engine
Thomas the Tank Engine
Thomas the Tank Engine is a fictional steam locomotive in The Railway Series books by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry and his son, Christopher. He became the most popular character in the series, and the accompanying television spin-off series, Thomas and Friends.Thomas is a tank engine, painted blue...
. Margery Sharp
Margery Sharp
Margery Sharp , was an English author. She was a prolific writer in her long career, writing 26 novels for adults, 14 stories for children, 4 plays, 2 mysteries, as well as numerous short stories...
's most famous books are The Rescuers
The Rescuers
The Rescuers is a 1977 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney Productions and first released on June 22, 1977. The 23rd film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film is about the Rescue Aid Society, an international mouse organization headquartered in New York and shadowing...
series, based on a heroic mouse organisation. The third Children's Laureate
Children's Laureate
Children's Laureate is a position awarded in the UK once every two years to a distinguished writer or illustrator of children's books. A biannual bursary of £10,000 is offered...
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo, OBE FKC AKC is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist, best known for his work in children's literature. He was the third Children's Laureate.-Early life:...
published War Horse in 1982. The prolific children's author Dick King-Smith
Dick King-Smith
Ronald Gordon King-Smith OBE, Hon.M.Ed. , better known by his pen name Dick King-Smith, was a prolific English children's author, best known for writing The Sheep-Pig, retitled in the United States as Babe the Gallant Pig, on which the movie Babe was based...
's novels include The Sheep-Pig
The Sheep-Pig
The Sheep-Pig is a novel by British author Dick King-Smith. It was first published in 1983, retitled Babe The Gallant Pig in the U.S., and adapted for the screen as the 1995 film Babe. The book is set in rural England, where Dick King-Smith spent twenty years as a farmer. The book won the Guardian...
1984, and The Water Horse. Diana Wynne Jones
Diana Wynne Jones
Diana Wynne Jones was a British writer, principally of fantasy novels for children and adults, as well as a small amount of non-fiction...
is noted for writing the young adult fantasy novel Howl's Moving Castle
Howl's Moving Castle
Howl's Moving Castle is a young adult fantasy novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones, first published in 1986. It won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and was named an ALA Notable Book for both children and young adults. In 2004 it was adapted as an Academy Award-nominated animated film by Hayao...
1986.
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...
is best known for his Discworld
Discworld
Discworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from, J. R. R....
series of comic fantasy novels, that begins with The Colour of Magic
The Colour of Magic
The Colour of Magic is a 1983 comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the Discworld series. Pratchett has described it as "an attempt to do for the classical fantasy universe what Blazing Saddles did for Westerns."...
1983, and includes Mort
Mort
Mort is a Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett. Published in 1987, it is the fourth Discworld novel and the first to focus on the Death of the Discworld, who only appeared as a side character in the previous novels...
1987, Hogfather
Hogfather
Hogfather is the 20th Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, and a 1997 British Fantasy Award nominee.The Hogfather is also a character in the book, representing something akin to Father Christmas. He grants children's wishes on Hogswatchnight and brings them presents...
1996, and Night Watch 2002. Pratchett's other most notable work is the 1990 novel Good Omens
Good Omens
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a World Fantasy Award nominated novel written in collaboration between the English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman....
.
Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
wrote the five-volume science fiction comedy
Comic science fiction
Comic science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that exploits the genre's conventions for comic effect. Comic science fiction often mocks or satirizes standard SF conventions like alien invasion of Earth, interstellar travel, or futuristic technology....
series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
, and also wrote the humorous fantasy detective novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams, first published in 1987. It is described by "the author" on its cover as a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic".The book was followed by a sequel,...
.
Clive Barker
Clive Barker
Clive Barker is an English author, film director and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories which established him as a leading young horror writer...
horror novels include The Hellbound Heart
The Hellbound Heart
The Hellbound Heart is a horror novella by Clive Barker, first published in November 1986 by Dark Harvest in the third volume of their Night Visions anthology series, and notable for becoming the basis for the 1987 movie Hellraiser and its franchise...
1986, and works in fantasy, Weaveworld
Weaveworld
Weaveworld is a novel by Clive Barker. It was published in 1987 and could be categorized as dark fantasy. It deals with a parallel world, like many of Barker's novels, and contains many horror elements....
1987, Imajica
Imajica
Imajica is a fantasy novel by British author Clive Barker. Barker names it as his favorite of all his writings. The work, 825 pages at its first printing in 1991, chronicles the events surrounding the reconciliation of Earth, called the Fifth Dominion, with the other four Dominions, parallel...
and Abarat
Abarat
Abarat is a fantasy novel written and illustrated by Clive Barker, the first in Barker's The Books of Abarat series. It is aimed primarily at young adults. The eponymous Abarat is a fictional archipelago which is the setting for the majority of the story.The title image contains an ambigram. The...
2002.
J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
's autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun is a 1984 novel by J. G. Ballard which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Like Ballard's earlier short story, "The Dead Time" , it is essentially fiction but draws extensively on Ballard's experiences in World War II...
1984, is based on his boyhood experiences in a Shanghai internment camp.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro OBE or ; born 8 November 1954) is a Japanese–English novelist. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and his family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing...
wrote historical novels in the first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
style. His works include, The Remains of the Day
The Remains of the Day
The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's third published novel. One of the most highly-regarded post-war British novels, the work was awarded the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989...
1989, Never Let Me Go 2005. A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner...
is best known for Possession 1990, with Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks
-Early life:Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 in Donnington, Berkshire to Peter Faulks and Pamela . Edward Faulks, Baron Faulks, is his older brother. He was educated at Elstree School, Reading and went on to Wellington College, Berkshire...
Birdsong
Birdsong (novel)
Birdsong is a 1993 war novel by the English author Sebastian Faulks. Faulks' fourth novel, it tells of a man called Stephen Wraysford at different stages of his life both before and during World War I...
1993, and Louis de Bernières
Louis de Bernières
Louis de Bernières is a British novelist most famous for his fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. In 1993 de Bernières was selected as one of the "20 Best of Young British Novelists", part of a promotion in Granta magazine...
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, released simultaneously as Corelli's Mandolin. in the United States, is a 1994 novel written by Louis de Bernières which takes place on the island of Cephallonia during the Italian and German occupation of World War II. The main characters are Antonio Corelli, an...
1993. Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...
's Trainspotting
Trainspotting (novel)
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It is written in the form of short chapters narrated in the first person by various residents of Leith, Edinburgh, who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are...
1993, gives a brutal depiction of the lives of working class Edinburgh drug users.
Science fiction novelist Iain M. Banks created a fictional anarchist, socialist, and utopian society the Culture
The Culture
The Culture is a fictional interstellar anarchist, socialist, and utopian society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks which features in a number of science fiction novels and works of short fiction by him, collectively called the Culture series....
, and novels that feature in it include Excession
Excession
Excession, first published in 1996, is Scottish writer Iain M. Banks's fourth science fiction novel to feature the Culture. It concerns the response of the Culture and other interstellar societies to an unprecedented alien artifact, the Excession of the title.The book is largely about the response...
1996, and Inversions 1998. Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and for the football memoir Fever Pitch. His work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.-Life and career:Hornby was...
's works include High Fidelity
High Fidelity (novel)
High Fidelity is a 1995 British novel by Nick Hornby. It was adapted into a 2000 film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Cusack. It also served as the basis for a 2006 Broadway musical of the same name.-Plot summary:...
1995, and About a Boy
About a Boy
About a Boy is a 1998 novel by British writer Nick Hornby. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 2002.-Plot summary:The novel is about Will Freeman, a 36-year-old bachelor, and Marcus, an introverted, bullied 12-year-old who lives alone with his suicidal mother, Fiona...
1998, with Nicholas Evans
Nicholas Evans
Nicholas Evans is an English journalist, screenwriter television and film producer and novelist. Evans was born at in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and educated at Bromsgrove School but before studying at Oxford University, he served in Africa with the charity Voluntary Service Overseas...
The Horse Whisperer
The Horse Whisperer
The Horse Whisperer is a 1998 American drama film directed by and starring Robert Redford, based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Nicholas Evans...
1995.
Helen Fielding
Helen Fielding
Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones, a sequence of novels and films that chronicle the life of a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life and love.Her novels Bridget Jones's...
's Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic...
1996, and its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is a 1999 novel by Helen Fielding, a sequel to her popular Bridget Jones's Diary. It chronicles Bridget Jones's adventures after she begins to suspect that her boyfriend, Mark Darcy, is falling for a rich young solicitor who works in the same firm as him, a woman...
1999, chronicle the life of Bridget Jones
Bridget Jones
Bridget Jones is a franchise based on the fictional character with the same name. English writer Helen Fielding started her Bridget Jones's Diary column in The Independent in 1995, chronicling the life of Bridget Jones as a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life...
, a thirtysomething single woman in London. Alex Garland
Alex Garland
Alexander Medawar "Alex" Garland is a British novelist and screenwriter.-Early life:Garland was born in London, England, the son of psychoanalyst Caroline and political cartoonist Nicholas Garland. His maternal grandparents were zoologist Peter Medawar and author Jean Medawar...
's works include The Beach
The Beach (novel)
The Beach is a novel by Alex Garland about backpackers in Thailand. Influenced by such literary works as Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies, it describes the adventures of a young Englishman in search of and on a legendary, idyllic beach untouched by tourism.-Plot summary:In a cheap hostel on...
1996, Giles Foden
Giles Foden
Giles Foden is an English author best known for his award-winning novel The Last King of Scotland .-Biography:Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967. His family moved to Malawi in 1971 where he was raised...
wrote the Last King of Scotland 1998, and Joanne Harris
Joanne Harris
Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris is a British author.Biography=Born to a French mother and an English father in her grandparents' sweet shop, her family life was filled with food and folklore. Her great-grandmother had an odd reputation and enjoyed letting the gullible think she was a witch and healer...
's most notable work is Chocolat
Chocolat
Chocolat is a 1999 novel by Joanne Harris. It tells the story of Vianne Rocher, a young mother, who arrives at a fictional insular French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes with her six-year-old daughter, Anouk...
1999. Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Craig Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter. He has written many children's novels, including The Power of Five, Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series and has written over fifty books. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie's...
's Alex Rider series
Alex Rider
Alex Rider is a series of spy novels by British author Anthony Horowitz about a 14-15 year old spy named Alex Rider. The series is aimed primarily at young adults. Nine novels have been published to date, as well as three graphic novels, three short stories and a supplementary book...
, begins with Stormbreaker
Stormbreaker (novel)
Stormbreaker is the first novel in the Alex Rider series by British author Anthony Horowitz. It was released in the United Kingdom on 4 September 2000 and in the United States on 21 May 2001...
2000.
Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman CBE, FRSL is an English writer from Norwich. He is the best-selling author of several books, most notably his trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials, and his fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ...
is best known for the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman comprising Northern Lights , The Subtle Knife , and The Amber Spyglass...
, that comprises Northern Lights
Northern Lights (novel)
Northern Lights, known as The Golden Compass in North America, is the first novel in English novelist Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy...
1995, The Subtle Knife
The Subtle Knife
The Subtle Knife, the second novel in the book His Dark Materials series, was written by English novelist Philip Pullman and published in 1997. The novel continues the adventures of Lyra Belacqua as she investigates the mysterious Dust phenomenon and searches for her father...
1997, and The Amber Spyglass
The Amber Spyglass
The Amber Spyglass is the third and final novel in the His Dark Materials series, written by English author Philip Pullman, and published in 2000....
2000. It is a coming-of-age story with many epic events. Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
is an esteemed writer of science fiction, fantasy short stories and novels, whose notable works include Stardust
Stardust (novel)
Stardust is the first solo prose novel by Neil Gaiman. It is usually published as a novel with illustrations by Charles Vess. Stardust has a different tone and style from most of Gaiman's prose fiction, being consciously written in the tradition of pre-Tolkien English fantasy, following in the...
1998, Coraline
Coraline
Coraline is a horror/fantasy novella by British author Neil Gaiman, published in 2002 by Bloomsbury and Harper Collins. It was awarded the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers...
2002, The Graveyard Book
The Graveyard Book
The Graveyard Book is a children's fantasy novel by English author Neil Gaiman. The story is about a boy named Nobody Owens, who after his family is murdered is adopted and raised by the occupants of a graveyard...
2009, and The Sandman series. Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
's works include Watchmen
Watchmen
Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colourist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form...
, V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s to about the 1990s. A mysterious masked revolutionary who calls himself "V" works to destroy the totalitarian government,...
set in a dystopian future UK, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, publication of which began in 1999. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a graphic novel from the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm/DC, and a third miniseries...
, and From Hell
From Hell
From Hell is a comic book series by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, originally published from 1991 to 1996, speculating upon the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper. The title is taken from the first words of the "From Hell" letter, which some authorities believe was an authentic...
, speculating on the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
.
Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
's Atonement
Atonement (novel)
Atonement is a 2001 novel by British author Ian McEwan.On a fateful day, a young girl makes a terrible mistake that has life-changing effects for many people...
2001, refers to the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression, and alludes to the main characters' search for atonement in interwar England. His 2005 novel Saturday
Saturday (novel)
Saturday is a novel by Ian McEwan set in Fitzrovia, London, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, during a large demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of chores and pleasures culminating in a family dinner in the...
, follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon.
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is a British novelist. To date she has written three novels. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors...
's Whitbread Book Award
Costa Book Awards
The Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in Great Britain and Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, after which Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship....
winning novel White Teeth
White Teeth
White Teeth is a 2000 novel by the British author Zadie Smith. It focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones, and their families in London...
2000, mixes pathos and humour, focusing on the later lives of two wartime friends in London. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a 2003 novel by British writer Mark Haddon. It won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book...
2003 by Mark Haddon
Mark Haddon
Mark Haddon is an English novelist and poet, best known for his 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.- Life and work :...
, is written in the first-person perspective
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
of a 15-year-old boy with autism living in Wiltshire. The first novel from Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke
Susanna Mary Clarke is a British author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell , a Hugo Award-winning alternate history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time...
is the historical fantasy Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the 2004 first novel by British writer Susanna Clarke. An alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, it is based on the premise that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and...
2004, that investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundary between reason and madness. Notable works of the 2007 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
recipient Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
include, The Grass is Singing
The Grass Is Singing
The Grass Is Singing is the first novel, published in 1950, by British Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing. It takes place in Rhodesia , in southern Africa, during the 1940s and deals with the racial politics between whites and blacks in that country...
, and The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook is a 1962 novel by Doris Lessing. This book, as well as the couple that followed it, enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in The Oxford Companion to English Literature has called Lessing's "inner space fiction", her work that explores mental and societal breakdown...
. Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mary Mantel CBE , née Thompson, is an English novelist, short story writer and critic. Her work, ranging in subject from personal memoir to historical fiction, has been short-listed for major literary awards...
's Booker prize winning novel Wolf Hall
Wolf Hall
Wolf Hall is a multi-award winning historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate. Set in the period from 1500 to 1535, Wolf Hall is a fictionalized biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex in the court of Henry VIII of...
2009, is set in the Tudor
Tudor dynasty
The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor was a European royal house of Welsh origin that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including the Lordship of Ireland, later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1485 until 1603. Its first monarch was Henry Tudor, a descendant through his mother of a legitimised...
court of King Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
.
J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling
Joanne "Jo" Rowling, OBE , better known as J. K. Rowling, is the British author of the Harry Potter fantasy series...
's Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
fantasy series, is a collection of seven fantasy novels that chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard
Magician (fantasy)
A magician, mage, sorcerer, sorceress, wizard, enchanter, enchantress, thaumaturge or a person known under one of many other possible terms is someone who uses or practices magic that derives from supernatural or occult sources...
Harry Potter
Harry Potter (character)
Harry James Potter is the title character and main protagonist of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. The majority of the books' plot covers seven years in the life of the orphan Potter who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard...
, the idea for which Rowling conceived whilst she was on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. The series begins with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first novel in the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling and featuring Harry Potter, a young wizard...
1997, and ends with the seventh and final book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2007.
In the 1950s, the bleak absurdist
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
play Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
, by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
profoundly affected British drama. The Theatre of the Absurd
Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...
influenced playwrights of the later decades of the 20th century, including Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia, and Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
. 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. Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn
Michael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...
is among other playwrights noted for their use of language and ideas.
Formerly an appointment for life, the appointment of the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
The Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, also referred to as the Poet Laureate, is the Poet Laureate appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Prime Minister...
is now made for a fixed term of 10 years, starting with Andrew Motion
Andrew Motion
Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...
in 1999 as successor to Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
. Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...
succeeded Motion in the post in May 2009. A position of national laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
, entitled The Scots Makar, was established in 2004 by the Scottish Parliament
Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Parliament is the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital, Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "Holyrood", is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament...
. The first appointment was made directly by the Parliament in that year when Edwin Morgan received the honour The post of National Poet of Wales was established in May 2005. The post is an annual appointment with the language of the poet alternating between English and Welsh.
Non English language literatures since 1900
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 LewisSaunders Lewis
Saunders Lewis was a Welsh poet, dramatist, historian, literary critic, and political activist. He was a prominent Welsh nationalist and a founder of the Welsh National Party...
and Kate Roberts. Islwyn Ffowc Elis
Islwyn Ffowc Elis
Islwyn Ffowc Elis was one of Wales's most popular Welsh-language writers.Born Islwyn Ffoulkes Ellis in Wrexham, Elis was educated at the University of Wales colleges of Bangor and Aberystwyth. During World War II he was a conscientious objector and he began writing poetry and prose, winning the...
was a popular novelist in Welsh (also a winner of the crown at the 1947 National Eisteddfod), who produced novels in a range of genres new to Welsh literature, such as science fiction in Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd
Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd
Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd is a science fiction novel in the Welsh language written by Islwyn Ffowc Elis and published by Plaid Cymru in 1957....
and Y Blaned Dirion. Contemporary novelists in Welsh include Mihangel Morgan
Mihangel Morgan
Mihangel Morgan is a Welsh author.-Background and career:...
and Fflur Dafydd
Fflur Dafydd
Fflur Dafydd is an award winning novelist, singer-songwriter and musician. Whilst predominantly publishing in Welsh, she also writes in English. She records in Welsh, and her work is regularly played on Radio Cymru.-Early life:...
.
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, A. S. D. Smith's epic poem Trystan hag Isolt reworked the Tristan and Iseult
Tristan and Iseult
The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult...
legend. Peggy Pollard's 1941 play Beunans Alysaryn was modelled on the 16th-century saints' plays.
In the early 20th century in Scotland, a renaissance in the use of Lowland Scots
Scottish Renaissance
The Scottish Renaissance was a mainly literary movement of the early to mid 20th century that can be seen as the Scottish version of modernism. It is sometimes referred to as the Scottish literary renaissance, although its influence went beyond literature into music, visual arts, and politics...
occurred, its most vocal figure being Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
. Other contemporaries were Douglas Young
Douglas Young (classicist)
Professor Douglas Young ; June 5, 1913 – October 23, 1973) was a Scottish poet, scholar, and translator. He was the leader of the Scottish National Party from 1942 to 1945.Young was born in Tayport, Fife...
, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Robert Garioch
Robert Garioch
Robert Garioch Sutherland, , was a Scottish poet and translator. His poetry was written almost exclusively in the Scots language, he was a key member in the literary revival of the language in the mid-20th century...
and Robert McLellan
Robert McLellan
Robert McLellan OBE was a Scottish dramatist and poet, mainly writing in the Scots language.-Early life and education:McLellan was born in 1907 at Linmill, a fruit farm in Kirkfieldbank in the Clyde valley, the home of his maternal grandparents. He was educated at Bearsden Academy in Glasgow...
. The revival produced verse and other literature, including the plays for which Robert McLellan is best known.
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.
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
Feuilleton
Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...
, some being collected in book or booklet form – this being a common genre in the Norman mainland. For example, a collection of Thomas Henry Mahy
Thomas Henry Mahy
Thomas Henry Mahy wrote Dires et Pensées du Courtil Poussin, a regular column in Guernésiais in La Gazette Officielle de Guernesey, from 1916. A collection was published in booklet form in 1922...
's Dires et Pensées du Courtil Poussin, was published in 1922. The imported eisteddfod tradition in the Channel Islands encouraged recitation
Oral literature
Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do...
and performance, a tradition that continues today. The German military occupation of the Channel Islands
Occupation of the Channel Islands
The Channel Islands were occupied by Nazi Germany for much of World War II, from 30 June 1940 until the liberation on 9 May 1945. The Channel Islands are two British Crown dependencies and include the bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey as well as the smaller islands of Alderney and Sark...
1940–1945 encouraged increased use of the vernacular languages among those who remained, 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 has never regained the situation it had enjoyed previously.
Dùn Aluinn
Dùn-Àluinn by Iain MacCormaic was the first full length novel in Scottish Gaelic. It was fist published in weekly serial form in the People's Journal May - September 1910. Iain MacCormaic had also published a novella, Gun d'thug i speis do'n Armunn a few years before...
, 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. Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna
Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna
Donald MacDonald known as Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna was a North Uist stonemason, a combat veteran of the First World War, and a legendary war poet in the Scottish Gaelic language.He is best known for the song An Eala Bhán which he composed during...
was a Scottish Gaelic poet who served in the First World War, and as a war poet
War poet
A War poet is a poet writing in time of and on the subject of war. The term, which is applied especially to those in military service during World War I, was documented as early as 1848 in reference to German revolutionary poet, Georg Herwegh.-Crimean War:...
described the use of poison gas in his poem Òran a' Phuinnsuin ("Song of the Poison"). His poetry is part of oral literature
Oral literature
Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do...
, as he himself never learnt to read and write in his native language. As part of the Scottish Gaelic Renaissance
Scottish Gaelic renaissance
The Scottish Gaelic Renaissance is a continuing movement concerning the revival of the Scottish Gaelic language. Although the Scottish Gaelic language had been facing gradual decline in the number of speakers since the late 19th century, the number of young fluent Gaelic speakers is quickly rising...
, Sorley MacLean
Sorley MacLean
Sorley MacLean was one of the most significant Scottish poets of the 20th century.-Early life:He was born at Osgaig on the island of Raasay on 26 October 1911, where Scottish Gaelic was the first language. He attended the University of Edinburgh and was an avid shinty player playing for the...
's work in Scottish Gaelic in the 1930s gave new value to modern literature in that language. Iain Crichton Smith
Iain Crichton Smith
Iain Crichton Smith was a Scottish man of letters, writing in both English and Scottish Gaelic, and a prolific author in both languages...
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. Contemporary writers in Scottish Gaelic include Aonghas MacNeacail
Aonghas MacNeacail
Aonghas MacNeacail , nickname Aonghas dubh or black Aonghas) is a contemporary writer in the Scottish Gaelic language. Born and brought up in the Isle of Skye, he was registered at birth as Angus Nicolson, but has changed his official name to his native Gaelic...
, and Angus Peter Campbell
Angus Peter Campbell
Angus Peter Campbell is a Scottish award-winning poet, novelist, journalist, broadcaster and actor.-Early life:...
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).
Highly anglicised Lowland Scots is often used in contemporary Scottish fiction, for example, the Edinburgh dialect of Lowland Scots in Trainspotting
Trainspotting (novel)
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It is written in the form of short chapters narrated in the first person by various residents of Leith, Edinburgh, who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are...
by Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...
. But'n'Ben A-Go-Go
But'n'Ben A-Go-Go
But n Ben A-Go-Go is a science fiction work by Scots writer Matthew Fitt, notable for being entirely in the Scots language. The novel was first published in 2000....
is a 2000 cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
novel entirely in Scots by Matthew Fitt
Matthew Fitt
Matthew Fitt is a Lowland Scots/Lallans poet and novelist. He was born in 1968 in Dundee, Scotland. Previously writer-in-residence at Greater Pollok in Glasgow, he is currently National Scots Language Development Officer....
, 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
James Fenton (Ulster-Scots poet)
James Fenton is a linguist and poet who writes in Ulster Scots.He was born in 1931 and grew up in Drumdarragh and in Ballinaloob, County Antrim. His home language of childhood was Ulster Scots...
's poetry, at times lively, contented, whistful, 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. Philip Robinson's (born 1946) writing has been described as verging on "post-modern
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
kailyard". He has produced a trilogy of novels, as well as story books for children, and two volumes of poetry.
There is some production of modern literature in Irish
Modern literature in Irish
Although Irish has been used as a literary language for more than 1500 years , and in a form intelligible to contemporary speakers since at least the sixteenth century, modern literature in Irish owes much to the Gaelic Revival, a cultural movement which began in the late nineteenth century.-Early...
in Northern Ireland.
In contemporary Cornish poetry, Tony Snell
Tony Snell
Tony Snell is a Cornish waterman, teacher, linguist, singer, and poet. Born in 1938, Snell spent many years teaching at St. Edward's School in Oxford. He became a member of Gorseth Kernow in 1954 under the Bardic name of Gwas Kevardhu...
's work is heavily influenced by the early poetry of Wales and Brittany, and it was he who adapted the Welsh traethodl
Traethodl
The traethodl is a Welsh verse form consisting of couplets in which seven-syllabled lines rhyme with alternate accented and unaccented rhyming syllables. It is first attested in medieval Welsh literature. With the addition of cynghanedd, it was elaborated in the 14th century and developed into the...
to Cornish. The bard Pol Hodge is another example of a poet writing in Cornish. 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).
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.
A collection of short stories P'tites Lures Guernésiaises (in Guernésiais with parallel English translation) by various writers was published in 2006.
In March 2006 Brian Stowell
Brian Stowell
Brian Stowell is a Manx radio personality, linguist and author. He is considered one of the primary people behind the revival of the Manx language. While a student he became fluent in the language, and made tape recordings of its elderly speakers. He became fluent in Irish and used his fluency to...
's Dunveryssyn yn Tooder-Folley (The vampire murders) was published – the first full-length novel in Manx.
Original literature continues to be promoted by institutions such as the Eisteddfod or the Mod
Mod (Scotland)
A mod is a festival of Scottish Gaelic song, arts and culture. Historically, the Gaelic word mòd refers to any kind of assembly. There are both local mods, and an annual national mod, the Royal National Mod...
, and by publishing organisations such as Ùr-sgeul
Ùr-sgeul
Ùr-sgeul is an independent publisher of new Scottish Gaelic prose. The name Ùr-sgeul is a Gaelic word which translates variously as: a romance, a novel or a recent tale.-History:Ùr-sgeul was founded in 2003 as a project to promote new Gaelic fiction...
and the Welsh Books Council
Welsh Books Council
The Welsh Books Council or Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru was established in 1961 under the name of Cyngor Llyfrau Cymraeg . Today it is funded by the Welsh Assembly Government. The Council's aims are to promote the interest in Welsh language books and English language books of interest to Wales...
. In Welsh poetry, Alan Llwyd
Alan Llwyd
Alan Llwyd , original name Alan Lloyd Roberts, is a Welsh poet, literary critic and editor, one of the most prolific Welsh-language poets in the last quarter of the 20th century....
came to prominence when he achieved the rare feat of winning both the Crown
Crowning of the Bard
The Crowning of the Bard is one of the most important events in an eisteddfod. The most famous such ceremony takes place at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, and is always on the Tuesday afternoon of Eisteddfod week....
and the Chair
Chairing of the Bard
The Chairing of the Bard is one of the most important events in the Welsh eisteddfod tradition. The most famous chairing ceremony takes place at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, and is always on the Friday afternoon of Eisteddfod week....
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
Hedd Wyn (film)
Hedd Wyn is a 1992 Welsh anti-war biopic, written by Alan Llwyd and directed by Paul Turner.Based on the life of Ellis Humphrey Evans , killed in the First World War, the cinematography starkly contrasts the lyrical beauty of the poet's native Meirionnydd with the bombed-out horrors of Passchendaele...
(1992) about the life of poet Hedd Wyn
Hedd Wyn
Hedd Wyn was a Welsh language poet who was killed during the Battle of Passchendaele in World War I. He was posthumously awarded the bard's chair at the 1917 National Eisteddfod...
, who was killed in World War I.
Translations are an important feature of the literatures of the regional language
Regional language
A regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area....
s of the islands, for example: Alice in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
has been translated into Manx as Contoyryssyn Ealish ayns Cheer ny Yindyssyn by Brian Stowell (published in 1990) and into Cornish as Alys in Pow an Anethow by Nicholas Williams
Nicholas Williams
Nicholas Jonathan Anselm Williams , writing as Nicholas Williams or sometimes N.J.A...
(published in 2009), and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer...
was translated into Jèrriais, from the English version by Edward FitzGerald
Edward FitzGerald (poet)
Edward FitzGerald was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The spelling of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen...
, during the German Occupation by Frank Le Maistre, and into Scots by Rab Wilson (published in 2004). Alexander Hutchison has translated the poetry of Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
into Scots, and in the 1980s Liz Lochhead
Liz Lochhead
Liz Lochhead is a Scottish poet and dramatist, originally from Newarthill in North Lanarkshire.-Background:After attending Glasgow School of Art, Lochhead lectured in fine art for eight years before becoming a professional writer....
produced a Scots translation of Tartuffe
Tartuffe
Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays.-History:Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664...
by Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
.
Literary prizes
Recipients of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureNobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
from the isles include Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
(1907), W. B. Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
(1925), John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
(1932), T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
(1948), Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
(1950), Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
(1953), Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
(1969), William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
(1983), Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
(1995), V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
(2001), Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
(2005) and Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
(2007).
Literary prizes for which writers from the United Kingdom are eligible include:
- Man Booker PrizeMan Booker PrizeThe Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
- Commonwealth Writers' PrizeCommonwealth Writers' PrizeCommonwealth Writers is an initiative by the Commonwealth Foundation to unearth, develop and promote the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. It's flagship are two literary awards and a website...
- International IMPAC Dublin Literary AwardInternational IMPAC Dublin Literary AwardThe International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award for a work of fiction, jointly sponsored by the city of Dublin, Ireland and the company IMPAC. At €100,000 it is one of the richest literary prizes in the world...
- Carnegie Medal in Literature
- Costa Book AwardsCosta Book AwardsThe Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in Great Britain and Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, after which Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship....
(formerly the Whitbread Awards) - Orange Prize for FictionOrange Prize for FictionThe Orange Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year...
- Queen's Gold Medal for PoetryQueen's Gold Medal for PoetryThe Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry is awarded for a book of verse published by someone in any of the Commonwealth realms. Originally the award was open only to British subjects living in the United Kingdom, but in 1985 the scope was extended to include people from the rest of the Commonwealth realms...
See also
- Big ReadBig ReadThe Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time...
(BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
2003 poll) - British LibraryBritish LibraryThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
- British poetryBritish poetryBritish poetry is a term rarely used, as almost all poets of the British world are clearly identified with one of the various nations within those areas....
- Bardic poetryBardic poetryBardic Poetry refers to the writings of poets trained in the Bardic Schools of Ireland and the Gaelic parts of Scotland, as they existed down to about the middle of the 17th century, or, in Scotland, the early 18th century. Most of the texts preserved are in Middle Irish or in early Modern Irish,...
- Bardic poetry
- Celtic literatureCeltic literatureIn the strictly academic context of Celtic studies, the term Celtic literature is used by Celticists to denote any number of bodies of literature written in a Celtic language, encompassing the Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Breton languages in either their modern or earlier...
- Cornish literature
- English literatureEnglish literatureEnglish literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
- Middle English literatureMiddle English literatureThe term Middle English literature refers to the literature written in the form of the English language known as Middle English, from the 12th century until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, became widespread and the printing press regularized the language...
- Early Modern EnglishEarly Modern EnglishEarly Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...
- English poetryEnglish poetryThe history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in Western culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is...
- English dramaEnglish dramaDrama was introduced to England from Europe by the Romans, and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose. By the medieval period, the mummers' plays had developed, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George...
- English novelEnglish novelThe English novel is an important part of English literature.-Early novels in English:A number of works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English. See the article First novel in English.-Romantic novel:...
- List of English novelists
- Middle English literature
- Gaelic literatureGaelic literatureGaelic literature is literature in the vernacular Gaelic languages of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man.Gaelic literature is recognised as one of the oldest literature traditions of Europe, excepting only Latin literature and Greek literature: literature has been written in Gaelic languages...
- Irish literatureIrish literatureFor a comparatively small island, Ireland has made a disproportionately large contribution to world literature. Irish literature encompasses the Irish and English languages.-The beginning of writing in Irish:...
- Irish fictionIrish fictionAlthough the epics of Celtic Ireland were written in prose and not verse, most people would probably consider that Irish fiction proper begins in the 18th century. However, there are aspects of Early Irish prose that appear to have had some influence on the Irish novel: the use of exaggeration for...
- Irish poetryIrish poetryThe history of Irish poetry includes the poetries of two languages, one in Irish and the other in English. The complex interplay between these two traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English, has produced a body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult to...
- List of Irish writers
- Irish fiction
- Jèrriais literatureJèrriais literatureJèrriais literature is literature in Jèrriais, the Norman dialect of Jersey in the Channel Islands.The literary tradition in Jersey is traced back to Wace, the 12th century Jersey-born poet, although there is little surviving literature in Jèrriais dating to before the introduction of the first...
- Languages in the United KingdomLanguages in the United KingdomThe de facto official language of the United Kingdom is English, which is spoken as the primary language of 95% of the UK population. Welsh is the second most spoken language in the United Kingdom.-Living:...
- List of literary movements
- Manx literatureManx literatureManx literature is literature in the Manx language.The earliest datable text in Manx , a poetic history of the Isle of Man from the introduction of Christianity, dates to the 16th century at the latest....
- Scottish literatureScottish literatureScottish literature is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers. It includes literature written in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Brythonic, French, Latin and any other language in which a piece of literature was ever written within the boundaries of modern Scotland.The earliest...
- History of the Scots languageHistory of the Scots languageThe history of the Scots language refers to how Anglic varieties spoken in parts of Scotland developed into modern Scots.-Origins:Speakers of Northumbrian Old English settled in south eastern Scotland in the 7th century, at which time Celtic Brythonic was spoken in the south of Scotland to a little...
- List of Scottish writers
- Scottish Gaelic literatureScottish Gaelic literatureScottish Gaelic literature refers to literature composed in the Scottish Gaelic language, a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages, along with Irish and Manx.-Before 1200:...
- History of the Scots language
- Literature of ShetlandLiterature of ShetlandShetland literature reflects the history of Shetland: five hundred years of Norse rule, followed by five hundred years of Scottish and British - this, in very simple terms, is the political reality of the last millennium...
- Welsh-language literature
- List of Welsh language poets
- Welsh literature in English
- Welsh poetryWelsh poetryWelsh poetry may refer to poetry in the Welsh language, Anglo-Welsh poetry, or other poetry written in Wales or by Welsh poets.-History:Wales has one of the earliest literary traditions in Northern Europe, stretching back to the days of Aneirin Welsh poetry may refer to poetry in the Welsh...
- Traditional Welsh poetic metres
- Women's writing in EnglishWomen's writing in EnglishWomen's writing as a discrete area of literary studies is based on the notion that the experience of women, historically, has been shaped by their gender, and so women writers by definition are a group worthy of separate study...