British literature

British literature is literature from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. This article covers British literature in the English language. Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literature is included, and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature. There is also some brief discussion of major figures who wrote in Scots, but the main discussion is in the various Scottish literature articles.

The article

Irish writers have played an important part in the development of literature in England and Scotland, but though the whole of Ireland was politically part of the United Kingdom from January 1801 to December 1922, it can be controversial to describe Irish literature as British. For some this includes works by authors from Northern Ireland.

The United Kingdom publishes more books per capita than any other country in the world.^[1]

British identity

The nature of

Works written in the English language by Welsh writers, especially if their subject matter relates to Wales, has been recognised as a distinctive entity since the 20th century. The need for a separate identity for this kind of writing arose because of the parallel development of modern Welsh-language literature.^[5]

Because Britain was a colonial power the use of English spread through the world; from the 19th century or earlier in the United States, and later in other former colonies, major writers in English began to appear beyond the boundaries of Britain and Ireland; later these included Nobel laureates.^[6][7]

The coming of the Anglo-Saxons: 449–c.1066

The other languages of early Britain

Although the

Various

Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous: 12 are known by name from medieval sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works with any certainty: Cædmon, Bede, Alfred the Great, and Cynewulf. Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known.^[13] Cædmon's only known surviving work is Cædmon's Hymn, which probably dates from the late 7th century.

Chronicles contained a range of historical and literary accounts, and a notable example is the

The linguistic diversity of the islands in the medieval period contributed to a rich variety of artistic production, and made British literature distinctive and innovative.^[16]

Some works were still written in Latin; these include

Interest in King Arthur continued in the 15th century with Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485), a popular and influential compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances. It was among the early books printed in England by Caxton.

In the later medieval period a new form of English now known as Middle English evolved. This is the earliest form which is comprehensible to modern readers and listeners, albeit not easily. Middle English Bible translations, notably Wycliffe's Bible, helped to establish English as a literary language. Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of, or at the instigation of, John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from about 1382 to 1395.^[18]

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late-14th-century Middle English alliterative romance. It is one of the better-known Arthurian stories, of an established type known as the "beheading game". Developing from Welsh, Irish and English tradition Sir Gawain highlights the importance of honour and chivalry. "Preserved in the same manuscript with Sir Gawayne were three other poems, now generally accepted as the work of its author, including the intricate elegiac poem, Pearl."^[19]

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 1400), 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

The multilingual nature of the audience for literature in the 14th century can be illustrated by the example of John Gower (c. 1330 – October 1408). A contemporary of Langland and a personal friend of Chaucer, Gower is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in Anglo-Norman, Latin, and Middle English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes.^[20]

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 (around 1393) is believed to be the first published book written by a woman in the English language.^[21] 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.

Major Scottish writers from the 15th century include Henrysoun, Dunbar, Douglas and Lyndsay. The works of Chaucer had an influence on Scottish writers.

Medieval drama

In the

Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the early formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre.^[23]

There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays from the late medieval period. The most complete is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants. They were performed in the city of York, from the middle of the 14th century until 1569.^[24] Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays in Cornish known as the Ordinalia.^[25]

Having grown out of the religiously based mystery plays, the morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment, which represented a shift towards a more secular base for European theatre.^[26] Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a godly life over one of evil. The plays were most popular in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries.^[27]

The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman) (c. 1509 – 1519), usually referred to simply as

Latin continued in use as a language of learning long after the Reformation had established the vernaculars as liturgical languages for the elites.

Other important figures in Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre include Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – 1632), John Fletcher (1579–1625) and Francis Beaumont (1584–1616). Marlowe's subject matter is different from Shakespeare's as it focuses more on the moral drama of the renaissance man. His play Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), is about a scientist and magician who sells his soul to the Devil. Beaumont and Fletcher are less known, but they may have helped Shakespeare write some of his better dramas, and were popular at the time. Beaumont's comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), satirises the rising middle class and especially the nouveaux riches.

After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist

A popular style of theatre in Jacobean times was the revenge play, which had been popularised earlier by Thomas Kyd (1558–94), and then developed by John Webster (1578–1632) in the 17th century. Webster's famous plays are The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1613). Other revenge tragedies include The Changeling written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.

Poetry

Shakespeare also popularised the

Besides Shakespeare, the major poets of the early 17th century included the

George Chapman (?1559-?1634) was a successful playwright who is remembered chiefly for his translation in 1616 of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into English verse. This was the first complete translation of either poem into the English language, and it had a profound influence on English literature.

Prose

Philosopher

The

Another important group of poets at this time were the Cavalier poets. They were an important group of writers, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–51). (King Charles reigned from 1625 and was executed in 1649). The best known of these poets are Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling. They "were not a formal group, but all were influenced" by Ben Jonson.^[39] Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with notable exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick was not a courtier, but his style marks him as a Cavalier poet. Cavalier works make use of allegory and classical allusions, and they are influenced by Latin authors Horace, Cicero, and Ovid.^[40]

Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660) translation of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel into English has been described as "the greatest Scottish translation since Gavin Douglas's Eneados".^[43]

The Restoration: 1660–1700

Drama

The

The Restoration of the monarchy in Ireland enabled Ogilby to resume his position as Master of the Revels and open the first Theatre Royal in Dublin in 1662 in Smock Alley. In 1662, Katherine Philips went to Dublin, where she completed a translation of Pierre Corneille's Pompée, produced with great success in 1663 in the Smock Alley Theatre, and printed in the same year both in Dublin and London. Although other women had translated or written dramas, her translation of Pompey broke new ground as the first rhymed version of a French tragedy in English and the first English play written by a woman to be performed on the professional stage. Aphra Behn (one of the women writers dubbed "The fair triumvirate of wit") was a prolific dramatist and one of the early English professional female writers. Her greatest dramatic success was The Rover (1677).

Poetry

Behn's depiction of the character Willmore in The Rover and the witty, poetry-reciting rake Dorimant in

.

18th century

The Augustan age: 1701–1750

Main articles: Augustan literature and Augustan prose

The late 17th, early 18th century (1689–1750) in English literature is known as the Augustan Age. Writers at this time "greatly admired their Roman counterparts, imitated their works and frequently drew parallels between" contemporary world and the age of the Roman emperor Augustus (27 AD – BC 14)^[52] (see Augustan literature (ancient Rome) ). Some of the major writers in this period were the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), William Congreve, (1670–1729), Joseph Addison (1672–1719), Richard Steele (1672–1729), Alexander Pope (1688–1744), Henry Fielding (1707–54), Samuel Johnson (1709–84).

1707: Birth of Britain

The Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707 to form a single

Rule Britannia!" is an example of the Scottish championing of this new national and literary identity. With the invention of British literature came the development of the early British novels, in contrast to the English novel of the 18th century which continued to deal with England and English concerns rather than exploring the changed political, social and literary environment.^[53] Tobias Smollett (1721–71) was a Scottish pioneer of the British novel, exploring the prejudices inherent within the new social structure of the country through comic picaresque novels. His The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) is the first major novel written in English to have a Scotsman as hero,^[53] and the multinational voices represented in the narrative confront Anti-Scottish sentiment, being published only two years after the Battle of Culloden. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) brings together characters from the extremes of Britain to question how cultural and linguistic differences can be accommodated within the new British identity, and influenced Charles Dickens.^[54] Richard Cumberland wrote patriotic comedies depicting characters taken from the "outskirts of the empire,".^[55] His most popular play "The West Indian" (1771) was performed in North America and the West Indies

.

Prose, including the novel

Main article: Augustan prose

In prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed by the development of the English essay. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator established the form of the British periodical essay, inventing the pose of the detached observer of human life who can meditate upon the world without advocating any specific changes in it. However, this was also the time when the English novel, first emerging in the Restoration, developed into a major art form. Daniel Defoe turned from journalism and writing criminal lives for the press to writing fictional criminal lives with Roxana and Moll Flanders.

Man Friday

after freeing him from the cannibals

The English novel has generally been seen as beginning with

If Addison and Steele were dominant in one type of prose, then Jonathan Swift author of the satire Gulliver's Travels was in another. In A Modest Proposal and the Drapier Letters, Swift reluctantly defended the Irish people from the predations of colonialism. This position provoked riots and arrests, but Swift, who had no love of Irish Roman Catholics, was outraged by the abuses he saw.^[58]

The English pictorial satirist and editorial cartoonist William Hogarth (1697–1764) 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 satirises contemporary politics and customs.^[59]

Drama

Although documented history of

The age of Augustan drama was brought to an end by the censorship established by the Licensing Act 1737. After 1737, authors with strong political or philosophical points to make would no longer turn to the stage as their first hope of making a living, and novels began to have dramatic structures involving only normal human beings, as the stage was closed off for serious authors. Prior to the Licensing Act 1737, theatre was the first choice for most wits. After it, the novel was^[60]

Poetry

The most outstanding poet of the age is

The second half of the 18th century is sometimes called the "Age of Johnson".

Another novel genre also developed in this period. In 1778, Frances Burney (1752–1840) wrote Evelina, one of the ear;y novels of manners.^[69] Fanny Burney's novels indeed "were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen".^[70]

The

James Macpherson (1736–96) was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation. Claiming to have found poetry written by the ancient bard Ossian, he published translations that acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics. Both Robert Burns (1759–96) and Walter Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced by the Ossian cycle.^[78][79]

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Various dates are given for the Romantic period in British literature, but here the publishing of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is taken as the beginning, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end, even though, for example, William Wordsworth lived until 1850 and William Blake published before 1798. The writers of this period, however, "did not think of themselves as 'Romantics'", and the term was first used by critics of the Victorian period.^[80]

The Romantic period was one of major social change in England, because of the depopulation of the countryside and the rapid development of overcrowded industrial cities, that took place in the period roughly from 1785 to 1830. The movement of so many people in England was the result of two forces: the

The landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so that the Romantics, especially perhaps Wordsworth, are often described as 'nature poets'. However, the longer Romantic 'nature poems' have a wider concern because they are usually meditations on "an emotional problem or personal crisis".[85]

Romantic poetry

The poet, painter, and printmaker

The second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron (1788–1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and John Keats (1795–1821). Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps, the least "romantic" of the three, preferring "the brilliant wit of Pope to what he called the 'wrong poetical system' of his Romantic contemporaries".^[90]

Though John Keats shared Byron and Shelley's radical politics, "his best poetry is not political".

Romanticism and the novel

Major novelists in this period were

Victorian fiction

The novel

It was in the

Charles Dickens (1812–70) emerged on the literary scene in the late 1830s and soon became probably the most famous novelist in the history of British literature. Dickens fiercely satirised various aspects of society, including the workhouse in Oliver Twist, the failures of the legal system in Bleak House. In more recent years, Dickens has been most admired for his later novels, such as Dombey and Son (1846–1848), Bleak House (1852–1853) and Little Dorrit (1855–1857), Great Expectations (1860–1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865).^[105]

An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair (1847).

The

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) was one of the more successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his works are set in the imaginary west country county of Barsetshire, including The Warden (1855) and Barchester Towers (1857). Trollope's novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England.^[109]

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880) was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially Middlemarch 1871–1872), are important examples of literary realism, and they are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict, leading to comparisons with Tolstoy.^[110]

George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for his novels The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) and The Egoist (1879). "His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th century but then seriously declined.^[111]

An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). A Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth.^[112] He gained fame as the author of such novels as, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).

Another significant late 19th-century novelist is

also wrote some short stories.

Genre fiction

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Important developments occurred in genre fiction in this era.

The history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author of The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet who also wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the 19th century. The vampire genre fiction began with John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819). This short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem The Giaour. Irish writer Bram Stoker was the author of seminal horror work Dracula (1897) with the primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula.

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 the Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu.

Children's literature

The leading poets during the Victorian period were

While Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the wife of Robert Browning ,she had established her reputation as a major poet before she met him. Her famous work is the sequence of 44 sonnets "Sonnets from the Portuguese", published in Poems (1850).^[117] Matthew Arnold's reputation as a poet has declined in recent years, and he is best remembered now for his critical works, like Culture and Anarchy (1869) and his 1867 poem "Dover Beach".

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was a poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.^[118]

While

George Meredith (1828–1909) is remembered for his innovative collection of poems Modern Love (1862).^[111]

In the second half of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French

The nonsense verse of Edward Lear, along with the novels and poems of Lewis Carroll, is regarded as a precursor of surrealism.^[121] In 1846, Lear published A Book of Nonsense, a volume of limericks that went through three editions and helped popularise the form.

Writers of comic verse included the dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911), who is best known for his 14 comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the famous include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado.^[122]

Victorian drama

For much of the first half of the 19th century, drama in London and provincial theatres was restricted by a licensing system to the Patent theatre companies, and all other theatres could perform only musical entertainments (although magistrates had powers to license occasional dramatic performances). The passing of the Theatres Act 1843 removed the monopoly on drama held by the Patent theatres.

Irish playwright Dion Boucicault (1820–90) was an extremely popular writer of comedies who achieved success on the London stage with works like London Assurance, (1841), in the middle of the 19th century. However, drama did not achieve importance as a genre in the 19th century until the end of the century, and then the main figures were also Irish-born. In the last decade of the century major playwrights emerged, including George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Arms and the Man (1894), and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Both of these Irish writers lived mainly in England and wrote in English, with the exception of some works in French by Wilde.

20th century

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The year 1922 marked a significant change in the relationship between Great Britain and Ireland, with the setting up of the (predominantly Catholic) Irish Free State in most of Ireland, and the predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom. This separation also leads to questions as to what extent Irish writing prior to 1922 should be treated as a colonial literature. There are also those who question whether the literature of Northern Ireland is Irish or British. Nationalist movements in Britain, especially in Wales and Scotland, also significantly influenced writers in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Modernism and cultural revivals: 1901–1945

Main articles:

Modernist movement

began to influence British literature. While their Victorian predecessors had usually been happy to cater to mainstream middle-class taste, 20th-century writers often felt alienated from it, so responded by writing more intellectually challenging works or by pushing the boundaries of acceptable content.

Edwardian fiction

The short but influential

A.A. Milne also began to write during this time, but his beloved Winnie the Pooh would not be published until 1926.^[124] Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories For Little Children (1902) was a successful followup to his earlier adventures with Mowgli and The Jungle Book

(1894).

Other exemplary novels of the time take on an optimistic but critical tone, including

E.M. Forster's A Room with a View (1908). Here, Forster satirizes the classism and xenophobia of Victorian England, using his own travel experiences to question the "ingrained bias[es]" of the previous century.^[125] The Women's Suffrage Movement was also gaining momentum during this era^[126] and fiction reflected these ideas. More than ever, fictional women were protagonists (not just supporting roles), and they often crossed social and geographical boundaries through marriage or the pursuit of knowledge.^[125]

An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness), others argue that this xenophobic characterization belongs to the fictional narrator (Charles Marlow), and that Conrad seeks to blur the lines between societies, demonstrating the ambiguity and darkness inherent in each.^[127]

First World War

The experiences of the First World War were reflected in the work of

T.E. Lawrence's (Lawrence of Arabia) autobiographical account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire

is important.

Poetry: 1901–1945

Main article: Modernist poetry in English

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), two Victorian poets who published little in the 19th century, have come to be regarded as major poets. While Hardy first established his reputation the late 19th century with novels, he wrote poetry throughout his career. However he did not publish his first collection until 1898, so that he tends to be treated as a 20th-century poet.^[128] Gerard Manley Hopkins's Poems were posthumously published in 1918 by Robert Bridges.

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) was born American, migrating to England in 1914, and he was "arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century."^[129] He produced some of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land" (1922) and Four Quartets (1935–1942).^[130]

The

Georgian poets like Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) and John Masefield (1878–1967, Poet Laureate from 1930) maintained a conservative approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism. Edward Thomas (1878–1917) is sometimes treated as another Georgian poet.^[131]

In the 1930s the

W.H. Auden (1907–73) and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972) and Louis MacNeice (1907–1963). Auden was a major poet who had a similar influence on subsequent poets as W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot had had on earlier generations.^[132]

invasion of Normandy. Alun Lewis (1915–1944), born in South Wales, was a prominent English-language poet of the war^[133]

The Second World War has remained a theme in British literature.

Modernist novel

While

Nobel Prize for Literature (1907).^[134]

H.G. Wells was a highly prolific author who is now best known for his work in the science fiction genre.[135] His notable science fiction works include The War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine, written in the 1890s. Forster's A Passage to India 1924, reflected challenges to imperialism, and his earlier works such as A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910) examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England.

Writing in the 1920s and 1930s

stream-of-consciousness technique. Her novels include Mrs Dalloway 1925, and 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".^[136] Woolf and E. M. Forster were members of the Bloomsbury Group, an enormously influential group of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists.^[137]

Other early modernists were

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930), who wrote with understanding about the social life of the lower and middle classes, and the personal life of those who could not adapt to the social norms of his time. Sons and Lovers 1913, is widely regarded as his earliest masterpiece. There followed The Rainbow in 1915 and its sequel Women in Love in 1920.^[138]

An important development, beginning really in the 1930s and 1940s, was a tradition of working class novels that were actually written by writers who had a

working-class background

.

An essayist and novelist, George Orwell's works are considered important social and political commentaries of the 20th century, dealing with issues such as poverty in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) and in the 1940s, his satires of totalitarianism included Animal Farm (1945). Malcolm Lowry published in the 1930s, and he is best known for Under the Volcano (1947). Evelyn Waugh satirised the "bright young things" of the 1920s and 1930s, notably in A Handful of Dust and Decline and Fall, and his novel Brideshead Revisited has a theological basis, aiming to examine the effect of divine grace on its main characters.^[139] Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) published his famous dystopia Brave New World in 1932, the same year as John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance. In 1938, Graham Greene's (1904–1991) first major novel Brighton Rock was published.

Late modernism: 1946–2000

George Orwell (left) and Aldous Huxley (right).

Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939,

T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Richardson and John Cowper Powys. Furthermore, Northumberland poet Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published little until Briggflatts

in 1965.

Novel

In 1947

Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour

(1952–1961) was published in this period.

magical realism

, and picaresque works.

controversial novel The Satanic Verses

(1989) was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad.

Hanif Kureshi (1954–), a playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, novelist and short story writer. 2017 Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro (1954– ) was born in Japan, but his parents immigrated to Britain when he was age 6,^[142] and he became a British citizen as an adult. Martin Amis (1949–2023) was one of the prominent British novelists of the end of the 20th, beginning of the 21st century. Pat Barker (1943–) has won many awards for her fiction. English novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan

(1948– ) is a highly regarded writer.

Drama

An important cultural movement in the British theatre that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama), art, novels, film, and television plays.^[143] The term angry young men was often applied members of this artistic movement. It used a style of social realism which depicts the domestic lives of the working class to explore social issues and political issues. The drawing room plays of the post war period, typical of dramatists like Sir Terence Rattigan and Sir Noël Coward, were challenged in the 1950s in plays like John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956).

Again in the 1950s, the

Theatre of the Absurd profoundly affected British dramatists, especially Irishman Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. Among those influenced were Harold Pinter (1930–2008), (The Birthday Party, 1958), and Tom Stoppard (1937– ) (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,1966).^[144]

The Theatres Act 1968 abolished the system of censorship of the stage that had existed in Great Britain since 1737. The new freedoms of the London stage were tested by Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain, first staged at the National Theatre during 1980, and subsequently the focus of an unsuccessful private prosecution in 1982.

Other playwrights whose careers began later in the century are

Sir Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular, 1972), Michael Frayn (1933–) playwright and novelist, David Hare (1947– ), David Edgar (1948– ). Dennis Potter

's more distinctive dramatic work was produced for television.

During the 1950s and 1960s, many major British playwrights either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio. Many major British playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio, including

Light Programme. Other notable radio dramatists included Brendan Behanand novelist Angela Carter

.

Among the more famous works created for radio, are Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1954), Samuel Beckett's All That Fall (1957), Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache (1959) and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1954).^[146]

Poetry

While poets T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas were still publishing after 1945, new poets started their careers in the 1950s and 1960s, including Philip Larkin (1922–1885) (The Whitsun Weddings,1964) and Ted Hughes (1930–1998) (The Hawk in the Rain, 1957). Northern Ireland has produced a number of significant poets, the most famous being Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney. However, Heaney regarded himself as Irish and not British. Others poets from Northern Ireland include Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, James Fenton, Michael Longley, and Medbh McGuckian.

In the 1960s and 1970s

J.H. Prynne, Eric Mottram, Tom Raworth, Denise Riley and Lee Harwood. It reacted to the conservative group called "The Movement

".

The Liverpool poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their works were self-conscious attempts at creating an English equivalent to the Beats. Tony Harrison (1937 – ), who explores the medium of language and the tension between native dialect (in his case, that of working-class Leeds) and acquired language,^[148] and Simon Armitage.

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) has been considered to be among the distinguished English poets of his generation,^[149][150] Charles Tomlinson (1927–2015) is another important English poet of an older generation, but "since his first publication in 1951, has built a career that has seen more notice in the international scene than in his native England.^[151]

Scottish literature

Scotland has in the late 20th century produced several important novelists, including

Day was named Book of the Year in the Costa Book Awards.;^[152] Alasdair Gray whose Lanark: A Life in Four Books

(1981) is a dystopian fantasy set in his home town Glasgow.

Highly anglicised Lowland Scots is often used in contemporary Scottish fiction, for example, the Edinburgh dialect of Lowland Scots used in

Ulster Scots.^[154] 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.^[155]

Genre fiction

Main article:

Genre literature

Early 20th century

Among significant writers in this genre in the early 20th century were

The Saint

.

Dame Agatha Christie

The medieval scholar M. R. James wrote highly regarded ghost stories in contemporary settings.

This was called 'the

Dame Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn). Georgette Heyer created the historical romance

genre and alwrote detective fiction.

A major work of science fiction from the early 20th century is

Space Trilogy.^[158]

From the early 1930s to late 1940s, an informal literary discussion group associated with the English faculty at the

C.S. Lewis. Lewis is known for The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy, and Tolkien is known as the author of The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion

.

Later 20th century

Among important writers of genre fiction in the second half of the 20th century are

James Bond 007. Fleming chronicled Bond's adventures in 12 novels, including Casino Royale

(1953).

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 regarded as orominent in the genre.

Frederick Forsyth writes thriller novels, and Ken Follett writes spy thrillers as well as historical novels, notably The Pillars of the Earth (1989).

nautical historical novels feature the Aubrey–Maturin series set in the Royal Navy

.

Richard the Lionheart. Nigel Tranter also wrote historical novels of celebrated Scottish warriors; Robert the Bruce in The Bruce Trilogy

.

The

murder mysteries of both Ruth Rendell and P. D. James

are popular crime fiction.

Science fiction

Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Iain M. Banks who created a fictional anarchist, socialist, and utopian society the Culture. Nobel prize winner Doris Lessing also published a sequence of five science fiction novels the Canopus in Argos

: Archives from 1979 to 1983.

Fantasy

Tolkien's Legendarium

.

20th-century literature for children and young adults

Significant writers of

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 12 books, and Dodie Smith's The Hundred and One Dalmatians featured the villainous Cruella de Vil

.

Roald Dahl is a prominent author of children's fantasy novels, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1964, which are often inspired from experiences from his childhood, with often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour.^[161] Popular school stories from this period include Ronald Searle's St Trinian's.

Viking

world.

21st-century literature

Novel

In the 21st century, an outstanding concern with historical fiction has been noted.^[165] Dame Hilary Mantel (1952–2022)^[166] was a highly successful writer of historical novels, winning the Booker Prize twice for Wolf Hall 2009 and Bring Up the Bodies. One of the more ambitious novelists to emerge in this period is David Mitchell, whose far-reaching novel Cloud Atlas (2004) spans from the 19th century into the future. Influences from earlier literary styles and techniques in English literature is notable by writers such as Ian McEwan in his 2002 novel Atonement.^[165] Zadie Smith was critically acclaimed for her debut novel White Teeth (2000), and for subsequent novels.^[167] Julian Barnes (1946– ) is another prominent writer, and he won the 2011 Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending. Kazuo Ishiguro was noted for works such as the dystopian science fiction-novel Never Let Me Go (2005), and he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature for his novels.^[168]

Theatre

The theatrical landscape has been reconfigured, moving from a single national theatre at the end of the 20th century to four as a result of the devolution of cultural policy.^[169]

Genre fiction

trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed, along with the companion novel Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian, have sold over 100 million copies globally, and set the record in the United Kingdom as the fastest selling paperback of all time.^[170][171] The perceived success and promotion of genre fiction authors from Scotland provoked controversy in 2009 when James Kelman criticised, in a speech at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the attention afforded to "upper middle-class young magicians" and "detective fiction" by the "Anglocentric" Scottish literary establishment.^[172]

Literary institutions

Original literature continues to be promoted by institutions such as the

Welsh Books Council. The Royal Society of Edinburgh includes literature within its sphere of activity. Literature Wales is the Welsh national literature promotion agency and society of writers,^[173] which administers the Wales Book of the Year award. The imported eisteddfod tradition in the Channel Islands encouraged recitation

and performance, a tradition that continues today.

Formed in 1949, the Cheltenham Literature Festival is the longest-running festival of its kind in the world. The Hay Festival in Wales attracts wide interest, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival is the largest festival of its kind in the world.

The

World Book Day

is observed in Britain and the Crown Dependencies on the first Thursday in March annually.

Literary prizes

Main article: List of British literary awards

British recipients of the

V.S. Naipaul (2001), Harold Pinter (2005) Doris Lessing (2007), and Kazuo Ishiguro

(2017).

Literary prizes for which writers from the United Kingdom are eligible include:

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

See also

• British Library
• British regional literature
• Early Modern English
• English poetry
• English drama
• English novel
• List of English novelists
• List of English writers
• Literature of Northern Ireland
• List of writers of Northern Ireland
• Scottish literature
• Scottish poetry
• Theatre of Scotland
• Scottish Renaissance
• History of the Scots language
• List of Scottish writers
• Literature of Shetland
• Theatre of the United Kingdom
• Welsh literature in English
• Welsh poetry
• List of Welsh writers
• Theatre of Wales
• Women's writing in English
• Literature of Birmingham

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Bibliography

Works cited

• ISBN 978-0-15-179260-3
• ISBN 978-0-14-053019-3
  .
• OL 6461529M
  .
• ISBN 978-0-415-35325-0
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Further reading

• Partridge, A. C. Tudor to Augustan English: a Study in Syntax and Style, from Caxton to Johnson, in series, The Language Library. London: A. Deutsch, 1969. 242 p. Without SBN or ISBN
• The Oxford History of English Literature (in 15 vols.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, reprinted 1990-97.

External links

• Works related to British literature at Wikisource