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.
Chroniclers 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.
For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a large contribution to world literature 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.[1]
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 antagonists: 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.
Chronicles 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 Mercian 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.[2]
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.[2]
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.[3]
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.[3]
The Prophecy of Merlin is a 12th-century poem written in Latin hexameters by John of Cornwall, which he claimed was based or revived from a lost manuscript in the Cornish language. Marginal notes on Cornish vocabulary are among the earliest known writings in the Cornish language.[4]
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.[5] 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.[2]
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.
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.[6] 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.[7] Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438) is known for writing The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language, which chronicles, to some extent, her extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites in Europe and Asia.
Dafydd ap Gwilym'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 makars and musicians in the court, based on the model of the Pléiade in France. The courtier and makar Alexander Montgomerie was a leading member. 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.[8]
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 poets 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 poems. 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 sources 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.[9]
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".[10]
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 novels: 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.[11]
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 sermons 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.[12]
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).[13] Robert Burns' 1785 poem Halloween is recited by Scots at Halloween, and Burns was influenced by Mayne's composition.[14][13]
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.[15] 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.[15]
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.[16]
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.[17] Ulster Scots also regularly appeared in Ulster newspaper columns such as those of "Bab M'Keen" from the 1880s.[18] 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,[19] 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.
Major political and social changes at the end of the 18th century, particularly the French Revolution, 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.[20] Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance was influenced and inspired by Shelley's verse, and Gandhi would often quote the poem to vast audiences.[20][21]
At the same time, Jane Austen 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.[22]
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.[23]
From the mid-1820s until the 1840s, fashionable novels 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.[24] 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 genres 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.
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.
Anglo-Welsh literature 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 major lyric poet of the first decades of the 20th century was Thomas Hardy. 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,[27] 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 poets 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".[28] 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".[29]
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.[30] 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 plays, 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 plays 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.[31] 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.[32]
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.
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.[33] Carol Ann Duffy succeeded Motion in the post in May 2009.[34] 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[35][36] The post of National Poet of Wales (Welsh: Bardd Cenedlaethol Cymru) was established in May 2005.[37] The post is an annual appointment with the language of the poet alternating between English and Welsh.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, Welsh literature began to reflect the way the Welsh language was increasingly becoming a political symbol. Two important literary nationalists were Saunders Lewis 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.[38]
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.[39]
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.[40] 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.[17] 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.[18] Philip Robinson's (born 1946) writing has been described as verging on "post-modern kailyard".[18] He has produced a trilogy of novels, as well as story books for children, and two volumes of poetry.[41]
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).[42]
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.[43]
A collection of short stories P'tites Lures Guernésiaises (in Guernésiais with parallel English translation) by various writers was published in 2006.[44]
In March 2006 Brian Stowell's Dunveryssyn yn Tooder-Folley (The vampire murders) was published – the first full-length novel in Manx.[45]
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 languages of the islands, for example: Alice in Wonderland has been translated into Manx as Contoyryssyn Ealish ayns Cheer ny Yindyssyn by Brian Stowell (published in 1990) 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,[46] 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.
Recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature 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:
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