Novel as a concept in English-language literature
Portrait of Samuel Richardson by
Joseph Highmore
.
National Portrait Gallery
,
Westminster
, England.
The
English novel
is an important part of
English literature
. This article mainly concerns novels, written in English, by
novelists
who were born or have spent a significant part of their lives in England, Scotland, Wales, or
Northern Ireland
(or any part of
Ireland
before 1922). However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to novels in other languages or novelists who are not primarily
British
, where appropriate.
Early novels in English
[
edit
]
Historically, the English novel has generally been seen as beginning with
Daniel Defoe
's
Robinson Crusoe
(1719) and
Moll Flanders
(1722),
[1]
though modern scholarship cites
Aphra Behn
's
Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
(1684) John Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's Progress
(1678) and
Aphra Behn
's
Oroonoko
(1688) as more likely contenders, while earlier works such as
Sir Thomas Malory
's
Morte d'Arthur
(1485), and even the "Prologue" to
Geoffrey Chaucer
's
Canterbury Tales
(c. 1400)
have been suggested.
[2]
Another important early novel is
Gulliver's Travels
(1726, amended 1735), by
Irish
writer and clergyman
Jonathan Swift
, which is both a
satire
of human nature, as well as a
parody
of travellers' tales like
Robinson Crusoe
.
[3]
The rise of the novel as an important literary genre is generally associated with the growth of the middle class in England.
Other major 18th-century English novelists are
Samuel Richardson
(1689?1761), author of the
epistolary novels
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
(1740) and
Clarissa
(1747?48);
Henry Fielding
(1707?1754), who wrote
Joseph Andrews
(1742) and
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
(1749);
Laurence Sterne
(1713?1768), who published
Tristram Shandy
in parts between 1759 and 1767;
[4]
Oliver Goldsmith
(1728?1774), author of
The Vicar of Wakefield
(1766);
Tobias Smollett
(1721?1771), a Scottish novelist best known for his comic
picaresque novels
, such as
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
(1751) and
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
(1771), who influenced
Charles Dickens
;
[5]
and
Fanny Burney
(1752?1840), whose novels "were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen," wrote
Evelina
(1778),
Cecilia
(1782) and
Camilla
(1796).
[6]
A noteworthy aspect of both the 18th- and 19th- century novel is the way the novelist directly addressed the reader. For example, the author might interrupt his or her narrative to pass judgment on a character, or pity or praise another, and inform or remind the reader of some other relevant issue.
[
citation needed
]
Romantic period
[
edit
]
Sir Walter Scott
The phrase 'Romantic novel' has several possible meanings. Here it refers to novels written during the
Romantic era
in literary history, which runs from the late 18th century until the beginning of the Victorian era in 1837. But to complicate matters there are novels written in the romance tradition by novelists like
Walter Scott
,
Nathaniel Hawthorne
,
George Meredith
.
[7]
In addition the phrase today is mostly used to refer to the popular
pulp-fiction
genre that focusses on romantic love. The Romantic period is especially associated with the poets
William Blake
,
William Wordsworth
,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
,
George Byron
,
Percy Shelley
and
John Keats
, though two major novelists,
Jane Austen
and
Walter Scott
, also published in the early 19th century.
Horace Walpole
's 1764 novel,
The Castle of Otranto
, invented the
Gothic fiction
genre. The word gothic was originally used in the sense of
medieval
.
[8]
This genre combines "the macabre, fantastic, and supernatural" and usually involves haunted castles, graveyards and various picturesque elements.
[9]
Later 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 described 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 genres.
Mary Shelley
's novel
Frankenstein
(1818), as another important
Gothic novel
as well as being an early example of
science fiction
.
[10]
The
vampire genre
fiction began with
John William Polidori
's
The Vampyre
(1819). This short story was inspired by the life of
Lord Byron
and his poem
The Giaour
. An important later work is
Varney the Vampire
(1845), where many standard vampire conventions originated: Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the neck of his victims, and has hypnotic powers and superhuman strength. Varney was also the first example of the "sympathetic vampire", who loathes his condition but is a slave to it.
[11]
Mary Shelley
Among more minor novelists in this period
Maria Edgeworth
(1768?1849) and
Thomas Love Peacock
(1785?1866) are worthy of comment. Edgeworth's novel
Castle Rackrent
(1800) is "the first fully developed regional novel in English" as well as "the first true
historical novel
in English" and an important influence on Walter Scott.
[12]
Peacock was primarily a satirist in novels such as
Nightmare Abbey
(1818) and
The Misfortunes of Elphin
(1829).
Jane Austen
's (1775?1817) works critique the
novels of sensibility
of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism.
[13]
Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.
[14]
Austen brings to light the hardships women faced, who usually did not inherit money, could not work and where their only chance in life depended on the man they married. She reveals not only the difficulties women faced in her day, but also what was expected of men and of the careers they had to follow. This she does with wit and humour and with endings where all characters, good or bad, receive exactly what they deserve. Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's
A Memoir of Jane Austen
introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become accepted as a major writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the emergence of a
Janeite
fan culture. Austen's works include
Pride and Prejudice
(1813)
Sense and Sensibility
(1811),
Mansfield Park
,
Persuasion
and
Emma
.
The other major novelist at the beginning of the early 19th century was
Sir Walter Scott
(1771?1832), who was not only a highly successful British novelist but "the greatest single influence on fiction in the 19th century ... [and] a European figure".
[15]
Scott established the genre of the
historical novel
with his series of
Waverley Novels
, including
Waverley
(1814),
The Antiquary
(1816), and
The Heart of Midlothian
(1818).
[16]
However, Austen is today widely read and the source for films and television series, while Scott is less often read.
Victorian novel
[
edit
]
It was in the
Victorian era
(1837?1901) that the novel became the leading
literary genre
in English. A number of women novelists were successful in the 19th century, although they often had to use a masculine pseudonym. At the beginning of the 19th century most novels were published in three volumes. However, monthly serialization was revived with the publication of Charles Dickens'
Pickwick Papers
in twenty parts between April 1836 and November 1837. Demand was high for each episode to introduce some new element, whether it was a plot twist or a new character, so as to maintain the readers' interest. Both Dickens and Thackeray frequently published this way.
[17]
In the 1830s and '40s, novelists began to show the influence of social critics on their work, especially
Thomas Carlyle
, who raised the "
Condition-of-England Question
" to describe "the social and political upheavals which followed the
Reform Act of 1832
".
[19]
In response, novelists wrote "
Condition of England novels
", which were in many ways a reaction to rapid
industrialization
, and the social, political and economic issues associated with it, and were a means of commenting on abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic prosperity.
[20]
Stories of the working-class poor were directed toward the middle class to help create sympathy and promote change. An early example is
Charles Dickens
'
Oliver Twist
(1837?38).
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
emerged on the literary scene in the 1830s with the two novels already mentioned. Dickens wrote vividly about London life and struggles of the poor, but in a good-humoured fashion, accessible to readers of all classes. One of his most popular works to this day is
A Christmas Carol
(1843). In more recent years Dickens has been most admired for his later novels, such as
Dombey and Son
(1846?48),
Great Expectations
(1860?61),
Bleak House
(1852?53),
Little Dorrit
(1855?57), and
Our Mutual Friend
(1864?65). An early rival to Dickens was
William Makepeace Thackeray
, who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for
Vanity Fair
(1847). In that novel he satirizes whole swaths of humanity while retaining a light touch. It features his most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp.
The
Bronte
sisters were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they were first published and were subsequently accepted as classics. They had written compulsively from early childhood and were first published, at their own expense, in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The sisters returned to prose, producing a novel each the following year: Charlotte's
Jane Eyre
, Emily's
Wuthering Heights
and Anne's
Agnes Grey
. Later, Anne's
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
(1848) and Charlotte's
Villette
(1853) were published.
Elizabeth Gaskell
was also a successful writer and her first novel,
Mary Barton
, was published anonymously in 1848. Gaskell's
North and South
contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south. Even though her writing conforms to Victorian conventions, Gaskell usually frames her stories as critiques of contemporary attitudes: her early works focused on factory work in the Midlands. She always emphasised the role of women, with complex narratives and dynamic female characters.
[21]
Anthony Trollope
(1815?82) was one of the most successful, prolific, and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works are set in the imaginary county of
Barsetshire
, including
The Warden
(1855) and
Barchester Towers
(1857). He also wrote perceptive novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical matters, including
The Way with Live Now
(1875). Trollope's novels portrayed the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England.
George Eliot
's (Mary Ann Evans) (1819?80) first novel
Adam Bede
was published in 1859. Her works, especially
Middlemarch
1871?72), are important examples of
literary realism
, and are admired for their combination of high
Victorian literary
detail combined with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict.
H. G. Wells studying in London, taken c. 1890
An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels of
Thomas Hardy
(1840?1928). A Victorian realist, in the tradition of
George Eliot
, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by
Romanticism
, especially by
William Wordsworth
.
[22]
Charles Darwin
is another important influence on Thomas Hardy.
[23]
Like Charles Dickens he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898, so that initially he gained fame as the author of such novels as,
Far from the Madding Crowd
(1874),
The Mayor of Casterbridge
(1886),
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
(1891), and
Jude the Obscure
(1895). He ceased writing novels following adverse criticism of this last novel. In novels such as
The Mayor of Casterbridge
and
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hardy attempts to create modern works in the genre of
tragedy
, that are modelled on the Greek drama, especially
Aeschylus
and
Sophocles
, though in prose, not poetry, a novel not drama, and with characters of low social standing, not nobility.
[24]
Another significant late 19th-century novelist is
George Gissing
(1857?1903) who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best known novel is
New Grub Street
(1891).
[
citation needed
]
Important developments occurred in genre fiction in this era. 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
, the influential author of
The Princess and the Goblin
and
Phantastes
(1858).
William Morris
was a popular English poet who also wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Wilkie Collins
'
epistolary novel
The Moonstone
(1868), is generally considered the first
detective novel
in the English language, while
The Woman in White
is regarded as one of the finest
sensation novels
.
H. G. Wells
's (1866?1946) writing career began in the 1890s with
science fiction
novels like
The Time Machine
(1895), and
The War of the Worlds
(1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by
Martians
. Wells is seen, along with Frenchman
Jules Verne
(1828?1905), as inventing the
scientific romance
. He also wrote realistic fiction about the lower middle class in novels such as
Kipps
(1905) and
The History of Mr Polly
(1910).
20th century
[
edit
]
The major novelists writing in Britain at the start of the 20th century were an Irishman
James Joyce
(1882?1941) and two immigrants, American
Henry James
(1843?1916) and Pole
Joseph Conrad
(1857?1924)
[
citation needed
]
. The modernist tradition in the novel, with its emphasis "towards the ever more minute and analytic exposition of mental life", begins with James and Conrad, in novels such as
The Ambassadors
(1903),
The Golden Bowl
(1904) and
Lord Jim
(1900).
[25]
Other important early modernists were
Dorothy Richardson
(1873?1957), whose novel
Pointed Roof
(1915), is one of the earliest example of the
stream of consciousness
technique, and
D. H. Lawrence
(1885?1930), who wrote with understanding about the social life of the lower and middle classes and the personal life of those who could not adapt to the social norms of his time.
Sons and Lovers
(1913), is widely regarded as his earliest masterpiece. There followed
The Rainbow
(1915), though it was immediately seized by the police, and its sequel
Women in Love
published in 1920.
[26]
Lawrence attempted to explore human emotions more deeply than his contemporaries and challenged the boundaries of the acceptable treatment of sexual issues, most notably in
Lady Chatterley's Lover
, which was privately published in Florence in 1928. However, the unexpurgated version of this novel was not published until 1959.
[27]
In 1922 Irishman
James Joyce
's important modernist novel
Ulysses
appeared. Set during one day in
Dublin
in June 1904, the novel has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement."
[28]
In it Joyce creates parallels with
Homer
's
epic poem
the
Odyssey
.
[29]
Another significant modernist in the 1920 was
Virginia Woolf
(1882?1941), who was an influential feminist, member of the
Bloomsbury Group
, and a major stylistic innovator associated with the
stream-of-consciousness
technique. Her novels include
Mrs Dalloway
(1925),
To the Lighthouse
(1927),
Orlando: A Biography
(1928), and
The Waves
(1931). Her essay collection
A Room of One's Own
(1929) contains her famous dictum: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction".
[30]
Virginia Woolf
But while
modernism
was to become an important literary movement in the early decades of the new century, there were also many fine novelists who were not strictly modernists. These include
E. M. Forster
((1879?1970),
John Galsworthy
((1867?1933) (
Nobel Prize
in Literature, 1932), whose novels include
The Forsyte Saga
,
Arnold Bennett
(1867?1931) author of
The Old Wives' Tale
, and
H. G. Wells
(1866?1946), though Forster's work is "frequently regarded as containing both modernist and Victorian elements".
[31]
E. M. Forster
's
A Passage to India
(1924), reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier works, such as
A Room with a View
(1908) and
Howards End
(1910), examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of
Edwardian
society in England. The most popular British writer of the early years of the 20th century was arguably
Rudyard Kipling
(1865?1936), a highly versatile
writer of novels
, short stories and poems and to date the youngest ever recipient of the
Nobel Prize for Literature
(1907).
A significant English writer in the 1930s and 1940s was
George Orwell
(1903?50), who is especially remembered for his satires of totalitarianism,
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949) and
Animal Farm
(1945).
Evelyn Waugh
(1903?66) satirised the "bright young things" of the 1920s and 1930s, notably in
A Handful of Dust
(1934) and
Decline and Fall
(1928), while
Brideshead Revisited
(1945) has a theological basis, setting out to examine the effect of divine grace on its main characters.
[32]
Irishwoman and Bloomsbury Group member
Elizabeth Bowen
is known for her novels about the Irish Protestant gentry, such as
The Death of the Heart
(1938) and London during World War II bombing raids,
The Heat of the Day
(1948).
Aldous Huxley
(1894?1963) published his famous
dystopia
Brave New World
in 1932, the same year as
John Cowper Powys
's (1872?1963)
A Glastonbury Romance
.
Samuel Beckett
(1906?89) published his first major work, the novel
Murphy
in 1938. This same year
Graham Greene
's (1904?91) first major novel
Brighton Rock
was published. Then in 1939
James Joyce
published
Finnegans Wake
. In this work Joyce creates a special language to express the consciousness of a character who is dreaming.
[33]
D. H. Lawrence
, 1906
Graham Greene
was an important novelist whose works span the 1930s to the 1980s. Greene was a convert to Catholicism and his novels 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,
The Heart of the Matter
(1948),
A Burnt-Out Case
(1961), and
The Human Factor
(1978).
Evelyn Waugh
's (1903?1966) career also continued after World War II, and in "1961 he completed his most considerable work, a trilogy about the war entitled
Sword of Honour
.
[34]
In 1947
Malcolm Lowry
published
Under the Volcano
. One of the most influential novels of the immediate post-war period was
William Cooper
's (1910?2002) naturalistic
Scenes from Provincial Life
(1950), which was a conscious rejection of the modernist tradition.
[35]
Other novelists writing in the 1950s and later were:
Anthony Powell
(1905?2000) whose twelve-volume cycle of novels
A Dance to the Music of Time
(1951?75), is a comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural, and military life in the mid-20th century; comic novelist
Kingsley Amis
is best known for his academic satire
Lucky Jim
(1954);
Nobel Prize
laureate
William Golding
's
allegorical
novel
Lord of the Flies
(1954), explores how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British schoolboys marooned on a deserted island. Philosopher
Iris Murdoch
was a prolific
writer of novels
that deal with such things as sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her works include
Under the Net
(1954),
The Black Prince
(1973) and
The Green Knight
(1993). Scottish writer
Muriel Spark
also began publishing in the 1950s. She 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 Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
(1961), jumps forward at the end to reveal the fates that befell its characters.
Anthony Burgess
is especially remembered for his
dystopian novel
A Clockwork Orange
(1962), set in the not-too-distant future, which was made into a
film
by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. In the entirely different genre of
Gothic fantasy
Mervyn Peake
(1911?1968) published his highly successful
Gormenghast trilogy
between 1946 and 1959.
Immigrant authors played a major role in post-war literature.
Doris Lessing
(1919) from
Southern Rhodesia
(now
Zimbabwe
), published her first novel
The Grass is Singing
in 1950, after immigrating to England. She initially wrote about her African experiences. Lessing soon became a dominant presence in the English literary scene, frequently publishing right through the century, and won the Nobel prize for literature in 2007.
Salman Rushdie
(born 1947) is another among a number of post Second World War writers from the former British colonies who permanently settled in Britain. Rushdie achieved fame with
Midnight's Children
1981, which was awarded both the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
and
Booker Prize
, and named
Booker of Bookers
in 1993. His most controversial novel
The Satanic Verses
(1989), was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad.
V. S. Naipaul
(1932?2018), born in
Trinidad
, wrote among other things
A House for Mr. Biswas
(1961) and
A Bend in the River
(1979). Naipaul won the
Nobel Prize in Literature
.
[36]
Also from the
West Indies
George Lamming
(1927?1922) is best remembered for
In the Castle of the Skin
(1953). Another important immigrant writer
Kazuo Ishiguro
(born 1954) was born in
Japan
, but his parents immigrated to Britain when he was six.
[37]
His works include
The Remains of the Day
{1989) and
Never Let Me Go
(2005). Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017.
[38]
Anthony Burgess
Scotland has in the late 20th-century produced several important novelists, including
James Kelman
(born 1946), who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most grim situations.
How Late it Was, How Late
(1994), won the
Booker Prize
that year;
A. L. Kennedy
(born 1965) whose 2007 novel
Day
was named Book of the Year in the
Costa Book Awards
.
[39]
In 2007 she won the
Austrian State Prize for European Literature
;
[40]
Alasdair Gray
(1934?2019) whose
Lanark: A Life in Four Books
(1981) is a
dystopian
fantasy set in his home town
Glasgow
. Another contemporary Scot is
Irvine Welsh
, whose novel
Trainspotting
(1993), gives a brutal depiction of the lives of working class Edinburgh drug users.
[41]
Angela Carter
(1940?1992) was a novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. Writing from the 1960s until the 1980s, her novels include,
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
(1972) and
Nights at the Circus
(1984).
Margaret Drabble
(born 1939) is a novelist, biographer, and critic, who has published from the 1960s until this century. Her older sister,
A. S. Byatt
(born 1936) is best known for
Possession
published in 1990.
Among popular novelists
Daphne Du Maurier
wrote
Rebecca
, a mystery novel, in 1938 and
W. Somerset Maugham
’s (1874?1965)
Of Human Bondage
(1915), a strongly autobiographical novel, is generally agreed to be his masterpiece. In
genre fiction
Agatha Christie
was an important writer of
crime novels
, short stories, and plays, best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. 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
, while
Georgette Heyer
created the
historical romance
genre.
[
citation needed
]
Contemporary novelists
[
edit
]
Martin Amis
(1949 to 2023) was one of the most prominent of contemporary British novelists. His best-known novels are
Money
(1984) and
London Fields
(1989).
Pat Barker
(born 1943) has won many awards for her fiction.
Novelist and screenwriter
Ian McEwan
(born 1948) is another of contemporary Britain's most highly regarded writers. His works include
The Cement Garden
(1978) and
Enduring Love
(1997), which was made into a film. In 1998 McEwan won the
Booker Prize
with
Amsterdam
, while
Atonement
(2001) was made into an
Oscar
-winning film. McEwan was awarded the
Jerusalem Prize
in 2011.
Jeanette Winterson
’s (born 1959) novels explore themes of sexuality and religion, such as
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
(1985) and
Sexing the Cherry
(1989).
Zadie Smith
's (born 1975)
Whitbread Book Award
winning novel
White Teeth
(2000), mixes pathos and humour, focusing on the later lives of two war time friends in London.
Julian Barnes
(born 1946) is another successful living novelist, who won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his book
The Sense of an Ending
, while three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
[
citation needed
]
Monica Ali
came to prominence in 2003 with the acclaimed novel
Brick Lane
. A chronicler of everyday life in multicultural Britain, Ali was hailed by critics and awarded several awards for the novel including the
Man Booker Prize for Fiction
.
[42]
One of the more ambitious novelists to emerge in contemporary English literature is
David Mitchell
whose far-reaching novel
Cloud Atlas
(2004) spans from the 19th century into the future.
[43]
In the early 21st century an outstanding concern with
historical fiction
has been noted.
[44]
Hilary Mantel
(1952-2022) had success with the critically acclaimed historical novel
Wolf Hall
(2009).
[45]
Survey
[
edit
]
In 2003 the
BBC
carried out a UK survey entitled
The Big Read
in order to find the "nation's best-loved novel" of all time, with works by English novelists
Tolkien
,
Austen
,
Pullman
,
Adams
and
Rowling
making up the top five on the list.
[46]
Famous novelists (alphabetical order)
[
edit
]
- Amis, Kingsley
- Amis, Martin
- Austen, Jane
- Barnes, Julian
- Becket, Samuel
- Bowen, Elizabeth
- Bronte, Anne
- Bronte, Charlotte
- Bronte, Emily
- Burney, Fanny
, later Madame D'Arblay
- Butler, Samuel
- Carroll, Lewis
- Collins, Wilkie
- Conan Doyle, Arthur
- Conrad, Joseph
- Defoe, Daniel
- Dickens, Charles
- Disraeli, Benjamin
- Du Maurier, Daphne
- Eliot, George
- Fielding, Henry
- Ford, Ford Madox
- Forster, E. M.
- Forster, Margaret
- Gaskell, Elizabeth
- Gissing, George
- Goldsmith, Oliver
- Greene, Graham
- Hardy, Thomas
- Huxley, Aldous
- Ishiguro, Kazuo
- James, Henry
- Joyce, James
- Kipling, Rudyard
- Lawrence, D. H.
- Lessing, Doris
- Lewis, C. S.
- Lewis, Wyndham
- Lowry, Malcolm
- Meredith, George
- Murdoch, Iris
- Naipaul, V. S.
- Oliphant, Margaret
, traditionally known as Mrs Oliphant
- Orwell, George
- Powell, Anthony
- Powys, John Cowper
- Powys, T. F.
- Pullman, Philip
- Reade, Charles
- Richardson, Dorothy
- Richardson, Samuel
- Rushdie, Salman
- Sackville-West, Vita
- Scott, Walter
- Shelley, Mary
- Smith, Charlotte Turner
- Smollett, Tobias
- Sterne, Laurence
- Stevenson, Robert Louis
- Swift, Jonathan
- Thackeray, William
- Tolkien, J. R. R.
- Trollope, Anthony
- Ward, Mary
, traditionally known as Mrs Humphry Ward
- Waugh, Evelyn
- Wells, H. G.
- Wilde, Oscar
- Winterson, Jeanette
- Woolf, Virginia
- Wyndham, John
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Defoe",
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, ed. Margaret Drabble. (Oxford: Oxforsd University Press,1996), p. 265.
- ^
J. A. Cuddon,
A Dictionary of Literary Terms
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), pp. 433, 434.
- ^
"Gullivers Travels by Dean Swift - AbeBooks"
.
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, p. 947.
- ^
Robert DeMaria (2001),
British Literature 1640?1789: An Anthology
, Blackwell Publishing,
ISBN
0-631-21769-X
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, ed. Margaret Drabble. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1996), p. 151.
- ^
J. A. Cuddon,
A Dictionary of Literary Terms
. (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1984), p. 582.
- ^
J. A. Cuddon,
A Dictionary of Literary Terms
, p. 289.
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, ed. Margaret Drabble. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1996), p. 411.
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, p. 886.
- ^
Skal, David J. (1996).
V is for Vampire
, p. 99. New York: Plume.
ISBN
0-452-27173-8
.
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, p. 310.
- ^
Litz, pp. 3?14; Grundy, "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions",
The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen
, pp. 192?193; Waldron, "Critical Responses, Early",
Jane Austen in Context
, pp. 83, 89?90; Duffy, "Criticism, 1814?1870",
The Jane Austen Companion
, pp. 93?94.
- ^
A. Walton Litz,
Jane Austen: A Study of Her Development
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. p. 142; Oliver MacDonagh,
Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. pp. 66?75; Collins, 160?161.
- ^
J. A. Cuddon, p. 435.
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, p. 890.
- ^
The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature
, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies. (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), pp. 97?8.
- ^
Tillotson, Kathleen (1956).
Novels of the Eighteen-Forties
. London: Oxford University Press. p. 154.
- ^
Bloomsbury Guide
, p. 101.
- ^
"James, Louis(2006)"
- ^
Abrams, M.H., et al. (eds), "Elizabeth Gaskell, 1810?1865".
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors: The Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century
, 7th ed., Vol. B. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
ISBN
0-393-97304-2
. DDC 820.8?dc21. LC PR1109.N6.
- ^
Dennis Taylor, "Hardy and Wordsworth". Victorian Poetry, vol.24, no.4, Winter, 1986.
- ^
Gillian Beer,
Darwin's Plots
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- ^
"Aristotelian Tragedy and the Novels of Thomas Hardy"
- ^
John Carruthers,
Scheherazade: or the Future of the English Novel
(1928), quoted in Randall Stevenson,
Modernist Fiction: An Introduction
. (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1992) pp. 18, 19, 22.
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, p. 562.
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, p. 562.
- ^
Beebe, Maurice (Fall 1972). "Ulysses and the Age of Modernism".
James Joyce Quarterly
(University of Tulsa) 10 (1): p. 176.
- ^
The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature
, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies. (New York: Prentice Hall, 19900, p. 644.
- ^
The Cambridge companion to Virginia Woolf
. By Sue Roe, Susan Sellers. p. 219. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- ^
The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature
, ed. Marion Wynne Davies (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), p. 118.
- ^
Memo dated 18 February 1947 from Evelyn Waugh to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
, reproduced in
Giles Foden
(22 May 2004).
"Waugh versus Hollywood"
.
The Guardian
. p. 34.
- ^
The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature
, p. 644.
- ^
The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature
, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies. (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), p. 1008.
- ^
Bradbury, Malcolm. "Introduction to
Scenes from Provincial Life
. (Macmillan, London, 1969).
- ^
"The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001"
. Nobelprize.org.
- ^
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
, p. 506.
- ^
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2017/summary/
Retrieved 25 May 2024.
- ^
Brown, Mark (23 January 2008).
"Perfect Day for AL Kennedy as she takes Costa book prize"
.
The Guardian
. London
. Retrieved
23 January
2008
.
- ^
"Literatur-Staatspreis an Britin verliehen"
.
ORF Salzburg (Austrian Broadcasting Company)
. 27 July 2008. Archived from
the original
on 26 August 2011
. Retrieved
27 July
2008
.
- ^
Irvine Welsh plans Trainspotting prequel
The Sunday Times
Retrieved 15 March 2011.
- ^
"Monica Ali"
. British Council.
- ^
"The 21st Century's 12 greatest novels"
. BBC Culture. 19 January 2015.
- ^
English literature - The 21st century
Encyclopedia Britannica
- ^
"A Premature Attempt at a 21st Century Canon"
. vulture.com. 17 September 2018.
- ^
BBC - The Big Read - Top 100 Books
Retrieved 2010-27-11