British literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands as well as to literature from England, Wales and Scotland prior to the formation

British literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands as well as to literature from England, Wales and Scotland prior to the formation of the United Kingdom.

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.

The most important literary achievements of the English Renaissance were in drama (see English Renaissance theatre). 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 leading playwrights of the time included Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe.

Major poets of the 17th century included John Donne and other metaphysical poets, and John Milton with religious epic Paradise Lost. Another seminal work of Milton was Areopagitica, among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech, which was written in opposition to licensing and censorship and is regarded as one of the most eloquent defenses of press freedom ever written.

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. Major novelists of the middle and later part of the century included Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Tobias Smollett, who was a great influence on Charles Dickens.[1

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 (especially Gulliver's Travels) and Oliver Goldsmith (especially The Vicar of Wakefield).

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.

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.

Major political and social changes at the end of the eighteenth 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, his verse endures lasting popularity, but perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the immortal children's classic, The Story of the Three Bears, 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, When We Two Parted, 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 Romantic movement John Keats, his letters, which expound on his aesthetic theory of negative capability, are among the most celebrated by any writer. Percy Shelley famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron, was the third major romantic poet of the second generation. Critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language, Shelley is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as Ozymandias, and long visionary poems which included Prometheus Unbound

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, notably with Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park 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 patriot include Rob Roy. He was the highest earning and most popular author up to that time.

Mary Shelley, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein in 1818, Frankenstein's chilling tale also suggests modern organ transplants, tissue regeneration, reminding us of the moral issues raised by today's medicine.

From the mid-1820s to mid-1840s, fashionable novels depicting the lives of the upper class dominated the literature market.

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, Oliver Twist, but in a good-humoured fashion, accessible to readers of all classes. The immortal A Christmas Carol he called his "little Christmas book". Great Expectations is quest for maturity. Dickens early works are masterpieces of comedy such as The Pickwick Papers. Later his works became darker, without losing his genius for caricature.

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 best known works of the era include 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 long search to secure publishers: the satire Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and Anthony Trollope's insightful portrayals of the lives of the landowning and professional classes of Victorian England. The novels of George Eliot, notably Middlemarch, are frequently held in the highest regard for their combination of high Victorian literary detail combined with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow confines they often depict. An alternative to mainstream works, the Penny Dreadful publications were aimed at working class adolescents, where the infamous Sweeney Todd was introduced.

An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside may be seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy and others. Wilkie Collins novel The Moonstone, is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language.

Literature for children was published during the Victorian period, some of which has become globally well-known, such as work of Lewis Carroll with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Anna Sewell wrote the classic animal novel Black Beauty. At the end of the Victorian Era, Beatrix Potter best known for her children’s books, featuring animal characters, notably The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula. Dracula has been attributed to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature.

H. G. Wells, whom alongside Jules Verne is referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction", invented a number of themes now classic in science fiction. The War of the Worlds, describing an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines, equipped with advanced weaponry. It is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. His novel The Time Machine is generally credited with the popularization 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.

Henry Rider Haggard wrote the genesis of the Lost World literary genre King Solomon's Mines. An important forerunner of modernist literature, Joseph Conrad with novella Heart of Darkness, is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon

Leading poetic figures of Victorian era included Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Robert Browning (and his wife, 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.

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 consisted of wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, grew in popularity early 20th century.

Oscar Wilde, 1882

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 recognized 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, ie. literature in the Welsh language.

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885

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 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 author of Peter Pan is one example of this mix of modernity and nostalgia.

[edit] English language literature since 1900

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Scotland of Irish parents, but his Sherlock Holmes stories have typified a fog-filled London for readers worldwide

The major lyric poet of the first decades of the 20th century was Thomas Hardy, who 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, notably The Jungle Book, often based on his experiences in British India. Kipling's inspirational poem "If" is a national favourite. Kenneth Grahame wrote children's classic The Wind in the Willows. Garden at Great Maytham Hall in Kent inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett novel The Secret Garden

From around 1910, the Modernist Movement began to influence English literature. Whereas their Victorian predecessors had usually been happy to cater to mainstream middle-class taste, 20th century writers often felt alienated from it, and responded by writing more intellectually challenging works or by pushing the boundaries of acceptable content.

Major poets of this period in Britain included American-born T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Irishman William Butler 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" autobiographical account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

DH Lawrence, 1906

Important novelists between the two World Wars include Irish writer James Joyce, alongside D. H. Lawrence, C. S. Forester, Virginia Woolf, Enid Blyton, E. M. Forster, P. G. Wodehouse

Joyce's increasingly complex works included Ulysses, an interpretation of the Odyssey set in Dublin, and culminated in the famously obscure Finnegans Wake. 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. He attempted to explore human emotions more deeply than his contemporaries and challenged the boundaries of the acceptable treatment of sexual issues in works such as Lady Chatterley's Lover. Virginia Woolf was an influential feminist, and a major stylistic innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique. Her novels included To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, and The Waves. Robert Graves is most renowned for I Claudius. E.M. Forster works include A Passage to India

Daphne Du Maurier wrote the highly acclaimed Rebecca. Intellectual Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel Brave New World anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. Malcolm Lowry is best known for Under the Volcano. Classics of children's literature consisted of A A Milne collection of books about fictional bear Winnie-the-Pooh, author Mary Norton with tiny people The Borrowers, the T H White Arthurian tale The Sword in the Stone, while Hugh Lofting created the character Doctor Dolittle

Novelists who wrote in a more traditional style, such as John Galsworthy and Arnold Bennett continued to receive great acclaim in the interwar period. At the same time the Georgian poets maintained a more conservative approach to poetry.

George Orwell

One of the most significant English writers of this period was George Orwell. An acclaimed 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 colonialism in Burmese Days. Orwell's works were often semi-autobiographical and in the case of Homage to Catalonia, wholly autobiographical.

Major fantasy novelists C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) and J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings), were leading figures in the English faculty at Oxford University and in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings".

Ian Fleming created the character James Bond, chronicling his adventures in twelve novels and two short story collections such as Casino Royale, Dr. No, and Goldfinger, Notable children's works consisted of Dodie Smith novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians

Agatha Christie was an English crime writer of novels, short stories and plays, best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Her works, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane 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, with some of her most famous works being Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile

Anthony Burgess, dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange 1962

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.

Notable War novels Alistair MacLean classic's Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, and Jack Higgins The Eagle Has Landed

Critically acclaimed British books of the latter 20th century include John Fowles with The French Lieutenant's Woman, Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander, Richard Adams symbolic Watership Down, Giles Foden's Last King of Scotland, Nick Hornby with High Fidelity, Alex Garland's The Beach, Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, and Ken Follet's novel The Pillars of the Earth

Major British novelists of the middle and later 20th century included satirist Evelyn Waugh, William Golding, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess, Henry Green, Anthony Powell, Kingsley Amis, V. S. Naipaul, Frederick Forsyth, Roald Dahl, Arthur C Clarke, JG Ballard, Douglas Adams and Iris Murdoch. On the turn of the 21st century, major writers include Philip Pullman, Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Ian McEwan, Alan Moore, Terry Pratchett and JK Rowling

JK Rowling, 2006

In drama, the drawing room plays of the post war period were challenged in the 1950s by the Angry Young Men, exemplified by as John Osborne's iconic play Look Back in Anger. Also 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 characterized 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.

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