1. The Birth of Modern Literature
The Dominance of the Novel

2. Pre-War Years In Britain : Queen Victoria’s reign ended (1901)
A period of sweeping social reform
Emergence of new political parties- The Labour Party, emergence of Trade Unions
The spread of education, an outcome of the Education Acts of 1870 and 1902.

3. Literacy became normal- increased demand for books.
Literature as a profession and as a business offered better prospects.
Enormous output of books- but sacrificed art for business.
Rise of national conscience to the evils of the Industrial Revolution- literature of social purpose- literature began to be used as a vehicle for social propaganda.

4. The Dominance of the Novel
For the first time in history the novel became the dominant literary form.
The form of the novel was better suited for sociological studies- this attracted many great artists.
More palatable and not as sophisticated as poetry.
More accessible to the masses than drama.

5. Major Writers of the Period:
The novel underwent revolutionary changes, in the hands of some great masters.
Major Writers of the Period:
Thomas Hardy
Henry James
Joseph Conrad
H.G.Wells
Arnold Bennett
Rudyard Kipling

6. James Conrad abandoned the direct biographical method of narration and opted for oblique (indirect) narrative [Linear narrative] with greater focus on pattern, composition and characterization.
The focus was primarily on studying the inner consciousness.
Hardy attempted to interpret life through a picture of human existence, so as to express his philosophy .

7. Writers like Butler , Galsworthy saw the novel as a means of social propaganda, a vehicle for propagating their ideas on religion, social values and family life.

8. Other developments: Realism and Naturalism
French and Russian Influences
Flaubert, Balzac and Zola- the novel was viewed as an art form, in which structure, pattern, style were of utmost importance.
Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy- the darker sides of human nature

9.  Survival of Romance
Huge demand for the exotic, the unusual , and the remote.
Kipling, Conrad, Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle, R.L.Stevenson.
 The Growth of Regional Fiction
Hardy created Wessex
Arnold Bennett talked about Five Towns

10. The Inter-War Years
The breakdown of established social and spiritual values- well reflected in the literature of the period.
Birth of Modernism
Experimented with narrative techniques- stream of consciousness, ‘character, given more importance than ‘action’
D.H.Lawrence
Virginia Woolf
James Joyce
E.M.Forster
Aldous Huxley

11. Writers who continued the established tradition- Somerset Maugham, J.B.Priestley.
The growth of the American novel is another striking feature.
Writers like Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos.
They wrote realistic fiction – depicted the contemporary scene- the corruption and lack of moral values.

12. The Mid-Twentieth Century
The uncertainty of the War – and post-War years is reflected in the concern of many novelists about the disintegration of society, and their lack of optimism.
Violence and sadism appear as themes.
Many novelists focussed on the psychological problems caused by the War.

13. Three new influences on the Contemporary English Novel:
Popularity of novels from the USA .
Writers like John Steinbeck, J.D.Salinger, John Updike, Truman Capote, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Jack Kerouac, V.S.Naipaul, Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Heller
Translated works of foreign authors like Kafka, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, Gunter Grass, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Jean Genet.

14. Revolution in printing and publishing
New Paperback volumes
Era of best-sellers
The advent of Television
huge demand for TV material lead to the dramatization of novels and stories.
 The best-known novelists of the period
Graham Greene, C.P.Snow, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis, Allan Sillitoe, William Golding, Antony Burgess, Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, Malcolm Lowry, Margaret Drabble et al.