English Literature of the 20th Century
(the 20s-30s)
James Joyce
(1882-1941)
James Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882. His family was middle class and very large. He was educated at a Catholic School, then at a Jesuit college, and finally at University College, Dublin. His school interests were Languages, Poetry, Latin and Philosophy.
James Joyce first published work was a volume of poems called Chamber Music (music played with a small group of instruments) (1907). He wrote in many genres. In 1914 Joice wrote Dub-liners, a collection of fifteen short stories set in Dublin. "It is a chapter of the moral history of my country", Joyce commented. It has become one of the best known books of its time. The short story form, dating back to the middle years of the 19th century, is used by Joyce in this collection of tales to show the lives and experiences of people in Dublin.
Joyce analyses Dublin as a city which cannot change, and whose people are dying. The collection starts with Eveline, a story of adolescence, and finishes with the story The Dead, the title of which signifies the conclusion both of the life and of the book. Each story presents a moment of self realization in the life of one person from Dublin. Joyce took inspiration for his short stories from Anton Chekhov.
The same theme is found in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1914—1915. This is almost an autobiography, although the hero is called Stephen Dedalus.
He wants to become a writer, like Joyce himself, and finally has to leave Ireland to find his true voice as an artist.
He says, near the end of the novel: "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church, and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile and cunning"
Ulysses
In 1922, James Joyce's Ulysses was published. It was published in Paris, and immediately caused great controversy — some people saw it as the most important novel of the country, but for others, including the British authorities, it was obscene, and was banned until 1936.
The novel concerns the experiences of two men during one day, 16th June, 1904, in Dublin, and one of the main characters, is Stephen Dedalus again. Leopold Bloom and Molly Bloom are the other main figures in the novel, which follows the two men through a day, and ends with a stream-of-consciousness monologue by Molly: "What shall I wear shall I wear a white rose those cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 V2d a pound or the other ones with cherries in them of course a nice plant for the middle of the table I love flowers I'd love to have the whole place swimming in roses".
Molly's thoughts and feelings here flow in a stream of consciousness. There is no punctuation as thoughts, memories and reflections move into one another.
Joyce also uses a wide range of references as well as using the styles of many works of literature from The Odyssey of Homer1, on which the structure of Ulysses is based, through Chaucer to the moderns. Joyce wanted to write the novel that was the climax of the traditions of English literature.
And after Ulysses he went further. He wrote Finnegan's Wake, which was finally published in 1939. Joyce took the novel and language to new limits. It is a highly experimental novel and very surprising to read. The main theme is Fall and Resurrection, told about Dublin settings. The novel uses dreams, play on words, in-vented words and jokes to make a unique text.
Virginia Woolf
(1882-1941)
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. She had two brothers, Thoby and Adrian, and one sister, Vanessa. Her mother, Julia, died in 1895, when Virginia was thirteen years old.
Her father, Leslie Stephen ,was a noted intellectual of the day, a philosopher and a critic. He was connected with many of the leading artists and writers of that period. After the death of his wife, he became depressed and suffered a great Virginia Woolf deal.
Virginia's early life was very hard. She witnessed her father's depression and suffered a mental breakdown herself after her mother's death. She was to suffer another breakdown in 1914, when her father died, this time trying to commit suicide.
After the death of their father, Thoby, Adrian, Vanessa and Virginia moved to Bloomsbury, and the two sisters began experimenting, painting and writing. Their house in Bloomsbury became the centre of literary interest among the intellectuals and artists of that time — the Bloomsbury Group.
In 1917 Virginia, now married to Leonard Woolf, started the publishing company that printed, apart from some of Virginia's own work, Thomas Stearns Eliot1, Edward Morgan Forster and Virginia's best friend, Katherine Mansfield2.
Virginia Woolf s first novel was The Voyage Out (1915). It was followed by Night and Day (1919). Then in 1922, she published Jacob's Room. It was set during the first World War, and tells a story very close to the death of the authors’ own brother Thoby. It was the first of her novels to use the impressionistic technique which were to make her famous. She wanted to leave realism, and move into a new kind of expression which would allow a more internal exploration of the described events and emotions. She continued this in her next novels, Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). In The Waves (1931), which is her most experimental novel, Woolf shows six different characters, all at different points in their lives, and explores how they are each affected by the death of someone well known to all of them.
Orlando (1928) is a very literary fantasy which takes its main character from the Elizabethan age to modern times, and through a change of sex, as he/she meets all sorts of literary and historic figures.
She spoke out for women, particularly in A Room of One's Own (1929). She also published a lot of criticism, such as The Common Reader (two series, 1925 and 1932). Her final works The Years (1937) and Between the Acts (1941) continue her experiments, and prove her to be one of the most important and original novelists of the 20th century.
Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941.
Thomas Stearns Eliot
(1888-1965)
Thomas Steams Eliot was born in America, in St Louis, Missouri in 1888. His family had emigrated from England in the 17th century, to Massachusetts, and had played an active part in the spiritual and intellectual life of the growing nation. Thomas Stearns Eliot was educated first in St Louis and then went to Harward. At Harward Eliot developed his interest in poetry, writing, contributing and editing the literary review The Harward Advocate.
In 1910 Eliot left America and went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. In 1914 he went to Oxford, where he wrote his doctoral thesis.
In England, Eliot quickly made a home. His first volume was published in 1917. This was Prufrock and Other Observations. It contains one of Eliot's best-known poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock which was first published in 1915. The poem shows Eliot's way of writing — he uses images, fragments and memorable phrases to build up a broad picture of the character, his anxieties, and his time. The poem is about time, and wasted time and how the different inner parts of the character of Prufrock grow old and see his life become more and more
In 1922 Thomas Stearns Eliot published The Waste Land and, ever since, it has been considered the most important single poem of the century. It takes the ideas of time, and waste, already found in Prufrock and extends them to all societies, all times, and all cultures. It is a poem full of references to other texts, and is one of the most complex.
The subject of the poem is the collapse of spirituality in modern society, and with it, the cultural and spiritual desolation of the world. The poet expresses his desire to reconstruct civilization.
The poem begins with an echo of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer writes of the sweet showers of spring, using April as the month which brings the coming of spring, but Eliot changes that positive idea with the words:
April is the cruelest month.
The poem then goes on to describe London, and the image of all the poem is of wastelands, deserts — the same kind of futility.
The image of the wasteland has come to be one of the most common images of modern times, and Eliot's poem has been discussed and examined by a great many cities.
Eliot believed that post-First World War Europe had become a "waste land" due to the cultural and spiritual desolation.
By 1930, Eliot had entered into a new phase of poetic production. Ash Wednesday, a deeply spiritual poem, was followed by other "religious" works, including Murder in the Cathedral, a verse drama, The Four Quartets, published between 1936— 1942, and the play The Family Reunion (1939).
In 1947 Thomas Stearns Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He continued his revival of verse-drama and poetic plays, writing three more plays, The Cocktail Party (1950), The Confidential Clerk (1954) and The Elder Statesman (1959).
Thomas Stearns Eliot died in London in 1965 at the age of 77. His influence on English literature was enormous, not only from the point of view of his creative work, but also for his critical articles and essays. He is considered by many critics to be the most important poet in English in the 20th century.
Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963)
Aldous Leonard Huxley was born on July 26, 1894, into a family that included some of the most distinguished members of the English intellectual elite.
Aldous' father was the son of Thomas Henry Huxley1, a great biologist. His mother was the sister of Mrs Humphrey Ward2, the novelist; the niece of Matthew Arnold3, the poet; and the grand-daughter of Thomas Arnold4, a famous educator and the real-life headmaster of Rugby School.
Undoubtedly Huxley's heritage and upbringing had an effect on his work. But his own experiences made him stand apart from the class into which he was born. Even as a small child he was considered different, showing an alertness, an intelligence, what his brother called a superiority. He was respected and loved for these abilities.
When Huxley was 16 and a student at the prestigious school Eton, an eye illness made him nearly blind. He recovered enough vision to go on to Oxford University and graduate with honors, but not enough to fight in World War I, an important experience for many of his friends, or to do the scientific work he had dreamed of. Scientific ideas remained with him, however, and he used them in many of his books. He entered the literary world while he was at Oxford. Huxley published his first book, a collection of poems, in 1916. He married Maria Nys, a Belgian, in 1919. The family divided their time between London and Europe, mostly Italy, in the 1920s, and travelled around the world in 1925 and 1926, seeing India and making a first visit to the United States Huxley liked the confidence and vitality he found in American life.
Huxley's Crome Yellow (crome = bright) (1921) was his first success, and Antic Hay (wild dance) (1923) continued this.
In 1928 he published his novel Point Counter Point, which was his best-seller. But Huxley is best remembered for his novel Brave New World (1932), with its vision of a society controlled by scientific progress.
In 1937, the Huxley’s came to the United States; in 1938 they went to Hollywood, where he became a screenwriter. He remained for most of his life in California, and one of his novels caricatures what he saw as the strange life there: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. In it Jo Stoyte tries to achieve immortality through scientific experimentation, even if it means giving up humanity and returning to the completely animal state.
In the 1950s Huxley became famous for his interest in drugs. He was looking for a drug, that would allow an escape from the self and that if taken with caution would be physically and socially harmless. He put his beliefs in such a drug into several books.
Two were nonfiction: Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956).
Another work centering on drugs was Island (1962), a novel that required 20 years of thought and five years of writing.
Huxley produced 47 books in his long career as a writer. Some critics thought that he was a better essayist than novelist because he cared more about his ideas than about plot or characters. But we cannot hide one important fact: the books he wrote are most read and best remembered today are all novels — Crome Yelow, Antic Hay, and Point Counter Point from the 1920s, Brave New World and After Many a Summer Dies a Swan from the 1930s. In 1959 the American Academy of Arts and Letters gave him the Award of Merit for the Novel, a prize given every five years; earlier recipients had been Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann1, and Theodore Driser.
The range of Huxley's interests can be seen from his note that his "preliminary research" for Island included "Greek history, translations from Sanscrit and Chinese of Buddhist texts, scientific papers on pharmacology, psychology and education, together with novels, poems, critical essays, travel books, political commentaries and conversations with all kinds of people, from philosophers to actresses. He used similar, though probably fewer, sources for Brave New World.
This list gives you some perspective on the wide range of ideas that Huxley studied. He also wrote an early essay on ecology that helped inspire today's environmental movement.
Huxley remained nearly blind all his life. He died November 22, 1963.
Agatha Christie
(1890-1976)
Agatha Christie is known all over the world as detective novelist and playwright whose books have been translated into 103 foreign languages.
She is one of the best-selling authors in the world, whose books were sold more than 100 000 000 copies.
Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devonshire. She was educated at home by her mother and took singing lessons in Paris. She began writing detective fiction while working as a nurse during World War I. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920. That was the first appearance of Hercule Poirot, who became one of the most popular private detectives. This little Belgian amazes everyone by his powerful intellect and his brilliant solutions to the most complicated crimes.
He reappeared in about 25 novels and many short stories before returning to Styles, where in Curtain (1075) he died. The elderly Miss Jane Marple, Christie's other principal detective figure, first appeared in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), which is considered Christie's masterpiece. It was followed by some 75 novels that usually made best-seller lists. Her plays include The Mousetrap (1952), which set a world record for the longest continuous run at one theatre (8,862 performances — more than 21 years — at the Ambassadors Theatre, London); and Witness for the Prosecution (1953) which, like many of her works, was adapted into a very successful film (1958).
Agatha Christie's first marriage, to Col.1 Archibald Christie, ended in divorce in 1928. After her marriage in 1930 to the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, she spent several months each year on expeditions in Iraq and Syria.
Agatha Christie's success with millions of readers lies in her entertaining plots, excellent character drawing, a great sense of humour. The reader cannot guess who the criminal is up to the end of the novel. Fortunately, evil is always punished in her novels.
Agatha Christie also wrote romantic, non-detective novels such as Absent in the Spring (1944) under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
(1892-1973)
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in the town of Bloemfontain, South Africa on January 3rd, 1892, to English parents. In 1895 Ronald, his mother, and brother Hilary returned to England. Ronald's memories of Africa were slight but vivid, and influenced his later writing to some extent.
His father died in 1896. In the autumn of 1899 Ronald took the entrance exam for King Edward School, but failed to obtain a place. He retook the exam a year later, and was accepted.
In 1904 his mother died, and Ronald and his brother were left to the care of
Father Francis Morgan a priest. In 1908 Ronald began his first term at Oxford.
In 1915 Ronald graduated from Oxford with a First in English Language and Literature. In 1916 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien married Edith Bratt, and in 1917 his first son John was born. Tolkien worked as an assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary for two years. Ayear after that, his second son Michael was born. In 1921, Tolkien began teaching at the University of Leeds. Three years later, he became Professor of English Language at Leeds.
Also that year, his third son Christopher was born.
In 1925, Tolkien moved to Oxford, where he served as Professor of Anglo-Saxon. In 1929 his fourth child, Priscilla, was born.
Over the past few years, Tolkien had already started to write a great cycle of the myths and legends of Middle-earth, which was to become The Silmarillion. Around 1933, Tolkien first began telling his children of a funny little creature named Bilbo. Tolkien got the idea for The Hobbit from these stories, and in 1936, he completed the book. A year later The Hobbit was published, and proved to be very successful.
In 1945, Tolkien became Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford; a position he held until his retirement in 1959. He completed the sequel to The Hobbit in 1948.
The first two parts were published in 1954, under the titles The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. A year later the third part, The Return of the King was published.
In 1954— 1955 Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, which are set in pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth.
In 1965 The Lord of the Rings was published.
The Lord of the Rings rapidly came to public notice. It had mixed reviews. Tolkien received different honorary degree and С. В. Е. (Commander of (the Order of) the British Empire) from the Queen. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien died on September 2, 1973 at the age of eighty-one.
The flow of publications was only temporarily slowed by Tolkien's death.
Tolkien got into the habit of writing the children annual illustrated letters as if from Santa Claus, and a selection of these was published in 1976 as The Father Christmas Letters.
The long-awaited Silmarillion edited by his son Christopher Tolkien, appeared in 1977.