MACMILLAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE General Edz"tor: A. NORMAN JEFFARES MACMILlAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE General Editor. A NormanJeffares Published OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE Michael Alexander ENGLISH GOTHIC LITERATURE Derek Brewer SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Murray Roston SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Bruce King EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Maximillian Novak NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Margaret Stonyk TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Harry Blamires ANGLO-IRISH LITERATURE A. NormanJeffares THE LITERATURE OF SCOTLAND RoryWatson THE LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES Marshall Walker A HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE Kenneth Goodwin A HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM Harry Blamires A HISTORY OF CANADIAN LITERATURE W.H.New Furthcoming A HISTORY OF LITERATURE IN THE IRISH LANGUAGE Declan Kiberd MACMILLAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE TWENTIETH CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Harry Blamires palgrave macmillan © Henry Blamires 1982, 1986 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First edition 1982 Second edition 1986 Published by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills. Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-42810-8 ISBN 978-1-349-18511-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18511-5 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 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Contents Editor's Preface Xl Introductory note 1 1 The new century 3 1900-1914 I Introduction 3 II Edwardian poetry 8 III The Edwardian novel 16 IV Drama and controversy 24 V The Irish movement 32 VI Various prose writers 36 2 Hors de combat 40 The 1910s and 1920s at home I Introduction 40 II Society under judgment 42 III Decadents and others 48 IV Ireland, the North, and Wales 54 V Georgian poetry 57 3 The first world war 66 I Introduction 66 II The war poets 68 III Other soldier poets 76 IV Novelists and chroniclers 84 4 The modern movement 88 I Introduction 88 II W. B. Yeats 90 III Ford Madox Ford and Ezra Pound 93 IV T. S. Eliot 97 V James Joyce 103 VI D. H. Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis 108 Vl lWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE 5 The post-war scene 114 The 1920s and 1930s I Introduction 114 II Sophistication and satire 117 III Moral and social concern 127 IV Popular writers 135 V Three Scottish poets 140 6 Today the struggle 143 The 1930s and 1940s I Introduction 143 II Poets of the thirties 145 III Romantics and visionaries 153 IV Dominant novelists 156 V Miscellaneous fiction 163 VI Irish writers and others 168 7 After firing 175 The 1940s and 1950s I Introduction 175 II Servicemen poets 177 III Scottish and Irish poets 181 IV Other poets and verse dramatists 185 V The realistic novel 190 VI Morality and fantasy 200 VII History and criticism 207 8 Post-modern reassessment 210 The 1950s and 1960s I Introduction 210 II The New Drama 211 III Protest fiction 219 IV The post-war novel 223 V English and Welsh poets 236 VI Scottish and Irish poets 248 9 Recent voices 253 The 1960s to the 1980s I Introduction 253 II The theatre 255 III The novel 263 IV Poetry 279 CONTENTS V11 Further reading 295 Bibliographies 298 Chronological Table 299 Index 318 List of plates 1. Coronation of King George V, 1911: the Procession 2. Coronation of King George V, 1911: Peers leaving Westminster Abbey 3. Henry J ames and Joseph Conrad, by Max Beerbohm 4. Arnold Bennett, by 'Low' 5. W. H. Hudson's 'Rima', by Jacob Epstein 6. Men leaving Calne, Wiltshire, for the Forces, 1914 7. The First World War: the Western Front 8. Dorothy Brett, Lytton Strachey, Ottoline Morrell, and Bertrand Russell 9. J. Middleton Murry, Frieda Lawrence, and D. H. Lawrence in 1914 10. Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and John Quinn in 1923 11. T. S. Eliot;by Patrick Heron 12. Unemployed hunger marchers in Trafalgar Square, 1932 13. The Second World War: Tube Shelter Scene, by Henry Moore 14. DavidJ ones: Dedicatory Inscription in The Anathemata (1952) 15. The Dancers, by Mervyn Peake 16. Dylan Thomas: Prologue to Collected Poems (1952) 17. Scene from television production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot 18. Benjamin Britten conducting his opera, Owen Wingrave, for television Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is due to publishers who have given permission for the use of quotations from copyright poems: to Duckworth (Gerald) & Co Ltd for 'Lord Heygate' from Cautionary Verses (1940) by Hilaire Belloc, to Cassell & Co Ltd for 'The Cool Web' from Collected Poems (1965) by Robert Graves, to John Murray Ltd for 'Devonshire Street WI' from Collected Poems (1970) by John Betjeman, to the Oxford University Press for 'Butterflies in the Desert' from Stones of Emptiness (1967) by Anthony Thwaite, and for 'A Given Grace' from Selected Poems 1951-:-74 (1978) by Charles Tomlinson. The author and publishers wish to acknowledge the following illustration sources and to state that they have tried to trace all copyright holders. In cases where they may have failed they will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. BBC TV Stills Library 17, 18; British Library/David Higham Associates 16; Courtauld Institute of Art/Conway Library 5; Professor Ellmann/Harriet Shaw-Weaver 10; Grey Walls PressfThe Late Mervyn Peake 15; Illustrated London News 12; Imperial War Museum 7; David Jones/ Faber and Faber 14; London Express News and Feature Services 4; National Portrait Gallery 11; The Tate Gallery 13; Popperfoto 1, 2; Texas University at Austin/Humanities Research Centre 3; Mrs Julian Vinogradoff - from Ottoline by Sandra Jobson Darroch: Chatto and Windus 8; Wiltshire Historical Society 6