
20th century in literature
Encyclopedia
See also: 20th century in poetry
, 19th century in literature
, other events of the 20th century
, 21st century in literature
, list of years in literature.
Literature
of the 20th century refers to world literature
produced during the 20th century. The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) 1900 through the 1990s.
In terms of the Euro-American tradition, the main periods are captured in the bipartite division, Modernist literature
and Postmodern literature
, flowering from roughly 1900 to 1940 and 1960 to 1990 respectively, divided, as a rule of thumb, by World War II. The somewhat malleable term of contemporary literature is usually applied with a post-1960 cutoff point.
Although these terms (modern, contemporary and postmodern) are most applicable to Western literary history, the rise of globalization has allowed European literary ideas to spread into non-Western cultures fairly rapidly, so that Asian and African literatures can be included into these divisions with only minor qualifications. And in some ways, such as in Postcolonial literature, writers from non-Western cultures were on the forefront of literary development.
Technological advances during the 20th century allowed cheaper production of books, resulting in a significant rise in production of popular literature and trivial literature, comparable to the development in music. The division of "popular literature" and "high literature" in the 20th century is by no means absolute, and various genres
such as detectives
or science fiction
fluctuate between the two.
For the most part of the century mostly ignored by mainstream literary criticism
, these genres develop their own establishments and critical awards, such as the Nebula Award
(since 1965), the British Fantasy Award
(since 1971) or the Mythopoeic Awards
(since 1971).
Towards the end of the century, electronic literature
develops as a genre due to the development of hypertext
and later the world wide web
.
The Nobel Prize in Literature
is awarded annually throughout the century (with the exception of 1914, 1918, 1935 and 1940–1943), the first laureate (1901) being Sully Prudhomme
. The New York Times Best Seller list
has been published since 1942.
The best-selling works of the 20th century are estimated to be Quotations from Chairman Mao (1966, 900 million copies), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
(1997, 120 million copies), And Then There Were None
(1939, 115 million copies) and The Lord of the Rings
(1954/55, 100 million copies).
The Lord of the Rings was also voted "book of the century" in various surveys.
Perry Rhodan
(1961 to present) boasts as being the best-selling book series, with an estimated total of 1 billion copies sold.
movement of the Belle Époque
persisted into the 20th century, but was brutally cut short with the outbreak of World War I (an effect depicted e.g. in Thomas Mann
's The Magic Mountain
, published 1924). The Dada
movement of 1916-1920 was at least in part a protest against the bourgeois
nationalist
and colonialist
interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war; the movement heralded the Surrealism
movement of the 1920s.
1900
Genre fiction
1901
Genre fiction
by M. P. Shiel
(Montserrat
, England) The First Men in the Moon
by H. G. Wells
(England)
1902
by Joseph Conrad
The Immoralist
by André Gide
(France) The Wings of the Dove
by Henry James
(USA, England) The Grand Babylon Hotel
by Arnold Bennett
(England)
Genre fiction
Plays
by George Bernard Shaw
(Ireland)
1903
by Joseph Conrad
and Ford Madox Ford
The Ambassadors
by Henry James
The Pit
by Frank Norris
(USA) In Wonderland
by Knut Hamsun
(Norway)
Genre fiction
1904
Genre fiction
by H. G. Wells
The Sea Wolf by Jack London
Green Mansions
by William Henry Hudson
(Argentina, England)
Plays
1905
1906
Genre fiction
by Rudyard Kipling
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
by J. M. Barrie
(Scotland) Time and the Gods
by Lord Dunsany (Ireland, England) White Fang
by Jack London
Plays
1907
Genre fiction
(England) - contains The Willows
, one of the first 'cosmic horror' stories The Hill of Dreams
by Arthur Machen
(England)
Plays
Poetry
by Hilaire Belloc
(France, England)
1908
by G. K. Chesterton
A Room with a View
by E. M. Forster
The Iron Heel
by Jack London
Hell
by Henri Barbusse
(France, Russia) The Magician
by Somerset Maugham (England, France) - based on the author's meeting with Aleister Crowley
Genre fiction
Poetry
(USA, England, Italy) - one of the first examples of 'modernist' poetry
1909
by Jack London
Tono-Bungay
by H. G. Wells
Three Lives
by Gertrude Stein
(USA, France)
Poetry
Plays
(Belgium)
1910
The Card
by Arnold Bennett
The History of Mr. Polly
by H. G. Wells
1911
by Max Beerbohm
(England) In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield
(England) - short stories Under Western Eyes
by Joseph Conrad
The White Peacock
by D. H. Lawrence
(England) Jennie Gerhardt
by Theodore Dreiser
(USA)
1912
by Andrei Bely
(Russia) The Trespasser
by D. H. Lawrence
Death In Venice
by Thomas Mann
(Germany)
Genre fiction
Plays
by George Bernard Shaw
1913
(France) Le Grand Meaulnes
by Alain-Fournier
(France) Sons and Lovers
by D. H. Lawrence
Chance
by Joseph Conrad
Genre fiction
Poetry
by Guillaume Apollinaire
(Poland, France) - dada poems Gitanjali
by Rabindranath Tagore
1914
by James Joyce
(Ireland, France, Italy) - short stories The Prussian Officer by D. H. Lawrence
- short stories The Vatican Cellars by André Gide
Tender Buttons
by Gertrude Stein
The Golem by Gustav Meyrink
(Czechoslovakia
) Maurice
by E. M. Forster
- unpublished Sinister Street
by Compton MacKenzie
(Scotland, Greece) The Flying Inn
by G. K. Chesterton
Poetry
1915
Genre fiction
by John Buchan (Scotland, Canada)
1916
by James Joyce
Women In Love
by D. H. Lawrence
- initially banned, published in 1920
Genre fiction
Plays
by George Bernard Shaw
Poetry
1917
Poetry
and Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen
(England) - published posthumously Prufrock and Other Observations by T. S. Eliot
(USA, England)
1918
by Wyndham Lewis
(Canada, England) Man of Straw by Heinrich Mann
(Germany)
Poetry
Non-fiction
by Lytton Strachey
(England)
's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover
was a scandal at the time because of its explicit descriptions of sex.
1919
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
Winesburg, Ohio
by Sherwood Anderson
(USA) - the first 'lost generation' novel Valmouth
by Ronald Firbank
Bazaar-e-Husn
by Premchand (publ. in Hindi as Seva-sadan)
Genre fiction
1920
Plays
by Luigi Pirandello
(Italy) Beyond the Horizon
and Anna Christie
by Eugene O'Neill
- Pulitzer prize winner
1921
Crome Yellow
by Aldous Huxley
England, My England and Other Stories
by D. H. Lawrence
- short stories The Forsyte Saga
by John Galsworthy
(England) - pentology, first volume published in 1906 My Life and Loves
by Frank Harris
(England, USA) - four volumes of quasi-factual sex gossip, the fifth completed by Alex Trocchi
Plays
1922
Poetry
by T. S. Eliot
1923
(Italy) The Good Soldier Švejk
by Jaroslav Hašek
(Czechoslovakia
) The Captive
by Marcel Proust
Kangaroo
by D. H. Lawrence
Antic Hay
by Aldous Huxley
Three Soldiers
by John Dos Passos
(USA) The Great American Novel by William Carlos Williams
The Devil in the Flesh
by Raymond Radiguet
(France) Aelita
by Alexey Tolstoy (Russia)
Plays
Poetry
by Robert Frost
1924
by Thomas Mann
(Germany) In Our Time
by Ernest Hemingway
(USA) - short stories Passage to India by E. M. Forster
Little Mexican
by Aldous Huxley
- short stories The Fox and The Captain's Doll
by D. H. Lawrence
- short stories
Genre fiction
Plays
by Sean O'Casey
The Vortex
by Noel Coward
(England)
1925
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
(Czechoslovakia
) - posthumous, first English translation in 1930 The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- often described as the epitome of the "Jazz Age" in American literature The Green Hat by Michael Arlen
- perhaps the epitome of the jazz age in British literature Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon
(France) Albertine disparue
by Marcel Proust
Manhattan Transfer
by John Dos Passos
In the American Grain by William Carlos Williams
The Desert of Love by François Mauriac
(France) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
by Anita Loos
(USA) Those Barren Leaves
by Aldous Huxley
St Mawr
by D. H. Lawrence
- short stories The Making of Americans
by Gertrude Stein
Heart of a Dog
by Mikhail Bulgakov
(Russia)
Genre fiction
Poetry
by T. S. Eliot
Non-fiction
1926
Genre fiction
(England)
Poetry
Plays
Non-fiction
1927
Plays
by Sean O'Casey
1928
by Alfred Doblin
(Germany) Nadja
by André Breton
(France) Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
(France) Parade's End
by Ford Madox Ford
- war tetralogy, first volume in 1926 Point Counter Point
by Aldous Huxley
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
- banned until 1963 Decline and Fall
by Evelyn Waugh
(England) Amerika by Franz Kafka
- posthumous, first English translation in 1938
Plays
Non-fiction
by Erich Maria Remarque
(Germany) - recounts the horrors of World War I and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front
1929
by Jean Cocteau
(France) A Farewell to Arms
by Ernest Hemingway
Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe
Death of a Hero
by Richard Aldington
(England) The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
(USA) Mario and the Magician
by Thomas Mann
The Escaped Cock
by D. H. Lawrence
The Defence by Vladimir Nabokov
(Russia, France) The Good Companions
by J. B. Priestley
(England)
Non-fiction
Genre fiction
by Dashiel Hammett (USA) - the first hard-boiled American detective novel
1930
by Evelyn Waugh
The Apes of God
by Wyndham Lewis
Brief Candles
by Aldous Huxley
- short stories As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Narcissus and Goldmund
by Hermann Hesse
Angel Pavement
by J. B. Priestley
The Virgin and the Gypsy
and Love Among the Haystacks by D. H. Lawrence
- short stories
Genre fiction
Poetry
(Ireland, France)
Plays
Genre fiction
Non-fiction
1931
Genre fiction
by Dashiel Hammett
Plays
Non-fiction
by Edmund Wilson
(USA) Music at Night
by Aldous Huxley
1932
by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
(France) Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
The Memorial
by Christopher Isherwood
(England) Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
(Russia, France) Light In August
by William Faulkner
Stamboul Train
by Graham Greene
(England) Black Mischief
by Evelyn Waugh
Radetzky March
by Joseph Roth
(Austria) Jew Boy by Simon Blumenfeld
(England)
Poetry
1933
Genre fiction
(England) Murder Must Advertise
by Dorothy L. Sayers
(England)
Non-fiction
1934
Genre fiction
by James M. Cain
(USA) Novel with Cocaine aka Cocain Romance
by M. Ageyev
(Russia)
Poetry
Non-fiction
by George Orwell
Death in the Afternoon
by Ernest Hemingway
1935
Eyeless in Gaza
by Aldous Huxley
Auto da Fe
by Elias Canetti
(Bulgaria
, Germany) A Clergyman's Daughter
by George Orwell
England Made Me
by Graham Greene
A House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
(Ireland) Tortilla Flat
by John Steinbeck
(USA) Studs Lonigan
by James T. Farrell
(USA) - trilogy, first volume published in 1932
Genre fiction
Poetry
(Northern Ireland)
Plays
1936
Genre fiction
by Daphne du Maurier
(England) Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
(USA) A Gun for Sale
by Graham Greene
1937
by Ernest Hemingway
The Years
by Virginia Woolf
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck
Lions and Shadows by Christopher Isherwood
The Black Book
by Lawrence Durrell
(UK, Egypt) Revenge for Love by Wyndham Lewis
White Mule by William Carlos Williams
Wide Boys Never Work by Robert Westerby
(England, USA)
Genre fiction
Non-fiction
by George Orwell
How Green Was My Valley
by Richard Llewellyn
(Wales)
1938
(France) Murphy
by Samuel Beckett
Tropic of Capricorn
by Henry Miller
Man's Hope
by André Malraux
The Death of the Heart
by Elizabeth Bowen
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh
The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov
Genre fiction
Non-fiction
by W. H. Auden
and Christopher Isherwood
Homage to Catalonia
by George Orwell
Enemies of Promise
by Cyril Connolly
(England)
1939
by John Steinbeck
Finnegans Wake
by James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds
by Flan O'Brien (Ireland) Goodbye to Berlin
by Christopher Isherwood
After Many a Summer
by Aldous Huxley
Coming Up for Air
by George Orwell
On the Marble Cliffs
by Ernst Junger
Good Morning Midnight
by Jean Rhys
The Day of the Locust
by Nathaniel West Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth
Lotte in Weimar
by Thomas Mann
The Confidential Agent
by Graham Greene
Mister Johnson
by Joyce Cary
(Ireland) Wind, Sand and Stars
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Pal Joey
by John O'Hara
Genre fiction
Poetry
(N Ireland) The Map of Love by Dylan Thomas
Plays
Genre fiction
(England) Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Plays
Non-fiction
by Edmund Wilson
1941
by Patrick Hamilton Reflections in a Golden Eye
by Carson McCullers
The Third Policeman
by Flan O'Brien
Genre fiction
Non-fiction
1942
Plays
by Jean-Paul Sartre
1943
by Arthur Koestler
The Ministry of Fear
by Graham Greene
The Man Without Qualities
by Robert Musil
(Austria) - trilogy, first volume published 1930
Genre fiction
Poetry
Non-fiction
The Myth of Sisyphus
by Albert Camus
1944
by Joyce Cary
Ficciones
by Jorge Luis Borges
(Argentina
) - short stories The Razor's Edge
by Somerset Maugham Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley
Plays
by Tennessee Williams
(USA)
1945
by George Orwell
Watt
by Samuel Beckett
- published in 1953 Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
Black Boy
by Richard Wright
Lark Rise to Candleford
by Flora Thompson
(England) - trilogy, first volume in 1939
Genre fiction
by Chester Himes
(USA, France) The Space Trilogy
by C. S. Lewis
(N Ireland) - first volume published in 1938
1946
by Alan Paton
(South Africa) The Miracle of the Rose
by Jean Genet
Froth on the Daydream
by Boris Vian
(France) The Member of the Wedding
by Carson McCullers
Poetry
by Dylan Thomas
Plays
by Terence Rattigan
(England)
Non-fiction
Memoirs of Hecate County
by Edmund Wilson
1947
by Albert Camus
Under the Volcano
by Malcolm Lowry
(England, Canada) Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov
The Victim by Saul Bellow
(Canada, USA) The Conformist
by Alberto Moravia
(Italy) The Middle of the Journey by Lionel Trilling
(USA) Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
Of Love and Hunger
by Julian MacLaren-Ross
(England) Funeral Rites by Jean Genet
Snow Country
by Yasunari Kawabata
Plays
by Tennessee Williams
Non-fiction
(Netherlands)
1948
by Norman Mailer
(USA) Confessions of a Mask
by 'Yukio Mishima
' (Japan) The Heart of the Matter
by Graham Greene
The City and the Pillar
by Gore Vidal
(USA) Ape and Essence
by Aldous Huxley
Querelle of Brest
by Jean Genet
Genre fiction
by James Hadley Chase
(England)
Plays
Non-fiction
by Simone de Beauvoir
(France — early feminist study
1949
by George Orwell
Roads to Freedom by Jean-Paul Sartre
- trilogy, first volume published 1945 The Thief's Journal
by Jean Genet
The Man with the Golden Arm
by Nelson Algren
(USA) The Train Was on Time
by Heinrich Böll
(Germany) The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges
The Kingdom of this World
by Alejo Carpentier
(Mexico) The Heat of the Day
by Elizabeth Bowen
Genre fiction
by Jack Trevor Story
(England) The Mating Season by PG Wodehouse
Plays
by Arthur Miller
(USA)
and the classical science fiction of Isaac Asimov
, Arthur C. Clarke
and Robert A. Heinlein
.
1950
(England) - the first of the British 50s 'kitchen sink' novels
Genre fiction
(England, Australia) Strangers On a Train by Patricia Highsmith
(USA)
Non-fiction
by Theodor Adorno (Germany, USA)
1951
by J. D. Salinger
(USA) The Grass Harp
by Truman Capote
(USA) Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar
(France)
Non-fiction
1952
by Ralph Ellison
(USA) Wise Blood
by Flannery O'Connor
(USA) Go by John Clellon Holmes
(USA) - the first Beat
novel The Natural
by Bernard Malamud
(USA) The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
Genre fiction
by Margery Allingham
(England) The Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson
(USA)
Plays
(Romania
, France)
1953
and Queer
by William S. Burroughs
(USA) Go Tell It On the Mountain
by James Baldwin
(USA, France) The Outsider by Richard Wright
The Adventures of Augie March
by Saul Bellow
Hurry on Down by John Wain
(England) - the first 'angry young man' novel
Genre fiction
by Ian Fleming
(England, Jamaica
) - first James Bond novel The Long Goodbye
by Raymond Chandler
Childhood's End
by Arthur C. Clarke
(England, Sri Lanka
) Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
(USA) - trilogy, first volume published in 1951 Prelude to a Certain Midnight by Gerald Kersh
Plays
by Samuel Beckett
1954
by William Golding
(England) Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
(England) - the most famous 'angry young man' novel Under the Net
by Iris Murdoch
(England) Bonjour Tristesse
by Françoise Sagan
(France)
Genre fiction
by Ray Bradbury
(USA) Story of O
by Pauline Réage
(France)
Plays
by Dylan Thomas
The Quare Fellow
by Brendan Behan
(Ireland)
Non-fiction
by Aldous Huxley
1955
by Vladimir Nabokov
One
by David Karp (USA) The Quiet American
by Graham Greene
The Bread of Those Early Years
by Heinrich Böll
The Tree of Man
by Patrick White
(Australia) The Inheritors
by William Golding
The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
(France) The Genius and the Goddess
by Aldous Huxley
The Deer Park
by Norman Mailer
The Recognitions
by William Gaddis
(USA) Memed, My Hawk
by Yaşar Kemal
(Turkey)
Genre fiction
by J. R. R. Tolkien
, first volume in 1954 The Talented Mr. Ripley
by Patricia Highsmith
Plays
by Tennessee Williams
Bus Stop
by William Inge
(USA)
Poetry
by Philip Larkin
(England)
1956
Giovanni's Room
by James Baldwin
The Lonely Londoners
by Samuel Selvon
(Trinidad
, England) A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren
Genre fiction
Plays
Poetry
Non-fiction
1957
Genre fiction
Plays
1958
Genre fiction
Plays
Non-fiction
1959
Genre fiction
by Mervyn Peake
(England) - first volume in 1946 The Getaway
by Jim Thompson
Plays
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
and Jacques Bergier
(France) - the 60s obsession with the occult starts here. Published in English 1963 A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter Miller Jr. (USA)
1961
(USA) A House for Mr Biswas
by V. S. Naipaul
(Trinidad
, England) Riders in the Chariot
by Patrick White
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
A Severed Head
by Iris Murdoch
Sword of Honour
by Evelyn Waugh
- trilogy, first volume published in 1952 Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates
(USA) Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place by Malcolm Lowry
- posthumous
Genre fiction
1962
Genre fiction
by Len Deighton
(England) - first of the Harry Palmer novels
Non-fiction
1963
Genre fiction
(France) The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
by John le Carré
(England) The Grifters
by Jim Thompson
Non-fiction
1964
Genre fiction
by Philip K. Dick
(USA) Little Big Man
by Thomas Berger (USA)
Non-fiction
1965
Plays
by Peter Weiss
(Germany, Sweden)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
1966
Genre fiction
by Keith Roberts
(England) The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
1967
Non-fiction
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Medium is the Message
by Marshall McLuhan
and Quentin Fiore
1968
by Mordecai Richler
(Canada) Couples by John Updike
(USA) The Public Image
by Muriel Spark
Lunar Caustic by Malcolm Lowry
- posthumous
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
1969
Genre fiction
The Final Programme
by Michael Moorcock
(England, USA) Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
(USA) The Godfather
by Mario Puzo
(Italy)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
1970
Genre fiction
(USA) Deliverance
by James Dickey
(USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
1971
Genre fiction
by Frederick Forsyth
(England)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
1972
Genre fiction
by George V. Higgins
(USA) Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach
(USA) The Odessa File
by Frederick Forsyth
Poetry
1973
Genre fiction
by Brian Aldiss
1974
by Nadine Gordimer
(South Africa) The Fan Man
by William Kotzwinkle
(USA) The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum
by Heinrich Böll
Napoleon Symphony
by Anthony Burgess
Myra Breckinridge
and Myron
by Gore Vidal
- first of pair published in 1968
Genre fiction
Genre fiction
by Peter Benchley
(USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
1975
Genre fiction
by Richard Adams
(England) The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh
(USA) Shōgun
by James Clavell
(England, USA) Salem's Lot by Stephen King
(USA)
1976
by EL Doctorow (USA)
Genre fiction
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
by Alex Haley
Drama
1977
1978
Genre fiction
by John Mortimer
(England)
1979
by V. S. Naipaul
The Unlimited Dream Company
by J. G. Ballard
Sophie's Choice
by William Styron
(USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
1980
1981
Genre fiction
by Thomas Harris
(USA) Gorky Park
by Martin Cruz Smith
(England, Russia)
1982
by Thomas Keneally
(Australia) An Ice-Cream War
by William Boyd
(Ghana, Scotland) The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
(USA) A Wild Sheep Chase
by Haruki Murakami
Genre fiction
1983
1984
Non-fiction
by J. G. Ballard
1985
by Don DeLillo
(USA) Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
(USA) Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
by Jeanette Winterson
(England) The Accidental Tourist
by Anne Tyler
(USA) Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
(England) Illywhacker
by Peter Carey (Australia) The Kingdom of the Wicked
by Anthony Burgess
Genre fiction
1986
Non-fiction
1987
by Salman Rushdie The Bonfire of the Vanities
by Tom Wolfe
Anthills of the Savannah
by Chinua Achebe
Genre fiction
1988
Genre fiction
(Canada, USA) - trilogy, first volume published 1984
1989
by Martin Amis
Foucault's Pendulum
by Umberto Eco
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
To the Ends of the Earth
by William Golding
- trilogy, first volume published 1980 The Book of Evidence
by John Banville
(Ireland) The Trick of It by Michael Frayn
by Michael Ondaatje
Boris Akunin
slam poetry
1990
(USA) - first volume published 1985 Restoration
by Rose Tremain
(England) Possession by A. S. Byatt
(England) The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
(England) Dirty Weekend
by Helen Zahavi
(England)
Genre fiction
by language
20th century in poetry
-Decades and years:...
, 19th century in literature
19th century in literature
See also: 19th century in poetry, 18th century in literature, other events of the 19th century, 20th century in literature, list of years in literature....
, other events of the 20th century
20th century
Many people define the 20th century as running from January 1, 1901 to December 31, 2000, others would rather define it as beginning on January 1, 1900....
, 21st century in literature
21st century in literature
See also: 21st century in poetry, 20th century in literature, other events of the 21st century, list of years in literature.The 21st century in literature refers to world literature in prose produced during the 21st century...
, list of years in literature.
Literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
of the 20th century refers to world literature
World literature
World literature refers to literature from all over the world, including African literature, American literature, Arabic literature, Asian literature, Australasian literature, Caribbean Literature, English literature, European literature, Indian literature, Latin American literature, Persian...
produced during the 20th century. The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) 1900 through the 1990s.
In terms of the Euro-American tradition, the main periods are captured in the bipartite division, Modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
and Postmodern literature
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
, flowering from roughly 1900 to 1940 and 1960 to 1990 respectively, divided, as a rule of thumb, by World War II. The somewhat malleable term of contemporary literature is usually applied with a post-1960 cutoff point.
Although these terms (modern, contemporary and postmodern) are most applicable to Western literary history, the rise of globalization has allowed European literary ideas to spread into non-Western cultures fairly rapidly, so that Asian and African literatures can be included into these divisions with only minor qualifications. And in some ways, such as in Postcolonial literature, writers from non-Western cultures were on the forefront of literary development.
Technological advances during the 20th century allowed cheaper production of books, resulting in a significant rise in production of popular literature and trivial literature, comparable to the development in music. The division of "popular literature" and "high literature" in the 20th century is by no means absolute, and various genres
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
such as detectives
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
or science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
fluctuate between the two.
For the most part of the century mostly ignored by mainstream literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
, these genres develop their own establishments and critical awards, such as the Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
(since 1965), the British Fantasy Award
British Fantasy Award
The British Fantasy Awards are administered annually by the British Fantasy Society and were first awarded in 1971. The membership of the BFS vote to determine recommendations, short-lists and winners of the awards...
(since 1971) or the Mythopoeic Awards
Mythopoeic Awards
The Mythopoeic Awards for literature and literary studies are given by the Mythopoeic Society to authors of outstanding works in the fields of myth, fantasy, and the scholarly study of these areas; the full criteria and description can be read on the Mythopoeic Society's -Mythopoeic Fantasy...
(since 1971).
Towards the end of the century, electronic literature
Electronic literature
Electronic literature is a literary genre consisting of works of literature that originate within digital environments.-Definitions:N. Katherine Hayles discusses the topic in the online article...
develops as a genre due to the development of hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
and later the world wide web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
.
The Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
is awarded annually throughout the century (with the exception of 1914, 1918, 1935 and 1940–1943), the first laureate (1901) being Sully Prudhomme
Sully Prudhomme
René François Armand Prudhomme was a French poet and essayist, winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1901....
. The New York Times Best Seller list
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
has been published since 1942.
The best-selling works of the 20th century are estimated to be Quotations from Chairman Mao (1966, 900 million copies), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first novel in the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling and featuring Harry Potter, a young wizard...
(1997, 120 million copies), And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...
(1939, 115 million copies) and The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
(1954/55, 100 million copies).
The Lord of the Rings was also voted "book of the century" in various surveys.
Perry Rhodan
Perry Rhodan
Perry Rhodan is the name of a science fiction series published since 1961 in Germany, as well as the name of the main character. It is a space opera, dealing with several themes of science fiction. Having sold over one billion copies worldwide, it is the most successful science fiction book series...
(1961 to present) boasts as being the best-selling book series, with an estimated total of 1 billion copies sold.
1900-1918
The Fin de siècleFin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
movement of the Belle Époque
Belle Époque
The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque was a period in European social history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic and the German Empire, it was a period characterised by optimism and new technological and medical...
persisted into the 20th century, but was brutally cut short with the outbreak of World War I (an effect depicted e.g. in Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
's The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature....
, published 1924). The Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
movement of 1916-1920 was at least in part a protest against the bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and colonialist
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war; the movement heralded the Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
movement of the 1920s.
1900
- Lord JimLord JimLord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900.An early and primary event is Jim's abandonment of a ship in distress on which he is serving as a mate...
by Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
(Poland, England)
Genre fiction
- The Wonderful Wizard of OzThe Wonderful Wizard of OzThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of...
by L. Frank BaumL. Frank BaumLyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
(USA)
1901
- BuddenbrooksBuddenbrooksBuddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six years old. The publication of the 2nd edition in 1903 confirmed that Buddenbrooks was a major literary success in Germany....
by Thomas MannThomas MannThomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
(Germany) - The InheritorsThe Inheritors (William Golding)The Inheritors is the 1955 second novel by the British author William Golding, best known for Lord of the Flies. It was his personal favourite of all his novels and concerns the extinction of the last remaining tribe of Neanderthals at the hands of the more sophisticated Homo sapiens.-Plot...
by Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
and Ford Madox FordFord Madox FordFord Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
(Germany, England) - KimKim (novel)Kim is a picaresque novel by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published serially in McClure's Magazine from December 1900 to October 1901 as well as in Cassell's Magazine from January to November 1901, and first published in book form by Macmillan & Co. Ltd in October 1901...
by Rudyard KiplingRudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
(India, England)
Genre fiction
The Purple Cloud
The Purple Cloud is a "last man" novel by the British writer M. P. Shiel. It was published in 1901. H. P. Lovecraft later praised the novel as exemplary weird fiction, "delivered with a skill and artistry falling little short of actual majesty." Frank Belknap Long deemed it "the most unutterably...
by M. P. Shiel
M. P. Shiel
Matthew Phipps Shiel was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained "Shiell" though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name....
(Montserrat
Montserrat
Montserrat is a British overseas territory located in the Leeward Islands, part of the chain of islands called the Lesser Antilles in the West Indies. This island measures approximately long and wide, giving of coastline...
, England)
The First Men in the Moon
The First Men in the Moon is a 1901 scientific romance novel by the English author H. G. Wells. The novel tells the story of a journey to the moon undertaken by the two protagonists, the impoverished businessman Mr Bedford and the brilliant but eccentric scientist Dr. Cavor...
by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
(England)
1902
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
The Immoralist
The Immoralist is a novel by André Gide, published in France in 1902. When it was first published, it was considered shocking. What some see as a story of dereliction, others see as a tale of introspection and self-discovery.-Plot:...
by André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
(France)
The Wings of the Dove
The Wings of the Dove is a 1902 novel by Henry James. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around her...
by Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
(USA, England)
The Grand Babylon Hotel
The Grand Babylon Hotel is a novel by Arnold Bennett, published in 1902, about the mysterious disappearance of a German prince. It originally appeared as a serial in the Daily Mail.-Plot introduction:...
by Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
(England)
Genre fiction
- The Hound of the BaskervillesThe Hound of the BaskervillesThe Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an...
by Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan DoyleSir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
(Scotland) - Just So StoriesJust So StoriesThe Just So Stories for Little Children were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. They are highly fantasised origin stories and are among Kipling's best known works.-Description:...
by Rudyard KiplingRudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
Plays
Man and Superman
Man and Superman is a four-act drama, written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to calls for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at The Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905, but with the omission of the 3rd Act...
by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
(Ireland)
1903
Romance (novel)
Romance is a novel co-authored by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. It was the second of their three collaborations. Romance was eventually published by George Bell and Sons in London and by McClure, Phillips in New York, in March 1904....
by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
and Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review . This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad, his widowed fiancée's supposedly...
by Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
The Pit (novel)
The Pit is a 1903 novel by Frank Norris. Detailing wheat speculation and the trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade Building, it was the second book in what was to be the Epic of Wheat trilogy . The third book, Wolf, was never completed.The Pit was the basis for A Corner in Wheat, a 1909 short...
by Frank Norris
Frank Norris
Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague , The Octopus: A Story of California , and The Pit .-Life:Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870...
(USA)
In Wonderland
In Wonderland is a travelogue written by Knut Hamsun in 1903. It documents Hamsun's impressions during his visit to the Russian Caucasus, Persia and Turkey in 1899.Sverre Lyngstad translated In Wonderland into English in 2004....
by Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....
(Norway)
Genre fiction
- The Call of the WildThe Call of the WildThe Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, in which sled dogs...
by Jack LondonJack LondonJohn Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
(USA) - The Riddle of the SandsThe Riddle of the SandsThe Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. It is an early example of the espionage novel, with a strong underlying theme of militarism...
by Erskine ChildersRobert Erskine ChildersRobert Erskine Childers DSC , universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands and an Irish nationalist who smuggled guns to Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard. He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish...
(England, Ireland)
1904
- The Golden BowlThe Golden BowlThe Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career...
by Henry JamesHenry JamesHenry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.... - NostromoNostromoNostromo is a 1904 novel by Polish-born British novelist Joseph Conrad, set in the fictitious South American republic of "Costaguana." It was originally published serially in two volumes of T.P.'s Weekly....
by Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties... - The Napoleon of Notting HillThe Napoleon of Notting HillThe Napoleon of Notting Hill is a novel written by G. K. Chesterton in 1904, set in a nearly unchanged London in 1984.Although the novel is set in the future, it is, in effect, set in an 'alternate reality' of Chesterton's own period, with no advances in technology or changes in the class system or...
by G. K. ChestertonG. K. ChestertonGilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
(England)
Genre fiction
The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth
The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth is a novel written by H. G. Wells. Published in 1904, it is one of his lesser known scientific romances, aside from the various B-movie adaptations .-Plot summary:...
by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
Green Mansions
Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest is an exotic romance by William Henry Hudson about a traveller to the Guyana jungle of southeastern Venezuela and his encounter with a forest dwelling girl named Rima.-Plot summary:...
by William Henry Hudson
William Henry Hudson
William Henry Hudson was an author, naturalist, and ornithologist.- Life and work :Hudson was born in the Quilmes, a borough of the greater Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, son of settlers of U.S. origin...
(Argentina, England)
Plays
- John Bull's Other IslandJohn Bull's Other IslandJohn Bull's Other Island is a comedy about Ireland, written by G. Bernard Shaw in 1904. Shaw himself was born in Dublin, yet this is the only play of his where he thematically returned to his homeland....
by George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
1905
- Hadrian VII by Frederick RolfeFrederick RolfeFrederick William Rolfe, better known as Baron Corvo, and also calling himself 'Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe', , was an English writer, artist, photographer and eccentric...
aka Baron Corvo (England, Italy) - Where Angels Fear to TreadWhere Angels Fear to TreadWhere Angels Fear to Tread is a novel by E. M. Forster, originally entitled Monteriano. The title comes from a line in Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism: "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread"....
by E. M. ForsterE. M. ForsterEdward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
(England) - KippsKippsKipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905. Humorous yet sympathetic, this perceptive social novel is generally regarded as a masterpiece, and was the author's own favourite work.-Plot:...
by H. G. WellsH. G. WellsHerbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games... - The House of MirthThe House of MirthThe House of Mirth , is a novel by Edith Wharton. First published in 1905, the novel is Wharton's first important work of fiction, sold 140,000 copies between October and the end of December, and added to Wharton's existing fortune....
by Edith WhartonEdith WhartonEdith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
(USA) - The Club of Queer TradesThe Club of Queer TradesThe Club of Queer Trades is a collection of stories by G. K. Chesterton first published in 1905.Each story in the collection is centered on a person who is making his living by some novel and extraordinary means...
by G. K. ChestertonG. K. ChestertonGilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
1906
- The JungleThe JungleThe Jungle is a 1906 novel written by journalist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel with the intention of portraying the life of the immigrant in the United States, but readers were more concerned with the large portion of the book pertaining to the corruption of the American meatpacking...
by Upton SinclairUpton SinclairUpton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
(USA) - The Confusions of Young TorlessThe Confusions of Young TörlessThe Confusions of Young Törless , the title of the novel is sometimes translated as Young Törless or Young Torless, is the literary debut of the Austrian novelist and essayist Robert Musil, first published in 1906.-Plot introduction:Musil's novel is ostensibly a Bildungsroman, a story of a young...
by Robert MusilRobert MusilRobert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
(Austria)
Genre fiction
Puck of Pook's Hill
Puck of Pook's Hill is a historical fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history. The stories are all narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the area of Kipling's own house Bateman's, by people...
by Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens is a novel by J. M. Barrie, published in 1906; it is one of four major literary works by Barrie featuring the widely known literary character he originated, Peter Pan.-Plot summary:...
by J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
(Scotland)
Time and the Gods
Time and the Gods is the second book by Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, considered a major influence on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin and others....
by Lord Dunsany (Ireland, England)
White Fang
White Fang is a novel by American author Jack London. First serialized in Outing magazine, it was published in 1906. The story takes place in Yukon Territory, Canada, during the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th-century, and details a wild wolfdog's journey to domestication...
by Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
Plays
- The Aran Islands by John Millington SyngeJohn Millington SyngeEdmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre...
(Ireland)
1907
- The Secret AgentThe Secret AgentThe Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad published in 1907. The story is set in London in 1886 and deals largely with the life of Mr. Verloc and his job as a spy. The Secret Agent is also notable as it is one of Conrad's later political novels, which move away from his typical...
by Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties... - The Longest JourneyThe Longest JourneyThe Longest Journey is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Norwegian studio Funcom for the PC. First published by IQ Media Nordic in Norway in 1999, it was later localized for and released in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Denmark,...
by E. M. ForsterE. M. ForsterEdward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
Genre fiction
Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T...
(England) - contains The Willows
The Willows (story)
"The Willows" is one of Algernon Blackwood's best known short stories. American horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird...
, one of the first 'cosmic horror' stories
The Hill of Dreams
-Plot summary:The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain...
by Arthur Machen
Arthur Machen
Arthur Machen was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella The Great God Pan has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror...
(England)
Plays
- Playboy of the Western World by John Millington SyngeJohn Millington SyngeEdmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre...
Poetry
Cautionary Tales for Children
Cautionary Tales for Children: Designed for the Admonition of Children between the ages of eight and fourteen years is a 1907 children's book written by Hilaire Belloc...
by Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...
(France, England)
1908
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book is sometimes referred to as a metaphysical thriller.-Plot summary:...
by G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
A Room with a View
A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the repressed culture of Edwardian England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century...
by E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are...
by Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
by Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...
(France, Russia)
The Magician (Maugham novel)
The Magician is a novel by British author W. Somerset Maugham, originally published in 1908. In this tale, the magician Oliver Haddo, a caricature of Aleister Crowley, attempts to create life...
by Somerset Maugham (England, France) - based on the author's meeting with Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
Genre fiction
- The Wind in the WillowsThe Wind in the WillowsThe Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...
by Kenneth GrahameKenneth GrahameKenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows , one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films....
(England)
Poetry
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
(USA, England, Italy) - one of the first examples of 'modernist' poetry
1909
Martin Eden
Martin Eden is a novel by American author Jack London, about a proletarian young autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909, and subsequently published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.This book...
by Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
Tono-Bungay
Tono-Bungay , by H. G. Wells, is a realist semi-autobiographical novel. It is narrated by George Ponderevo, a science student who is drafted in to help with the promotion of Tono-Bungay, a harmful stimulant disguised as a miraculous cure-all, the creation of his ambitious uncle Edward...
by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
Three Lives
Three Lives was Gertrude Stein's first published work. The book is separated into three stories, "The Good Anna," "Melanctha," and "The Gentle Lena."...
by Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
(USA, France)
Poetry
- Exultations by Ezra PoundEzra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
- Poems by William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
(USA)
Plays
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
(Belgium)
1910
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
The Card
The Card is a short comedic novel written by Arnold Bennett in 1911, . It was later made into a 1952 movie starring Alec Guinness and Petula Clark. It chronicles the rise of Edward Henry Machin from washerwoman's son to Mayor of Bursley...
by Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
The History of Mr. Polly
The History of Mr. Polly is a 1910 comic novel by H. G. Wells.-Plot summary:Alfred Polly is a quiet, timid and direction-less young man living in Edwardian England, in an imaginary town of Fishbourne in Kent...
by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
1911
Zuleika Dobson
Zuleika Dobson, full title Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story, is a 1911 novel by Max Beerbohm, a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford. It was his only novel, but was nonetheless very successful...
by Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
(England)
Katherine Mansfield
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...
(England) - short stories
Under Western Eyes
Under Western Eyes is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Crime and Punishment; Conrad being reputed to have detested Dostoevsky...
by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
The White Peacock
The White Peacock is a novel by D. H. Lawrence published in 1911. Lawrence started the novel in 1906 and then rewrote it three times. The early versions had the working title of Laetitia....
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
(England)
Jennie Gerhardt
Jennie Gerhardt is a 1911 novel by Theodore Dreiser.-Plot summary:Jennie Gerhardt is a destitute young woman. While working in a hotel in Columbus, Ohio, Jennie meets Senator George Brander, who becomes infatuated with her. He helps her family and declares his wish to marry her...
by Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
(USA)
1912
Petersburg (novel)
Petersburg or St. Petersburg is the title of Andrei Bely's masterpiece, a Symbolist work that foreshadows Joyce's Modernist ambitions. For various reasons the novel never received much attention and was not translated into English until 1959 by John Cournos, over 45 years after it was written,...
by Andrei Bely
Andrei Bely
Andrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev , a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century.-Biography:...
(Russia)
The Trespasser
The Trespasser is an American film directed and written by Edmund Goulding, starring Gloria Swanson, Robert Ames, Purnell Pratt, Henry B...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
Death in Venice
The novella Death in Venice was written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1913 as Der Tod in Venedig. The plot of the work presents a great writer suffering writer's block who visits Venice and is liberated and uplifted, then increasingly obsessed, by the sight of a...
by Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
(Germany)
Genre fiction
- Riders of the Purple SageRiders of the Purple SageRiders of the Purple Sage is Zane Grey's best-known novel, originally published in 1912. Most critics agree that it played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre.- Plot in a paragraph :...
by Zane GreyZane GreyZane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the Old West. Riders of the Purple Sage was his bestselling book. In addition to the success of his printed works, they later had second lives and continuing influence...
(USA) - The Lost World by Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan DoyleSir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
- Tarzan of the ApesTarzan of the ApesTarzan of the Apes is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first in a series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine in October, 1912; the first book edition was published in 1914. The character was so popular that Burroughs...
by Edgar Rice BurroughsEdgar Rice BurroughsEdgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...
(USA)
Plays
Pygmalion (play)
Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of...
by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
1913
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
(France)
Le Grand Meaulnes
Le Grand Meaulnes is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier. Fifteen-year-old François Seurel narrates the story of his relationship with seventeen-year-old Augustin Meaulnes as Meaulnes searches for his lost love. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies the romantic ideal, the...
by Alain-Fournier
Alain-Fournier
Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban-Fournier , a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes , which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature.-Biography:Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher...
(France)
Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.-Plot introduction and history:...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
Chance (novel)
Chance is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1913 following serial publication the previous year. Although the novel was not one upon which Conrad's later critical reputation was to depend, it was his greatest commercial success upon initial publication.Chance is narrated by Conrad's regular...
by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
Genre fiction
- A Prisoner in Fairyland by Algernon BlackwoodAlgernon BlackwoodAlgernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T...
- adapted into a play, it later became the Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
musical, Starlight ExpressStarlight ExpressStarlight Express is a rock musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber , Richard Stilgoe and Arlene Phillips , with later revisions by Don Black and David Yazbek . The story follows a child's dream in which his toy train set comes to life; famously the actors perform wearing roller skates... - The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu by 'Sax RohmerSax RohmerArthur Henry Sarsfield Ward , better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr...
' (England)
Poetry
Alcools
Alcools is a collection of poems by the French author Guillaume Apollinaire.- External links :* Alcools * Alcools...
by Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
(Poland, France) - dada poems
Gitanjali
Gitanjali is a collection of 103 English poems, largely translations, of the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.This volume became very famous in the West, and was widely translated....
by Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
1914
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century....
by James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
(Ireland, France, Italy) - short stories
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
- short stories
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
Tender Buttons
Tender Buttons is the third and final studio album by the British band Broadcast. It was released by Warp Records on September 19, 2005 in the UK, one day later in the United States...
by Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
Gustav Meyrink
Gustav Meyrink was the pseudonym of Gustav Meyer, an Austrian author, storyteller, dramatist, translator, and banker, most famous for his novel The Golem.-Childhood:...
(Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
)
Maurice (novel)
Maurice is a novel by E. M. Forster. A tale of homosexual love in early 20th century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays, through university and beyond. It was written from 1913 onwards...
by E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
- unpublished
Sinister Street
Sinister Street is a 1913-14 novel by Compton Mackenzie. It is a kind of bildungsroman or novel about growing up, and concerns two children, Michael Fane and his sister Stella...
by Compton MacKenzie
Compton Mackenzie
Sir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...
(Scotland, Greece)
The Flying Inn
The Flying Inn is a novel first published in 1914 by G. K. Chesterton. It is set in a future England where the Temperance movement has allowed a bizarre form of "Progressive" Islam to dominate the political and social life of the country. Because of this, alcohol sales are effectively prohibited...
by G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
Poetry
- North of BostonNorth of BostonNorth of Boston is a 1914 poetry collection by Robert Frost. It includes two of his most famous poems, "Mending Wall" and "After Apple-Picking"...
by Robert FrostRobert FrostRobert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
(USA)
1915
- The Good SoldierThe Good SoldierThe Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by English novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends...
by Ford Madox FordFord Madox FordFord Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature... - The RainbowThe RainbowThe Rainbow is a 1915 novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, particularly focusing on the sexual dynamics of, and relations between, the characters....
by D. H. LawrenceD. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation... - The MetamorphosisThe MetamorphosisThe Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of short fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world...
by Franz KafkaFranz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
(CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
) - Of Human BondageOf Human BondageOf Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had...
by Somerset Maugham - VictoryVictory (novel)Victory is a psychological novel by Joseph Conrad first published in 1915, through which Conrad achieved "popular success." The New York Times, however, called it "an uneven book" and "more open to criticism than most of Mr...
by Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties... - The Voyage OutThe Voyage OutThe Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth; and published in the U.S. in 1920 by Doran.Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of...
by Virginia WoolfVirginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
(England) - Vainglory by Ronald FirbankRonald FirbankArthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
(England) - RashōmonRashomon (short story)is a short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa based on tales from the Konjaku Monogatarishū.The story was first published in 1915 in Teikoku Bungaku. Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon , takes only its name and some of the material for the frame scenes, such as the theft of a kimono and the discussion of the...
by Ryūnosuke AkutagawaRyunosuke Akutagawawas a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "Father of the Japanese short story". He committed suicide at age of 35 through an overdose of barbital.-Early life:...
Genre fiction
The Thirty-nine Steps
The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It first appeared as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine in August and September 1915 before being published in book form in October that year by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh...
by John Buchan (Scotland, Canada)
1916
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialised in the magazine The Egoist from 1914 to 1915, and published first in book format in 1916 by B. W. Huebsch, New York. The first English edition was published by the Egoist Press in February 1917...
by James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
Women in Love
Women in Love is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence published in 1920. It is a sequel to his earlier novel The Rainbow , and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
- initially banned, published in 1920
Genre fiction
- GreenmantleGreenmantleGreenmantle is the second of five novels by John Buchan featuring the character of Richard Hannay, first published in 1916 by Hodder & Stoughton, London...
by John Buchan
Plays
Pygmalion (play)
Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of...
by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
Poetry
- Salt-Water Poems and BalladsSalt-Water Poems and BalladsSalt-Water Poems and Ballads is a book of poetry on themes of seafaring and maritime history by John Masefield. It was first published in 1916 by Macmillan, with illustrations by Charles Pears....
by John MasefieldJohn MasefieldJohn Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
(England) - Mountain IntervalMountain IntervalMountain Interval is a 1916 poetry collection written by Robert Frost. Frost made several alterations in the sequencing of the collection and released the new edition in 1920.- Poems included :*"The Road Not Taken"*"Christmas Trees"...
by Robert FrostRobert FrostRobert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
1917
- Under FireUnder Fire (novel)Under Fire: The Story of a Squad by Henri Barbusse , was one of the first novels about World War I to be published...
by Henri BarbusseHenri BarbusseHenri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...
(France, Russia) - Walpurgis NightWalpurgis NightWalpurgis Night is a traditional spring festival on 30 April or 1 May in large parts of Central and Northern Europe. It is often celebrated with dancing and with bonfires. It is exactly six months from All Hallows' Eve.-Name:...
by Gustav MeyrinkGustav MeyrinkGustav Meyrink was the pseudonym of Gustav Meyer, an Austrian author, storyteller, dramatist, translator, and banker, most famous for his novel The Golem.-Childhood:... - Growth of the SoilGrowth of the SoilThe Growth of the Soil is the novel by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.-Theme:...
by Knut HamsunKnut HamsunKnut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul.... - The Shadow LineThe Shadow LineThe Shadow-Line is a short novel based at sea by Joseph Conrad; it is one of his later works, being written from February to December 1915. It was first published in 1916 as a serial in New York's Metropolitan Magazine in the English Review and published in book form in 1917 in the UK and America...
by Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties... - Caprice by Ronald FirbankRonald FirbankArthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
Poetry
Dulce et Decorum Est
Dulce et Decorum est is a poem written by poet Wilfred Owen in 1917, during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. Owen's poem is known for its horrific imagery and condemnation of war. It was drafted at Craiglockhart in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at...
and Anthem for Doomed Youth
Anthem for Doomed Youth
"Anthem for Doomed Youth" is a well-known poem written by Wilfred Owen which incorporates the themes of the horror of war.It employs the traditional form of a petrarchan sonnet, but it uses the rhyme scheme of an English sonnet. Much of the second half of the poem is dedicated to funeral rituals...
by Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...
(England) - published posthumously
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
(USA, England)
1918
Tarr
Tarr is a modernist novel by Wyndham Lewis, written in 1909-11, revised and expanded in 1914-15 and first serialized in The Egoist from April 1916 until November 1917...
by Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
(Canada, England)
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
(Germany)
Poetry
- CalligrammesCalligrammesCalligrammes, subtitled Poems of war and peace 1913-1916, is a collection of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, and was first published in 1918 . Calligrammes is noted for how the typeface and spatial arrangement of the words on a page plays just as much of a role in the meaning of each poem as the...
by Guillaume ApollinaireGuillaume ApollinaireWilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
- dada poetry
Non-fiction
Eminent Victorians
Eminent Victorians is a book by Lytton Strachey , first published in 1918 and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and wit Strachey brought to bear on three men and a woman who had till then been regarded as heroes and heroine...
by Lytton Strachey
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
(England)
Interwar period
The 1920s were a period of literary creativity, and works of several notable authors appeared during the period. D. H. LawrenceD. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
was a scandal at the time because of its explicit descriptions of sex.
1919
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
Winesburg, Ohio
Winesburg is an unincorporated community in southwestern Paint Township, Holmes County, Ohio, United States. The town sits on the crest of a hill in the Amish country of Ohio, with a quaint downtown containing antique shops. It lies along U.S. Route 62....
by Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
(USA) - the first 'lost generation' novel
Valmouth
thumb|1st edition Cover by [[Augustus John]] Valmouth is a 1919 novel by British author Ronald Firbank. Valmouth is an imaginary English spa resort that attracts centenarians owing to its famed pure air...
by Ronald Firbank
Ronald Firbank
Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was a British novelist.-Biography:Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907...
Bazaar-e-Husn
Bazaar-e-Husn i.e The Red Light Area, Hindi title Seva-sadan is a Hindi/Urdu novel by Munshi Premchand. Originally written in Urdu under the title Bazaar-e-Husn but first published in Hindi under the title Seva-sadan Bazaar-e-Husn i.e The Red Light Area(Red-light district), Hindi title Seva-sadan...
by Premchand (publ. in Hindi as Seva-sadan)
Genre fiction
- Dope by Sax RohmerSax RohmerArthur Henry Sarsfield Ward , better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr...
- inspired by the true story of Limehouse dope-dealer Brilliant Chang - Dope Darling by Leda Burke (David GarnettDavid GarnettDavid Garnett was a British writer and publisher. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname "Bunny", by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life.-Early life:...
) (England)
1920
- WeWe (novel)We is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences during the Russian revolution of 1905, the Russian revolution of 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, and his work in the Tyne shipyards during the First...
by Yevgeny ZamyatinYevgeny ZamyatinYevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...
(CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
) - Limbo by Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
(England) - short stories - The Lost GirlThe Lost GirlThe Lost Girl is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1920. It was awarded the 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the fiction category.Lawrence started to write 200 pages of it in 1913 and abandoned it before he finished it in 1920....
by D. H. LawrenceD. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation... - This Side of ParadiseThis Side of ParadiseThis Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University...
by F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
(USA) - The London Venture by Michael ArlenMichael ArlenMichael Arlen , original name Dikran Kouyoumdjian, was an Armenian essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter, who had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England...
(ArmeniaArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, England) - Storm of SteelStorm of SteelStorm of Steel is the memoir of German officer Ernst Jünger's experiences on the Western Front during the First World War. It was originally printed privately in 1920, making it one of the first personal accounts to be published. The book is a graphic account of trench warfare...
by Ernst JungerErnst JüngerErnst Jünger was a German writer. In addition to his novels and diaries, he is well known for Storm of Steel, an account of his experience during World War I. Some say he was one of Germany's greatest modern writers and a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I...
(Germany) - Voyage to Arcturus by David LindsayDavid Lindsay (novelist)David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus .-Biography:...
(Scotland) - Main StreetMain Street (novel)- Plot summary :Carol Milford is a liberal, free-spirited young woman, reared in the metropolis of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She marries Will Kennicott, a doctor, who is a small-town boy at heart....
by Sinclair LewisSinclair LewisHarry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
(USA) - The Age of InnocenceThe Age of InnocenceThe Age of Innocence is a novel by Edith Wharton published in 1920, which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. In 1920, The Age of Innocence was serialized in four parts in the Pictorial Review magazine, and later released by D...
by Edith WhartonEdith WhartonEdith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
(USA)
Plays
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author is a play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello.The play is a satirical tragicomedy. It was first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" .Subsequently the play enjoyed a much...
by Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
(Italy)
Beyond the Horizon (play)
Beyond the Horizon is a 1920 play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It was O'Neill's first full-length work, and the winner of the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Drama....
and Anna Christie
Anna Christie
Anna Christie is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. It made its Broadway debut at the Vanderbilt Theatre on November 2, 1921. O'Neill received the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his work.-Plot summary:...
by Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
- Pulitzer prize winner
1921
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
Crome Yellow
Crome Yellow is the first novel by British author Aldous Huxley. It was published in 1921. In the book, Huxley satirises the fads and fashions of the time. It is the witty story of a house party at "Crome"...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
England, My England and Other Stories
England, My England is the title of a collection of short stories by D. H. Lawrence. Individual items were originally written between 1913 and 1921, many of them against the background of World War I. Most of these versions were placed in magazines or periodicals. Ten were later selected and...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
- short stories
The Forsyte Saga
The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by John Galsworthy. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of an upper-middle-class British family, similar to Galsworthy's own...
by John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
(England) - pentology, first volume published in 1906
My Life and Loves
My Life and Loves is the autobiography of the Ireland-born, naturalized-American writer and editor Frank Harris . As published privately by Harris between 1922 and 1927, and by Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press in 1931, the work consisted of four volumes, illustrated with many drawings and photographs of...
by Frank Harris
Frank Harris
Frank Harris was a Irish-born, naturalized-American author, editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day...
(England, USA) - four volumes of quasi-factual sex gossip, the fifth completed by Alex Trocchi
Plays
- Back to MethuselahBack to MethuselahBack to Methuselah , by George Bernard Shaw consists of a preface and a series of five plays: In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 , The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day, The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, and As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D...
by George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60... - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, an English phrase used as the subtitle in the Czech original. It premiered in 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.The...
by Karel ČapekKarel CapekKarel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
- from which the term 'robot' was coined
1922
- UlyssesUlysses (novel)Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
by James JoyceJames JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century... - Jacob's RoomJacob's RoomJacob's Room is the third novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on October 26th 1922.The novel centers, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders, and is presented entirely by the impressions other characters have of Jacob [except for those times when we do...
by Virginia WoolfVirginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.... - Sodom and GomorrahSodom and GomorrahSodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....
by Marcel ProustMarcel ProustValentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu... - The Enormous RoomThe Enormous RoomThe Enormous Room is a 1922 autobiographical novel by the poet and novelist E. E. Cummings about his temporary imprisonment in France during World War I....
by E. E. CummingsE. E. CummingsEdward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
(USA) - Futility by William GerhardieWilliam GerhardieWilliam Alexander Gerhardie was a British novelist and playwright.Gerhardie was one of the most critically acclaimed English novelists of the 1920s . H.G. Wells also championed his work...
(Russia, England) - The Beautiful and DamnedThe Beautiful and DamnedThe Beautiful and Damned, first published by Scribner's in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. The novel provides a portrait of the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York Café Society. As with his other novels, Fitzgerald's characters are complex, especially in their...
by F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost... - Mortal CoilsMortal CoilsMortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional pieces written by Aldous Huxley in 1922.The title uses a phrase from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1:...
by Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- short stories - Aaron's RodAaron's rodAaron's rod refers to any of the staves carried by Moses' brother, Aaron, in the Old Testament of the Bible. The Bible tells how, along with Moses' rod, Aaron's rod was endowed with miraculous power during the Plagues of Egypt which preceded the Exodus...
by D. H. LawrenceD. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation... - The Garden PartyThe Garden Party"The Garden Party" is the pilot episode of the Adult Swim animated series The Boondocks, although the production number, 103, suggests it was the third episode produced...
by Katherine MansfieldKatherine MansfieldKathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...
- short stories - SiddharthaSiddhartha (novel)Siddhartha is a novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of an Indian man named Siddhartha during the time of the Buddha.The book, Hesse's ninth novel , was written in German, in a simple, powerful, and lyrical style. It was published in the U.S. in 1951 and became influential...
by Hermann HesseHermann HesseHermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
(Germany, Switzerland) - Peter Whiffle by Carl Van VechtenCarl van VechtenCarl Van Vechten was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.-Biography:...
(USA) - BabbittBabbitt (novel)Babbitt, first published in 1922, is a novel by Sinclair Lewis. Largely a satire of American culture, society, and behavior, it critiques the vacuity of middle-class American life and its pressure on individuals toward conformity....
by Sinclair LewisSinclair LewisHarry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of... - Lady into FoxLady into FoxLady into Fox was David Garnett's first novel under his own name, published in 1922. This short and enigmatic work won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Hawthornden Prize a year later.-Plot summary:...
by David GarnettDavid GarnettDavid Garnett was a British writer and publisher. As a child, he had a cloak made of rabbit skin and thus received the nickname "Bunny", by which he was known to friends and intimates all his life.-Early life:...
Poetry
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
1923
Italo Svevo
Aron Ettore Schmitz , better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo, was an Italian writer and businessman, author of novels, plays, and short stories.- Biography :...
(Italy)
The Good Soldier Švejk
The Good Soldier Švejk , also spelled Schweik or Schwejk, is the abbreviated title of a unfinished satirical/dark comedy novel by Jaroslav Hašek. It was illustrated by Josef Lada and George Grosz after Hašek's death...
by Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek
Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech humorist, satirist, writer and socialist anarchist best known for his novel The Good Soldier Švejk, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures, which has been translated into sixty...
(Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
)
In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...
by Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
Kangaroo (novel)
Kangaroo is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1923. It is set in Australia.-Description:Kangaroo is an account of a visit to New South Wales by an English writer named Richard Lovat Somers, and his German wife Harriet, in the early 1920s...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
Antic Hay
Antic Hay is a comic novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1923. The story takes place in London, and depicts the aimless or self-absorbed cultural elite in the sad and turbulent times following the end of World War I....
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
Three Soldiers
Three Soldiers is a 1920 novel by the American writer and critic John Dos Passos. It is one of the key American war novels of the First World War, and remains a classic of the realist war novel genre. H.L. Mencken, then practising primarily as an American literary critic, praised the book in the...
by John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
(USA)
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
Le Diable au corps (novel)
Le Diable au corps is an early 1923 novel by Parisian literary prodigy Raymond Radiguet. The story of a young married woman who has an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy while her husband is away fighting at the front provoked scandal in a country that had just been through World War I...
by Raymond Radiguet
Raymond Radiguet
Raymond Radiguet was a French author whose two novels were noted for their explicit themes and writing style and tone.-Early life:...
(France)
Aelita
Aelita , also known as Aelita: Queen of Mars, is a silent film directed by Soviet filmmaker Yakov Protazanov made on Mezhrabpom-Rus film studio and released in 1924. It was based on Alexei Tolstoy's novel of the same name...
by Alexey Tolstoy (Russia)
Plays
- The Shadow of a GunmanThe Shadow of a GunmanThe Shadow of a Gunman is a 1923 play by Seán O'Casey. It centers on the mistaken identity of a building tenant who is thought to be an IRA assassin....
by Sean O'CaseySeán O'CaseySeán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
(Ireland)
Poetry
New Hampshire (book)
New Hampshire is a 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of poems written by Robert Frost. The book included several of Frost's most well-known poems, including "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and "Fire and Ice". Illustrations for the collection were provided by...
by Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
1924
The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature....
by Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
(Germany)
In Our Time (book)
In Our Time is the first collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway published by Boni & Liveright in New York in 1925, after a smaller edition of the book, titled in our time, had been published in Paris in 1924...
by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
(USA) - short stories
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
Little Mexican
Little Mexican , Aldous Huxley's third collection of short fiction, consists of the following six short stories:*"Uncle Spencer"*"Little Mexican"*"Hubert and Minnie"*"Fard"*"The Portrait"...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- short stories
The Captain's Doll
The Captain's Doll is a short story or novella by the English author D. H. Lawrence. It was written in 1921 and first published by Martin Secker in March 1923 in a volume with The Ladybird and The Fox....
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
- short stories
Genre fiction
- The Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger AckroydThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons in June 1926 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company on the 19th of the same month. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective...
by Agatha ChristieAgatha ChristieDame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
(England)
Plays
Juno and the Paycock
Juno and the Paycock is a play by Sean O'Casey, and one of the most highly regarded and oft-performed plays in Ireland. It was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1924...
by Sean O'Casey
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
The Vortex
The Vortex is a play by the English writer and actor Noël Coward. The story focuses on sexual vanity and drug abuse among the upper classes. The play was Coward's first great commercial success....
by Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
(England)
1925
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
The Trial
The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...
by Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
(Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
) - posthumous, first English translation in 1930
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
- often described as the epitome of the "Jazz Age" in American literature
Michael Arlen
Michael Arlen , original name Dikran Kouyoumdjian, was an Armenian essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter, who had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England...
- perhaps the epitome of the jazz age in British literature
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...
(France)
Albertine disparue
Albertine disparue is the title of the sixth volume of Marcel Proust's seven part novel, À la recherche du temps perdu. It is also known as La Fugitive and The Sweet Cheat Gone .-Publication:...
by Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
Manhattan Transfer (novel)
Manhattan Transfer is a novel by John Dos Passos published in 1925. It focuses on the development of urban life in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age as told through a series of overlapping individual stories....
by John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
François Mauriac
François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...
(France)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (novel)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady is a comic novel written by Anita Loos first published in 1925. Loos was inspired to write the book after watching a sexy blonde turn intellectual H. L. Mencken into a lovestruck schoolboy. Mencken, a close friend, actually...
by Anita Loos
Anita Loos
Anita Loos was an American screenwriter, playwright and author.-Early life:Born Corinne Anita Loos in Sisson, California , where her father, R. Beers Loos, had opened a tabloid newspaper for which her mother, Minerva "Minnie" Smith did most of the work of a newspaper publisher...
(USA)
Those Barren Leaves
Those Barren Leaves is a satirical novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1925. The title is derived from the poem 'The Tables Turned' by William Wordsworth which ends with the words:...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
St Mawr
St Mawr is a short novel written by D. H. Lawrence. It was first published in 1925.The heroine of the story, Lou Witt, abandons her sterile marriage and a brittle, cynical post-First World War England. Her sense of alienation is associated with her encounter with a high-spirited stallion, the St...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
- short stories
The Making of Americans
The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress is a modernist novel by Gertrude Stein. The novel traces the genealogy, history, and psychological development of members of the fictional Hersland and Dehning families...
by Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
Heart of a Dog
Heart of a Dog , a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a biting satire of the New Soviet man written in 1925 at the height of the NEP period, when Communism appeared to be weakening in the Soviet Union....
by Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...
(Russia)
Genre fiction
- Beau GesteBeau GesteBeau Geste is a 1924 adventure novel by P. C. Wren. It has been adapted for the screen several times.-Plot summary:Michael "Beau" Geste is the protagonist. The main narrator , by contrast, is his younger brother John...
by P. C. WrenP. C. WrenPercival Christopher Wren was a British writer, mostly of adventure fiction. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much-filmed book of 1924, involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa, and its main sequels, Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal Percival Christopher Wren (1 November 187522...
(England)
Poetry
The Hollow Men
The Hollow Men is a major poem by T. S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognised to be concerned most with post-World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles , the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, and, as some critics...
by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
Non-fiction
- The Old Straight TrackThe Old Straight TrackThe Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones is a book by Alfred Watkins, first published in 1925, describing the existence of alleged ley lines in Britain....
by Alfred WatkinsAlfred WatkinsAlfred Watkins was a businessman, self-taught amateur archaeologist and antiquarian who, while standing on a hillside in Herefordshire, England, in 1921 experienced a revelation and noticed on the British landscape the apparent arrangement of straight lines positioned along ancient features, and...
(England) - introducing ley lines
1926
- The Castle by Franz KafkaFranz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
- posthumous, first English translation in 1932 - The CounterfeitersThe Counterfeiters (novel)The Counterfeiters is a 1925 novel by French author André Gide, first published in Nouvelle Revue Française...
by André GideAndré GideAndré Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide... - The Sun Also RisesThe Sun Also RisesThe Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received...
aka Fiesta by Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the... - Moravagine by Blaise CendrarsBlaise CendrarsFrédéric Louis Sauser , better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.-Early years:...
(France) - Nigger HeavenNigger HeavenNigger Heaven is a 1926 novel written by Carl Van Vechten, set during the Harlem Renaissance in the United States in the 1920s. The book and its title have been controversial since its publication....
by Carl Van VechtenCarl van VechtenCarl Van Vechten was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.-Biography:... - Two or Three GracesTwo or Three GracesTwo or Three Graces , Aldous Huxley's fourth collection of short fiction, consists of the following four short pieces:*"Two or Three Graces"*"Half Holiday"*"The Monocle"*"Fairy Godmother"...
by Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- short stories - The Plumed SerpentThe Plumed SerpentThe Plumed Serpent is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, begun when writer was living at the D. H. Lawrence Ranch near Taos in U.S. state of New Mexico in 1924. It was first published by Martin Secker in 1926...
by D. H. LawrenceD. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
Genre fiction
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...
(England)
Poetry
- A Drunk Man Looks at the ThistleA Drunk Man Looks at the ThistleA Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle is a long poem by Hugh MacDiarmid written in Scots and published in 1926. It is composed as a form of monologue with influences from stream of consciousness genres of writing...
by 'Hugh MacDiarmidHugh MacDiarmidHugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
' (Scotland)
Plays
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
Non-fiction
- The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. LawrenceT. E. LawrenceLieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...
(England, Arabia)
1927
- To the LighthouseTo the LighthouseTo the Lighthouse is a novel by Virginia Woolf. A novel set on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, it skilfully manipulates temporal and psychological elements....
by Virginia WoolfVirginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.... - Time Regained by Marcel ProustMarcel ProustValentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
- SteppenwolfSteppenwolf (novel)Steppenwolf is the tenth novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into English in 1929. Combining autobiographical and psychoanalytic elements, the novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the steppes...
by Hermann HesseHermann HesseHermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature... - Men Without Women by Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
- short stories - Vestal Fire by Compton MacKenzieCompton MackenzieSir Compton Mackenzie, OBE was a writer and a Scottish nationalist.-Background:Compton Mackenzie was born in West Hartlepool, England, into a theatrical family of Mackenzies, but many of whose members used Compton as their stage surname, starting with his grandfather Henry Compton, a well-known...
- Dusty AnswerDusty AnswerDusty Answer is English author Rosamond Lehmann's first novel, published in 1927. She sent it unsolicited to publishers Chatto & Windus who agreed to publish it, saying it showed 'decided quality'....
by Rosamond LehmannRosamond LehmannRosamond Nina Lehmann, CBE , was a British novelist. Her first novel, Dusty Answer , was a succès de scandale; she subsequently became established in the literary world and intimate with members of the Bloomsbury set...
(England) - Elmer GantryElmer GantryElmer Gantry is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 and published by Harcourt in March 1927.-Background:Lewis did research for the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays. He first worked with William L...
by Sinclair LewisSinclair LewisHarry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of... - The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. LawrenceD. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
- short stories
Plays
The Silver Tassie (play)
The Silver Tassie is a four-act Expressionist play about the First World War, written between 1927 and 1928 by the Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. It was O'Casey's fourth play and attacks imperialist wars and the suffering that they cause. O'Casey described the play as "A generous handful of stones,...
by Sean O'Casey
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...
1928
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz is a novel by Alfred Döblin, published in 1929. The story concerns a small-time criminal, Franz Biberkopf, fresh from prison, who is drawn into the underworld. When his criminal mentor murders the prostitute whom Biberkopf has been relying on as an anchor, he realizes that...
by Alfred Doblin
Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin was a German expressionist novelist, best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz .- 1878–1918:...
(Germany)
Nadja (novel)
One of the iconic works of the French surrealist movement, Nadja is the second novel published by André Breton, in 1928. It starts with the question "Who am I?"...
by André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
(France)
Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
(France)
Parade's End
Parade's End is a tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. It is set mainly in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where Ford served as an officer in the Welch Regiment, a life vividly depicted in the novels.In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Parade's End 57th on...
by Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
- war tetralogy, first volume in 1926
Point Counter Point
Point Counter Point is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1928. It is Huxley's longest novel, and was notably more complex and serious than his earlier fiction....
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
- banned until 1963
Decline and Fall
Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928. It was Waugh's first published novel; an earlier attempt, entitled The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed by Waugh while still in manuscript form. Decline and Fall is based in part on Waugh's undergraduate years...
by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
(England)
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
- posthumous, first English translation in 1938
Plays
- Strange InterludeStrange InterludeStrange Interlude is an experimental play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill finished the play in 1923, but it was not produced on Broadway until 1928, when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lynn Fontanne originated the central role of Nina Leeds on Broadway...
by Eugene O'NeillEugene O'NeillEugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
(USA) - Pulitzer prize winner
Non-fiction
All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.The...
by Erich Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque was a German author, best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front.-Life and work:...
(Germany) - recounts the horrors of World War I and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front
1929
Les Enfants Terribles
Les Enfants Terribles is a 1929 novel by Jean Cocteau, published by Editions Bernard Grasset. It concerns two siblings, Elisabeth and Paul, who isolate themselves from the world as they grow up; this isolation is shattered by the stresses of their adolescence. It was first translated into English...
by Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
(France)
A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway concerning events during the Italian campaigns during the First World War. The book, which was first published in 1929, is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a Lieutenant in the ambulance...
by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
Death of a Hero
Death of a Hero is a World War I novel by Richard Aldington. It was his first novel, written in 1929, and thought to be partly autobiographical.-Plot summary:...
by Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington , born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...
(England)
The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury is a novel written by the American author William Faulkner. It employs a number of narrative styles, including the technique known as stream of consciousness, pioneered by 20th century European novelists such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Published in 1929, The Sound and...
by William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
(USA)
Mario and the Magician
Mario and the Magician is a novella written by German author Thomas Mann in 1929.-Background:Mario and the Magician is one of Mann's most political stories. Mann openly criticizes fascism, a choice which later became one of the grounds for his exile to Switzerland following Hitler's rise to power...
by Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
The Escaped Cock
The Escaped Cock is a short novel by D. H. Lawrence that was originally written in two parts and published in 1929. Lawrence wrote the first part in 1927 after visiting some Etruscan tombs with his friend Earl Brewster, a trip that encouraged the author to reflect upon death and myths of...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
(Russia, France)
The Good Companions
The Good Companions is a novel by the English author J. B. Priestley.Written in 1929 , it focuses on the trials and tribulations of a concert party in England between World War I and World War II. It is arguably Priestley's most famous novel, and the work which established him as a national figure...
by J. B. Priestley
J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
(England)
Non-fiction
- Goodbye to All ThatGoodbye to All ThatGood-Bye to All That, an autobiography by Robert Graves, first appeared in 1929, when the author was thirty-four. "It was my bitter leave-taking of England," he wrote in a prologue to the revised second edition of 1957, "where I had recently broken a good many conventions"...
by Robert GravesRobert GravesRobert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
(UK) - A Room of One's OwnA Room of One's OwnA Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928...
by Virginia WoolfVirginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
Genre fiction
Red Harvest
Red Harvest is a novel by Dashiell Hammett. The story is narrated by The Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction. Hammett based the story on his own experiences in Butte, Montana as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency, San Francisco.Time included Red Harvest in its...
by Dashiel Hammett (USA) - the first hard-boiled American detective novel
1930
Vile Bodies
Vile Bodies is a 1930 novel by Evelyn Waugh satirising the Bright Young People: decadent young London society between World War I and World War II.-Title:The title comes from the Epistle to the Philippians 3:21...
by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
The Apes of God
The Apes of God is a 1930 novel by the British artist and writer Wyndham Lewis. It is a satire of London's contemporary literary and artistic scene....
by Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
Brief Candles
thumb|1st edition cover Brief Candles , Aldous Huxley's fifth collection of short fiction, consists of the following four short stories:*"Chawdron"*"The Rest Cure"*"The Claxtons"*"After the Fireworks"...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- short stories
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
Narcissus and Goldmund
Narcissus and Goldmund is a novel written by the German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse which was first published in German as Narziß und Goldmund in 1930...
by Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
Angel Pavement
Angel Pavement is a novel by J. B. Priestley, published in 1930 after the enormous success of The Good Companions. It is often paired with English Journey ....
by J. B. Priestley
J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...
The Virgin and the Gypsy
The Virgin and the Gypsy is a short story by English author D. H. Lawrence. It was written in 1926 and published posthumously in 1930...
and Love Among the Haystacks by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
- short stories
Genre fiction
- Last and First MenLast and First MenLast and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen...
by Olaf StapledonOlaf StapledonWilliam Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.-Life:...
(England)
Poetry
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
(Ireland, France)
Plays
- Private LivesPrivate LivesPrivate Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...
by Noel CowardNoël CowardSir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
Genre fiction
Non-fiction
- Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting ManMemoirs of a Fox-Hunting ManMemoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is a novel by Siegfried Sassoon, first published in 1928 by Faber and Faber. It won both the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, being immediately recognised as a classic of English literature...
by Siegfried SassoonSiegfried SassoonSiegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...
(England) - 2 volumes, 1st in 1929
1931
- The WavesThe Waves- External links :* The Waves, at wikilivres.info...
by Virginia WoolfVirginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.... - Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-ExupéryAntoine de Saint-ExupéryAntoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...
(France)
Genre fiction
The Glass Key
The Glass Key is a novel by Dashiell Hammett, said to be his favorite among his works. It was first published in 1931, and tells the story of gambler and racketeer Ned Beaumont, whose devotion to crooked political boss Paul Madvig leads him to investigate the murder of a local senator's son as a...
by Dashiel Hammett
Plays
- Mourning Becomes ElectraMourning Becomes ElectraMourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932...
by Eugene O'NeillEugene O'NeillEugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish... - CavalcadeCavalcade (play)Cavalcade is a play by Noël Coward. It focuses on three decades in the life of the Marryotts, a quintessential British family, and their servants, beginning at the start of the 20th century and ending on New Year's Eve in 1929....
by Noel CowardNoël CowardSir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
Non-fiction
Axel's Castle
Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 is a 1931 book of literary criticism by Edmund Wilson on the Symbolist movement in literature.-Contents:...
by Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
(USA)
Music at Night
Music at Night is a 1931 collection of essays by Aldous Huxley.The essays in this books cover different subjects, such as morality in arts Music at Night is a 1931 collection of essays by Aldous Huxley.The essays in this books cover different subjects, such as morality in arts Music at Night is a...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
1932
Journey to the End of the Night
Journey to the End of Night is the first novel of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu....
by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
(France)
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
The Memorial
The Memorial is a 1932 English novel by author Christopher Isherwood. The novel tells the story of an English family's disintegration in the days following World War I. Isherwood's second published novel, this is the first of his works for which he adapted his own life experiences into his fiction....
by Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
(England)
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
(Russia, France)
Light in August
Light in August is a 1932 novel by the American author William Faulkner.Light in August is an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working title for Absalom, Absalom!...
by William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
Stamboul Train
Stamboul Train is a novel by author Graham Greene. A thriller set on an Orient Express train, it was renamed Orient Express when it was published in the United States.-Plot introduction:...
by Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
(England)
Black Mischief
Black Mischief was Evelyn Waugh's third novel, published in 1932. The novel chronicles the efforts of the English-educated Emperor Seth, assisted by a fellow Oxford graduate, Basil Seal, to modernize his Empire, the fictional African island of Azania, located in the Indian Ocean off of the eastern...
by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
Radetzky March
Radetzky March, Op. 228, is a march composed by Johann Strauss Sr. in 1848. It was dedicated to the Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, and became quite a popular march among soldiers....
by Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...
(Austria)
Simon Blumenfeld
Simon Blumenfeld was a Jewish columnist, author, playwright, theatre critic, editor and communist.Although he described himself as Jewish, he was born to a family of Sicilian refugees, who eventually settled in Whitechapel, in the East End of London...
(England)
Poetry
- The OratorsThe OratorsThe Orators: An English Study is a long poem in prose and verse written by W. H. Auden, first published in 1932. It is regarded as a major contribution to modernist poetry in English....
by W. H. AudenW. H. AudenWystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
(England)
1933
- Man's FateMan's FateMan's Fate is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux about the failed communist insurrection in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associated with the revolution...
by André MalrauxAndré MalrauxAndré Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
(France) - Love on the DoleLove on the DoleLove on the Dole is a novel by Walter Greenwood, about working class poverty in 1930s Northern England. It has been made into both a play and a film.-The novel:...
by Walter GreenwoodWalter GreenwoodWalter Greenwood was an English novelist, best known for the socially influential novel Love on the Dole .-Biography:...
(England) - Miss LonelyheartsMiss LonelyheartsMiss Lonelyhearts, published in 1933, is Nathanael West's second novel. It is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression.-Plot summary:...
by Nathaniel West (USA) - The Autobiography of Alice B. ToklasThe Autobiography of Alice B. ToklasThe Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a 1933 book by Gertrude Stein, written in the guise of an autobiography authored by Alice B. Toklas, who was her lover.-Summary:-Before I came to Paris:...
by Gertrude SteinGertrude SteinGertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
Genre fiction
James Hilton
James Hilton was an English novelist who wrote several best-sellers, including Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.-Biography:...
(England)
Murder Must Advertise
Murder Must Advertise is a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, published in 1933.Most of the action takes place in an advertising agency, a setting with which Sayers was very familiar. One of her advertising colleagues, Bobby Bevan, was the inspiration for the character Mr Ingleby...
by Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
(England)
Non-fiction
- Down and Out in Paris and LondonDown and Out in Paris and LondonDown and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell , published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. The first part is a picaresque account of living on the breadline in Paris and the experience of casual...
by George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
(England) - Texts and Pretexts by Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
- In Praise of ShadowsIn Praise of Shadowsis an essay on Japanese aesthetics by the Japanese author and novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. It was translated into English by the academic students of Japanese literature Thomas Harper and Edward Seidensticker.-Publication:...
by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
1934
- Tropic of CancerTropic of Cancer (novel)Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the...
by Henry MillerHenry MillerHenry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
(USA) - a groundbreaking obscenity case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1961 allowed its publication there - Call It SleepCall It SleepCall It Sleep is a 1934 novel by Henry Roth. The book centers on the experiences of a young boy growing up in the Jewish immigrant ghetto of New York's Lower East Side in the early twentieth century....
by Henry RothHenry RothHenry Roth was an American novelist and short story writer.-Biography:Roth was born in Tysmenitz near Stanislaviv, Galicia, Austro-Hungary...
(Austria, USA) - Tender is the NightTender is the NightTender Is the Night is a novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was his fourth and final completed novel, and was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January-April, 1934 in four issues...
by F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost... - Threepenny NovelThreepenny NovelThreepenny Novel is a work of fiction written by Bertolt Brecht first published in Amsterdam by Allert de Lange in 1934 as Dreigroschenroman. The novel retains certain of the elements of The Threepenny Opera — including the characters Macheath, Polly, etc. — but is basically a completely separate...
by Bertoldt Brecht (Germany) - DespairDespair (novel)Despair was written by Vladimir Nabokov and originally published as a serial in Sovremennye Zapiski during 1934. It was then published as a book in 1936 and later translated to English by the author in 1937. Most copies of the 1937 English translation of the book were destroyed by German bombs,...
by Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist... - It's a BattlefieldIt's a BattlefieldIt's a Battlefield is an early novel by Graham Greene, first published in the year 1934. Graham Greene later described it as his "first overtly political novel"...
by Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world... - A Handful of DustA Handful of DustA Handful of Dust is a novel by Evelyn Waugh published in 1934. It is included in Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels, and was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present....
by Evelyn WaughEvelyn WaughArthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer... - 20,000 Streets Under the Sky20,000 Streets Under the SkyTwenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels by Patrick Hamilton.The three books are The Midnight Bell , The Siege of Pleasure and The Plains of Cement...
by Patrick Hamilton (England) - Voyage in the DarkVoyage in the DarkVoyage in the Dark is a 1934 novel by Jean Rhys. It tells of the semi-tragic descent of its young protagonist Anna Morgan who is moved from her Caribbean home to England by an 'evil' stepmother...
by Jean RhysJean RhysJean Rhys , born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a mid 20th-century novelist from Dominica. Educated from the age of 16 in Great Britain, she is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea , written as a "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.-Early life:Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica...
(DominicaDominicaDominica , officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean Sea, south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its size is and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of . The Commonwealth...
, France, England) - Appointment in SamarraAppointment in SamarraAppointment in Samarra, published in 1934, is the first novel by John O'Hara. It concerns the self-destruction of Julian English, once a member of the social elite of Gibbsville ....
by John O'HaraJohn O'HaraJohn Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
(USA) - A Scots QuairA Scots QuairA Scots Quair is a trilogy by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon, describing the life of Chris Guthrie, a woman from the north east of Scotland during the early 20th century....
by Lewis Grassic GibbonLewis Grassic GibbonLewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell , a Scottish writer.-Biography:...
(Scotland) - trilogy, first volume published in 1932
Genre fiction
The Postman Always Rings Twice
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1934 crime novel by James M. Cain.The novel was quite successful and notorious upon publication, and is regarded as one of the more important crime novels of the 20th century...
by James M. Cain
James M. Cain
James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
(USA)
Cocain Romance
The Cocain Romance, or Novel With Cocaine , is a mysterious Russian novel first published in 1934 in a Parisian émigré publication, Numbers, and subtitled "Confessions of a Russian opium-eater". Its author was given as M. Ageyev...
by M. Ageyev
M. Ageyev
M. Ageyev is believed to be the nom-de-plume of Russian author Mark Lazarevich Levi , .-Biography:...
(Russia)
Poetry
- 18 Poems by Dylan ThomasDylan ThomasDylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
(WalesWalesWales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
)
Non-fiction
Burmese Days
Burmese Days is a novel by British writer George Orwell. It was first published in the USA in 1934. It is a tale from the time of the waning days of British colonialism, when Burma was ruled as part of the Indian empire - " a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj." At its centre is John...
by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
Death in the Afternoon
Death in the Afternoon is a non-fiction book by Ernest Hemingway about the ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting. It was originally published in 1932. The book provides a look at the history and what Hemingway considers the magnificence of bullfighting...
by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
1935
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
Eyeless in Gaza
Eyeless in Gaza is a bestselling novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1936. The title originates from a phrase in John Milton's Samson Agonistes:The chapters of the book are not ordered chronologically...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
Auto Da Fe
Auto Da Fe were an Irish new wave musical group formed in Holland in 1980 by former Steeleye Span singer Gay Woods and Trevor Knight. The band's sound incorporated keyboards and electronics. Woods stated "It was the happiest musical time I ever had so far. I learned so much. I was ridding myself...
by Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".-Life:...
(Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, Germany)
A Clergyman's Daughter
A Clergyman's Daughter is a 1935 novel by English author George Orwell. It tells the story of Dorothy Hare, the clergyman's daughter of the title, whose life is turned upside-down when she suffers an attack of amnesia...
by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
England Made Me (novel)
England Made Me or The Shipwrecked is an early novel by Graham Greene. It was first published in 1935, and was republished as "The Shipwrecked" in 1953....
by Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...
(Ireland)
Tortilla Flat
Tortilla Flat is an early John Steinbeck novel set in Monterey, California. The novel was the author's first clear critical and commercial success....
by John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
(USA)
Studs Lonigan
Studs Lonigan is the title of a novel trilogy by American author James T. Farrell: Young Lonigan, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, and Judgment Day. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the Studs Lonigan trilogy at 29th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.The...
by James T. Farrell
James T. Farrell
James Thomas Farrell was an American novelist. One of his most famous works was the Studs Lonigan trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and into a television miniseries in 1979...
(USA) - trilogy, first volume published in 1932
Genre fiction
- Little House on the PrairieLittle House on the PrairieLittle House is a series of children's books by Laura Ingalls Wilder that was published originally between 1932 and 1943, with four additional books published posthumously, in 1962, 1971, 1974 and 2006.-History:...
by Laura Ingalls WilderLaura Ingalls WilderLaura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was an American author who wrote the Little House series of books based on her childhood in a pioneer family...
(USA)
Poetry
Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis CBE was an Irish poet and the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake...
(Northern Ireland)
Plays
- Waiting for LeftyWaiting for LeftyWaiting for Lefty is a 1935 play by American playwright Clifford Odets. Consisting of a series of related vignettes, the entire play is framed by the meeting of cab drivers who are planning a labor strike. The framing situation utilizes the audience as part of the meeting.While this was not the...
by Clifford OdetsClifford OdetsClifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, socialist, and social protester.-Early life:Odets was born in Philadelphia to Romanian- and Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Louis Odets and Esther Geisinger, and raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York. He dropped out of high...
(USA)
1936
- Death on the Installment PlanDeath on the Installment PlanDeath on Credit is a novel by author Louis-Ferdinand Céline, published in 1936. The most common, and generally most respected English translation is Ralph Manheim's....
by Louis-Ferdinand CelineLouis-Ferdinand CélineLouis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and... - Black Spring by Henry MillerHenry MillerHenry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
- U.S.A.U.S.A. trilogyThe U.S.A. Trilogy is a major work of American writer John Dos Passos, comprising the novels The 42nd Parallel ; 1919, also known as Nineteen Nineteen ; and The Big Money . The three books were first published together in a single volume titled U.S.A by Harcourt Brace in January, 1938...
by John Dos PassosJohn Dos PassosJohn Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos... - MephistoMephisto (novel)Mephisto – Novel of a Career is the sixth novel by Klaus Mann, which was published in 1936 whilst he was in exile in Amsterdam. It was published for the first time in Germany in the East Berlin Aufbau-Verlag in 1956...
by Klaus MannKlaus Mann- Life and work :Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews. He began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a...
(Germany, USA) - Absalom, Absalom!Absalom, Absalom!Absalom, Absalom! is a Southern Gothic novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. It is a story about three families of the American South, taking place before, during, and after the Civil War, with the focus of the story on the life of Thomas Sutpen.-Plot...
by William FaulknerWilliam FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career... - Keep the Aspidistra FlyingKeep the Aspidistra FlyingKeep the Aspidistra Flying, first published 1936, is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. It is set in 1930s London. The main theme is Gordon Comstock's romantic ambition to defy worship of the money-god and status, and the dismal life that results....
by George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist... - Confessions of a Murderer by Joseph RothJoseph RothJoseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...
- Invitation to a BeheadingInvitation to a BeheadingInvitation to a Beheading is a novel by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov. It was originally published in Russian in 1935-1936 as a serial in Contemporary Notes , a highly respected Russian émigré magazine...
by Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist... - The Wessex Novels by John Cowper PowysJohn Cowper Powys-Biography:Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, in 1872, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys , who was vicar of Montacute, Somerset for thirty-two years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendent of the poet William Cowper. He came from a family of eleven children, many of whom were also...
(England) - tetrology, 1st vol published in 1927 - GodaanGodaanGodaan The Gift of a Cow is a Hindi novel by Munshi Premchand.It was first published in 1936 and is considered one of the greatest Hindi-Urdu novels of modern Indian literature. Themed around the socio economic deprivation as well as the exploitation of the village poor, the novel was the last...
by Premchand
Genre fiction
Jamaica Inn
The Jamaica Inn, originally a public house and now an inn, is a Grade II listed building in the civil parish of Altarnun, Cornwall, United Kingdom. Located near the middle of Bodmin Moor near the hamlet of Bolventor, it was built as a coaching house in 1750 as a staging post for changing horses...
by Daphne du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...
(England)
Gone with the Wind
The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...
by Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...
(USA)
A Gun for Sale
A Gun for Sale is a 1936 novel by Graham Greene.This novel was made into a film in 1941 and renamed This Gun for Hire, which was also the title of the book's U.S. edition. Alan Ladd was cast as Raven in the film....
by Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
1937
To Have and Have Not
To Have and Have Not is a 1937 novel by Ernest Hemingway about Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain who lives with a prostitute and runs contraband between Cuba and Florida. The novel depicts Harry as an essentially good man who is forced into blackmarket activity by economic forces beyond his...
by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
The Years
The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s....
by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....
by John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
The Black Book
The Black Book was the post-war name given to the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. , the list of prominent British to be arrested in the case of a successful invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany in World War II.-Background:The list was similar to earlier lists prepared by SS like the Special Prosecution...
by Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
(UK, Egypt)
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
Robert Westerby
Robert Westerby , was an author of novels and screenwriter for films and television....
(England, USA)
Genre fiction
- Star MakerStar Maker-External links:*...
by Olaf StapledonOlaf StapledonWilliam Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.-Life:... - Night and the CityNight and the CityNight and the City is a film noir based on the novel by Gerald Kersh, directed by Jules Dassin, and starring Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney. Shot on location in London, the plot evolves around an ambitious hustler whose plans keep going wrong....
by Gerald KershGerald KershGerald Kersh was a British writer. Born in 1911, he began to write at the age of 8. After leaving school he worked as, amongst other things, a cinema manager, bodyguard, debt collector, fish & chip cook, travelling salesman, French teacher and all-in-wrestler whilst attempting to 'make it' as a...
(England, USA) - The Face on the Cutting-Room FloorThe Face on the Cutting-Room FloorThe Face on the Cutting-Room Floor is a 1937 crime novel by Ernest Borneman writing as Cameron McCabe. It was first published in London. The book makes use of the false document technique: It pretends to be the true story of a 38-year-old Scotsman called Cameron McCabe who writes about a crucial...
by Cameron McCabe (Ernest BornemanErnest BornemanErnst Wilhelm Julius Bornemann was a German crime writer, filmmaker, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, jazz musician, jazz critic, psychoanalyst, sexologist, and committed socialist. All these diverse interests, he claimed, had a common root in his lifelong insatiable curiosity...
) (Germany, England) - The HobbitThe HobbitThe Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald...
by J. R. R. TolkienJ. R. R. TolkienJohn Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
(England)
Non-fiction
The Road to Wigan Pier
The Road to Wigan Pier is a book by the British writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions amongst the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World...
by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, telling the story through narration of the main character, of his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The author had claimed to have based the book on his own knowledge of the Gilfach Goch area, but this was proven...
by Richard Llewellyn
Richard Llewellyn
Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd , better known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, was a Welsh novelist.Llewellyn Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd (8 December 1906 – 30 November 1983), better known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, was a Welsh novelist.Llewellyn Richard Dafydd...
(Wales)
1938
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
(France)
Murphy (novel)
Murphy, first published in 1938, is a novel as well as the third work of prose fiction by the Irish author and dramatist Samuel Beckett. The book was Beckett's second published prose work after the short-story collection More Pricks than Kicks and his unpublished first novel Dream of Fair to...
by Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
Tropic of Capricorn (novel)
Tropic of Capricorn is a semi-autobiographical novel by Henry Miller, first published in Paris in 1938. The novel was subsequently banned in the United States until a 1961 Justice Department ruling declared that its contents were not obscene. It is a sequel to Miller's 1934 work, the Tropic of...
by Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
Man's Hope
Man's Hope is a 1937 novel by André Malraux about the Spanish Civil War. It was translated to English and published during 1938 as "Man's Hope". The story was later adapted as a movie, L'espoir , produced by Edouard Corniglion-Molinier....
by André Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
The Death of the Heart
The Death of the Heart is a 1938 novel by Elizabeth Bowen set between the two world wars. It is about a sixteen year old orphan, Portia Quayne, who moves to London to live with her half-brother Thomas and falls in love with Eddie, a friend of her sister-in-law.-Plot summary:At the beginning of the...
by Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
Scoop (novel)
Scoop is a 1938 novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, a satire of sensationalist journalism and foreign correspondence.-Plot:William Boot, a young man who lives in genteel poverty far from the iniquities of London, is contributor of nature notes to Lord Copper's Beast, a national newspaper...
by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
Genre fiction
- Brighton Rock by Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
- RebeccaRebecca (novel)Rebecca is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. When Rebecca was published in 1938, du Maurier became – to her great surprise – one of the most popular authors of the day. Rebecca is considered to be one of her best works...
by Daphne du MaurierDaphne du MaurierDame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...
Non-fiction
Journey to a War
Journey to a War is a travel book in prose and verse by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, published in 1939.The book is in three parts: a series of poems by Auden describing his and Isherwood's journey to China in 1938 ; a "Travel-Diary" by Isherwood about their travels in China itself, and...
by W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
and Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952. The American edition had a preface...
by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
Enemies of Promise
Enemies of Promise is a critical and autobiographical work written by Cyril Connolly and first published in 1938.It comprises three parts, the first dedicated to Connolly's observations about literature and the literary world of his time, the second a listing of adverse elements that affect the...
by Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
(England)
1939
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....
by John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
by James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
At Swim-Two-Birds
At Swim-Two-Birds is a 1939 novel by Irish author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It is widely considered to be O'Brien's masterpiece, and one of the most sophisticated examples of metafiction....
by Flan O'Brien (Ireland)
Goodbye to Berlin
Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 short novel by Christopher Isherwood set in pre-Nazi Germany. It is often published together with Mr Norris Changes Trains in a collection called The Berlin Stories.-Details:...
by Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
After Many a Summer
After Many a Summer is a novel by Aldous Huxley that tells the story of a Hollywood millionaire who fears his impending death; it was published in the United States as After Many a Summer Dies the Swan...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
Coming Up for Air
Coming Up for Air is a novel by George Orwell, first published in June 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. It combines premonitions of the impending war with images of an idyllic Thames-side Edwardian era childhood...
by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
On the Marble Cliffs
On the Marble Cliffs is a novella by Ernst Jünger published in 1939 describing the upheaval and ruin of a serene agricultural society...
by Ernst Junger
Ernst Jünger
Ernst Jünger was a German writer. In addition to his novels and diaries, he is well known for Storm of Steel, an account of his experience during World War I. Some say he was one of Germany's greatest modern writers and a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I...
Good Morning Midnight
Good Morning Midnight is a 2004 crime novel by Reginald Hill, and part of the Dalziel and Pascoe series. The title takes its name from Good Morning -- Midnight, a poem by Emily Dickinson which is quoted throughout the story.-Plot summary:...
by Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys , born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a mid 20th-century novelist from Dominica. Educated from the age of 16 in Great Britain, she is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea , written as a "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.-Early life:Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica...
The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood, California during the Great Depression, its overarching themes deal with the alienation and desperation of a broad group of odd individuals who exist at the fringes of the Hollywood movie industry.In 1998,...
by Nathaniel West
Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...
Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns
Thomas Mann's 1939 novel, Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, or otherwise known by Lotte in Weimar or The Beloved Returns, is a story written in the shadow of Goethe; Thomas Mann developed the narrative almost as a response to Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, although Goethe's work...
by Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
The Confidential Agent
The Confidential Agent is a thriller novel by British author Graham Greene. Fueled by Benzedrine, Greene wrote it in six weeks. To avoid distraction while working, he rented a room in Bloomsbury from a landlady who lived in an apartment below him. He used that apartment in the novel and had an...
by Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
Mister Johnson
Mister Johnson is a 1990 American drama film based on the 1939 novel by Joyce Cary. The film was entered into the 41st Berlin International Film Festival, where Maynard Eziashi won the Silver Bear for Best Actor.The film was shot in Toro, Nigeria...
by Joyce Cary
Joyce Cary
Joyce Cary was an Anglo-Irish novelist and artist.-Youth and education:...
(Ireland)
Wind, Sand and Stars
Wind, Sand and Stars is a memoir by Antoine de Saint Exupéry published in 1939. It was translated from the French by Lewis Galantière, and published in the US in November 1945....
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...
Pal Joey
Pal Joey is a 1940 epistolary novel by John O'Hara, which became the basis of the 1940 stage musical comedy and 1957 motion picture of the same name, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart....
by John O'Hara
John O'Hara
John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
Genre fiction
- The Big SleepThe Big SleepThe Big Sleep is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first in his acclaimed series about detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978...
by Raymond ChandlerRaymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
(USA) - Rogue MaleRogue Male (novel)Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household is a classic thriller novel of the 1930s.-Storyline:The protagonist, an unnamed British sportsman, sets out to see whether he can stalk and prepare to shoot a European dictator...
by Geoffrey HouseholdGeoffrey HouseholdGeoffrey Edward West Household was a prolific British novelist who specialized in thrillers. He is best known for his novel Rogue Male .-Personal life:...
(England) - The Mask of DimitriosThe Mask of DimitriosThe Mask of Dimitrios is an American film noir directed by Jean Negulesco and written by Frank Gruber, based on the 1939 novel of the same name written by Eric Ambler . Ambler is known as a major influence on writers and an inventor of the modern thriller genre...
by Eric AmblerEric AmblerEric Clifford Ambler OBE was an influential British author of spy novels who introduced a new realism to the genre. Ambler also used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda.-Life:... - And Then There Were NoneAnd Then There Were NoneAnd Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...
by Agatha ChristieAgatha ChristieDame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
Poetry
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
(N Ireland)
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
Plays
- This Happy BreedThis Happy BreedThis Happy Breed is a play by Noël Coward. It was written in 1939 but, because of the outbreak of World War II, it was not staged until 1942, when it was performed on alternating nights with another Coward play, Present Laughter. The two plays later alternated with Coward's Blithe Spirit...
by Noel CowardNoël CowardSir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
World War II
1940- Darkness at NoonDarkness at NoonDarkness at Noon is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940...
by Arthur KoestlerArthur KoestlerArthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
(Hungary, England) - The Master and MargaritaThe Master and MargaritaThe Master and Margarita is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven around the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider the book to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and one of the foremost Soviet satires, directed against a...
by Mikhail BulgakovMikhail BulgakovMikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...
- published in English 1966 - For Whom the Bell TollsFor Whom the Bell TollsFor Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a...
by Ernest HemingwayErnest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the... - The Power and the GloryThe Power and the GloryThe Power and the Glory is a novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often added to the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever , amen." This novel has also been published in the US under the name The...
by Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world... - Native SonNative SonNative Son is a novel by American author Richard Wright. The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s...
by Richard WrightRichard Wright (author)Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
(USA, France) - The Heart Is a Lonely HunterThe Heart Is a Lonely HunterThe Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 novel by American author Carson McCullers. Written in Charlotte, North Carolina, in houses on Central Avenue and East Boulevard, it is about a deaf man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the US state of Georgia...
by Carson McCullersCarson McCullersCarson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...
(USA) - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan ThomasDylan ThomasDylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
- You Can't Go Home AgainYou Can't Go Home AgainYou Can't Go Home Again is a novel by Thomas Wolfe. It was published posthumously in 1940 from the October Fair manuscript. The novel tells the story of George Webber, a beginning author, who writes a book that makes frequent references to his home town of Libya Hill...
by Thomas WolfeThomas WolfeThomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing... - The Quiet Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (Russia) - two volumes, first published in 1934
Genre fiction
Eric Ambler
Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an influential British author of spy novels who introduced a new realism to the genre. Ambler also used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda.-Life:...
(England)
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
Plays
- The Iceman ComethThe Iceman ComethThe Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939. First published in 1940 the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on 9 October 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling where it ran for 136 performances to close on 15 March 1947.-Characters:* Night Hawk-...
by Eugene O'NeillEugene O'NeillEugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
Non-fiction
To the Finland Station
To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History is a book by American critic and historian Edmund Wilson. The work presents the history of revolutionary thought and the birth of socialism, from the French Revolution through the collaboration of Marx and Engels to the arrival...
by Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
1941
Hangover Square
Hangover Square is a 1941 novel by English playwright and novelist Patrick Hamilton . Subtitled A tale of Darkest Earl's Court it is set in that area of London in 1939....
by Patrick Hamilton
Reflections in a Golden Eye (novel)
Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1941 novel by American author Carson McCullers.It first appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 1940, serialized in the October–November issues. The book was published by Houghton Mifflin on February 14, 1941, to mostly poor reviews...
by Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...
The Third Policeman
The Third Policeman is a novel by Irish author Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It was written between 1939 and 1940, but after it initially failed to find a publisher, the author withdrew the manuscript from circulation and claimed he had lost it. The book remained...
by Flan O'Brien
Genre fiction
- Mildred PierceMildred PierceMildred Pierce is a 1941 hardboiled novel by James M. Cain. It was made into an Oscar-winning 1945 film starring Joan Crawford and a 2011 Emmy-winning miniseries starring Kate Winslet.-Plot :...
by James M. CainJames M. CainJames Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
Non-fiction
- Grey EminenceGrey EminenceGrey Eminence: A Study in Religion and Politics is a book by Aldous Huxley published in 1941. It is a biography of François Leclerc du Tremblay, the French monk who served as advisor to Cardinal de Richelieu. He was also known as Father Joseph and as l'éminence grise; that phrase originally...
by Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
1942
- The StrangerThe Stranger (novel)The Stranger or The Outsider is a novel by Albert Camus published in 1942. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of existentialism, though Camus did not consider himself an existentialist; in fact, its content explores various philosophical schools of thought, including absurdism, as...
by Albert CamusAlbert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
(AlgeriaAlgeriaAlgeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
, France) - Our Lady of the FlowersOur Lady of the FlowersOur Lady of the Flowers is the debut novel of French writer Jean Genet, first published in 1943. The free-flowing, poetic novel is a largely autobiographical account of a man's journey through the Parisian underworld...
by Jean GenetJean GenetJean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
(France) - Flight to ArrasFlight to ArrasFlight to Arras is a memoir by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Written in 1942, it recounts his role in the Armée de l'Air as pilot of a reconnaissance plane during the Battle of France in 1940....
by Antoine de Saint-ExupéryAntoine de Saint-ExupéryAntoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...
Plays
The Flies
The Flies is a play by Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1943. It is an adaptation of the Electra myth, previously used by the Greek playwrights Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides....
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
1943
Arrival and Departure
Arrival and Departure is the third novel of Arthur Koestler's trilogy concerning the conflict between morality and expediency . The first volume, The Gladiators, is about the subversion of the Spartacus revolt, and the second, Darkness at Noon, is the celebrated novel about the Soviet Show trials...
by Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
The Ministry of Fear
The Ministry of Fear is a 1943 novel written by Graham Greene. It was first published in Britain by William Heinemann. It was made into the 1944 film Ministry of Fear, starring Ray Milland.It revolves around the relationship between Love and Fear...
by Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
The Man Without Qualities
The Man Without Qualities is an unfinished novel in three books by the Austrian writer Robert Musil....
by Robert Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
(Austria) - trilogy, first volume published 1930
Genre fiction
- Double IndemnityDouble Indemnity (novel)Double Indemnity is a highly influential 1943 crime novel, written by American journalist-turned-novelist James M. Cain. The book was first published in serial form for Liberty magazine in 1936. Following that, Double Indemnity appeared as a one of "three long short tales" in the collection Three...
by James M. CainJames M. CainJames Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir... - The Little PrinceThe Little PrinceThe Little Prince , first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ....
by Antoine de Saint-ExupéryAntoine de Saint-ExupéryAntoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...
(France)
Poetry
- Selected Poems by Keith DouglasKeith DouglasKeith Castellain Douglas , was an English poet noted for his war poetry during World War II and his wry memoir of the Western Desert Campaign, Alamein to Zem Zem. He was killed during the invasion of Normandy.-Poetry:...
(England)
Non-fiction
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 120 pages and was published originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955....
by Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
1944
The Horse's Mouth
The Horse's Mouth is a 1944 novel by Joyce Cary, the third in his First Trilogy, whose first two books are Herself Surprised and To Be A Pilgrim...
by Joyce Cary
Joyce Cary
Joyce Cary was an Anglo-Irish novelist and artist.-Youth and education:...
Ficciones
Ficciones is the most popular anthology of short stories by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, often considered the best introduction to his work. Ficciones should not be confused with Labyrinths, although they have much in common. Labyrinths is a separate translation of Borges' material,...
by Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
(Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
) - short stories
The Razor's Edge
The Razor’s Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad....
by Somerset Maugham
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
Plays
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
(USA)
1945
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...
by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
Watt
The watt is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units , named after the Scottish engineer James Watt . The unit, defined as one joule per second, measures the rate of energy conversion.-Definition:...
by Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
- published in 1953
Brideshead Revisited
Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...
by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
Black Boy
Black Boy is an autobiography by Richard Wright. The author explores his childhood and race relations in the South. Wright eventually moves to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party....
by Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
Lark Rise to Candleford
Lark Rise to Candleford is a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels about the countryside of north-east Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England, at the end of the 19th century. They were written by Flora Thompson and first published together in 1945...
by Flora Thompson
Flora Thompson
Flora Jane Thompson was an English novelist and poet famous for her semi-autobiographical trilogy about the English countryside, Lark Rise to Candleford.-Early life and family:...
(England) - trilogy, first volume in 1939
Genre fiction
If He Hollers Let Him Go
If He Hollers Let Him Go is a novel by Chester Himes, published in 1945, about an African American shipyard worker in Los Angeles during World War II. A 1968 film adaptation with Raymond St. Jacques, Barbara McNair, Kevin McCarthy, and Arthur O'Connell bore little resemblance to the book.The story...
by Chester Himes
Chester Himes
Chester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works include If He Hollers Let Him Go and a series of Harlem Detective novels...
(USA, France)
The Space Trilogy
The Space Trilogy, Cosmic Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy is a trilogy of science fiction novels by C. S. Lewis, famous for his later series The Chronicles of Narnia. A philologist named Elwin Ransom is the hero of the first two novels and an important character in the third.The books in the trilogy...
by C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
(N Ireland) - first volume published in 1938
1946
Cry, The Beloved Country
Cry, the Beloved Country is a novel by South African author Alan Paton. It was first published in New York City in 1948 by Charles Scribner's Sons and in London by Jonathan Cape; noted American publisher Bennett Cerf remarked at that year's meeting of the American Booksellers Association that there...
by Alan Paton
Alan Paton
Alan Stewart Paton was a South African author and anti-apartheid activist.-Family:Paton was born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal Province , the son of a minor civil servant. After attending Maritzburg College, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Natal in his hometown, followed...
(South Africa)
The Miracle of the Rose
The Miracle of the Rose is a 1946 book by Jean Genet about experiences as a detainee in Mettray Penal Colony and Fontevrault prison - although there is no direct evidence of Genet ever having been imprisoned in the latter establishment...
by Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
Froth on the daydream
Froth on the daydream is a novel written by French author Boris Vian, and published in 1947.It has been translated several times into English, under different titles...
by Boris Vian
Boris Vian
Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their...
(France)
The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel by Southern writer Carson McCullers. It took McCullers five years to complete—though she interrupted the work for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe....
by Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...
Poetry
Deaths and Entrances
Deaths and Entrances is a volume of poetry by Dylan Thomas, first published in 1946. Many of the poems in this collection dealt with the effects of World War II, which had ended only a year earlier. It became the best-known of his poetry collections....
by Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
Plays
The Winslow Boy
thumb|1st edition cover The Winslow Boy is an English play from 1946 by Terence Rattigan based on an actual incident in the Edwardian era, which took place at the Royal Naval College, Osborne.-Performance History:...
by Terence Rattigan
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...
(England)
Non-fiction
Keith Douglas
Keith Castellain Douglas , was an English poet noted for his war poetry during World War II and his wry memoir of the Western Desert Campaign, Alamein to Zem Zem. He was killed during the invasion of Normandy.-Poetry:...
Memoirs of Hecate County
Memoirs of Hecate County is a work of fiction by Edmund Wilson, first published in 1946, but banned in the United States until 1959, when it was reissued with minor revisions by the author....
by Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
1947
The Plague
The Plague is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of medical workers finding solidarity in their labour as the Algerian city of Oran is swept by a plague. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition...
by Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano is a 1947 semi-autobiographical novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry . The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac , on the Day of the Dead.Surrounded by the helpless presences of his ex-wife, his...
by Malcolm Lowry
Malcolm Lowry
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
(England, Canada)
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
(Canada, USA)
The Conformist
The Conformist is a novel by Alberto Moravia published in 1951, which details the life and desire for normalcy of a government official during Italy's fascist period. It is also known for the 1970 film adaptation by Bernardo Bertolucci....
by Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism....
(Italy)
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...
(USA)
Of Love and Hunger
Of Love and Hunger is a novel by Julian Maclaren-Ross, first published in the UK in 1947 by Allan Wingate.- Plot summary :Richard Fanshawe sells vacuum cleaners for a living and has an unhappy love affair with Sukie, the wife of his friend....
by Julian MacLaren-Ross
Julian MacLaren-Ross
Julian MacLaren-Ross was a British novelist.-Background:Born James McLaren Ross in South Norwood, London in 1912, his father John Lambden Ross was of mixed Scottish and Cuban blood, and his mother, from an Anglo-Indian family, was described as "a magnificent Indian lady and the obvious source of...
(England)
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
Snow Country
is the first full-length novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. The novel established Kawabata as one of Japan's foremost authors and became an instant classic.- Name :...
by Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award...
Plays
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
Non-fiction
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...
(Netherlands)
1948
The Naked and the Dead
The Naked and the Dead is a 1948 novel by Norman Mailer. It was based on his experiences with the 112th Cavalry Regiment during the Philippines Campaign in World War II...
by Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
(USA)
Confessions of a Mask
is Japanese author Yukio Mishima's first novel. Published in 1948, it launched him to national fame though he was only in his early twenties.The main protagonist is referred to in the story as Kochan. Being raised during Japan’s era of right-wing militarism and Imperialism, he struggles from a very...
by 'Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima
was the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...
' (Japan)
The Heart of the Matter
The Heart of the Matter , a novel by the English author Graham Greene, won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. During World War II, Greene worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in Sierra Leone, the setting for his novel...
by Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
The City and the Pillar
The City and the Pillar is the third published novel by American writer and essayist Gore Vidal, written in 1946 and published on January 10, 1948...
by Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
(USA)
Ape and Essence
Ape and Essence is a novel by Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and Harper & Brothers in the US. It is set in a dystopia, similar to that in Brave New World, Huxley's more famous work...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
Querelle of Brest
Querelle of Brest is a novel by the French writer Jean Genet. It was written in 1947 and first published in 1953. It is set in the midst of the port town of Brest, where sailors and the sea are associated with murder, and its protagonist is Georges Querelle. The novel formed the basis for Rainer...
by Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
Genre fiction
No Orchids for Miss Blandish (novel)
No Orchids For Miss Blandish is a 1939 crime novel by the British writer James Hadley Chase. The novel was influenced by the American crime writer James M. Cain and the stories in the pulpmagazine Black Mask....
by James Hadley Chase
James Hadley Chase
James Hadley Chase is the best-known pseudonym of the British writer Rene Brabazon Raymond who also wrote under the names James L. Docherty, Ambrose Grant, and Raymond Marshall. Chase is one of the best known thriller writers of all time...
(England)
Plays
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...
Non-fiction
The Second Sex
The Second Sex is one of the best-known works of the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist literature and the starting point of second-wave feminism. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book...
by Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
(France — early feminist study
1949
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
- trilogy, first volume published 1945
The Thief's Journal
The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most famous work. It is a part- fact, part-fiction autobiography that charts the author's progress through Europe in a curiously depoliticized 1930s, wearing nothing but rags and enduring hunger, contempt, fatigue and vice. Spain, Italy, Austria,...
by Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren, which tells the story of a heroin addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world. It stars Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold...
by Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren was an American writer.-Early life:Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on the South Side...
(USA)
The Train Was on Time
The Train Was on Time is the first published novel by German author Heinrich Böll. It dates from 1949 and it talks about a German soldier taking a train from Paris to Przemyśl . On his way to the war front, he meets two other Germans with whom he starts a dialogue and a short-term friendship...
by Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...
(Germany)
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
The Kingdom of this World
The Kingdom of This World is a novella by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, published in 1949 in his native Spanish and first translated into English in 1957. A work of historical fiction, it tells the story of Haiti before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution as seen by its central character,...
by Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba; and despite his European birthplace, Carpentier strongly self-identified...
(Mexico)
The Heat of the Day
The Heat of the Day is a novel written by Elizabeth Bowen, first published in 1948 in Great Britain, and in 1949 in the United States of America....
by Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...
Genre fiction
The Trouble with Harry
The Trouble With Harry is a 1955 American black comedy film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the novel of the same name by Jack Trevor Story. It was released in the United States on October 3, 1955 then rereleased once the distribution rights were acquired by Universal Pictures in 1984...
by Jack Trevor Story
Jack Trevor Story
Jack Trevor Story was a British novelist, publishing prolifically from the 1940s to the 1970s. His best-known work is the story for Alfred Hitchcock's comedy The Trouble With Harry, the Albert Argyle trilogy , and his Horace Spurgeon novels Jack Trevor Story (30 March 1917 - 5 December 1991) was a...
(England)
Plays
Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949, the original production ran for a total of 742 performances.-Plot :Willy Loman...
by Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
(USA)
Postwar period
The intermediate postwar period separating "Modernism" from "Postmodernism" (1950s literature) is the floruit of the beat generationBeat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
and the classical science fiction of Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
, Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
and Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
.
1950
William Cooper (novelist)
Harry Summerfield Hoff was an English novelist, writing under the name William Cooper.-Life:H.S.Hoff was born in Crewe, the son of elementary school teachers , and read natural sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge...
(England) - the first of the British 50s 'kitchen sink' novels
Genre fiction
Nevil Shute
Nevil Shute Norway was a popular British-Australian novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer. He used his full name in his engineering career, and 'Nevil Shute' as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.-...
(England, Australia)
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...
(USA)
Non-fiction
The Authoritarian Personality
The Authoritarian Personality is an influential sociology book by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, researchers working at the University of California, Berkeley, during and shortly after World War II.TAP "invented a set of criteria by which to define...
by Theodor Adorno (Germany, USA)
1951
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major...
by J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980....
(USA)
The Grass Harp
The Grass Harp is a novel by Truman Capote published on October 1, 1951 It tells the story of an orphaned boy and two elderly ladies who observe life from a tree...
by Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
(USA)
Memoirs of Hadrian
Memoirs of Hadrian is a novel by the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar about the life and death of Roman Emperor Hadrian. The book was first published in France in French in 1951 as Mémoires d'Hadrien, and was an immediate success, meeting with enormous critical acclaim...
by Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980, and the seventeenth person to occupy Seat 3.-Biography:Yourcenar was born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie...
(France)
Non-fiction
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
1952
Invisible Man
Invisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison, and the only one that he published during his lifetime . It won him the National Book Award in 1953...
by Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...
(USA)
Wise Blood
Wise Blood is the first novel by American author Flannery O'Connor, published in 1952. The novel was assembled from several disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review...
by Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
(USA)
John Clellon Holmes
John Clellon Holmes , born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, was an author, poet and professor, best known for his 1952 novel Go. Considered the first "Beat" novel, Go depicted events in his life with his friends Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. He was often referred to as the "quiet Beat"...
(USA) - the first Beat
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
novel
The Natural
The Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball written by Bernard Malamud. The book follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a woman who seeks to kill arrogant athletes to "better the world"...
by Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...
(USA)
The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who...
by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
Genre fiction
The Tiger in the Smoke
The Tiger in the Smoke is a crime novel by Margery Allingham, first published in 1952, in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus, London and in the United States by Doubleday Doran, New York. It is the fourteenth novel in the Albert Campion series....
by Margery Allingham
Margery Allingham
Margery Louise Allingham was an English crime writer, best remembered for her detective stories featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.- Childhood and schooling :...
(England)
The Killer Inside Me
The Killer Inside Me is a 1952 novel by American writer Jim Thompson published by Fawcett Publications. In the introduction to the anthology Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s, it is described as "one of the most blistering and uncompromising crime novels ever written."- Plot summary :The...
by Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson (writer)
James Myers Thompson was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction....
(USA)
Plays
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
(Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, France)
1953
Junkie (novel)
Junkie is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by William S. Burroughs. It was his first published novel and has come to be considered a seminal text on the lifestyle of heroin addicts in the early 1950s. Burroughs' working title was Junk.-Inspiration:The novel was considered unpublishable more than...
and Queer
Queer (novel)
Queer is the title of an early short novel by William S. Burroughs. It is partially a sequel to his earlier novel, Junkie. That novel ends with the stated ambition of finding the ultimate ‘high’- a drug called Yage...
by William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
(USA)
Go Tell It on the Mountain (novel)
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. The novel examines the role of the Christian Church in the lives of African-Americans, both as a source of repression and moral hypocrisy and as a source of inspiration and community...
by James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
(USA, France)
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
The Adventures of Augie March
The Adventures of Augie March is a novel by Saul Bellow.It centers on the eponymous character who grows up during the Great Depression...
by Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
John Wain
John Barrington Wain was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated with the literary group "The Movement". For most of his life, Wain worked as a freelance journalist and author, writing and reviewing for newspapers and the radio. He seems to have married in 1947, since C. S...
(England) - the first 'angry young man' novel
Genre fiction
Casino Royale (novel)
Casino Royale is Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel. It paved the way for a further eleven novels by Fleming himself, in addition to two short story collections, followed by many "continuation" Bond novels by other authors....
by Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
(England, Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
) - first James Bond novel
The Long Goodbye (novel)
The Long Goodbye is a 1953 novel by Raymond Chandler, centered on his famous detective Philip Marlowe. While some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, others rank it as the best of his work...
by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
Childhood's End
Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival ends all war, helps form a world government, and turns the planet into a near-utopia...
by Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
(England, Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
)
Foundation (novel)
Foundation is the first book in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy . Foundation is a collection of five short stories, which were first published together as a book by Gnome Press in 1951...
by Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
(USA) - trilogy, first volume published in 1951
Gerald Kersh
Gerald Kersh was a British writer. Born in 1911, he began to write at the age of 8. After leaving school he worked as, amongst other things, a cinema manager, bodyguard, debt collector, fish & chip cook, travelling salesman, French teacher and all-in-wrestler whilst attempting to 'make it' as a...
Plays
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
by Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
1954
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results...
by William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
(England)
Lucky Jim
Lucky Jim is an academic satire written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction...
by Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
(England) - the most famous 'angry young man' novel
Under the Net
Under the Net was the first novel of Iris Murdoch, published in 1954. Set in London, it is the story of a struggling young writer, Jake Donaghue. Its mixture of the philosophical and the picaresque has made it one of Murdoch's most popular....
by Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
(England)
Bonjour Tristesse
Bonjour Tristesse is a novel by Françoise Sagan. Published in 1954, when the author was only 18, it was an overnight sensation...
by Françoise Sagan
Françoise Sagan
Françoise Sagan – real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Hailed as "a charming little monster" by François Mauriac on the front page of Le Figaro, Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois...
(France)
Genre fiction
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury. The novel presents a future American society where reading is outlawed and firemen start fires to burn books...
by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
(USA)
Story of O
Story of O is an erotic novel published in 1954 about love, dominance and submission by French author Anne Desclos under the pen name Pauline Réage.Desclos did not reveal herself as the author for forty years after the initial publication...
by Pauline Réage
Pauline Réage
Anne Desclos was a French journalist and novelist who wrote under the pseudonyms Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage.-Early life:...
(France)
Plays
Under Milk Wood
Under Milk Wood is a 1954 radio drama by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, adapted later as a stage play. A movie version, Under Milk Wood directed by Andrew Sinclair, was released during 1972....
by Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
The Quare Fellow
The Quare Fellow is Brendan Behan's first play, first produced in 1954.The title is taken from a Hiberno-English pronunciation of queer, meaning 'strange' or 'unusual'. In context, the word lacks the denotation of homosexuality which it holds today...
by Brendan Behan
Brendan Behan
Brendan Francis Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both Irish and English. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.-Early life:...
(Ireland)
Non-fiction
The Doors of Perception
The Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. The book takes the form of Huxley’s recollection of a mescaline trip which took place over the course of an afternoon, and takes its title from William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
1955
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
One (David Karp novel)
One is a dystopian novel by David Karp first published in 1953. It was also published under the title, Escape to Nowhere.Set in an unspecified time in the future in an unspecified Americanized country, One depicts a society on its way to a self-proclaimed perfection which consists in dissension...
by David Karp (USA)
The Quiet American
The Quiet American is an anti-war novel by British author Graham Greene, first published in United Kingdom in 1955 and in the United States in 1956. It was adapted into films in 1958 and 2002. The book draws on Greene's experiences as a war correspondent for The Times and Le Figaro in French...
by Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
The Bread of Those Early Years
The Bread of Those Early Years is a 1962 West German film directed by Herbert Vesely, based on the novel The Bread of Those Early Years by Heinrich Böll...
by Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...
The Tree of Man
The Tree of Man is the fourth published novel by the Australian novelist and 1973 Nobel Prize-winner, Patrick White. It is a domestic drama chronicling the lives of the Parker family and their changing fortunes over many decades...
by Patrick White
Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
(Australia)
The Inheritors (William Golding)
The Inheritors is the 1955 second novel by the British author William Golding, best known for Lord of the Flies. It was his personal favourite of all his novels and concerns the extinction of the last remaining tribe of Neanderthals at the hands of the more sophisticated Homo sapiens.-Plot...
by William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
(France)
The Genius and the Goddess
The Genius and the Goddess is a novel by Aldous Huxley. It was published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and by Harper & Row in the US. It is the fictional account of John Rivers, a student physicist in the 1920s who was hired out of college as a laboratory assistant to Henry Maartens.-Plot...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
The Deer Park
The Deer Park is a Hollywood novel written by Norman Mailer and published in 1955 by G.P. Putnam's Sons after it was rejected by Mailer's publisher, Rinehart & Company, for obscenity. Despite having already typeset the book, Rinehart claimed that the manuscript's obscenity voided its contract with...
by Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
The Recognitions
The Recognitions, published in 1955, is American author William Gaddis's first novel. The novel was poorly received initially, but Gaddis's reputation grew, twenty years later, with the publication of his second novel J R , and The Recognitions received belated fame as a masterpiece of American...
by William Gaddis
William Gaddis
William Thomas Gaddis, Jr. was an American novelist. He wrote five novels, two of which won National Book Awards and one of which, The Recognitions , was chosen as one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005...
(USA)
Memed, My Hawk
Memed, My Hawk is a 1955 novel by Yaşar Kemal. It was Kemal's debut novel and is the first novel in his İnce Memed tetralogy. The novel won the Varlik prize for that year and earned Kemal a national reputation...
by Yaşar Kemal
Yasar Kemal
Yaşar Kemal, is a Turkish writer. He is one of Turkey's leading writers. He has long been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, on the strength of Memed, My Hawk....
(Turkey)
Genre fiction
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
by J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, first volume in 1954
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith. This novel first introduced the character of Tom Ripley who returns in the novels Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water...
by Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...
Plays
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
Bus Stop (play)
Bus Stop is a 1955 play by William Inge. The 1956 film is only loosely based upon it.-Characters:Bus Stop is a drama, with romantic and some comedic elements. It is set in a diner in rural Kansas, about 20 miles west of Kansas City, Missouri during a snowstorm from which bus passengers must take...
by William Inge
William Inge
William Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s, he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, and one of these, Picnic, earned him a Pulitzer Prize...
(USA)
Poetry
The Less Deceived
The Less Deceived, first published in 1955, was Philip Larkin's first mature collection of poetry, having been preceded by the derivative North Ship from The Fortune Press and a privately printed collection...
by Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...
(England)
1956
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
Giovanni's Room
Giovanni's Room is James Baldwin's second novel, first published in 1956. The book focuses on the events in the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni who he meets...
by James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
The Lonely Londoners
The Lonely Londoners is a 1956 novel by British Caribbean author Samuel Selvon. Its publication marked the first literary work focusing on poor, working class blacks in the beat writer tradition following the enactment of the British Nationality Act 1948....
by Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon was a Trinidad-born writer. Selvon was educated at Naparima College, San Fernando before moving to London, England in the 1950s, and later to Alberta, Canada. He is known for novels such as The Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending...
(Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
, England)
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren was an American writer.-Early life:Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on the South Side...
Genre fiction
- The Chronicles of NarniaThe Chronicles of NarniaThe Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages...
by C. S. LewisC. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
(N Ireland) - seven volumes, first in 1950 - Peyton PlacePeyton Place (novel)Peyton Place is a 1956 novel by Grace Metalious. It sold 60,000 copies within the first ten days of its release and remained on the New York Times best seller list for 59 weeks. It was adapted as both a 1957 film and a 1964–69 television series....
by Grace Metalious
Plays
- Look Back In AngerLook Back in AngerLook Back in Anger is a John Osborne play—made into films in 1959, 1980, and 1989 -- about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man , his upper-middle-class, impassive wife , and her haughty best friend . Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace...
by John OsborneJohn OsborneJohn James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
(England) - the first 'angry young man' play
Poetry
- Howl and Other PoemsHowl and Other PoemsHowl and Other Poems is a collection of poetry by Allen Ginsberg published November 1, 1956. It contains Ginsberg's most famous poem, "Howl", which is considered to be one of the principal works of the Beat Generation as well as "A Supermarket in California", "Transcription of Organ Music",...
by Allen GinsbergAllen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
(USA)
Non-fiction
- Heaven and HellHeaven and Hell (essay)Heaven and Hell is a philosophical essay written by Aldous Huxley, and published in 1956. Huxley derived the title from William Blake's book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The essay discusses the relationship between bright, colorful objects, geometric designs, psychoactives, art, and profound...
by Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
1957
- On the RoadOn the RoadOn the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...
by Jack KerouacJack KerouacJean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
(Canada, USA) - Young AdamYoung AdamYoung Adam is a 1957 novel by Alexander Trocchi which tells the story of Joe, a young man who labors on the river barges of Glasgow, and who discovers the body of a young woman floating in the canal...
by Alexander TrocchiAlexander TrocchiAlexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.-Early career:Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to...
(Scotland) - Room at the TopRoom at the Top (novel)Room at the Top , by John Braine, tells the rise of an ambitious young man of humble origin, and the socio-economic struggles undergone in realising his social ambitions in post-war Britain...
by John BraineJohn BraineJohn Gerard Braine was an English novelist. Braine is usually associated with the Angry Young Men movement.-Biography:...
(England) - Doctor ZhivagoDoctor Zhivago-Original creation:*Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, published in 1957**Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago, a fictional character and the main protagonist of the book Doctor Zhivago-Adaptations:There are several adaptations based on the Doctor Zhivago book:...
by Boris PasternakBoris PasternakBoris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
(Russia) - VossVossis a municipality in Hordaland county, Norway. It is part of the traditional district of Voss. The administrative center of the municipality is the village of Vossevangen....
by Patrick WhitePatrick WhitePatrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative... - The AssistantThe Assistant (novel)The Assistant is Bernard Malamud's second novel. Set in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, it explores the situation of first- and second-generation Americans in the early 1950s, as experienced by three main characters and the relationships between them: an aging Jewish refugee...
by Bernard MalamudBernard MalamudBernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford... - Second Thoughts by Michel ButorMichel Butor-Life and work:Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Salonika, the United States, and Geneva...
(France) - PninPninPnin is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957.-Plot summary:The book's eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, is a Russian-born professor living in the United States...
by Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist... - Cairo TrilogyCairo TrilogyThe Cairo Trilogy or ) is a trilogy of novels written by the Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz.The three novels are, in order:* Palace Walk...
by Naguib MahfouzNaguib MahfouzNaguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...
(Egypt) - Gimpel the FoolGimpel the Fool"Gimpel the Fool" is a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated into English by Saul Bellow in 1953. It tells the story of Gimpel, a simple bread maker who is the butt of many of his town's jokes. It also gives its name to the collection first published in 1957...
by Isaac Bashevis SingerIsaac Bashevis SingerIsaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
(Poland, USA) - short stories, originally published in Yiddish years earlier - Atlas ShruggedAtlas ShruggedAtlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
by Ayn RandAyn RandAyn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
(USA)
Genre fiction
- On the Beach by Nevil ShuteNevil ShuteNevil Shute Norway was a popular British-Australian novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer. He used his full name in his engineering career, and 'Nevil Shute' as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.-...
Plays
- The Room and The Birthday PartyThe Birthday Party (play)The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays...
by Harold PinterHarold PinterHarold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
(England) - EndgameEndgame (play)Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters, written in a style associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. It was originally written in French ; as was his custom, Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the...
by Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most... - The EntertainerThe Entertainer (play)The Entertainer is a three act play by John Osborne, first produced in 1957. His first play, Look Back in Anger, had attracted mixed notices but a great deal of publicity. Having depicted an "angry young man" in the earlier play, Osborne wrote, at Laurence Olivier's request,about an angry middle...
by John OsborneJohn OsborneJohn James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre.... - Orpheus DescendingOrpheus DescendingOrpheus Descending is a play by Tennessee Williams. It was first presented on Broadway in 1957 where it enjoyed a brief run with only modest success. The play is basically a rewrite of an earlier play by Williams called Battle of Angels, which was written in 1940, but had been closed on its opening...
by Tennessee WilliamsTennessee WilliamsThomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs... - The VisitThe VisitThe Visit is a 1956 tragicomic play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.-Plot summary:...
by Friedrich DürrenmattFriedrich DürrenmattFriedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire...
(Switzerland)
1958
- If This Is a ManIf This Is a ManIf This Is a Man is a work by the Italian writer, Primo Levi, describing his 11 months—from February 21, 1944 until liberation on January 27, 1945—in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, during the Second World War...
by Primo LeviPrimo LeviPrimo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
(Italy) - Breakfast At Tiffany'sBreakfast at Tiffany's (novella)Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella by Truman Capote published in 1958. The main character, Holly Golightly, is one of Capote's best-known creations and an American cultural icon.-Plot:...
by Truman CapoteTruman CapoteTruman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At... - The Dharma BumsThe Dharma BumsThe Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after the events of On the Road...
by Jack KerouacJack KerouacJean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic... - Saturday Night and Sunday MorningSaturday Night and Sunday MorningSaturday Night and Sunday Morning is the first novel by British author Alan Sillitoe and won the Author's Club First Novel Award.It was adapted by Sillitoe into a 1960 film starring Albert Finney, directed by Karel Reisz, and in 1964 was adapted by David Brett as a play for the Nottingham...
by Alan SillitoeAlan SillitoeAlan Sillitoe was an English writer and one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s.. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied.- Biography :...
(England) - A Taste of HoneyA Taste of HoneyA Taste of Honey is the first play by the British dramatist Shelagh Delaney, written when she was 18. It was initially intended as a novel, but she turned it into a play because she hoped to revitalize British theatre and to address social issues that she felt were not being presented...
by Shelagh DelaneyShelagh DelaneyShelagh Delaney, FRSL was an English dramatist and screenwriter, best-known for her debut work, A Taste of Honey ....
(England) - Things Fall ApartThings Fall ApartThings Fall Apartis a 1958 English language novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first African...
by Chinua AchebeChinua AchebeAlbert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...
(Nigeria) - The BellThe Bell (novel)The Bell is a novel written by Iris Murdoch in 1958. It was her fourth to be published, and is set in Imber Court, a lay religious community situated next to an enclosed order of Benedictine nuns in Gloucestershire.-Plot summary:...
by Iris MurdochIris MurdochDame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious... - Fowlers End by Gerald KershGerald KershGerald Kersh was a British writer. Born in 1911, he began to write at the age of 8. After leaving school he worked as, amongst other things, a cinema manager, bodyguard, debt collector, fish & chip cook, travelling salesman, French teacher and all-in-wrestler whilst attempting to 'make it' as a...
- Our Man in HavanaOur Man in HavanaOur Man In Havana is a novel by British author Graham Greene, where he makes fun of intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants....
by Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world... - CandyCandy (novel)Candy is a 1958 novel written by Maxwell Kenton in collaboration with Mason Hoffenberg published by Olympia Press. It was later published in North America by Putnam under the authors' own names...
by Terry SouthernTerry SouthernTerry Southern was an American author, essayist, screenwriter and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style...
(USA)
Genre fiction
- ExodusExodus (novel)Exodus by American novelist Leon Uris is about the founding of the State of Israel. Published in 1958, it is based on the name of the 1947 immigration ship Exodus....
by Leon UrisLeon UrisLeon Marcus Uris was an American novelist, known for his historical fiction and the deep research that went into his novels. His two bestselling books were Exodus, published in 1958, and Trinity, in 1976.-Life:...
(USA) - Zimiamvian TrilogyZimiamvian TrilogyThe Zimiamvian Trilogy is the title given to a collection of three novels by the author E. R. Eddison.- Books in the trilogy :*Mistress of Mistresses*A Fish Dinner in Memison*The Mezentian Gate...
by E. R. Eddison (England) - first volume in 1935 - MolesworthNigel MolesworthNigel Molesworth is the supposed author of a series of books , with cartoon illustrations by Ronald Searle....
by Geoffrey WillansGeoffrey WillansHerbert Geoffrey Willans , an English author and journalist, is best known as the co-creator, with the illustrator Ronald Searle, of Nigel Molesworth, the "goriller of 3b and curse of St. Custard's"....
(England) and Ronald SearleRonald SearleRonald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI, is a British artist and cartoonist, best known as the creator of St Trinian's School. He is also the co-author of the Molesworth series....
(England, France) - tetrology, first book in 1954
Plays
- Krapp's Last TapeKrapp's Last TapeKrapp's Last Tape is a one-act play, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"...
by Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most... - Suddenly, Last SummerSuddenly, Last SummerSuddenly, Last Summer is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams. It opened off Broadway on January 7, 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams's one-acts, Something Unspoken. The presentation of the two plays was given the overall title Garden District, but Suddenly, Last Summer is...
by Tennessee WilliamsTennessee WilliamsThomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
Non-fiction
- The Theatre and Its Double by Antonin ArtaudAntonin ArtaudAntoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
(France) - Borstal BoyBorstal BoyBorstal Boy is an autobiographical 1958 book by Brendan Behan. The story depicts a young, fervently idealistic Behan who loses his naïveté over the three years of his sentence to a juvenile borstal, softening his radical Republican stance and warming to his fellow British prisoners...
by Brendan BehanBrendan BehanBrendan Francis Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both Irish and English. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.-Early life:...
1959
- The Tin DrumThe Tin DrumThe Tin Drum is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass. The novel is the first book of Grass's .- Plot summary :The story revolves around the life of Oskar Matzerath, as narrated by himself when confined in a mental hospital during the years 1952-1954...
by Günter GrassGünter GrassGünter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...
(Germany) - Naked LunchNaked LunchNaked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs originally published in 1959. The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order...
by William S. BurroughsWilliam S. BurroughsWilliam Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th... - The Last of the JustThe Last of the JustThe Last of the Just is a post-war novel by André Schwarz-Bart originally published in French in 1959. It was published in an English translation by Stephen Becker in 1960. It was Schwarz-Bart's first book and won the Prix de Goncourt, France's highest literary prize...
by André Schwarz-BartAndre Schwarz-BartAndré Schwarz-Bart was a French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins....
(France) - Goodbye, ColumbusGoodbye, ColumbusGoodbye, Columbus is a 1959 book by American novelist Philip Roth. It was the writer's first book: a collection of five short stories and one novella, also titled "Goodbye, Columbus"....
by Philip RothPhilip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
(USA) - Zazie in the MetroZazie in the MetroZazie in the Metro — or simply Zazie, depending on the translation — a French novel written in 1959, was the first major success of author Raymond Queneau...
by Raymond QueneauRaymond QueneauRaymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
(France) - In the LabyrinthIn the LabyrinthIn the Labyrinth was a groundbreaking multi-screen presentation at Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It used 35mm and 70mm film projected simultaneously on multiple screens and was the precursor of today's IMAX format.The film split elements across the five screens and also combined them for a...
by Alain Robbe-GrilletAlain Robbe-GrilletAlain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice... - The Loneliness of the Long Distance RunnerThe Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner"The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" is a short story by Alan Sillitoe which was set in Irvine Beach, and published in 1959 as part of a short story collection of the same name. The work focuses on Colin, a poor Nottingham teenager from a dismal home in a blue-collar area, who has bleak...
by Alan SillitoeAlan SillitoeAlan Sillitoe was an English writer and one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s.. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied.- Biography :... - Billy LiarBilly LiarBilly Liar is a 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse, which was later adapted into a play, a film, a musical and a TV series. The work has inspired and featured in a number of popular songs....
by Keith WaterhouseKeith WaterhouseKeith Spencer Waterhouse CBE was a novelist, newspaper columnist, and the writer of many television series.-Biography:Keith Waterhouse was born in Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
(England) - The Long Day WanesThe Long Day WanesThe Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy, also published as The Malayan Trilogy, is Anthony Burgess's novel cycle about the withdrawal from empire....
by Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
(England) - trilogy, first volume published in 1956 - The Magic ChristianThe Magic Christian (novel)The Magic Christian is a 1959 comic novel by American author Terry Southern. In 1969 the novel was made into a film starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, by director Joseph McGrath, also titled The Magic Christian...
by Terry SouthernTerry SouthernTerry Southern was an American author, essayist, screenwriter and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style...
Genre fiction
Gormenghast series
The Gormenghast series comprises three novels by Mervyn Peake, featuring Castle Gormenghast, and Titus Groan, the title character of the first book.-Works in the series:...
by Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...
(England) - first volume in 1946
The Getaway (novel)
The Getaway is a 1959 crime novel by Jim Thompson that begins with a bank robbery and the later life of the robber and his wife.The novel has been adapted into film twice. The first version was a Steve McQueen vehicle: see The Getaway , and the second was a remake starring Alec Baldwin: see The...
by Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson (writer)
James Myers Thompson was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction....
Plays
- The Dumb WaiterThe Dumb WaiterThe Dumb Waiter is a one-act play by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter written in 1957; it premiered at the Hampstead Theatre Club, on 21 January 1960...
and The CaretakerThe CaretakerThe Caretaker is a play by Harold Pinter. It was first published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960. The sixth play that Pinter wrote for stage or television production, it was his first significant commercial success...
by Harold PinterHarold PinterHarold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to... - RhinocérosRhinocerosRhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....
by Eugène IonescoEugène IonescoEugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
Cold War period 1960-1989
1960- To Kill a MockingbirdTo Kill a MockingbirdTo Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature...
by Harper LeeHarper LeeNelle Harper Lee is an American author known for her 1960 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals with the issues of racism that were observed by the author as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama...
(USA) - The London Trilogy by Colin MacInnesColin MacInnesColin MacInnes was an English novelist and journalist.-Early life:MacInnes was born in London, the son of singer James Campbell McInnes and novelist Angela Thirkell, who was also related to Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. His family moved to Australia in 1920, MacInness returning in 1930...
(England) - first volume, Absolute Beginners, published in 1957 - Cain's BookCain's BookCain's Book is a 1960 novel by Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi. A roman a clef, it details the life of Joe Necchi, a heroin addict and writer, who is living and working on a scow on the Hudson River in New York....
by Alexander TrocchiAlexander TrocchiAlexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.-Early career:Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to...
(UK, France, USA) - This Sporting LifeThis Sporting LifeThis Sporting Life is a 1963 British film based on a novel of the same name by David Storey which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. It tells the story of a rugby league footballer, Frank Machin, in Wakefield, a mining area of Yorkshire, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting...
by David StoreyDavid StoreyDavid Rhames Storey is an English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a former professional rugby league player....
(UK) - A Burnt-Out CaseA Burnt-Out Case-Plot summary:The plot concerns Querry, who is the victim of a terrible attack of indifference, he no longer finds meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper colony overseen by Catholic missionaries, he is diagnosed - by Dr Colin, the resident doctor - as the mental...
by Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world... - Hiroshima Mon AmourHiroshima Mon AmourHiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness...
by Marguerite DurasMarguerite DurasMarguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
(France) - The Ballad of Peckham RyeThe Ballad of Peckham RyeThe Ballad of Peckham Rye is a novel written in 1960 by the Scottish author Muriel Spark.It tells the story of a devilish Scottish migrant, Dougal Douglas, who moves to Peckham in London and wreaks havoc amongst the lives of the inhabitants...
by Muriel SparkMuriel SparkDame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
(Scotland) - The Rosy CrucifixionThe Rosy CrucifixionThe Rosy Crucifixion, consisting of Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus, documents the period of Henry Miller's life from his first divorce in 1928 to his departure for France in 1930.-Sexus:...
by Henry MillerHenry MillerHenry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
(USA) - trilogy, first volume published 1949 - The Sot-Weed FactorThe Sot-Weed FactorThe Sot-Weed Factor is a 1960 novel by the American writer John Barth, which marks Barth's discovery of Postmodernism.-Plot:The novel is a satirical epic of the colonization of Maryland based on the life of an actual poet, Ebenezer Cooke, who wrote a poem of the same title...
by John BarthJohn BarthJohn Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...
(USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
Louis Pauwels
Louis Pauwels was a French journalist and writer.- Biography :Louis Pauwels was a teacher at Athis-Mons from 1939 to 1945 , Louis Pauwels wrote in many monthly literary French magazines as early as 1946 until the...
and Jacques Bergier
Jacques Bergier
Jacques Bergier , was a chemical engineer, member of the French-resistance, spy, journalist and writer...
(France) - the 60s obsession with the occult starts here. Published in English 1963
A Canticle for Leibowitz
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960. Set in a Roman Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as...
by Walter Miller Jr. (USA)
1961
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...
(USA)
A House for Mr Biswas
A House for Mr Biswas is a 1961 novel by V. S. Naipaul, significant as Naipaul's first work to achieve acclaim worldwide. It is the story of Mr Mohun Biswas, an Indo-Trinidadian who continually strives for success and mostly fails, who marries into the Tulsi family only to find himself dominated by...
by V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
(Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
, England)
Riders in the Chariot
Riders in the Chariot is the sixth published novel by Australian Author Patrick White, Nobel Prize winner of 1973. It was published in 1961 and won the Miles Franklin Award in that year...
by Patrick White
Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
A Severed Head
A Severed Head is a satirical, sometimes farcical 1961 novel by Iris Murdoch.Primary themes include marriage, adultery, and incest within a group of civilized and educated people. Set in and around London, it depicts a power struggle between grown-up middle class people who are lucky to be free of...
by Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
Sword of Honour
The Sword of Honour trilogy by Evelyn Waugh is his look at the Second World War. It consists of three novels, Men at Arms , Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender , which loosely parallel his wartime experiences...
by Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
- trilogy, first volume published in 1952
Revolutionary Road
Revolutionary Road, the first novel of author Richard Yates, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962 along with Catch-22 and The Moviegoer. When it was published by Atlantic-Little, Brown in 1961, it received critical acclaim, and the New York Times reviewed it as "beautifully crafted.....
by Richard Yates
Richard Yates (novelist)
Richard Yates was an American novelist and short story writer, known for his exploration of mid-20th century life.-Life:...
(USA)
Malcolm Lowry
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
- posthumous
Genre fiction
- SolarisSolaris (novel)Solaris is a 1961 Polish science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem. It is about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and non-human species....
by Stanisław Lem (Poland) - Stranger in a Strange LandStranger in a Strange LandStranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The novel explores his interaction with—and...
by Robert A. HeinleinRobert A. HeinleinRobert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
(USA) - The Man in the High CastleThe Man in the High CastleThe Man in the High Castle is a science fiction alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It won a Hugo Award in 1963 and has since been translated into many languages....
by Philip K. DickPhilip K. DickPhilip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
(USA)
1962
- One Day in the Life of Ivan DenisovichOne Day in the Life of Ivan DenisovichOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir . The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov...
by Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
(Russia) - A Clockwork OrangeA Clockwork OrangeA Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
and The Wanting SeedThe Wanting SeedThe Wanting Seed is a dystopian novel by the English author Anthony Burgess, written in 1962.-Theme:Although the novel addresses many societal issues, the primary subject is overpopulation and its relation to culture. Religion, government, and history are also addressed...
by Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works... - Pale FirePale FirePale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
by Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist... - IslandIslandAn island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...
by Aldous HuxleyAldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel... - The Golden NotebookThe Golden NotebookThe Golden Notebook is a 1962 novel by Doris Lessing. This book, as well as the couple that followed it, enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in The Oxford Companion to English Literature has called Lessing's "inner space fiction", her work that explores mental and societal breakdown...
by Doris LessingDoris LessingDoris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
(Zimbabwe, England) - The Death of Artemio CruzThe Death of Artemio CruzThe Death of Artemio Cruz is a novel written in 1962 by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes and is considered to be a contributor to the Latin American literary movement known as the Latin American "Boom".-Plot summary:...
by Carlos FuentesCarlos FuentesCarlos Fuentes Macías is a Mexican writer and one of the best-known living novelists and essayists in the Spanish-speaking world. He has influenced contemporary Latin American literature, and his works have been widely translated into English and other languages.-Biography:Fuentes was born in...
(Mexico) - The Alexandria QuartetThe Alexandria QuartetThe Alexandria Quartet is a tetralogy of novels by British writer Lawrence Durrell, published between 1957 and 1960. A critical and commercial success, the books present four perspectives on a single set of events and characters in Alexandria, Egypt, before and during World War II.As Durrell...
by Lawrence DurrellLawrence DurrellLawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
- first volume published 1957 - Big SurBig SurBig Sur is a sparsely populated region of the Central Coast of California where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. The name "Big Sur" is derived from the original Spanish-language "el sur grande", meaning "the big south", or from "el país grande del sur", "the big...
by Jack KerouacJack KerouacJean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
- the last of the Lost Generation at the end of the Beat Generation
Genre fiction
The Ipcress File
The IPCRESS File was the first spy novel by Len Deighton, published in 1962.It was made into a film in 1965 produced by Harry Saltzman and directed by Sidney J. Furie, starring Michael Caine as the protagonist....
by Len Deighton
Len Deighton
Leonard Cyril Deighton is a British military historian, cookery writer, and novelist. He is perhaps most famous for his spy novel The IPCRESS File, which was made into a film starring Michael Caine....
(England) - first of the Harry Palmer novels
Non-fiction
- Silent SpringSilent SpringSilent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 September 1962. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement....
by Rachel CarsonRachel CarsonRachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement....
(USA) - the first major popular study on the deterioration of the environment
1963
- V.V.V. is the debut novel of Thomas Pynchon, published in 1963. It describes the exploits of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane, his reconnection in New York with a group of pseudo-bohemian artists and hangers-on known as the Whole Sick Crew, and the quest of an aging traveller named...
by Thomas PynchonThomas PynchonThomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
(USA) - The Bell JarThe Bell JarThe Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed...
by Sylvia PlathSylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
(USA, England) - The Time of the HeroThe Time of the HeroThe Time of the Hero was the first novel published by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Set among a community of cadets in a Lima military school , it is notable for its experimental and complex employment of multiple perspectives...
by Mario Vargas LlosaMario Vargas LlosaJorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...
(Peru) - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (novel)One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey. Set in an Oregon asylum, the narrative serves as a study of the institutional process and the human mind, as well as a critique of Behaviorism and a celebration of humanistic principles. Written in 1959, the novel was adapted into a...
by Ken KeseyKen KeseyKenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...
(USA) - The CollectorThe CollectorThe Collector is the title of a 1963 novel by John Fowles. It was made into a movie in 1965.- Plot summary :The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his spare time...
by John FowlesJohn FowlesJohn Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
(England) - The Lowlife by Alexander BaronAlexander BaronAlexander Baron was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough and his London novel The Lowlife .-Early life:...
(England) - Live Now, Pay Later by Jack Trevor StoryJack Trevor StoryJack Trevor Story was a British novelist, publishing prolifically from the 1940s to the 1970s. His best-known work is the story for Alfred Hitchcock's comedy The Trouble With Harry, the Albert Argyle trilogy , and his Horace Spurgeon novels Jack Trevor Story (30 March 1917 - 5 December 1991) was a...
Genre fiction
Pierre Boulle
Pierre Boulle was a French novelist largely known for two famous works, The Bridge over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes .-Biography:...
(France)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , by John le Carré, is a British Cold War spy novel that became famous for its portrayal of Western espionage methods as being morally inconsistent with Western democracy and values. The novel received critical acclaim at the time of its publication and became an...
by John le Carré
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
(England)
The Grifters (novel)
The Grifters is a noir fiction novel by Jim Thompson, published in 1963.-Plot summary:Roy Dillon is a 25-year-old con artist living in Los Angeles. At the start of the novel, he gets hit in the stomach with a baseball bat when a simple con goes wrong. He seems to be well but when Lilly - his mother...
by Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson (writer)
James Myers Thompson was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction....
Non-fiction
- The TruceThe TruceThe Truce is a book by the Italian author Primo Levi. It describes his experiences returning from the concentration camp at Auschwitz after the Second World War...
by Primo LeviPrimo LeviPrimo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
)
1964
- HerzogHerzog (novel)Herzog is a 1964 novel by Saul Bellow. Letters from the protagonist constitute much of the text.Herzog won the 1965 National Book Award for Fiction and the The Prix International...
by Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts... - A Single ManA Single Man (novel)A Single Man is a 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood.Set in Southern California during 1962, it depicts one day in the life of George, a middle-aged, gay Englishman who is a professor at a Los Angeles university....
by Christopher IsherwoodChristopher IsherwoodChristopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed... - Last Exit to BrooklynLast Exit to BrooklynLast Exit to Brooklyn is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby, Jr. The novel has become a cult classic because of its harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s and for its brusque, everyman style of prose....
by Hubert Selby (USA) - The SpireThe SpireThe Spire is a 1964 novel by the English author William Golding. "A dark and powerful portrait of one man's will", it deals with the construction of the 404-foot high spire of Salisbury Cathedral; the vision of the fictional Dean Jocelin...
by William GoldingWilliam GoldingSir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
(England) - Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
Genre fiction
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a 1965 novel by US science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965....
by Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
(USA)
Little Big Man
Little Big Man is a 1970 American Western film directed by Arthur Penn and based on the 1964 comic novel by Thomas Berger. It is a picaresque comedy about a Caucasian boy raised by the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century...
by Thomas Berger (USA)
Non-fiction
- Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhanMarshall McLuhanHerbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
(Canada)
1965
- The MagusThe Magus (novel)The Magus is the first novel written by British author John Fowles. It tells the story of Nicholas Urfe, a teacher on a small Greek island...
by John FowlesJohn FowlesJohn Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:... - The InterpretersThe InterpretersThe Interpreters were a Power pop band formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1996. They were composed of singer/bassist Herschel Gaer, guitarist Patsy Palladino and drummer Branko Jakominich. In 1997 they released the EP "In Rememberance[sic] of That Fine, Fine Evening" which was produced by...
by Wole SoyinkaWole SoyinkaAkinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
(Nigeria) - CosmicomicsCosmicomicsCosmicomics is a book of short stories by Italo Calvino first published in Italian in 1965 and in English in 1968. Each story takes a scientific "fact" , and builds an imaginative story around it...
by Italo CalvinoItalo CalvinoItalo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
(Italy) - The Painted Bird by Jerzy KosinskiJerzy KosinskiJerzy Kosiński , born Józef Lewinkopf, was an award-winning Polish American novelist, and two-time President of the American Chapter of P.E.N.He was known for various novels, among them The Painted Bird and Being There...
(Poland, USA) - Here We Go Round the Mulberry BushHere We Go Round the Mulberry BushHere We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is a 1967 British film made based on the novel of the same name by Hunter Davies. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France....
by Hunter DaviesHunter DaviesEdward Hunter Davies is a prolific British author, journalist and broadcaster, perhaps best known for writing the only authorised biography of The Beatles.- Early life :...
(England) - the kitchen sink novel mutates into the swinging sixties novel
Plays
Marat/Sade
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , almost invariably shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss...
by Peter Weiss
Peter Weiss
Peter Ulrich Weiss was a German writer, painter, and artist of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance....
(Germany, Sweden)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
- The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline BabyThe Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline BabyThe Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby is the title of Tom Wolfe's first collected book of essays, published in 1965...
by Tom WolfeTom WolfeThomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
(USA) - The Autobiography of Malcolm XThe Autobiography of Malcolm XThe Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination...
by Alex HaleyAlex HaleyAlexander Murray Palmer Haley was an African-American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.-Early life:...
(USA)
1966
- A Man of the PeopleA Man of the PeopleA Man of the People is a 1966 satirical novel by Chinua Achebe. It is Achebe's fourth novel. The novel tells the story of the young and educated Odili, the narrator, and his conflict with Chief Nanga, his former teacher who enters a career in politics in an unnamed modern African country...
by Chinua AchebeChinua AchebeAlbert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...
(Nigeria) - Alfie by Bill NaughtonBill NaughtonWilliam John Francis Naughton, or Bill Naughton was an Irish-born British playwright and author, best known for his play Alfie.-Early life:...
(England) - The ComediansThe Comedians (novel)The Comedians is a novel by Graham Greene, first published in 1966. Set in Haiti under the rule of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his secret police, the Tontons Macoute, The Comedians tells the story of a tired hotel owner, Brown, and his increasing fatalism as he watches Haiti descend into...
by Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world... - Wide Sargasso SeaWide Sargasso SeaWide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica-born author Jean Rhys. Since her previous work, Good Morning, Midnight, was published in 1939, Rhys had lived in obscurity. Wide Sargasso Sea put Rhys into the limelight once more, and became her most successful novel.The novel...
by Jean RhysJean RhysJean Rhys , born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a mid 20th-century novelist from Dominica. Educated from the age of 16 in Great Britain, she is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea , written as a "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.-Early life:Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica... - Tremor of Intent by Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
Genre fiction
Pavane (novel)
Pavane by Keith Roberts is an alternate history science fiction fix-up novel first published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd in 1968. Most of the original stories were published in Science Fantasy...
by Keith Roberts
Keith Roberts
Keith John Kingston Roberts , was an English science fiction author. He began publishing with two stories in the September 1964 issue of Science Fantasy magazine, "Anita" and "Escapism.Several of his early stories were written using the pseudonym...
(England)
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
- In Cold BloodIn Cold BloodIn Cold Blood is a 1966 book by Truman Capote.In Cold Blood may also refer to:* In Cold Blood , a 1967 film and 1996 miniseries, both based on the book* In Cold Blood...
by Truman CapoteTruman CapoteTruman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At... - Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter S. ThompsonHunter S. ThompsonHunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
(USA) - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to MeBeen Down So Long It Looks Like Up to MeBeen Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is a novel by Richard Fariña. First published in the United States during 1966 the novel, based largely on Fariña's college experiences and travels, is a comic picaresque story that is set in the American West, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and at an...
by Richard FariñaRichard FariñaRichard George Fariña was an American writer and folksinger.-Early years and education:Richard Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Cuban and Irish descent. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School...
(USA)
1967
- One Hundred Years of SolitudeOne Hundred Years of SolitudeOne Hundred Years of Solitude , by Gabriel García Márquez, is a novel which tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia...
by Gabriel García MárquezGabriel García MárquezGabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
(ColombiaColombiaColombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
) - The Crying of Lot 49The Crying of Lot 49The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero...
by Thomas PynchonThomas PynchonThomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature... - The Vendor of SweetsThe Vendor of SweetsThe Vendor of Sweets is a 1967 English novel by R. K. Narayan.-Plot summary:R.K Narayan’s The Vendor of Sweets like his other books is composed in simple, lucid English that can be read and undestood without turning and returning the pages after a single read...
by R. K. NarayanR. K. NarayanR. K. Narayan , shortened from Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami Tamil: ) , Madras Presidency, British India. His father was a school headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his father's school...
(India) - Poor CowPoor CowPoor Cow is a 1967 British drama film directed by Ken Loach, based on Nell Dunn's novel of the same name.Although Malcolm McDowell is listed in the credits on the commercial release of the film, the scenes in which he appeared were deleted....
by Nell DunnNell Dunn-Early years:Dunn was born in London and educated at a convent, which she left at the age of fourteen. Although she came from an upper class background, in 1959 she moved to Battersea and made friends in the neighbourhood and worked for a time in a sweets factory...
(England) - A Grain of WheatA Grain of WheatA Grain of Wheat is a novel by Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. The novel weaves several stories together during the state of emergency in Kenya's struggle for independence , focusing on the quiet Mugo, whose life is ruled by a dark secret. The plot revolves around his home village's preparations...
by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'oNgugi wa Thiong'oNgũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gĩkũyũ. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature...
Non-fiction
The First Circle
In the First Circle is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released in 1968. A fuller version of the book was published in English in 2009....
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
The medium is the message
"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.- Publications :...
by Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
and Quentin Fiore
Quentin Fiore
Quentin Fiore is a graphic designer, who has worked mostly in books.Having taken art lessons from renowned artists George Grosz and Hans Hofmann, Fiore later studied at the "New Bauhaus" in Chicago....
1968
Cocksure
Cocksure is a novel by Mordecai Richler. It was first published in 1968 by McClelland and Stewart.A satirical work, the novel centres on Mortimer Griffin, a middle-class Anglican from Caribou, Ontario who has built a successful career as a publisher and editor in 1960s London, England...
by Mordecai Richler
Mordecai Richler
Mordecai Richler, CC was a Canadian Jewish author, screenwriter and essayist. A leading critic called him "the great shining star of his Canadian literary generation" and a pivotal figure in the country's history. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney's Version,...
(Canada)
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
(USA)
The Public Image
The Public Image is a novel published in 1968 by Scottish author Muriel Spark and shortlisted for the Booker Prize the following year.It is set in Rome and concerns Annabel Christopher, an up-and-coming film actress. Annabel carefully cultivates her image to keep her career on course, managing to...
by Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
Malcolm Lowry
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
- posthumous
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
- Cancer Ward by Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid TestThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid TestThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a work of literary journalism by Tom Wolfe, published in 1968. Using techniques from the genre of hysterical realism and pioneering new journalism, the "nonfiction novel" tells the story of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters...
by Tom WolfeTom WolfeThomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:... - The Armies of the Night and Miami and the Siege of ChicagoMiami and the Siege of ChicagoMiami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 is a non-fiction novel written by Norman Mailer.-External links:* in Commentary...
by Norman MailerNorman MailerNorman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S... - Bomb CultureBomb CultureBomb Culture is an important book at the time that the counter-culture in London was rapidly emerging. It was later largely forgotten as the 'scene' moved away from the older generation artists towards new happenings....
by Jeff NuttallJeff NuttallJeff Nuttall was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist sympathiser and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of literary critic A. D. Nuttall.-Life and work:Jeff Nuttall was born in Clitheroe,...
(England) - Slouching Towards BethlehemSlouching Towards BethlehemSlouching Towards Bethlehem is a 1968 collection of essays by Joan Didion and mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s. It takes its title from the poem "The Second Coming," by W. B. Yeats...
by Joan DidionJoan DidionJoan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation...
(USA) - The Teachings of Don JuanThe Teachings of Don JuanThe Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge was published by the University of California Press in 1968 as a work of anthropology. It was written by Carlos Castaneda and submitted as his master’s thesis in the school of anthropology...
by Carlos CastanedaCarlos CastanedaCarlos Castaneda was a Peruvian-born American anthropologist and author....
(USA)
1969
- Portnoy's ComplaintPortnoy's ComplaintPortnoy's Complaint is the American novel that turned its author Philip Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver...
by Philip RothPhilip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award... - The French Lieutenant's WomanThe French Lieutenant's WomanThe French Lieutenant’s Woman , by John Fowles, is a period novel inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika, by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated into English in 1977...
by John FowlesJohn FowlesJohn Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:... - A Void by Georges PerecGeorges PerecGeorges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...
(France) - Passacaille by Robert PingetRobert PingetRobert Pinget was a major avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers...
(France) - Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid by Malcolm LowryMalcolm LowryClarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
- posthumous
Genre fiction
Brian Aldiss
Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
The Final Programme
The Final Programme is a 1973 British comedy-thriller film directed by Robert Fuest, and starring Jon Finch and Jenny Runacre. It was based on the first Jerry Cornelius novel by Michael Moorcock...
by Michael Moorcock
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
(England, USA)
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
(USA)
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
by Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather , which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola...
(Italy)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
- PapillonPapillon (autobiography)Papillon is a memoir by convicted felon and fugitive Henri Charrière, first published in France in 1969. It became an instant bestseller. It was translated into English from the original French by June P. Wilson and Walter B. Michaels for a 1970 edition, and by author Patrick O'Brian...
by Henri CharrièreHenri CharrièreHenri Charrière was a convicted murderer chiefly known as the author of Papillon, a hugely successful memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana....
(France) - The View Over Atlantis by John MichellJohn Michell (writer)John Frederick Carden Michell was an English writer whose key sources of inspiration were Plato and Charles Fort...
(England)
1970
- Play It as It LaysPlay It As It LaysPlay It as It Lays is a 1970 novel by the American writer Joan Didion. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The book was made into a 1972 movie starring Tuesday Weld as Maria and Anthony Perkins as B.Z...
by Joan DidionJoan DidionJoan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation... - Mr Sammler's Planet by Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
- October Ferry to GabriolaOctober Ferry to GabriolaOctober Ferry to Gabriola is a novel by Malcolm Lowry. Edited by his widow Margerie Bonner, it was posthumously published in 1970.It is an existential love story featuring a Lowry-like character, Ethan Lleweyllen, and his wife, in their never-fully-consummated journey to Gabriola, an island near...
by Malcolm LowryMalcolm LowryClarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...
- posthumous
Genre fiction
Donald E. Westlake
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American writer, with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction or other genres...
(USA)
Deliverance (novel)
Deliverance is a 1970 novel by James Dickey, his first. It was adapted into a 1972 film by director John Boorman. In 1998, the editors of the Modern Library selected Deliverance as #42 on their list of the 100 best 20th-Century novels...
by James Dickey
James Dickey
James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1966.-Early years:...
(USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
- The Female EunuchThe Female EunuchThe Female Eunuch is a book first published in 1970 that became an international bestseller and an important text in the feminist movement. The author, Germaine Greer, became well known in broadcast media of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and her home of Australia...
by Germaine GreerGermaine GreerGermaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
(Australia, England) - Groupie by Jenny Fabian (England)
- PlaypowerPlayPowerPLAYPOWER is a non-profit organization designed to create free educational computer software for low income families in India and other developing countries. The games are designed to run on 8-bit systems, using a processor that is in the public domain, which allows the games to be run on very low...
by Richard NevilleRichard Neville (writer)Richard Neville is an Australian author and self-described "futurist", who came to fame as a co-editor of the counterculture magazine Oz in Australia and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and early 1970s...
(Australia, England) - Revolt into Style by George MellyGeorge MellyAlan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer and lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.-Early life and career:He was born in Liverpool and was educated at Stowe...
(England) - Soledad Brother by George JacksonGeorge Jackson (Black Panther)George Lester Jackson was an American convict who became a left-wing activist, Marxist, author, a member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang...
(USA) - prison letters - Soul On Ice by Eldridge CleaverEldridge CleaverLeroy Eldridge Cleaver better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a leading member of the Black Panther Party and a writer...
(USA)
1971
- In a Free StateIn a Free StateIn a Free State is a novel by V.S. Naipaul published in 1971, consisting of a framing narrative and three short stories, the last one also titled In a Free State. It won the Booker Prize for 1971. The work is symphonic with different movements working towards an overriding theme...
by V. S. NaipaulV. S. NaipaulSir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
(TrinidadTrinidadTrinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
, England) - M/FM/FM/F is a 1971 novel by the English author Anthony Burgess.-Plot introduction:Miles Faber is to spend some time on vacation before inheriting the company that belonged to his late father....
by Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works... - Our GangOur GangOur Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively...
by Philip RothPhilip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award... - The Dice ManThe Dice ManThe Dice Man is a novel published in 1971 by George Cockcroft under the pen name Luke Rhinehart and tells the story of a psychiatrist who begins making life decisions based on the casting of dice. Cockcroft wrote the book based on his own experiences of using dice to make decisions while studying...
by Luke Rhinehart (USA) - Another Roadside AttractionAnother Roadside AttractionAnother Roadside Attraction is Tom Robbins' first novel, published in 1971 by Doubleday, which initiated what has grown to be considered his cult following.-Plot summary:...
by Tom RobbinsTom RobbinsThomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins (born July 22, 1936 is an American author. His best-selling novels are serio-comic, often wildly poetic stories with a strong social and philosophical undercurrent, an irreverent bent, and scenes extrapolated from...
(USA) - Being ThereBeing ThereBeing There is a 1979 American comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby. Adapted from the 1971 novella written by Jerzy Kosinski, the screenplay was coauthored by Kosinski and Robert C. Jones. The film stars Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard A...
by Jerzy KosinskiJerzy KosinskiJerzy Kosiński , born Józef Lewinkopf, was an award-winning Polish American novelist, and two-time President of the American Chapter of P.E.N.He was known for various novels, among them The Painted Bird and Being There...
Genre fiction
The Day of the Jackal
The Day of the Jackal is a thriller novel by English writer Frederick Forsyth, about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French terrorist group of the early 1960s, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France....
by Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
(England)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
- The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander (Indonesia, Netherlands)
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. ThompsonHunter S. ThompsonHunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
1972
- The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor HoffmanThe Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor HoffmanThe Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, published in the United States as The War of Dreams, is a 1972 novel by Angela Carter. This picaresque novel is heavily influenced by surrealism, Romanticism, critical theory, and other branches of Continental philosophy. Its style is an amalgam of...
by Angela CarterAngela CarterAngela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...
(England) - Invisible CitiesInvisible CitiesInvisible Cities is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.-Description:The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo...
by Italo CalvinoItalo CalvinoItalo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,... - GG. (novel)G. is a 1972 novel by John Berger. The novel's setting is pre-First World War Europe, and its protagonist, named "G.", is a Don Juan or Casanova-like lover of women who gradually comes to political consciousness after misadventures across the continent...
by John BergerJohn BergerJohn Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...
(England, France) - The Good for NothingTutunamayanlarTutunamayanlar is the first novel of Oguz Atay, one of the most prominent Turkish authors. It was written in 1970-71 and published in 1972. Although it was never reprinted in his lifetime and was controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984...
by Oguz AtayOguz AtayOğuz Atay was a pioneer of the modern novel in Turkey. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar , appeared 1971-72. Never reprinted in his lifetime and controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984...
(Turkey)
Genre fiction
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
This is an article about the movie. For information about George V. Higgins' 1970 novel, go to The Friends of Eddie Coyle .The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a 1973 crime film starring Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle. Directed by Peter Yates, the screenplay was adapted from the novel by George V. Higgins...
by George V. Higgins
George V. Higgins
George V. Higgins was a United States author, lawyer, newspaper columnist, and college professor. He is best known for his bestselling crime novels. His full name was George Vincent Higgins, but his books were all published as by George V. Higgins. ACtually, his full name was George V...
(USA)
Richard Bach
Richard David Bach is an American writer. He is widely known as the author of the hugely popular 1970s best-sellers Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, and others. His books espouse his philosophy that our apparent physical limits and mortality are merely...
(USA)
The Odessa File
The Odessa File is a thriller by Frederick Forsyth, first published in 1972, about the adventures of a young German reporter attempting to discover the location of a former SS concentration-camp commander....
by Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
Poetry
- Crossing the Water and Winter Trees by Sylvia PlathSylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
1973
- Gravity's RainbowGravity's RainbowGravity's Rainbow is a postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28, 1973.The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest...
by Thomas PynchonThomas PynchonThomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature... - Crash by J. G. BallardJ. G. BallardJames Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
(England) - Season of Anomy by Wole SoyinkaWole SoyinkaAkinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
(Nigeria) - Life Is ElsewhereLife Is ElsewhereLife Is Elsewhere is a Czech-language novel by Milan Kundera published in 1973.The setting for Life Is Elsewhere is Czechoslovakia before, during, and after the Second World War, and tells the story of Jaromil, a character who dedicates his life to poetry....
by Milan KunderaMilan KunderaMilan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...
(CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, France) - Sweet DreamsSweet Dreams (novel)Sweet Dreams is a 1973 novel by Michael Frayn.The plot addresses the question of what happens when a middle-class intellectual man dies. Why, he goes to a middle-class intellectual Heaven of course...
by Michael FraynMichael FraynMichael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...
(England) - Fear of FlyingFear of FlyingA fear of flying is a fear of air travel. Fear of Flying may also refer to:*Fear of Flying , a 1973 novel by Erica Jong*"Fear of Flying" , a 1994 episode of the animated television series The Simpsons...
by Erica JongErica JongErica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.-Career:A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A...
(USA) - The Great American Novel by Philip RothPhilip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
Genre fiction
Frankenstein Unbound
Frankenstein Unbound is a 1990 horror movie based on Brian Aldiss' novel of the same name. This film was directed by Roger Corman, returning to the director's chair after a hiatus of almost twenty years.- Cast :...
by Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss
Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
1974
The Conservationist
The Conservationist is a 1974 novel by 1991 Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. The book was a joint winner of the Man Booker Prize for fiction.-Plot summary:...
by Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer is a South African writer and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".Her writing has long dealt...
(South Africa)
The Fan Man
The Fan Man is a comic novel published in 1974 by the American writer William Kotzwinkle. It is told in the first-person by the narrator, Horse Badorties, a down-at-the-heels hippie living a life of drug-fueled befuddlement in New York City c. 1970...
by William Kotzwinkle
William Kotzwinkle
William Kotzwinkle is an American novelist, children's writer, and screenwriter. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He has won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Doctor Rat in 1977, and has also won the National Magazine Award for fiction. Kotzwinkle wrote the novelization of the...
(USA)
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, or: how violence develops and where it can lead is a 1974 novel by Heinrich Böll....
by Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...
Napoleon Symphony
Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements is Anthony Burgess's fictional recreation of the life and world of Napoleon Bonaparte, first published in 1974...
by Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
Myra Breckinridge
Myra Breckinridge is a 1968 satirical novel by Gore Vidal written in the form of a diary. It was made into a movie in 1970. Described by the critic Dennis Altman as "part of a major cultural assault on the assumed norms of gender and sexuality which swept the western world in the late 1960s and...
and Myron
Myron (novel)
Myron is the name of a 1974 novel by Gore Vidal. It was written as a sequel to his 1968 bestseller Myra Breckinridge. The novel was published shortly after an anti-pornography ruling by the Supreme Court; Vidal responded by replacing the profanity in his novel with the names of the Justices...
by Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
- first of pair published in 1968
Genre fiction
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, SpyTinker, Tailor, Soldier, SpyTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1974 British spy novel by John le Carré, featuring George Smiley. Smiley is a middle-aged, taciturn, perspicacious intelligence expert in forced retirement. He is recalled to hunt down a Soviet mole in the "Circus", the highest echelon of the Secret Intelligence...
by John le CarréJohn le CarréDavid John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"... - FletchFletch (novel)Fletch is a 1974 mystery novel by Gregory Mcdonald, the first in a series featuring the character Irwin Maurice Fletcher.-Plot introduction:...
by Gregory McDonaldGregory McdonaldGregory Mcdonald was an American mystery writer best known for his character Irwin Maurice Fletcher, an investigative reporter otherwise known as "Fletch." Fletch was later played by Chevy Chase in the movie of the same name...
(USA)
Genre fiction
Jaws (novel)
Jaws is a 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It tells the story of a great white shark that preys upon a small resort town, and the voyage of three men to kill it....
by Peter Benchley
Peter Benchley
Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author, best known for his novel Jaws and its subsequent film adaptation, the latter co-written by Benchley and directed by Steven Spielberg...
(USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
- All the President's MenAll the President's MenAll the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists investigating the first Watergate break-in and ensuing scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial...
by Bob WoodwardBob WoodwardRobert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
and Carl BernsteinCarl BernsteinCarl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of...
(USA)
1975
- Humboldt's GiftHumboldt's GiftHumboldt's Gift is a 1975 novel by Saul Bellow, which won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and contributed to Bellow's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year....
by Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts... - The Deptford TrilogyThe Deptford TrilogyThe Deptford Trilogy is a novel trilogy by Canadian novelist Robertson Davies.-Overview:The trilogy consists of Fifth Business , The Manticore , and World of Wonders...
by Robertson DaviesRobertson DaviesWilliam Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
- first volume published 1970 - Dead BabiesDead Babies (novel)Dead Babies is Martin Amis' second novel, published in 1975 by Jonathan Cape.-Plot:Amis' second novel—a parody of Agatha Christie's country-house mysteries—takes place over a single weekend at a manor called Appleseed Rectory.-Reception:...
by Martin AmisMartin AmisMartin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
(England) - The Autumn of the PatriarchThe Autumn of the PatriarchThe Autumn of the Patriarch is a novel written by Gabriel García Márquez in 1975.A "poem on the solitude of power" according to the author, the novel is a flowing tract on the life of an eternal dictator...
by Gabriel García MárquezGabriel García MárquezGabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in... - The History ManThe History ManThe History Man is a campus novel by the British author Malcolm Bradbury set in 1972 in the fictional seaside town of Watermouth in the South of England. Watermouth bears some resemblance to Brighton. For example, there is a frequent and fast train service to London.-Plot introduction:Howard Kirk...
by Malcolm BradburyMalcolm BradburySir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
(England) - The Periodic TableThe Periodic Table (book)The Periodic Table is a collection of short stories by Primo Levi, published in 1975, named after the periodic table in chemistry. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it the best science book ever ....
by Primo LeviPrimo LeviPrimo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
- short stories
Genre fiction
Watership Down
Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, about a small group of rabbits. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language , proverbs, poetry, and mythology...
by Richard Adams
Richard Adams
Richard Adams was a non-conforming English Presbyterian divine, known as author of sermons and other theological writings.-Life:...
(England)
Joseph Wambaugh
Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. is a bestselling American writer known for his fictional and non-fictional accounts of police work in the United States...
(USA)
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
by James Clavell
James Clavell
James Clavell, born Charles Edmund DuMaresq Clavell was an Australian-born, British novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II veteran and prisoner of war...
(England, USA)
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
(USA)
1976
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
by EL Doctorow (USA)
Genre fiction
- Interview with a Vampire by Anne RiceAnne RiceAnne Rice is a best-selling Southern American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history...
(USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the U.S....
by Alex Haley
Alex Haley
Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an African-American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.-Early life:...
Drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
- Death and the King's HorsemanDeath and the King's HorsemanDeath and The King's Horseman is a play by Wole Soyinka based on a real incident that took place in Nigeria during British colonial rule: the ritual suicide of the horseman of an important chief was prevented by the intervention of the colonial authorities...
by Wole SoyinkaWole SoyinkaAkinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
1977
- The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef ŠkvoreckýJosef ŠkvoreckýJosef Škvorecký, CM is a leading contemporary Czech writer and publisher who has spent much of his life in Canada. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country...
(CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
) - Song of SolomonSong of SolomonThe Song of Songs of Solomon, commonly referred to as Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible—one of the megillot —found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim...
by Toni MorrisonToni MorrisonToni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
(USA)
1978
- SuccessSuccess (novel)Success is Martin Amis' third novel, published in 1978 by Jonathan Cape.-Plot:Success tells the story of two foster brothers—Terence Service and Gregory Riding, narrating alernate sections—and their exchange of position during one calendar year as each slips towards, and away from,...
by Martin AmisMartin AmisMartin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year... - The Sea, The SeaThe Sea, the SeaThe Sea, the Sea is the 19th novel by Iris Murdoch. It won the Booker Prize in 1978.-Plot summary:The Sea, the Sea is a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a self-satisfied playwright and director as he begins to write his memoirs...
by Iris MurdochIris MurdochDame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious... - LanarkLanarkLanark is a small town in the central belt of Scotland. Its population of 8,253 makes it the 100th largest settlement in Scotland. The name is believed to come from the Cumbric Lanerc meaning "clear space, glade"....
by Alasdair GrayAlasdair GrayAlasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years...
(Scotland) - Life: A User's ManualLife: A User's ManualLife A User's Manual is Georges Perec's most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987. Its title page describes it as "novels", in the plural, the reasons for which become apparent on reading...
by Georges PerecGeorges PerecGeorges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group... - The Book of Laughter and ForgettingThe Book of Laughter and ForgettingThe Book of Laughter and Forgetting is a novel by Milan Kundera, published in 1979. It is composed of seven separate narratives united by some common themes. The book considers the nature of forgetting as it occurs in history, politics and life in general...
by Milan KunderaMilan KunderaMilan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in... - Jake's ThingJake's ThingJake's Thing is a satirical novel written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1978 by Hutchinson, and shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year....
by Kingsley AmisKingsley AmisSir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism... - The World According to GarpThe World According to GarpThe World According to Garp is John Irving's fourth novel. Published in 1978, the book was a bestseller for several years.A movie adaptation of the novel starring Robin Williams was released in 1982, with a screenplay written by Steve Tesich....
by John IrvingJohn IrvingJohn Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978...
(USA) - 1985 by Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
- Horatio Stubbs by Brian AldissBrian AldissBrian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
- trilogy, first volume published in 1970
Genre fiction
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients...
by John Mortimer
John Mortimer
Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...
(England)
1979
A Bend in the River
A Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A Bend in the River #83 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century...
by V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
The Unlimited Dream Company
The Unlimited Dream Company is a novel by J. G. Ballard, first published in 1979. It was nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1980.- Plot :...
by J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
Sophie's Choice (novel)
Sophie's Choice is a novel by William Styron published in 1979. It concerns a young American Southerner, an aspiring writer, who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps...
by William Styron
William Styron
William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
(USA)
Non-fiction and Quasi-fiction
- The White AlbumThe White Album (book)The White Album is a 1979 book of essays by Joan Didion. The entire contents of this book are reprinted in Didion's We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction .-I...
by Joan DidionJoan DidionJoan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation... - The Right StuffThe Right Stuff (book)The Right Stuff is a 1979 book by Tom Wolfe about the pilots engaged in U.S. postwar experiments with experimental rocket-powered, high-speed aircraft as well as documenting the stories of the first Project Mercury astronauts selected for the NASA space program...
by Tom WolfeTom WolfeThomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
(USA)
1980
- The Name of the RoseThe Name of the RoseThe Name of the Rose is the first novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
by Umberto EcoUmberto EcoUmberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory... - Pascali's Island by Barry UnsworthBarry UnsworthBarry Unsworth is a British novelist who is known for novels with historical themes. He has published 15 novels, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger....
(England) - Earthly PowersEarthly PowersEarthly Powers is a panoramic saga of the 20th century by Anthony Burgess first published in 1980. On one level it is a parody of a "blockbuster" novel, with the 81-year-old hero, Kenneth Toomey , telling the story of his life in 82 chapters...
by Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
1981
- Midnight's ChildrenMidnight's ChildrenMidnight's Children is a 1981 book by Salman Rushdie about India's transition from British colonialism to independence and the partition of India. It is considered an example of postcolonial literature and magical realism...
by Salman Rushdie (India, UK) - The Comfort of StrangersThe Comfort of StrangersThe Comfort of Strangers is a 1981 novel by British writer Ian McEwan. It is his second novel, and is set in an unnamed city . It was adapted into a film in 1990 , which starred Rupert Everett, Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren and Natasha Richardson...
by Ian McEwanIan McEwanIan Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
(England) - The White HotelThe White HotelThe White Hotel is a novel written by the English poet, translator and novelist D. M. Thomas. It was first published in January 1981 by Gollancz in Great Britain and in March 1981 by The Viking Press in the United States...
by DM Thomas (England) - Chronicle of a Death ForetoldChronicle of a Death ForetoldChronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1981...
by Gabriel García MárquezGabriel García MárquezGabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in... - What We Talk About When We Talk About LoveWhat We Talk About When We Talk About LoveWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love is the name of a 1981 collection of short stories by American writer Raymond Carver, as well as the title of one of the stories in the collection.-Why Don't You Dance?:...
by Raymond CarverRaymond CarverRaymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....
(USA) - short stories
Genre fiction
The Red Dragon
The Red Dragon is a 1946 mystery film starring Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan, who has to sift through a host of suspects for three murders.-Cast:*Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan*Fortunio Bonanova as Insp...
by Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris is an American author and screenwriter, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter...
(USA)
Gorky Park (novel)
Gorky Park is a 1981 crime novel written by Martin Cruz Smith set in the Soviet Union. It follows Arkady Renko, a chief investigator for the Militsiya, who is assigned to a case involving three corpses found in Gorky Park, an amusement park in Moscow, who have had their faces and fingertips cut off...
by Martin Cruz Smith
Martin Cruz Smith
Martin Cruz Smith is an American mystery novelist.-Early life and education:Born Martin William Smith in Reading, Pennsylvania, he was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing in 1964...
(England, Russia)
1982
Schindler's Ark
Schindler's Ark is a Booker Prize-winning novel published in 1982 by Australian Thomas Keneally, which was later adapted into the highly successful movie Schindler's List directed by Steven Spielberg...
by Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor...
(Australia)
An Ice-Cream War
An Ice-Cream War is a darkly comic war novel by Scottish author William Boyd, which was nominated for a Booker Prize in the year of its publication.- Synopsis :...
by William Boyd
William Boyd (writer)
William Boyd, CBE is a Scottish novelist and screenwriter.-Biography:Of Scottish descent, Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, in Africa...
(Ghana, Scotland)
The Color Purple
The Color Purple is an acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. It received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction...
by Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...
(USA)
A Wild Sheep Chase
is a novel published in 1982 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. It is the sequel to Pinball, 1973, and is the third book in Murakami's "Trilogy of the Rat"....
by Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami
is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and Jerusalem Prize among others.He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature...
Genre fiction
- Prizzi's Honor by Richard CondonRichard CondonRichard Thomas Condon was a prolific and popular American political novelist whose satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers...
1983
- WaterlandWaterlandWaterland is a municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is located north of Amsterdam, on the borders of the IJsselmeer.-Population centres :...
by Graham SwiftGraham SwiftGraham Colin Swift FRSL is a British author. He was born in London, England and educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. He was a friend of Ted Hughes...
(England) - ShameShame (novel)Shame is Salman Rushdie's third novel, published in 1983. Like most of Rushdie's work, this book was written in the style of magic realism. On the face of it, Shame is a novel about Pakistan and about the people who ruled Pakistan. One of the main aims of the novel is to portray the lives of...
by Salman Rushdie
1984
- MoneyMoney (novel)Money: A Suicide Note is a 1984 novel by Martin Amis. Time magazine included the novel in its "100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present".-Plot summary:...
by Martin AmisMartin AmisMartin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year... - Bright Lights, Big CityBright Lights, Big City (novel)Bright Lights, Big City is an American novel by Jay McInerney, published by Vintage Books on August 12, 1984.- Plot :It is written about a character's time spent caught up in, and notably escaping from, the mid-1980s New York City fast lane. It is one of the few well-known English-language novels...
by Jay McInerneyJay McInerneyJohn Barrett McInerney Jr. is an American writer. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City; Ransom; Story of My Life; Brightness Falls; and The Last of the Savages...
(USA) - The Unbearable Lightness of BeingThe Unbearable Lightness of BeingThe Unbearable Lightness of Being , written by Milan Kundera, is a philosophical novel about two men, two women, a dog and their lives in the Prague Spring of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later, in France...
by Milan KunderaMilan KunderaMilan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in... - Flaubert's ParrotFlaubert's ParrotFlaubert's Parrot is a novel by Julian Barnes that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize the following year...
by Julian BarnesJulian BarnesJulian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending...
(England) - Nights at the CircusNights at the CircusNights at the Circus is a novel by Angela Carter, first published in 1984 and that year's winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The novel focuses on the life and exploits of Fevvers, a woman who is – or so she would have people believe – a Cockney virgin, hatched from an egg...
by Angela CarterAngela CarterAngela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works... - EnderbyInside Mr. EnderbyInside Mr Enderby is the first volume of the Enderby series, a quartet of comic novels by the British author Anthony Burgess.The book was first published in 1963 in London by William Heinemann under the pseudonym Joseph Kell. The series which began with the publication, in 1963, of Inside Mr...
by Anthony BurgessAnthony BurgessJohn Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
- tetrology, first volume published in 1963 - The Witches of EastwickThe Witches of EastwickThe Witches of Eastwick is a 1984 novel by John Updike.-Plot summary:The story, set in the fictional Rhode Island town of Eastwick in the late 1960s, follows the witches Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart, and Sukie Rougemont, who acquired their powers after leaving or being left by their husbands....
by John UpdikeJohn UpdikeJohn Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
Non-fiction
Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun is a 1984 novel by J. G. Ballard which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Like Ballard's earlier short story, "The Dead Time" , it is essentially fiction but draws extensively on Ballard's experiences in World War II...
by J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
1985
White Noise (novel)
White Noise, the eighth novel by Don DeLillo, is an example of postmodern literature. Widely considered his "breakout" work, the book won the National Book Award in 1985 and brought him to the attention of a much larger audience. Time included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels...
by Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...
(USA)
Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...
(USA)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a novel by Jeanette Winterson published in 1985, which she subsequently adapted into a BBC television drama...
by Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson OBE is a British novelist.-Early years:Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted on 21 January 1960. She was raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by Constance and John William Winterson...
(England)
The Accidental Tourist
The Accidental Tourist is a 1985 novel by Anne Tyler that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction...
by Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler is an American novelist.Tyler, the eldest of four children, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father was a chemist and her mother a social worker. Her early childhood was spent in a succession of Quaker communities in the mountains of North Carolina and in Raleigh...
(USA)
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award...
(England)
Illywhacker
Illywhacker is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey. It was published in 1985, short-listed for the 1985 Booker Prize, and won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and The Age Book of the Year Award...
by Peter Carey (Australia)
The Kingdom of the Wicked
The Kingdom of the Wicked is a 1985 historical novel by Anthony Burgess.Like two of his earlier works, the long narrative poem Moses and the novel Man of Nazareth , Burgess wrote The Kingdom of the Wicked in part as preparation for a screenplay; in this case for thetelevision...
by Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
Genre fiction
- L.A. Noir by James EllroyJames EllroyLee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a so-called "telegraphic" prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black...
(USA) - trilogy, first volume published 1984
1986
- Slaves of New YorkSlaves of New YorkSlaves of New York is a 1989 comedy-drama Merchant Ivory Productions film. It was directed byJames Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant, and starred Bernadette Peters, Adam Coleman Howard, Chris Sarandon, Mary Beth Hurt, Mercedes Ruehl, Madeleine Potter, and Steve Buscemi.Based on the stories Slaves...
by Tama JanowitzTama JanowitzTama Janowitz is an American novelist and a short story writer. The 2005 September/October issue of Pages magazine listed her as one of the four "brat pack" authors, along with Bret Easton Ellis, Mark Lindquist and Jay McInerney.-Life:Her parents, a psychiatrist father, Julian Janowitz, and...
(USA) - The Old DevilsThe Old DevilsThe Old Devils is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1986. The novel won the Booker Prize. It was adapted for television by Andrew Davies for the BBC in 1992, starring John Stride, Bernard Hepton, James Grout and Ray Smith...
by Kingsley AmisKingsley AmisSir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism... - An Artist of the Floating WorldAn Artist of the Floating WorldAn Artist of the Floating World is a novel by British-Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro. It is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an aging painter, who looks back on his life and how he has lived it. He notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and...
by Kazuo IshiguroKazuo IshiguroKazuo Ishiguro OBE or ; born 8 November 1954) is a Japanese–English novelist. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and his family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing...
(Japan, UK) - The Handmaid's TaleThe Handmaid's TaleThe Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction, written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985...
by Margaret AtwoodMargaret AtwoodMargaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
(Canada)
Non-fiction
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gĩkũyũ. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature...
1987
The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters...
by Salman Rushdie
The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City and centers on four main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, British expatriate...
by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
Anthills of the Savannah
Anthills of the Savannah is a 1987 novel by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. A finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize for Fiction, it has been described as the "most important novel to come out of Africa in the [1980s]."-Plot:...
by Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe
Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...
Genre fiction
- Presumed InnocentPresumed InnocentPresumed Innocent, published in 1987, is Scott Turow's first novel, which tells the story of a prosecutor charged with the murder of his colleague, an attractive and intelligent prosecutor, Carolyn Polhemus. It is told in the first person by the accused, Rǒzat "Rusty" Sabich...
by Scott TurowScott TurowScott F. Turow is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies...
(USA)
1988
- Mother LondonMother LondonMother London is a novel by Michael Moorcock. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Although the city of London itself is perhaps the central character, it follows three outpatients from a mental hospital, a music hall artist, a reclusive writer and a woman just awoken from a long coma,...
by Michael MoorcockMichael MoorcockMichael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels.... - LibraLibra (novel)Libra is a novel written by Don DeLillo. It focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events that shaped the assassination of President John F...
by Don DeLilloDon DeLilloDon DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries... - Oscar and LucindaOscar and LucindaOscar and Lucinda is a novel by Peter Carey which won the 1988 Booker Prize, the 1989 Miles Franklin Award, and was shortlisted for The Best of the Booker.-Plot introduction:...
by Peter Carey (Australia) - Love in the Time of CholeraLove in the Time of CholeraLove in the Time of Cholera is a novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez first published in the Spanish language during 1985. Alfred A. Knopf published the English translation during 1988...
by Gabriel García MárquezGabriel García MárquezGabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
Genre fiction
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
(Canada, USA) - trilogy, first volume published 1984
1989
London Fields
London Fields is a park and the name of an area of London, situated in the eastern borough of Hackney. The park itself was first recorded in 1540. At this time it was common ground and was used by drovers to pasture their livestock before taking them to market in London.London Fields is just over ...
by Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
Foucault's Pendulum
Foucault's Pendulum is a novel by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. It was first published in 1988; the translation into English by William Weaver appeared a year later....
by Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
The Remains of the Day
The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's third published novel. One of the most highly-regarded post-war British novels, the work was awarded the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989...
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro OBE or ; born 8 November 1954) is a Japanese–English novelist. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and his family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing...
To the Ends of the Earth
To the Ends of the Earth is a trilogy of novels by William Golding, consisting of Rites of Passage , Close Quarters , and Fire Down Below...
by William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
- trilogy, first volume published 1980
The Book of Evidence
The Book of Evidence is a 1989 novel by the Irish author John Banville. The book is narrated by Freddie Montgomery, a 38-year-old scientist, who murders a servant girl during an attempt to steal a painting from a neighbour...
by John Banville
John Banville
John Banville is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.Banville's breakthrough novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011...
(Ireland)
Michael Frayn
Michael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...
1990s
The English Patient
The English Patient is a 1992 novel by Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje. The story deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned English accented Hungarian man, his Canadian nurse, a Canadian-Italian thief, and an Indian sapper in the British Army as they live out...
by Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje , OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.-Life and work:...
Boris Akunin
Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili , a Russian writer. He is an essayist, literary translator and writer of detective fiction.-Life and career:...
Slam poetry
A poetry slam is a competition at which poets read or recite original work. These performances are then judged on a numeric scale by previously selected members of the audience.-History:...
1990
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...
(USA) - first volume published 1985
Restoration (Tremain novel)
Restoration is a novel by Rose Tremain, published in 1989. It was short listed for the Booker Prize in 1989 and was the Sunday Express Book of the Year. It was made into a film in 1995.-Plot summary:...
by Rose Tremain
Rose Tremain
Rose Tremain CBE is an English author.-Life:Rose Tremain was born Rosemary Jane Thomson on August 2, 1943 in London and attended Francis Holland School then Crofton Grange School from 1954 to 1961; the Sorbonne from 1961–1962; and graduated from the University of East Anglia in 1965 where she then...
(England)
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner...
(England)
Hanif Kureishi
Hanif Kureishi CBE is an English playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker, novelist and short story writer. The themes of his work have touched on topics of race, nationalism, immigration, and sexuality...
(England)
Dirty Weekend (novel)
Dirty Weekend is a novel by Helen Zahavi, adapted into a film two years later by Zahavi and acclaimed director Michael Winner. In the US it was first published under the title The Weekend; some editions are subtitled "A Novel of Revenge"....
by Helen Zahavi
Helen Zahavi
Helen Zahavi is an English novelist and screenwriter. Before becoming a writer she worked as a Russian translator, and has spent several years living in Paris....
(England)
Genre fiction
- Devil in a Blue DressDevil in a Blue DressDevil in a Blue Dress is a 1990 hardboiled mystery novel by Walter Mosley.The text centers on the main character, Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, and his transformation from a day laborer into a detective. The story begins with Easy out-of-work and unable to pay his mortgage...
by Walter MosleyWalter MosleyWalter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los...
(USA) - Harry PotterHarry PotterHarry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
series
See also
- 20th century#Literature
- History of modern literatureHistory of modern literatureThe history of literature in the Modern period in Europe begins with the Age of Enlightenment and the conclusion of the Baroque period in the 18th century, succeeding the Renaissance and Early Modern periods....
- List of notable 20th-century writers
- Modern Library's selection of best 20th century novels
- Museum of Modern LiteratureMuseum of Modern LiteratureThe Museum of Modern Literature or LiMo is part of the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar, Germany...
, Germany - Experimental literatureExperimental literatureExperimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
by language
- French literature of the 20th centuryFrench literature of the 20th century20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts...