English Literature: At a Glance

THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD (I) (ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD) (450-1050)

Beowulf is probably the oldest epic of the Teutonic world.
It  is believed to be belonging to the first half of the sixth century.Some important works of the Anglo-Saxon period (Pre-Christian Era)Some important works of the Anglo-Saxon period are: The Ruined Burg, The Lover's Message. 
The Maiden's Complaint, The Wanderer and the Seafarer. 
'The Wanderer is also known as 'Widsith'. 
The work is based on the wandering life of the gleeman.Belonging to this period, we also have 'Deor's Lament', which, according to Long is, 'much more poetic than 'Widsith,' and is the one perfect lyric of the Anglo-Saxon period.
In the Seafarer, we have glimpses of hard sea life along with the call of the sea, which we, in our times, find more pronouncedly, but perhaps less picturesquely, in Masefield's 'Sea-Fever'.Some Christian writers of the Anglo-Saxon periodWhereas the pagan literature of the Anglo-Saxon period was chiefly in the form of oral legends which they had brought with them from the foreign lands which they previously inhabited, the Christian writing mainly came into existence as a result of the teachings of the monks who had come under the influence of two schools—theAugustinian School (from Rome) and Northumbrian School (from Ireland).While the former, did not produce much lasting works, the latter produced a number of good and great writers, e.g., The Venerable Bede (673-735), Caedmon (seventh century) and Cynewulf (eighth century).Besides the poets mentioned above, we have Alfred (848-90) who is chiefly known as a translator.

ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD (1066-1350)
Some important works of the Anglo-Norman period

One important work of this period is Geoffrey's 'Historic Regum Britanniae' (1137) commonly known as 'History'.Geoffrey is believed to have died in 1154.Geoffrey's work which became immensely popular in his own life, is a mixture of pagan and Christian legends and is based more on lies than on real historical events.However, the said work has its literary value for its poetry and romance pertaining to king Arthur and his Knights, and hence, it became a source of inspiration and scintillating subject matter for such illustrious authors as Malory, Shakespeare and Tennyson.Geoffrey's work was in Latin verse. 
Thereafter appeared 'Layman's Brut' (c. 1200) which has its main interest in giving Arthur's legends in (Anglo-Saxon) English itself.Then there appeared what are known as 'MetricalRomances' which were based on the 'matter' of France, Rome and Britain.While in the Matter of France, Charlemagne's exploits dominated and in the Matter of Rome Alexander's adventures and the war of Troy were the main subjects, in the Matter of Britain, exploits of Arthur and his knights of the Round Table were chief subject matter. 
There were a number of cycles pertaining to the knights of Arthur, among them being Sir Gawain (1350) Quest of the Holy Grail, Death of Arthur, Merlin, etc.Besides the above, other works of the period included ballads, lyrics and such poems as the Owl and the Nightingale, Ormulum, Cursor Mundi (1320), The Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, etc. 
Also Roger Bacon's 'Opus Majus' appeared in 1267.

THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1340-1400)
The Hundred years war between England and France had already started in 1338 when Chaucer was born in 1340.
In  the earlier years of the war, England was all-powerful and under Edward III it won victories over France at Sluys in 1340 and Crecy in 1346, culminating in the capture ofCalais in 1347.Another thumping victory was won by the Black Prince, Edward III's son in 1356 by defeating the French at Poitiers. 
As a result of the English victories, the English foreign trade began to flourish, particularly in the export of wool to Flanders, which filled the coffers of the English king and the people also became richer, as we notice conspicuously in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales when we consider the lot of so many characters, particularly those belonging to landed aristocracy.This picture is also graphically depicted in Trevelyan's British History of Six Centuries.
It  was unfortunate for England that in the moment of its glory it was overtaken by plague, the Black Death which took a heavy toll of life all over Europe in 1348-49. 
As a result of the Black Death, most of the labourers who escaped death, left the country, and this caused an intense scarcity of the availability of essential commodities at cheap rates. 
To meet this menace, the Parliament tried to force the labourers to accept the same wages as they were getting before the Black Death, and it all finally precipitated into the well-known Peasants' Revolt during the reign of Richard II.
In  spite of the passage of certain statutes purported to safeguard the English clergy against the undue domination of the Pope, the low simmering of wrath among the clergymen for several reasons, there emerged in the 'LollardsMovement' under the leadership of the redoubtable Wyclif.Another prominent feature, this one in the literary world, was the slow advent of the spirit of New Learning from Italy and drastic changes in the structure of the English language which had already been continuing as the inevitable outcome of the Norman conquest at Hastings in 1066These were the general conditions in which the most significant writers of the age—Chaucer, Langland, Dunbar, etc. 
lived and flourished, thus heralding a new age slowly, but boldly and surely.

MAJOR AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS OF CHAUCER'S AGE
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) Utopia (English Version)
William Tyndale (1485-1536) - New Testament
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) - The Boke of the Duchesse, The Romaunt of the Rose, The House of Fame, Troylus Cryseyde, The Canterbury Tales, Legends of Good Women, The Parliament of Fouls
Wyclif (1320-1384) - The Bible
John Heywood (1564-1627) - Four P's
Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton : (1536- 1608) (1532-1584) - Gorboduc

The Seventeenth Century
THE RENAISSANCE (1578-1625)

The Renaissance of English Literature coincides with theAge of Queen Elizabeth I. 
Hence, in the history of English literature, this period is also called as the Elizabethan Age.The inspiration for the great works of this period came from the prolific translations into English of works of ancient Rome and Greece. 
Thus, Plutarch's Lives was translated bySir Thomas North (1579) from the French version.Montaigne's Essays was translated by John Florio (1603).
In verse, Ovid's Metamorphoses was translated by Arthur Golding (1565, 1567). 
Among other works of foreign origin translated into English were Ariosto's Orlando Furioso by Harrington (1591), and Homer's Iliad by George Chapman (1598).The rising English stage and the English novel borrowed from Boccaccio, Cinthio, Bandello and Straparola — the Italians. 
Attracted though England was to Italian art, it resisted the evil influences of debauchery, crime and passions that the Italian spirit represented. 
Yet, the time was ripe in England for the full development of every art and literary form. 
Renaissance means a flowering again of art and culture. 
It inculcated a sense of wonder in things.England also wanted to rival Spain, France and Portugal in her navigational triumphs. 
Thus in 1578, Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the world, and in 1588, the English navy destroyed the Armada. 
The same spirit of adventure moved literature. 
In Apologie for Poetrie, Sidney described the poet — of all sciences 'the monarch'. 
Poets were encouraged to innovate new styles and rhythms.

Poetry

Three great men of letters led the Renaissance in England— Spenser, Sidney and Lyly. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) wrote the ShepheardesCalendar (1579)—an allegory. 
The union of line and metre is varied and rich. 
In Hymnes In honour of Love and Beautie, he sets forth his philosophy, the conflict in his mind between paganism and Christianity. 
He also wrote a satire named, Mother Hubberd's Tale to denounce the neglect of arts and letters. 
His pastoral, Colin Clout's ComeHome Again describes his stay in London in 1589. 
His Amoretti (1595) are sonnets on love and his Epithalamion is an ode, But his masterpiece is the Faerie Queene (1589, 1595), an allegory in which characters represent virtues and vices. 
In it his lyrical quality and colour-effects are at their best. 
The Faerie Queene is Queen Elizabeth. 
The nine-line stanza he used is now called the Spenserian stanza. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was a scholar, knight and courtier. 
In 1580 he wrote Arcadia which has a blend of pastoral and heroic elements It is a romance of chivalry and love. 
The language is characterized by pathetic fallacy— endowing inanimate objects with feelings and sensations.

William Shakespeare borrowed from this style. 
His other poem, Astrophel and Stella (1591) describes his lost love for the daughter of an Earl. 
His Apologie for Poetrie (1595) written in an unaffected prose, is a plea for poetry.John Lyly (1554-1606) invented an artistic, flowery style called euphuism through his famous romance, Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579). 
This style was adopted by the refined people of the Court. 
The style is characterized by the use of alliteration and antithesis, fantastic metaphors and similes based on mythology, and natural history of flora and fauna. The works of these three trail-blazed many poets and sonneteers like Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, ThomasWatson, Henry Constable and Thomas Lodge. 

Notable works from 1590 to 1603 were Samuel Daniel's (1562-1619) The Civil Wars (1595) describing the War of theRoses, Michael Drayton's (1563-1631) Idea, the Shepherd'sGarland, The Baron's Wars, England's Heroicall Epistles (1603) and Poly-Olbion, a long description of England in15,000 alexandrines or lines of twelve syllables. 
England came to be known as 'a nest of singing birds' because of the great number of lyrics and poems written in this period.Thomas Campion (1567-1620) published an anthology called Two Books of Ayres (1612). 
Many of the best poems are found in plays by Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Webster. 
But those of WilliamShakespeare are probably the most beautiful. 
In his Sonnets, he describes his love for a married woman who betrays him.Other poems of this period are Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1598), Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593) and TheRape of Lucrece (1594).After Elizabeth's reign, in James I rule, poetry became religious and didactic. 

The Protestant spirit dominated the literary works. 
The poems of George Wither, WilliamBrowne, the Fletcher brothers and William Drummond show the influence of Spenser still.Ben Jonson (1573-1637) was the greatest humanist of the time. 
He was mainly a playwright but wrote poems also.His poetry is found in collections like Epigrams and TheForest (1616) and The Underwoods (1640). 
He was a satirist and neo-classicist being influenced by the Latin classics.John Donne's (1573-1631) poetry is revolut-ionary. 
He disobeys the laws of rhythm and uses a device called the metaphysical conceit in which strangely opposite ideas are juxtaposed.ProseMuch of the prose of the period is poetical, influenced by euphuism. 
Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Deloney, and Thomas Dekker are the major writers.Robert Greene's (1558-1592) works include Mamilia andMenaphon and Thomas Lodge's (1558-1625) include Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie (1590). 
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) wrote pamphlets like The Anatomie ofAbsurdities and The Terrors of the Night. 
Thomas Dekker's (1572-1632) The Gils Horne booke is famous for its picturesque prose. 
Most of the poets and prose writers of this period were also dramatists. 
Shakespeare used prose for homely and humorous scenes and verse for tragic ones.Many writers of the English Renaissance were inspired by the literary criticism of the Continent to write some themselves. 
Stephen Gosson's The Schoole of Abuse (1579) and Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie are good examples.Sidney eulogizes the poet as a law-giver. 

The period also saw works of religious prose. 
Richard Hooker's (1554-1600) pamphlet on the Marlin Marprelate controversy is a famous one. 
Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594) is a masterpiece of English prose. 
The most seminal work of the period is the authorized version of the Bible published in 1611. 
The work was commissioned by James 1. 
A beautiful prose minus archaism is used by the revisers.The diction was to influence the English language very deeply. 
It is the language of daily speech, yet fresh and lofty.Side by side with religious literature, secular and philosophical literature, mostly written by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), came out. 
He had taken all knowledge as his province and elaborated his doctrines in his Novum Organum (1620). 
His ideas influenced the formation of TheRoyal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge in 1645.His most popular work is his Essays written on diverse topics in a terse, epigrammatic style. 
The English writers quote copiously from Bacon today. 
His sentences are household terms. 
Take for example, 'He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune'. 
'Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested'.Another great prose-writer of the period was Robert Burton (1577-1640) whose The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is full of pedantry. 
He borrowed from numerous sources and is full of melancholy and jests; his style abounds in synonyms and epithets.

Drama

Drama thrived in the Renaissance. 
Foreign influence, especially of Italy, predominated. 
Plays were written so that the public would enjoy them and applaud the stage.There was a great variety of plays written — pure tragedy, tragi-comedy, historical drama, romantic comedy, comedy of errors, farce, pastoral, etc. 
The stage was a simple structure, circular in form with a courtyard open to the sky. 
A platform projected into the courtyard. 
Boys played the female roles.The public consisted of groundlings and courtiers on galleries. 
The unities of time, place and action were disregarded. 
Farce and tragedy were found in succession.Several mythological allegories were acted before the court. 

John Lyly's euphuistic romances like Campaspe (1584), Sapho and Phao, Endymion (1592), Midas were praises of the queen. 
George Peele (1558-1598) wrote The Araygnement of Paris (1584) and The Old Wives' Tale.

There were violent plays like Thomas Kyd's (1558-1594)The Spanish Tragedie (1585) and Christopher Marlowe's (1564-1593) Tamburlaine, the Great (1587) and Doctor Faustus (1592). 
Doctor Faustus is an allegory on the Renaissance love of power. 
It shows how Doctor Faustus, the scientist, sells his soul to the devil for twenty-four years of full power to satisfy every desire. 
In the end his agony increases as the devil approaches to claim his soul. 
Marlowe also wrote The Jew of Malta, which shows the unbridled love for wealth, and the historical play Edward II. 
Marlowe crafted the blank verse (mighty line as Shakespeare called it and used). 
This was suited to the fiery speeches of his characters.

The towering genius of the age was certainly William Shakespeare (1564-1616). 
He was versatile and wrote about36 plays and 144 sonnets. 
'Shakespeare was not of an age but for all times' and 'Poets are born not made', wrote BenJonson about him. 
He created a gallery of nearly 800 characters who typify personalities found through human history. 
Julius Caesar's pride and ambition, Macbeth's unbridled ambition, King Lear's dotedness, and Othello's susceptibility to suspicion against his wife — are tragic flaws that govern men even today.Shakespeare was not educated except for a few years at a grammar school. 
He had 'little Latin and less Greek' and read books in translation from Latin and Greek. 
He adapted the stories into a World entirely his own, instinct with life and vibrancy. 
Shakespeare began his career by acting for the stage. 
Then he wrote plays and staged them, mainly to seek court patronage. 
His great success made him the envy of his contemporaries like Robert Greene. 
In his tragedies he depicts the fall of great men owing to a tragic flaw in their character. 
Although they had the will to change their destiny, a fate controlled them. 
He used the beliefs of his time like the supernatural powers and phenomena to capture the interest of his audience. 
Some of his historical plays areRichard II (1596) and King John (1595). 
Among the romantic comedies As You Like It (1600), The Merchant ofVenice (1596) and Twelfth Night (1601) are popular. 
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595) is a fairy play. 
Romeo and Juliet (1594) is a tragicomedy. 
He used prose and blank verse.His Henry IV (I & 2) (1597, 1598) contain much more blank verse than his other plays. 
In depth of psychological insight, and power of style Hamlet (1601), one ofShakespeare's great tragedies, stands supreme. 
The Tempest (161I) is one of his last plays which shows the dramatist's mellowed maturity.Even after 400 years, Shakespeare's plays are very popular, being translated into almost every important language. 
'Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety'; Shakespeare described Cleopatra in these words. 
The same may be said about his plays also.Ben Jonson was Shakespeare's antithesis. 
He borrowed the style of the classics and was very erudite. 
He carefully studied society and wrote about it. 
He took the different 'humours' or dominating characteristics of men and satirized them in Every Man in his Humour (1598) and Every Man out of his Humour (1599), Volpone, or the Fox (1605) andThe Alchemist (1605). 
He also wrote the historical tragedies, Sejanus His Fall (1603)' and Catiline His Conspiracy (1611). 
The plays are very true to history. 

John Marston, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and Middleton were other playwrights of the age. 
John Webster (1580-1625) is famous for horror plays like The White Devil (1609-1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1613-1614).

MAJOR AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)The Faerie QueeneThe Shepheardes CalendarAmorettiEpithalamionProthalamionMother Hubberd's Tale The Ruins of TimeThe Tears of the MusesAstrophel
Phillip Sidney (1554-1586)Arcadia Astrophel and Stella A.  Apologie for Poetrie
Ben Jonson (1573-1637)Every Man in His HumourEvery Man Out of His HumourVolpone Or the FoxCynthia's RevelsThe AlchemistBartholomew FayreEpicaene or the Silent WomenSejanus His FallCatline His ConspiracyThe PoetasterThe Devil as an AssThe Masque of Beauty
Samuel Daniel (1562-1619)DeliaCivil Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster andYork
Michael Drayton (1563-1631)The Battle of AgincourtEngland's heroic EpistlesThe Barons' WarsPolyolbion
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)The Two Gentlement of VeronaThe Merry Wives of WindsorMeasure for MeasureThe Comedy of ErrorsLove's Labour's LostThe Taming of the ShrewAll's Well that Ends WellA Midsummer Night's DreamThe Merchant of VeniceMuch Ado About Nothing As You Like itTwelfth NightRomeo and JulietMacbethHamletKing LearOthelloAntony and CleopatraJulius CaesarTimon of AthensCoriolanusTitus AndronicusTroilus and CressidaKing JohnKing Richard the SecondKing Henry the Fourth-Part FirstKing Henry the Fourth-Second PartKing Henry the FifthKing Henry the Sixth-First PartKing Henry the Sixth-Second PartKing Henry the Sixth-Third PartKing Richard the ThirdKing Henry the EighthCymbelinePericlesThe Winter's TaleThe TempestVenus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece (Narrative Poems)Sonnets (154 in number).
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)Tamburlaine the GreatEdward IIDoctor FaustusThe Jew of MaltaThe Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage.
George Peele (1558-1597)The Araygnement of ParisThe Famous Chronicle of King Edward I
Robert Greene (1560-1592)Frier Bacon and Frier BungeyOrlando FuriosoPandosto
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)The Unfortunate Traveller Or The Life of Jack Wilton
Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) The Wounds of Civil WarRosalynde
Thomas Kyd (1557-1595) The Spanish Tragedy(English Lang.)
John Lyly (1554-1606) Euphues, The Anatomy of WitEuphues and His EnglandEndymion
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) EssaysThe Advancement of LearningThe New AtlantisNovum Organum
John Webster (1580-1625) The White DevilThe Duchess of MalfiThe Devil's Law Case.
Thomas Heywood (1575-1650) A Woman Killed with KindnessThe English TravellerThe Captives
Robert Burton (1577-1640) The Anatomy of Melancholy
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) Religio MediciVulgar ErrorsHydrotaphia or Urne BurrialeChristian Morals
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) Leviathan
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) The Liberty of Prophesying - Holy Living - Holy Dying

END OF THE RENAISSANCE (1625-1660)

Prose
Puritanism set the trend for the literature during the reign of Charles 1. 
The Bible was the guiding spirit which may be best seen in Milton's works. 
The zealous Calvinists enforced Presbyterianism. 
The passionate curiosity for life which characterized the Renaissance gave place to a search for salvation. 
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was a scientist, but in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or VulgarErrors (1646), we see his belief in miracles. 
His Religio Medici (1642) speaks of the vanity of earthly life. 
George Herbert's (1596-1633) The Country Parson and JeremyTaylor's (1613-1667) Holy Living (1650) and Holy Dying (1651) are sermons championing religious freedom. 
John Milton (1608-1674), who is famous as a poet, wrote numerous pamphlets in favour of divorce which are models of beautiful prose. 
His Areopagitica (1644) is a speech for the liberty of unlicensed writing.Another great prose-writer was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) whose Leviathan (1651) is a famous work. 
He was an empiricist and realist and believed that sensations and ideas are caused by physical reasons. 

Numerous works of ethics, sociology and history were written. 
The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England was written by Edward Hyde (1609-1674). 
Izaac Walton (1593-1683) wrote the biographies of John Donne and George Herbert.The Compleat Angler (1653) is his famous work on the post-Civil War scene and contains descnptions of the English countryside.PoetryTwo types of poets existed then — the Cavaliers, who were the Royalists, and the religious or Metaphysical poets.Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, John Cleveland, RobertHerrick were Cavalier poets who displayed epicurean tastes.Imagination and sensuous imagery predominate their poems.Among the religious poets, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan andMarvell stand out. 
They were mystics. 

George Herbert's (1593-1633) style is simple and expresses Christian piety in his anthology The Temple (1633). 
His poems The Pulley and Love are very popular. 
Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) used fantastic conceits; e.g. he describes the maudlin St. Mary Magdalene's eyes as 'walking baths, compedious oceans', Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) was a mystic and his poem The Retreat is a nostalgic longing for the blissful heavenly state of childhood.John Milton's greatest achievement was his Paradise Lost (1667). 
In theme it deals with the fall of man. 
In form, it follows the strict unity of the classical epic. 
His other poems are L'Allegro (1632), II Penseroso (1632), Comus (1634), Lycidas (1637), Samson Agonistes (1671), etc.

RESTORATION LITERATURE (1620-1734)

Prose
In 1660, Charles II returned to the throne and the Puritan republic ended. 
The year is also marked as the beginning of the modem literature. 
John Bunyan's (1628-1688) works, Grace Abounding (1666) and The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) are the last surviving works of Puritan faith. 
The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory describing the trials and tribulations on the way to salvation as faced by a Christian. 
Bunyan's prose is a blend of common speech and the grandeur of the revised Bible.The scientific spirit took over the reign. 
The RoyalSociety of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, to which Bacon and William Harvey (who discovered the circulation of blood) had contributed, now had many learned men. 
Sir Isaac Newton published Principia in 1687. 
He discovered the laws of gravity, of the diffraction of white light and the theory of fluxions.John Locke (1632-1704) propounded a new philosophy of commonsense and intelligent reasoning in his An EssayConcerning Human Understanding (1690). 
It lays stress on development of character. 
It was to influence the English thought. 
Voltaire was one of his French disciples.

Poetry
Restoration literature was derived from pre-Commonwealth national literature and was a reaction against Puritan oppression. 
It rejected severe moral codes of conduct and was chiefly satiric in nature. 
Samuel Butler's (1612-1680) poem, Hudibras published in three parts (1663, 1664 &1678), is a typical work of this period. 
It is inspired by Don Quixote. 
He satirizes Sir Hudibras as a grotesque Presbyterian with a squire called Ralpho. 
It lays bare all the human follies in octosyllabic couplets. 
Many court poets like Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and John Oldham (1653-1683) were veterans of the Republican era and satirize the follies of the new age.
The great poet of the period was John Dryden (1631-1700). 
He excelled in almost every kind of composition.He wrote a series of heroic stanzas in honour of Cromwell on his death. 
He was a disciple of the metaphysical poets displaying their far-fetched images and conceits. 
In AstraeaRedux (1660), he celebrated the return of Charles II and inAnnus Mirabilis (1667) he commemorated the Great Fire ofLondon and the war with Holland. 
He was a staunch Tory and his famous satires are Absalom and Achitophel (1681), The Medal and Mac-Flecknoe. 
In this last work he satirizesShadwell, the Whig poet. 
The Hind and the Panther (1687) is an allegory on Catholicism and Anglicanism. 
Dryden also translated the classics, chiefly Persuis and Juvenal. 
He turned Virgil's Aeneid into brilliant couplets. 
HisAlexander's Feast is an ode in honour of St.  Cecilia.

Drama
The dramatic works of the Restoration were licentious and full of cynicism. 
They regarded the moral code of the Puritans as a matter of ridicule. 
Scenery now played an important part on the stage and actresses, not boys, played the female roles. 
The theatre was regarded as a place of vice and evil. 
Shakespeare's plays were rewritten and his tragedies like Romeo and Juliet given happy endings.French influence dominated and extraordinary superhuman feats were described. 
Heroes were presented as ideals and were made to give pompous speeches.Dryden wrote many plays like Aurengzebe or The GreatMogul (1675) and The Conquest of Granada (1669, 1670) which abound in rhetoric.
The tragedians were Thomas Otway (1651-1685), Nathaniel Lee (1653-1692) and Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718). 

The comedy of this period reflects the gay intrigues of the society. 
Caricature and farce were used and obscenity also touched it. 
The main aim was to amuse. 
Sir GeorgeEtheredge (1635-1691) was an innovator and WilliamWycherley (1640-1715) was a moralist playwright. 
WilliamCongreve (1670-1729) wrote a series of masterpieces including The Way of the World (1700). 
John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) and George Farquhar (1678-1707) were other comedy writers of the period.CriticismDryden was the first English critic. 
The Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668) is his longest single prose work and a major piece of English literary criticism. 
It is in the form of a discussion between four characters, one of whom is Dryden himself. 
It deals with topics related to theatre and evaluates the works of the Elizabethan dramatists, especially of Shakespeare.

 

The Diarists of the Restoration Period One of the sources of information and genres of prose writing during the Restoration were diaries. 
The important names are those of John Evelyn, Samuel Pepys and RogerNorth. 
John Evelyn (1620-1706) was a rich man who had cultured tastes. 
He was a member of the Royal Society and had wide interests in diverse fields like gardening, forestry, navigation and architecture. 
His Diary which was written almost throughout his lifetime throws a floodlight on the major social and national events of the time like the GalleySlaves and the Great Fire. 
It is written in a plain, graphic style. 

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) had a chequered career.Coming from the middle classes, he joined the civil services and rose to be the secretary of the Admiralty. 
He also became the President of the Royal Society and a member of Parliament. 
His famous Diary, covering a period of ten years, is in the form of confessions. 
It was written in laconic sentences like the messages of a telegram and was in a sort of code which was deciphered only in 1825. 
The diary shows him to be a man of versatile interests like music, science and literature. 
But the most controversial aspect is the detailed confessions of his life. 
Nobody seemed to guess he was a libertine, a morally debauched character who could stoop to low means. 
When we read the diary, it seems he is writing of another person. 

Roger North belonged to an elite family. 
He was a Tory gentleman and was engaged in the politics of the times. 
His famous work is North's Lives of the Norths containing biographies of three relatives and an autobiography. 
His pen pictures and anecdotes are in colloquial style.

MAJOR AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS
Robert Herrick (1591-1574)Noble NumbersHesperides
Thomas Carew (1598-1639)Poems 'He that loves a rosy cheek'
Sir John Suckling (1660-1642) 'Ballad upon a Wedding' 'Why so pale and wan, Fond Lover'?
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) 'To His Coy Mistress' 'The Rehearsal Transprosed' 'Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland'New Letters (a Prose Work)
George Herbert (1593-1633)The TempleAfflictionEaster WingsThe CollarMan
Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) Carmen Deo NostroThe Infant MortursSteps to the Temple
John Milton (1608-1674) Paradise Lost (in twelve Books)Paradise RegainedComusLycidasSamson AgonistesL'Allegro II.  Penseroso Areopagitica (Prose Work)Ode on the Morning of Christ's NativitySonnets (including) : 'On His Blindness' 'On the Late Massacre in Piedmont' 'When the Assault was Intended to the City' 'On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three'A large number of Tracts and Pamphlets in support of the Parliament
John Donne (1573-1631) Songs and SonnetsAires and AngelsA Nocturnall upon Lucies DayA Valediction : Forbidding MourningThe ExtasieDevotions (Sermon in Prose)Ignatius His Enclave (a Prose Work)Of the Progress of the SoulDeath's Duell
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)Pyramus and ThisbeThe MistressThe DavideisPindarique OdesConstantia and PhiletusDiscourse by Way of VisionConcerning the Government of Cromwell (a Prose Work)
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)PoemsRegenerationThe RetreatOlor IscanusThalia RediviaSilex Scintillans
John Dryden (1631-1700) (i) Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver CromwellAstraea Redux (on the Restoration of Charles II)Absalom and AchitophelReligio LaiciThe Hind and the PantherThe FablesAnnus MirabilisThe MedalMac FlecknoeAlexander's FeastPrefaces to His Plays (in Prose)  An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (ii) Dryden's PlaysTyrannic LoveConquest of GranadaAll for loveThe Rival LadiesThe Indian EmperorAureng-ZebDon SebastianCleomenesLove Triumphant
John Vanbrugh (1664-1726)The RelapseThe Provoked WifeThe Confederacy
George Farquhar (1678-1707)The Recruiting OfficerThe Beaux Stratagem
Thomas Otway (1652-1685)OrphanVenice PreservedDon CarlosAlcibiades
Nathaniel Lee (1653-1692)NeroThe Rival QueensSophonisba
John Bunyan (1628-1688) The Pilgrim's ProgressGrace AboundingThe Life and Death of Mr. BadmanThe Holy War
John Locke (1632-1704) Essay on the Human UnderstandingTreatise on GovernmentThoughts on Education
John Evelyn (1620-1706)Diary
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) Diary

The Eighteenth Century

THE AUGUSTAN AGE (1700-1740)
In general, the eighteenth century was the age of understanding and enlightenment. 
The emphasis was on the advancement of the human mind. 
Sensibility was the guiding principle. 
This age borrowed the humour and poetic technique of the previous century.This age is generally called The Augustan Age or TheAge of Queen Anne because the queen patronized the men of letters. 
The period is also known as the Classical Age.

It was an age of tolerance and harmony and was guided by reason. 
Dryden still wrote and was a contemporary of French authors Corneille, Racine and Moliere. 
Many English works were translated by the French. 
Poetry was still for aristocrats and the courts, but prose spread among the common public.People demanded instructions and information and practical hints for living. 
This led writers to use a simple style to be comprehensible to all.PoetryMatthew Prior (1664-1721) began by writing a parody of The Hind and the Panther in which he expounded his opinions on politics. 
Sir Samuel Garth (1661-1791) andJoseph Addison (1672-1719) used the heroic couplet ofDryden. 
Addison described Marlborough's victory atBlenheim in his poem The Campaign (1704). 
But the poetical luminary of the period was Alexander Pope (1688-1744). 
He polished Dryden's couplet and used it as a weapon of satire, like in the famous An Essay on Man (1732-1734).His An Essay on Criticism (1711) and The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) are other great works. 
The latter is in mockheroic style and describes the anger of a lady whose lock of hair had been cut off. 
Pope also translated the Iliad. 
He wrote The Dunciad (1728) to castigate bad poets. 
His Imitations of Horace (1733-1737) is highly admired even today.

Jonathan Swift, usually known as a prose writer, also showed a gift or versification like in his poem On theDeath of Dr.  Swift. 
John Gay (1685-1732) was popular for his fables like The Hare with Many Friends and his songs in The Beggar's Opera. 
Edward Young's (1683-1765) TheCommaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, andImmortality (1742), is a poet's delight in meditation underlining the vanity of all earthly glory.ProseThis period saw an increasing demand for the circulation of facts and ideas among the public. 

Daniel Defoe (1659-1731) was a trail-blazer as a Journalist and his popular works are The True-Born Englishman (1701) and TheShortest way with the Dissenters (1702). 
Defoe wrote the first English nove! Robinson Crusoe (1719), which is a children's classic or collection of adventure stories. 
He cultivated the art of reporting and presented his stories as historical narratives which are precise and practical.Steele, Addison, Swift, Arbuthnot were the other great prose-writers of the time. 
They introduced a style adorned by figures of speech. 
The periodicals of Steele and Addison contain essays which deal with practica1 moral questions and reflect the morals of the time.

Richard Steele (1672-1729) led a dissipated life and was full of remorse for it. 
He extols the Bible as a guide in life in his work The Christian Hero. 
He launched the journal The Tatler in 1709. 
Joseph Addison propagated rational and moderate ideas He collaborated with Steele on The Tatler. 
Steele then founded The Spectator in 1711 and62Addison again collaborated. 
Here they were merely the spectators of the society and its foibles. 
It epitomizes the whole nation. 
The character of Sir Roger de Coverley is a masterpiece, a comic personality with eccentricities. 
Other characters, Sir Andrew Freeport. 
Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry capture the imagination of the readers.Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) enjoyed ridicule rather than correction. 
He lays bare all the vices of man as something that are beyond correction. 
He ridiculed the modern authors in his The Battle of the Books (1704) and attacked the Papists and Presbyterians in The Tale of a Tub (1704). 
His most popular work is a children's classic, Gulliver's Travels (1726), which is also a satire on politics, religions, science and nature of man.John Arbuthnot (1667-1735) was another humanist and man of wit and is known for his The History of John Bull (1712), an amusing allegory on the politics of the time.During this period a number of deists like Locke, Collins and Tindal propounded a philosophy advocating reasoning rather than superstitious beliefs as advocated by orthodoxChristians. 
Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), LordBolingbroke (1678-1751) and Mandeville were other rationalists of the time who wrote many prose works.

THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1740-1800)
Like all other periods of transition, this age was also disturbed and confused. 

Two movements can be clearly observed in the writings of the time: (i) the allegiance to the old order of classicism, and (ii) the search after the new order of Romanticism. 
The period was marked by new learning, new philosophy, growth of historical research and new realism.This period is also known as the Age of Johnson because Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the greatest English man of letters, flourished during this period. 

Samuel Johnson was a versatile man of letters translator, journalist, commentator, critic, novelist, biographer and poet. 
He created two satirical poems, London (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749). 
He had a supple style and describes his personal reflections in his essays The Rambler (1750-1752) and TheIdler (1758-1760). 
His Dictionary of English Language (1747-1755) shows remarkable precision in definition and a feeling for the correct use of words. 
Besides the novel Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759) his best works are biographical and literary studies and his edition ofShakespeare (1765). 
His Lives of the Poets (1777-1781) is a biographical work. 
His admirer James Boswell's famous biography of Johnson has made him immortal. 
He is described here in candid details. 
His prejudices, excellences and demerits are all laid bare.

Poetry

Poetry showed the influence of Dryden and Pope. 
It was mainly didactic and satirical and the couplet stilI was the major form.Oliver Goldsmith's (1728-1774) Deserted Village (1770) is a masterpiece of the period. 
James Thomson's (1700-1748) The Seasons (1730) is a praise of the beauties of Nature in all her diversity. 
Other noteworthy poems of the period are William Collins' (1721-1759) Ode toEvening, a delightful lyric, and Thomas Gray's (1716-1771) Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751).A general belief in human liberty was seen as the FrenchRevolution proceeded. 
William Cowper (1731-1800) who wrote The Ballad of John Gilpin, George Crabbe (1754-1832), the Scotsman Robert Burns (1759-1796) and the mystic William Blake (1757-1827) echoed the sentiments of the period. 
Burns was a farmer and wrote in original racy dialect thus causing a break from convention. 
Blake was a visionary and his poems are collected in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). 
In The Tyger, he uses the Lamb as a symbol of innocence and of Jesus, and the Tiger as the symbol of evil in the world, of the evil seen in the French Revolution where thousands were sent to the guillotine.NovelThe period saw the development of the novel. 
A series of masterpieces came out. 

In the novel, the author could describe events in detail. 
Defoe's novels so far were based on strange subjects. 
Now they concentrated on commonplace events of family life and society. 
Adventure of earlier novels gave place to character portrayal. 
The novels were very long and filled with minute details. 

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) wrote Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) andClarissa Harlowe (1747-1748). 
Henry Fielding (1707-1754) is famous for Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749), Tobias Smollet (1721-1771) wrote The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Expedition of HumphryClinker (1771), Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) wroteTristram Shandy (1760), and Oliver Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).

Letters 
There were famous letter writers also, like Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773). 
Horace Walpole (1719-1797), Thomas Gray and Richardson. 
Frequently, a series of letters was bound into book-form. 
Collections of this kind were the letters ofLady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), written toPope from Constantinople, and of Thomas Gray, from theLake District. 
Chesterfield's letters to his son contain63 comments on political and social matters. 
Richardson's Pamela is entirely in letter-form.

Drama

The century was the age of the great novels. 

Drama lost originality and talent. 
People saw Shakespeare's plays enacted, but what attracted them was the genius of the actors. 
However, there were a few good plays written. 
For instance, Johnson's Irene (1749), Fielding's The Miser, Goldsmith's anti-sentimental comedy She Stoops toConquer (1773), and Sheridan's The School for Scandal (1777) and The Rivals (1775).Historical WorkTowards the last part of the century the history of England was rocked by many revolutionary changes the impact of which were felt in English literature. 
Till the mid-18th century Victorian England reigned supreme. 
She was mistress of the seas and her imperial rule covered many colonies. 
In1776, America declared her independence and the BritishParliament was divided on the issue. 
Many Britishers favoured the American claims. 
In 1789, the FrenchRevolution broke out and here too the Britishers were divided into two camps. 
Inspired by the writings ofRousseau, many believed the Revolution was being fought for the right causes. 
The Parliament resounded with the speeches of the famous. 
Some even accused Warren Hastings for his extortion policies in India and some others were against slave-trade.
Treatises on philosophy by David Hume (1711-1776) and histories by William Robertson (1721-1793) and political economy (Wealth of Nations) by Adam Smith (1723-1790) came out.Edmund Burke (1729-1797) read law and began writing to propound his views on human feelings and emotions. 
His language is as oratorical in Parliament at the trial of WarrenHastings as in his famous writing A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756).Other orators who expressed themselves in writing wereTom Paine, Godwin and Jeremy Bentham. 
William Godwin (1756-1836) advocated the elimination of government inEnquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). 
He proscribed law, marriage, gratitude, everything that limited liberty.His monumental work is The Decline and Fall of the RomanEmpire (1776-1788) in which he describes the growth ofChristianity and his belief in reason rather than the divine. 
At the same time William Paley (1743-1805) wrote A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794) to prove the existence of miracles by logic.

MAJOR AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Pastorals An Essay on CriticismWindsor ForestThe Rape of the LockDunciadTranslation of Iliad and OdysseyTo Lord BathrustOn the Use of the Riches An Essay on ManEpistle to Dr. ArbuthnotOf the Knowledge and Characters of MenOf the Characters of WomenThe MessiahSatires and Epistles of Horace Imitated
Matthew Prior (1664-1721)Solomon on the Vanity of the WorldAlma : or the Progress of the MindThe Town and Country Mouse
John Gay (1685-1732)FablesThe Shepherd's WeekThe Rural SportsTriviaThe Beggar's OperaThe Streets of London
Edward Young (1683-1765)Night ThoughtsDr. 
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) The Vanity of Human WishesLondonThe Lives of the PoetsPreface to ShakespeareDictionary of the English LanguageA journey to the Western Islands of ScotlandThe RamblerRasselasPrince of AbyssiniaThe Life of SavageThe AdventurerThe Idler
Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) Robinson CrusoeMall Flanders64Colonel JackThe Memoirs of a CavalierCaptain SingletonJournal of the Plague YearRoxana
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) The Battle of the BooksA Tale of a TubGulliver's TravelsJournal to StellaThe Drapier's LettersCadenus and Vanessa
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)The SpectatorThe CampaignPublic CreditThe Vision of MirzaCatoRosamondThe Drummer
Richard Steele (1672-1729)The TatlerThe GuardianThe FuneralThe Lying LoverThe Tender HusbandThe Conscious Lover
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)Elegy Written in a Country ChurchyardOn a Distant Prospect of Eton CollegeOn the Death of a Favourite CatThe BardThe Progress of PoesyThe Fatal SistersThe Descent of OdinThe Nineteenth Century

THE ROMANTIC AGE (1798-1830)
The eighteenth century literature of England was inspired by reason, but the nineteenth century was the age of imagination. 
The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798, heralds the period of English Romanticism. 
The authors of this work were disgusted with the excesses of the FrenchRevolution, they condemned the Rationalist Movement.England turned away from the literature of France and transferred her sympathies to Germany. 
The philosophical doctrine of Romanticism was inspired by Germany. Romanticism was essentially poetic. 
Although poles apart in their political beliefs, Wordsworth and Shelley both considered the poet as the guide, prophet and seer of mankind.

Poetry

For the great Romantics — Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Byron — the study of the wondrous world of feelings, senses, instincts, of Man' relation to Nature, were of prime importance. 

Romanticism is shot with metaphysics. 

As M.Lanson puts it, tout traverse de frissons metaphysiqueAlexander Pope had used poetry to depict the thoughts of the philosophers in his Essay on Man. 
The Romantics, dedicated to Romantic imagination — the esemplastic imagination as Coleridge called it — were convinced that what was revealed to their poetic intuitions, was right, theTruth. 
Mysterious forces divine in origin moved the earth, not cold rationalist cause and effect. 
Pope's couplet was dull and too precise governed by convention. 
The Romantics sought a lyrical form using unusual images and association of words. 
They found models for these in the Renaissance and the old popular poetry.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is aptly called the 'High Priest of Nature'. 
He saw Nature as the 'SternDaughter of the voice of God', man's conscience whose balmy presence never disappointed. 
He was born in 1770 in the picturesque Lake District of England. 
Here he spent happy years of his childhood in communion with God andNature. 
After study at Cambridge, he went to France in1791 and was enthused by the cause of the Revolution.But when the Reign of Terror came and thousands died at the guillotine, his fine sensibilities, his search for human equality and peace received a rude shock. 
He engaged himself in the philosophy of William Godwin for sometime.Finding no solution to the problem of human pain, he finally turned to the study of Nature. 
In the poems of theLyrical Ballads he describes the mundane happenings of country life, the activities of humble people. 
He used their common dialect with its flawed grammar as his style. 
He decries the coming of the industrial era which mechanized English life. 
With no ornament, his poetry draws its power from the intensity of his feelings and imagination, In ThePrelude (1805), a long poem, Wordsworth set out to look65 back and retrospect on his life. 
He follows the growth, the turnings of his poetic genius since childhood, ruminates on his errors and recalls the corrective lessons of Nature. 
In his great moral poem, The Excursion (1814), he uses a philosophy to refute the pessimism that the Revolution had brought.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was Wordsworth's 'Spirits Brother'. 
He was guided by the same philosophy of the imagination. 
While Wordsworth's imagination gave him a special vision of the common things of rustic life, Coleridge stirred up the supernatural.To apprediate his poetry peopled with strange, translunary beings like the Ancient Mariner, one needs 'that willing suspension of disbelief that constitutes poetic faith', In TheRime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge describes tne strange adventures of a sailor in a ship. 
Having killed an albatross, the mariner suffers from hallucinations. 
The poem, with strange rhythm and cadences, creates a wondrous world.Coleridge was a master of lyrical style. 
His other famous poems are Christabel (1816), and Kubla Khan (1816).Kubia Khan was written as a result of an opium dream and described the wonderful, strange palace of the Chinese king, Kubla Khan. 
Coleridge certainly fulfils the meaning of 'Renaissance' as 'a renascence of wonder'.Robert Southey (1774-1843) wrote poetry based on outlandish settings and myths like Thalaba, the Destroyer (1801), The Curse of Kehama (1810), and Roderick, theLast of the Goths (1814). 
His descriptions are rich and graphic and he uses a great variety of verse forms. 
He wrote a number of poems in ballad form.

Walter Scott (1771-1832) also had an interest in ballad poetry. 
He translated the Lenore from German (1796). 
HisThe Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802) shows a great romantic interest in the Middle Ages and the days of chivalry.The second generation of great Romantic poets includeShelley, Keats and Byron.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) gave up his title and wealth to write poetry. 
His aim was to awaken mankind to the millenium, the coming future, which would remove human anguish and sorrow. 
His famous ode, Ode to theWest Wind is an impassioned exhortation — Make me thy lyre eu'n as the forest is ...... 
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
He came under the influence of WilliamGodwin, the philosopher. 
He proclaimed himself an atheist at the age of 21. 
His works include Queen Mab (1813), Prometheus Unbound (1818-1819), which shows human revolt against false gods, To a Skylark, Adonais (1821), which is an elegy to Keats, and The Cenci (1819). 
Shelley's style is a mixture of abstractions and visual images.

John Keats (1795-1821) was the most sensuous of the great Romantic poets. 
As we read his poems, richly laden with imagery and associations, all the senses are stirred up the visual, olfactory, auditory and tactile. 
It is said he tasted pepper in wine to describe certain lines. 
His famous odes are To a Nightingale, To Autumn and On a Grecian Urn.Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was a wealthy nobleman who shunned the popular beliefs of his times. 
He was notorious as a dilletante. 
At the age of 19, he wroteHours of Idleness (1807). 
With the publication of ChildeHarold's Pilgrimage (1812) he became famous. 

Childe Harold was Byron himself, the figure of the disillusioned man, the hero fed up of pleasures and debauches. 
He lives an outlawed life and is rebellious in spirit. 
He took on more incarnations in his poems, The Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814), The Siege of Corinth (1815). 
In these he displayed his own passions and eccentricities. 
In 1816, divorced from his wife, he retired to Switzerland and then to Italy. 
He wrote a number of plays — Manfred (1817), Cain (1821) and The Deformed Transformed (1824). 
The crowning work was his lyrical, satirical Don Juan (1819-1823). 
He went toGreece to fight for its independence, but died of illness. 
His satire is political, against England and also against English hypocrisy and cant. 
His licentious descriptions caused scandals. 
Don Juan, his magnum opus, is written in ottava rima or eight-line stanzas and is full of wit and mockery.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), Jamess Hogg (1770-1835), Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) and LeighHunt (1784-1859) were other poets of the time.NovelNovels of terror and mystery prospered from 1800 to 1830.Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818) wrote Tales of Terror (1800) and Tales of Wonder (1801). 
Charles Lamb's (1775-1834) Tales from Shakespeare (1807) is very popular even today. 
Mrs Shelley, the poet's wife, wrote the classicFrankenstein in which a scientist creates a monster that turns on its creator and destroys his most beloved ones. 
It is a novel of prophetic fear. 
Miss Mary Mitford wrote on country life and Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) brought out educational novels like Belinda (1801) and Tales ofFashionable Life — novels for children.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) produced half a dozen novels which are drawing-room comedies of life. 
They study the passion and distress of young ladies and the life of countryfolk.The novels — Pride and Prejudice (1813), Sense andSensibility (1811), Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818), Mansfield Park (1814), Northanger Abbey (1818) — are realistic and witty, full of bracing dialogue. 

Walter Scott was Scotland's greatest novelist recreating the past of his country's myths and ballads with rich humour.Waverly (1814), Guy Mannering (1815), The Heart ofMidlothian (1818) contain history and direct observation.
In Ivanhoe (1820), he describes the history of England in the days of the legendary Richard, the Lion Heart.Kenilworth (1821), Quentin Dunward (1823) were his other famous historical novels. 
He imbued the Romantic era with a love for the Middle Ages.

Prose/Criticism

The Romantic Age saw a number of reviewers and critics like Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), who expounded utilitarian doctrines, Sydney Smith (1771-1845), and William Cobbett (1762-1835). 
Coleridge, the poet, interpreted the doctrines of Kant and Schelling which show the distinction between pure reason and practical reason.

Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey and Leigh Hunt were Romantic critics of literature. 
Charles Lamb's essays onShakespeare's tragedies state that we cannot do justice to them by staging them since the passions which are to be felt in their intensity are torn to tatters by the gimmickry of the actors. 
William Hazlitt's (1778-1830) criticism of some of Shakespeare's characters like Falstaff — he laughs three inches below the flesh — is a masterpiece. 
Coleridge's famous work of criticism, Biographia Literaria (1817), marvellously analyses Wordsworth's poetry. 

The Romantics believed that Shakespeare's art was organic like a work of Nature and 'esemplastic' — able to blend different elements by imagination. 

Thomas De Quincey's (1785-1859) style is penetrating and incisive when criticizing the poets inThe Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821).

MAJOR AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) The Lyrical BalladsThe PreludeThe ExcursionTintern AbbeyOde on Intimations of ImmortalityMichaelThe Solitary ReaperLoadamiaOde to DutyTo MiltonThe Leech-Gatherer Upon Westminster AbbeyThe RainbowWe Are SevenThe World Is Too Much with UsTo the CuckooThe DaffodilsLucy GraySimon LeeEarly SpringStrange Fits of Passion Have I Known
Walter Scott (1771-1832) The Bride of LammermoorIvanhoeQuentin DurwardThe Heart of midlothianOld MortalityThe AntiquityGuy Mannering WaverlyRob RoyKenilworthRed GauntletThe Black DwarfThe MonasteryThe AbbotThe PirateThe Fortunes of NightThe BetrothedThe TalismanWoodstockLives of the NovelistsLife of NapoleonTales of GrandfatherThe Lay of the Last MinstrelThe Minstrelsy of the Scottish BorderMarmionThe Lady of the LakeRockeby
Robert Southey (1774-1843)Joan of ArcWat TylerAfter BlenheimThe Holly TreeThe ScholarA Vision of JudgementMadocLife of NelsonThalaba the DestroyerRoderickThe Curse of Kehama
S.T. Coleridge (1772-1834) Biographia LiterariaTable TalkAids to ReflectionChristabelKubla KhanThe Rime of the Ancient MarinerFrance : An OdeDestiny of NationsFrost at MidnightDejection : An OdeYouth and AgeReligious Musings
Lord Byron (1788-1824)Childe Harold's PilgrimageDon JuanThe Bride of AbydosManfredThe GiaourHours of IdlenessThe Vision of JudgementThe Prisoner of ChillonLaraMarino FalieroEnglish Bards and Scotch ReviewersThe Siege of CorinthThe CorsairCainP.B. 
Shelley (1792-1822)On the Necessity of AtheismThe Revolt of IslamPrometheus UnboundThe Mask of AnarchyHellasThe CenciThe Witch of AtlasThe Indian SerenadeOzymandias of EgyptEpipsychidionAlasterQueen MabAdonaisOde to the West WindThe CloudOde to a SkylarkO World! O Life! O Time!Defence of Poetry (a Prose Work)To NightThe Sensitive PlantA Lament
John Keats (1795-1821) EndymionLamiaHyperionThe Eve of St. AgnesIsabellaThe Eve of St. MarkLa Belle Dame Sans MerciOde to a NightingaleOde to AutumnOde On a Grecian UrnOde to PsycheOn MelancholyOn First Looking into Chapman's HomerBright Star
Jane Austen (1775-1871) Sense and SensibilityPride and PrejudiceMansfield ParkEmmaPersuasionNorthanger Abbey
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) Essays of EliaThe Last Essays of EliaJohn WoodvilTales from ShakespeareSpecimens of English Dramatic PoetsThe English Comic WritersThe Old Familiar Faces
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) Characters of Shakespeare's PlaysThe English PoetsThe English Comic WritersThe Dramatic Literature of the Age of ElizabethThe Round Table : A Collection of EssaysTable Talk on Men and MannersThe Spirit of the Age
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) Confessions of an English Opium EaterJoan of ArcEnglish Mail CoachDream FugueMurder Considered as One of the Fine ArtsSuspiria de Profundis
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)Pleasures of MemoryItaly
James Hogg (1770-1835)KilmenyThe Queen's WakeThomas CampbellPleasures of HopeTheodoricGertrude of WyomingLachielLord Ullin's DaughterThe Last ManYe Mariners of EnglandHohenlindenThe Battle of Baltic
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)Lalla RookhIrish Melodies
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)Story of RiminiAutobiography
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)GebirHellenicsImaginary ConversationsThe Citations of William ShakespearePericles and Aspasia

THE VICTORIAN ERA (1830-1880)
During this era, the conflict between religion and science, mysticism and rationalism, became intense. 
There were those who, influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution as expounded in his On the Origin of Species, lost their faith in the biblical explanation of man's descent from Adam and Eve. 
They wanted to shun dogma and accept the scientific spirit. 
Others lamented the loss of faith and the rising consumer values. 

Matthew Arnold in his poem Dover Beach writes: 'The Sea of Faith was once too at the full.....But now I only hear its long withdrawing melancholy roar......'ProseCarlyle and Ruskin echoed the prophecies of the Romantic era in their prose works. 

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), theScotsman, abandoned orthodoxy and came under the influence of the German writers Schiller, Novalis, Richter and Goethe. 
His work Sartor Resartus (1833-1834) is a sort of allegory based on a German professor who has written a treatise on clothes. 
He penetrates through the clothes to the essence of the man's being. 
Carlyle was also a historian.His historical works are The French Revolution (1837) and The History of Frederich II of Prussia, called Frederik theGreat (1858-1865). 
These are satirical and prophetic, expounding how man and society are organized. 
He was against materialism and praised the Magi and prophets of the past. 
He advocates strength and power.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) was indignant about the ugliness of existence brought in by industrialism and the machine. 
Unto This Last (1860), which influenced Mahatma  Gandhi's economic theories, describes his disgust for soulless labour.He was a student of arts. 
Modern Painters (1843, 1860) is about landscape painters like Turner. 
He also wrote The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones ofVenice (1851-1853), praising Gothic art.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), the poet, wanted his countrymen to inculcate classical qualities to become harmonious in morals and in ereative works. 
The English must break away from their insular moorings by imbibing the teachings of Greece and the French. 
He is the detectorgeneral of the intellectual failings of his own nation.Poetry, according to him, is important in character formation, and culture is 'the minister of the sweetness and light essential to the perfect character'. 
His works include On translating Homer, The Study of Celtic Literature andEssays in Criticism (1865, 1889). 
He wrote St. Paul andProtestantism advocating that dogma should be removed from Christianity and it should adjust itself to the findings of science.A number of philosophers, historians and scholars wrote in this period. 
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution dramatically affected human thought. 

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) expounded the processes of logic and political economy. 
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) were scientists. 
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was a poet, essayist and historian who advocated English education in India. 
The Oxford Movement gave rise to religious writers like JohnKeble (1792-1866) and John Henry Newman (1801-1890).Newman's famous work is Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) in which he explains why he had converted to the RomanChurch.NovelThe transition from Walter Scott's novels to Charles Dickens's first novel in 1836 is a great one. 
When Queen Victoria ascended the throne, Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) produced sea-stories; Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873) wrote about Byronic heroes, attractive criminals and historical novels like The Last Days of Pompeii (1834);Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), the Prime Minister ofEngland, wrote Coningsby: or The New Generation (1844) and Sybil: or The Two Nations (1845) to show that the aristocrats of the society had a duty towards the unfortunate ones. 

In Disraeli's novels, one finds the politics of QueenVictoria's reign.

Perhaps the greatest Victorian novelist is CharlesDickens (1812-1870), whose identification with the underdog in society was unmatched by any writer. 
One reason for this is his own troubled childhood led in penury under the shadow of a father who was in debtor's prison.The part of his life comes through vividly in his novelDavid Copperfield (1849-1850) which is also an indictment of the cruel, unimaginative schools of his times. 
He was a master craftsman in character delineation. 
A host of characters and their dialogues have become household in the English-speaking world. 
Thus the incorrigible optimistMicawber, Geakle, Pickwick, Fagin and others are types of characters that may be seen all around us anywhere. 
Dickens had a forgiving sense of humour. 
He never let bitterness creep into his recreations of painful events of the past.Among his famous novels are: Pickwick Papers (1836; in the picaresque style), Barnaby Rudge (1841) and A Tale ofTwo Cities (1859; based on the French Revolution), OliverTwist (1837) and Hard Times (1854); novels exposing social conditions. 
He has a picturesque style and concrete imagination.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) made a penetrating analysis of upper middle class and aristocratic society. 
He was a master of irony. 
In The Book of Snobs (1849), he ridicules the tendency to fawn on nobility and to imitate their manners. 
Vanity Fair (1847-1848), History of Pendennis (1848-1850), The Newcomes (1853-1855), The History of Henry Esmond (1852) and The Virginians (1857-1859) are pictures of contemporary life in which he depicts human eccentricities and follies. 
He was adept at reproducing jargon and idiolects.

The Romantic spirit was still alive in the works of the Bronte sisters. 

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) wrote JaneEyre (1847), the story of a governess in a terrifying house.Her sister Emily Bronte (1818-1848) wrote The WutheringHeights (1847), set in a wild landscape. 
Powerful passions and characters have made this one of the greatest novels of all times.

George Eliot (1819-1880), a pen-name for Mary Ann Evans, wrote Adam Bede (1859), the story of a girl who was forced to murder her own baby. 
The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Romola (1863) are other novels by her. 
In Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life (1871-1872), the novelist builds up, from the lives of a great number of deeply studied characters, the complex picture of the life of a small town.

Poetry
The poetry of this period still shows the influence of the Romantic Era. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was an eclectic, selecting the best of his forerunners. 
He was first interested in style and metre, but later on ideas started interesting him. 
A great many poems by him are flawlessly beautiful. 
If The Lotus Eaters is softly languorous, Ulysses has a striking severity. 
Tennyson also experienced the intellectual crisis of his times and shared its anxieties. 
For instance, The Princess (1847) is occupied with the question of feminism. 
In Memoriam (1850) is one of his most beautiful poems. 
It is an elegy on the premature death of his friendArthur Hallam. 
It concerns itself with the belief in immortality, the conflict between the hopes of Christianity and the rationalism of science. 
It is com posed of octosyllabic quatrains. 
He shows a type of Byronic revolt in Locksley Hall (1886) and Maud (1855). 
In Idylls of the King (1859, 1869, 1889) he took Arthurian legends as his theme.

Robert Browning (1812-1889) was famous for using the technique of dramatic monologue in his poems.Through the protagonists of his poems he gives vent to his feelings, passions and aspirations. 
Thus in Paracelsus (1835), he describes the highly ambitious hero who wanted to transform man's life. 
We find here Browning's views on truth and philosophy. 
His other poems include Sordello (1840), Pippa Passes (1841), My Last Duchess, Porphyria'sLover and his masterpiece, The Ring and the Book (1868-1869). 
In his works we find an excess of thought and a rare vocabulary. 
He uses blank verse dexterously. 
His brusque speech, broken syntax and uneven rhythm are in contrast to Tennyson's. 
As Pound and Eliot have said, Browning brought verse nearer to modem colloquial speech.Browning's characters are remote in time and culture. 
Some of these are Rabbi Ben Ezra, Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea del Sarto. 
In The Ring and the Book he takes as his subject an Italian crime and explores the minds of all his characters.He strikes a note of hope in his poems. 
The lines 'God's in his heaven/And all's well with the world' lay bare his beliefs. 
But in general, Browning is considered a difficult poet.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was a reflective poet with a melancholic bent. 
A deep brooding pensiveness informs his poetry. 
Dover Beach shows his concern with the loss of faith in a world of science. 
His epic poem Sohrab andRustum, Tristram and Iseult, The Scholar Gypsy are other famous works.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and AlgernonCharles Swinburne together are known as the Pre-Raphaelite poets. 
They affected Raphael, the Renaissance painter, in their desire to paint sonorous word pictures which may not have much content to conveyor any philosophy to reveal.
It was in accordance with the aestheticism of Ruskin. 
In fact Rossetti and Morris were painters as well as poets.They worshipped beauty like John Keats did. 
RobertBuchanan attacked these poets as belonging to the fleshly school of poetry.Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) translated theItalian poet Dante's Vita Nuova. 
His The Blessed Damozel is an exquisite poem and his best sonnets are contained inThe House of Life in which he extols his young and beautiful wife. 
They are full of rich sounds and images and mystic symbols. 
Rossetti was inspired by the ballads of theMiddle Ages. 
Like the primitive Italian painters, he uses rich colours and depicts warm sensuous feelings.William Morris (1834-1896) was enchanted by Gothic art of the Middle Ages. 
His poems drew inspiration from those of Froissart, Chaucer and Malory. 
He borrowed stories from Scandinavia and Iceland. 
His poems are like frescoes and are very lyrical in quality. 
The famous ones are TheEarthly Paradise (1868-1870) and The Life and Death ofJason (1867). 
These works show rhythm and use of archaism. 
He strove to bring civilization back to art from the utilitarian industrialization.Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was a prodigy. 
He was a musician, and a sonority of rhymes filled his poetry. 
He took romantic themes like revolt against society, hatred of monarchy and struggle against traditional morality. 
His Atalanta in Calydon (l865) is his masterpiece and is known for its choral passages.To these poets of the Victorian Age must be added the name of Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) whose TheRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859) is a classic.

MAJOR AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) The Princess In MemoriamMaudEnoch ArdenIdylls of the KingQueen MaryHaroldBacketAkbar's TombCrossing the BarLocksley HallLocksley Hall Sixty Years AfterDoraPoems by Two BrothersThe FalconThe CupPoems Chiefly Lyrical UlyssesPoems Chiefly Lyrical UlyssesThe Lotos-EatersThe Death of Oenone and Other Poems
Robert Browning (1812-1889) PaulineParacelsusStraffordSordelloBells and PomegranatesChristmas Eve and Easter DayMen and WomenDramatis PersonaeThe King and the BookAsolandoPippa PassesFra Lippo LippiAndrea del SartoKing Victor and King CharlesDramatic LyricsDramatic Romances and Lyrics
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) Sohrab and RustumTristram and IseultBalder DeadEmpedocles on EtnaStanzas from the Grande ChartreuseThe Strayed Reveller and Other PoemsDover BeachThyrsisScholar GypsyOn Translating HomerNew Poems On the Study of Celtic Literature Essays in Criticism - Culture and Anarchy Literature and Dogma Mixed Essays Friendship's Garland God and the Bible
D.G. Rossetti (1828-1882)The Blessed DamozelWorld's WorthAveThe White ShipSister HelenEden BowerThe House of LifeBallads and Sonnets
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)The Goblin MarketThe Prince's MarketA Pageant and Other Poems
William Morris (1834-1896)The Defence of GuenevereThe Life and Death of JasonThe Earthly ParadiseA Dream of John BullNews from NowhereA Tale of the House of the WolfingsThe Roots of the MountainsThe Story of the Glittering PlainThe Sundering FloodHope and Fears for ArtSigns of Change
A.C. Swinburne (1837-1909)Atalanta in CalydonErechtheusTristram of LyonesseChastelandBathwellMary StuartWilliam Blake : A CritiqueA Study of ShakespeareA Study of Ben JonsonSongs Before Sunrise
Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883)Euphranor : A Dialogue on YouthTranslation of Rubaiat
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)Sartor ResartusThe French RevolutionHeroes and Hero-WorshipPast and PresentThe Letters and Speeches of Oliver CromwellLatter-day PamphletsLife of John SterlingHistory of Frederick the GreatChartism
John Ruskin (1819-1900)The Modern PaintersSalsette and ElephantaThe Seven Lamps of ArchitecturThe Stones of VeniceThe Two Paths Unto This LastMunera PulverisTime and Tide by Wear and TyneFors ClavigeraSesame and LiliesThe Crown of Wild Olive
T.B. Macaulay (1800-1859) History of England from the Accession of James II Lays of Ancient Rome
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Pickwick Papers Nicholas Nickleby Martin Chuzzlewit Dombey and Son David Copperfield Bleak House A Tale of Two Cities Great Expectations Our Mutual Friend Edwin Drood Oliver Twist Little Dorrit Baraby Rudge The Uncommercial Traveller A Christmas Carol Hard Times Old Curiosity Shop
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) Vanity Fair Barry Lyndon PendennisHenry EsmondThe New ComesThe VirginiansAdventures of PhilipThe Book of SnobsThe History of PendennisLovel the WidowerThe Round about PapersThe English Humorists of the Eighteenth CenturyThe Four GeorgesRebecca and RowenaThe Rose and The RingIvanhoe—the Legend of the Rhine
George Meredith (1828-1909)The Ordeal of Richard FeveralEvan HarringtonEmilia in EnglandRhoda FlemingVittoriaThe Adventures of Harry RichmondDiana of the CrosswaysOne of Our ConquerousThe Amazing MarriageThe EgoistBeauchamp's CareerThe Tragic Comedians

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) Jane EyreShirleyThe ProfessorVillette
Emily Bronte (1818-1848) Wuthering Heights
George Eliot (1810-1880) (Mary Ann Evans) Adam BedeThe Mill on the FlossSilas MarnerScenes of Clerical LifeLife of JesusRomolaFleix Holt the RadicalDaniel DerondaMiddlemarch
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)Vivian GraySybil : Or the Two NationsThe Voyage of Captain PopavillaHenrietta TempleConingsby : or the New GenerationTancred : or the New CrusadeThe Wondrous Tale of Alroy and the Rise of IskanderContarini Fleming : A Psychological Auto-biography
R.L. Stevenson (1850-1894) Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes A. Inland VoyageVirginibus PueresqueNew Arabian NightsTreasure IslandThe Strange Case of Dr. Jackyll and Mr. HydeKidnappedThe Black ArrowThe Master of BallantraeCatriona UnderwordsA Child's Garden of Verses
Thomas Hardy (1840-1828) Under the Greenwood TreeDesperate RemediesA Pair of Blue EyesTwo on a TowerFar From the Madding CrowdThe Return of the NativeThe Mayor of CasterbridgeTess of the D'UrbervillesJude the ObscureThe Hand of EthelbertaThe Trumpet MajorThe WoodlandersThe Well-belovedA LaodiceanA Group of Noble DamesLife's LIttle IroniesWessex PoemsThe DynastsA Changed ManWinter WordsThe Waiting Supper and Other Tales. 

As the 20th century dawned, new values replaced the old ones and shaped the literature of Great Britain. 
England fast lost its imperial image as her colonies revolted and fought for independence. 
Industrialization progressed by leaps and bounds and the two World Wars brought economic depression. 

All this affected the content of literature. 
Writers sought new vehicles of expression. 
The findings of Sigmund Freud in the realms of psychology took novelists to the subconscious mind. 
A great number of writers who became famous men of letters in English came from Ireland (G.B. Shaw, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett) and from America (T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound). 
Socialism became a practising creed and feminism raised her head. 
Dogmatic Christianity was more or less ignored. 
Although great strides were made in scientific inventions, science could not provide suitable answers to the deep questioning of the human mind resulting in ethical philosophy. 
The age saw the end of feudalism.Victorian reticence and prudery gave way to decadence in literature. 
English writers came under the influence of theFrench Parnassians and Symbolists. 
Scandinavia and Russia represented by Ibsen and Tolstoy also influenced the British men of letters. 
Many a poet wished to fight free from the fixed rules of versification and wrote in free verse. 
Many imitated the American poet Walt Whitman. 
English literature became more expansive in its concerns. 
The life and culture of foreign lands were depicted. 
Although Kipling was an imperialist, his works go beyond England. Being born in India, his works give a graphic view of the country. 
The great Celtic Revival under Yeats brought a new strain to English literature. 

Finally, the theatre, lying dormant for a century, now woke up with renewed vigour.CriticismThe Age began with scholarly works in literary history.Leslie Stephen (1832-1904) wrote biographical and critical essays. 
He produced The English Utilitarians and theDictionary of National Biography. 
He was an agnostic and rationalist. 

A.C. Bradley (1851-1935), H.J.C. Grierson (1866-1960) and Edward Dowden (1843-1913) were other famous critics. 
Bradley is famous for his critical work on Shakespeare's tragedies.Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894) propounded the literary doctrine Art for Art's Sake which was a quest for the most refined pleasure. 
The exquisite in art came from a reflection of the past. 
He eulogized the accomplishments of the Renaissance. 
His prose style was rich, musical and classical. 
His works include Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) and Marius the Epicurean (1885).John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) was another admirer of the Renaissance. 

Oscar Wilde (1856-1900), more known as a novelist and dramatist, gave a wider dimension to the theory of Art for Art's Sake by spicing it with wit and paradox.
 
George Saintsbury (1845-1933) and Sir Walter Raleigh (1861-1922) were other famous critics.PoetryMost of the poetry written in this period are the works of those more renowned as novelists: Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy. 
William Butler Yeats, who pioneered the Celtic Revival, Thomas Steams Eliot, whose Wasteland is a watershed leading to modern poetry, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Catholic poet, are the famous poets of this period.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) wrote on imperialist themes in Barrack Room Ballads (1892), The Seven Seas (1896) and Five Nations (1903). 
These poems were aimed by their rugged music to rouse people to protest. 
He combined folk-music with music-hall chorus. 
It had the sound of drum beats and bugle-calls and even the refinements of chamber music. 
The poetry of imperialism, heroism of national policy, contained slang and even biblical allusions. 
In fact, his popularity was that of WaltWhitman, the national poet of America. 
Many of his subjects were from India, like the poem Gunga Din.

W.E. Henley (1849-1903) also wrote poetry which praised Britain's colonial power. 
The Song of the Sword, For England's Sake and London Voluntaries are some of his better-known poems.There were also a group of poets called the Decadents.They were aesthetes and their doctrine was 'Art for Art'sSake'. 
Oscar Wilde was the leading poet of the group. 
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) is his famous work inspired by his crime and imprisonment. 

A group of poets had a pessimistic view of life. 
John Davidson (1857-1909), Ernest Dawson (1867-1900) and A.E. Housman (1859-1936) are some of these poets. 

But the leading pessimist of the age was Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), better known as a novelist. 
He published WessexPoems (1898) after the novel Jude the Obscure failed to receive public acclaim. 
His poetry was musical and highly individual. 
He had a disillusioned view of life. 
From 1903 to 1908, he produced the vast poetical work The Dynasts, written under the background of Napoleon's struggle againstEurope combining real history with symbolic flashes. 
His poem, To an Unborn Pauper Child, reveals his utter dejection with life: 'Breathe : hid heart', it begins.

The Modern Age (1880 Onwards)
Francis Thompson (1859-1907) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) were religious poets of the beginning of the twentieth century. 
Thompson's poem, The Hound of Heaven is a masterpiece. 
It describes God as a HeavenlyHound chasing man to capture his soul and man fleeing Him in the pleasures of life. 

The Jesuit, Hopkins invented a new type of verse called 'sprung rhythm'. 
It was filled with strange word coinages and is difficult for the ordinary reader to understand. 
His poetry reflects the conflict within him between his attraction to Roman Catholicism and his joy tor the beautiful creation. 
He wrote a number of religious poems of which The Wreck of the 'Deutschland' is one of the best. 
It describes the death of five Franciscan nuns on board the ship, Deutschland.

Irish, English and Continental influences met in W.B.Yeats (1865-1939). 
He Was born in Ireland but came to live in London. 
He was influenced by the strange mystical visions of William Blake, by pre-Raphaelite refinement and even the mysticism and occultism of the Orient, especially of India. 
His poetry is an attempt to reviveCeltic mysticism and Irish mythology. 
Apparently it Was Yeats who introduced Rabindra Nath Tagore to the West.He also came under the influence of Verlaine, a French symbolist poet. 
His best poetry is in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1933). 
Some of his well-known poems are: Easter (1916), The Second Coming, Byzantium, A Prayer for my Daughter, Leda and Swan, Sailing to Byzantium, Meru, Lapis Lazudili, Among School Children, etc. 
His progress as a poet can be assessed by comparing the beautiful but simple Lake Isle of Innisfree with the beautiful and profound Byzantium.

The towering poet of the 20th century is Thomas Steams Eliot (1888-1965). 
Eliot came on to the scene when theWest was passing through tremendous upheavals — belief in religion, especially of the Church was fading, democracy was the new experiment in politics, and many modernist trends were noticeable in literature. 
Eliot proclaimed himself 'a royalist in politics, an Anglo-Catholic in religion and a classicist in literature'. 
Tradition, according to him, was not the dead past but the past living in the present. 
In his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, he states that 'the talent of an artist shows itself not where he differs from the ancients but where, in his work, they assert their immortality'. 
Eliot's poetry shows metaphysical, symbolist and imagist strains, but his individual talent shines forth unmistakeably. 
An eclectic philosophy, borrowed from his own Christianity and Buddhism and the Upanishads informs his poetry. 

His poetry, especially The Wasteland (1922) is a poem that describes the zeitgeist (spirit of the times) and the angoisse metaphysique (metaphysical anguish) of life in post-World War Europe. 
It begins with the sentence 'April is a cruel month' and this sets the strain lor the whole poem. 
A brooding sense of futility and human inanity pervades modern life. 
Eliot achieves this effect by a combination of literary allusions to the past which stirs associations, and by what is called as the objective correlative. 
This last technique means that images are described which call up an emotion or a feeling. 
His other poems are The Lave Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and FourQuartets (1944). 
These lines from the Four Quartets may sum up the disillusionment of the times: 'Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage one could not take / To the door one could not open'. 
Eliot was a poet of spiritual regeneration. 

As the century proceeds, a host of poets make their mark Stephen Spender (1909-1995), W.H. Auden (1907-1973), C. Day Lewis (1904-1972), Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) — all of them wrote with a Social awareness, exposing the horror of the bourgeois culture and capitalist exploitation and the terror of totalitarianism.

We cannot end this section of the early modern twentieth century without a reference to Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and SiegfriedSassoon (1886-1967) popularly known as the 'War poets'.They had served the Armed Forces in the First World War, and after 1918, disillusioned by the horrors they had witnessed took their pens to write against the war. 
The poem The Soldier is one of the finest lyrics in the English language. 
It describes the poet's sense of impending death in battle and his love for his country: 'If I should die/Think only this of me/That there is a part of England/Buried in some foreign land'. 
Another poem is Sassoon's Everyone Sang, which describes the exultation felt by the soldiers returning home after the General Armistice was signed.They are described as freed birds.NovelJust like poetry, the novel of this century reflects the great passions and strivings of the age. 

The discoveries of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) revealed the relationship of man 's behaviour to his subconscious mind. 
The subconscious contains impressions of past experiences which influence a person's attitudes and behaviour. 
These discoveries led not only to new methods of psychiatric treatment but also to new dramatic techniques in the art of the novel. 
The stream-of-consciousness method used by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf spring from these discoveries. 
The modem novel is more and more concerned with an analysis of human behaviour. 
The focus shifts from a description of the external atmosphere to the thoughts of the characters.

Thomas Hardy's works are tinged with a gloomy pessimism reminiscent of Schopenhauer, and an analogy may be found in his works to FIaubert and Zola from France. 
Hardy's country Dorsetshire and the surroundings become the 'Wessex' of his novels. 
His work is full of realistic descriptions of the countryside. 
The places, full of pre-historic and Roman remains, heaths, have a character, and influence the people living there. 
The pre-historic past presses on the life of today. 
He is adept at delineating rustic characters. 
Man is a puppet of fate and an uncontrollable destiny drives him along life. 
A bitter helplessness pervades his novels Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Jude the Obscure (1895). 
His success reached a climax with Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). 
His Tess of the D'UrberviUes and Jude the Obscure, because of their frank handling of sex and religion, aroused the hostility of the reading public. 
These two books, however, present Hardy's most moving indictments of the human situation.

The works of George Robert Gissing (1857-1903) produce a sense of absolute dejection. 
He worked as an illpaid hack in the poor districts of London and described these places vividly in his books. 
Although impressed by Charles Dickens, his writings show none of Dickens' humour. 
One bitter, wretched world, a miserable London, exists in his works. 
Thus Demos, a Story of English Socialism (1886) describes the futility of socialist agitation, The Nether World (1889), the wretchedness of the London slums, New Grub Street (1891), the hopeless lot of a penniless writer, and The Odd Women (1893), the plight of unmarried women. 
His style is as bare and unaffected as his ideas.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) stands in contrast to Hardy and Gissing in his recreation of the life of action and adventure. 
Although he suffered from an incurable malady, he did not lose faith in himself. 
He brought out An Inland Voyage (1878), Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), The Silverado Squatters, Treasure Island (1833), Kidnapped and The Master of Ballantrae (1889) among others. 
The last three are very popular among children the world over. 
He also wrote children's adventure classics like The Treasure Island (1883), Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Kidnapped (1886). 
In Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde he touches upon the dual nature of man his good and evil aspects. 
His style is vivid and full of interesting details.

Another great novelist was the Pole, Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), who perfected his knowledge of English and wrote in a vivid style with a strong foreign accent. 
His experience of sailing life and work in the English merchant service gave him the ideas to write masterpieces like The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), and Lord Jim: A Tale (1900). 
Like the Slavs he was preoccupied with the problem of human misery. 
Lord Jim and The Heart of Darkness (1902) show his anger at what the white man had done to exploit Africa and other nations. 
A trait of his narrative technique is the gradual picture of his character formed from fragmentary descriptions of witnesses. 
He has a rich, sensuous prose style full of striking imagery.

Rudyard Kipling wrote stories about Indian life: Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Soldiers Three (1888).Plain Tales from the Hills depicts an Englishman's encounter with the strange East. 
Kipling was born in Bombay and spent his early life in India. 
He knew the land and its customs, its people and languages. 
His best book is Kim (1901), the story of a half-Irish boy, who speaks the language of the rustics of India and accompanies a Buddhist Lama on his search for 'Nirvana' or Salvation. 
Kipling is adept at describing the sights and smells of India and its colourful people with their racy dialects. 
He also wrote two animal epics entitled, The Jungle Book (1894) and a series of short stories for children like Captains Courageous (1897), just So Stories (1902) and Puck of Pook's Hill (1906). 
Kipling was influenced by Carlyle's doctrine of energy. 
As a spokesman of the Imperialist theme he believed that it was ideal for a person to sacrifice himself for his tribe. 
He believed that especially the white man was ordained to rule and lead nations. 
His works praise Britain's hegemony over her colonies.

Shortly after Kipling, came H. G. Wells and John Galsworthy who were Socialists and criticized the English society. 
H.G. Wells (1866-1946) began by writing stories with a semi-scientific flavour like The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). 
The stories are ingenuously plotted and thrill and disturb the readers. 
Later on Wells' interest shifted to social problems. 
He became a member of the Fabian Society. 
He wrote Mankind in the Making (1903) describing how society would look like when reformed by socialism. 
He also satirized the society in Love and Mr Lewisham (1900), Kipps (1905), Tono-Bungay (1909) and Marriage (1912). 
He does not glorify Britain's past and he scorns the existing institutions of his country. 
He wrote a number of remarkable books after the outbreak of World War I in 1914. 
These show his restless self-examining spirit. 
Some of these are Mr Britling Sees it through (1916) and The Undying Fire (1919).

In  the works of John Galsworthy (1867-1933) we find an artistic conscience. 
Like Wells, he also attacked the concept of property and commercialism in his novels. 
He too exposed and criticized national prejudices, especially those existing among his own class, the landed gentry. 
He was widely read in Continental Literature and was especially influenced by France and Russia. 
Turgenev with his noble realism was his ideal. 
He is a detached and impartial observer of his country's decadent values. 
He advocates a fearless search for truth. 
In The Island Pharisees (1904) he exposes the stagnation of thought among English privileged classes.A similar theme is touched in other novels like The Country House (1907), The Patrician (1911) and The Dark Flower (1913) where country squires, aristocracy and artists are critically studied. 
The Forsyte Saga (1922) is his masterpiece. 
It is a natural history of the rich upper-middle class family. 
He describes their attitude to events like the Great War, the growth of socialism, unemployment and the coal strike.Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) wrote a number of different types of novels presenting a detailed picture of an industrial district in the provinces. 
He is a realist like the French nationalists. 
His masterpiece is The Old Wives' Tale (1908).

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a champion of tradition and he refuted and opposed the attacks of his contemporaries against English society in Orthodoxy (1908), The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904). 
He believed in tradition sanctified by ages of experience and even in the religious bond between men. 
His style is effective with the use of imagery and comparison and he spices it with plenty of humour.

James Joyce (1882-1941) pioneered a new type of novel with the stream-of-consciousness technique.Characters in Ulysses (1922) unreel themselves by a sort of interior monologue. 
Speech is mimicked and styles are parodied. 
Ulysses is modelled on the Odyssey of Homer and set in the slums of Dublin. 
The thousand pages of this novel cover just one day in the life of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. 
Joyce coined words from several languages and was a master craftsman with wit and conceits.

His other famous work is the autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) which describes his adolescence and sensuous tendencies.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) continued the stream-ofconsciousness technique. 
Her works To the Lighthouse (1927) and Mrs Dallaway (1925) reveal the hidden inner life of her characters.

E.M. Forster (1879-1970) was the novelist of cultural relations. 
In A Passage to India (1924) he studies the conflict between the west and the east and takes a favourable stand for the latter. 
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) studies how the cultural divide between an Italian girl and her English husband leads to the ruination of their marriage and life.

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) was a prolific writer. 
His outspoken views on sexual relations raised much hue and cry. 
He considered sex the religion of the blood. 
His novels were dubbed pornographic. 
He believed in the free expression of human personality, in being guided by unrestrained primitive instincts. 
In Sons and Lovers (1913) he studies the relationship of son and mother and the social disparity of a father, a coalminer and a mother, a teacher. The novel is autobiographical. 
Other works by him are The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1921), and The Plumed Serpent (1926). 
The Rainbow, suppressed as obscene, treats the conflict between man and woman. 
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) was canned for being obscene.

George Orwell (1903-1950) wrote novels which were an indictment of totalitarian government: Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). 

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) is a prophetic book about the fu ture of civilization in the con text of scientific advancement.

Drama

After Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is the great playwright whose works enlivened the British stage. 
Shaw, like Ibsen, believed in drama as a vehicle for ideas. 
He had a rich Irish sense of humour and his plays are satires on various social and philosophical themes. 
His general technique was to discuss the problem of his play first in its preface. 
Often this preface is longer than the play itself. 
Widowers' Houses (1892) was his first play. 
In this he discusses the problem of Housing. 
In Mrs Warren's Profession (1894) he lays bare the profession of a prostitute.
In  Arms and the Man (1894) the theme is the chocolate cream soldier. 
Shaw was an iconoclast breaking wellestablished idols or myths. 
Thus this play disillusions us of the romantic image of a soldier. 
He is not one who is willing to die for his country, but one who loves his life.When the enemy is weak, he attacks, but withdraws and takes to his heels if the enemy is strong. 
George Bernard Shaw had a keen interest in the English language and formulated a standard pronunciation for it. 
He studies the theme of how language can influence one's rise in the social ladder. 
Professor Higgins succeeds in teaching a flower-girl to rid herself of a cockney accent and to speak well enough to pass for royalty! In Man and Superman we see Shaw as a master conversationalist. 
Ideas are discussed without much action taking place in the play. 
The AppleCart (1929) shows the weaknesses of democracy. 
Although an Irish man, Shaw did not write on Irish themes as such.

Oscar Wilde reminds one of the Restoration playwrights Sheridan and Congreve in his comedy of manners. 
His style is full of paradox and verbal wit. 
Some of his famous plays are Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893) and The Importance of Being Ernest (1895).

John Galsworthy's plays Sfrife (1909), Justice (1910) and Loyalties (1922) were based on the theme of class exploitation.

W.B. Yeats contributed to the Irish drama. 
His Celtic theme comes through in The Countess Cathleen (1892) and The Land of Heart's Desire (1894). 
Sean O'Casey (1884-1964) and J. M. Synge (1871-1909) were other notedIrish playwrights. 
The latter's plays, The Playboy of the Western World (1907) and Riders to the Sea (1904) are famous.

T.S. Eliot's contribution to the modern theatre were religious and moral plays. 
He uses the Greek 'chorus' style in Murder in the Cathedral (1935) to heighten the dramatic effect of the murder of Thomas Becket by the Archbishop of Canterbury's men. 
The Family Reunion (1939) is a play about sin and expiation. 
Eliot pruned verse to sound like prose. 
This is done dexterously in The Cocktail Party (1949) and The Confidential Clerk (1953) where characters speak verse which sounds like prose.

A group of playwrights came to be known as the 'Angry Young Men'. 

John Osborne (1929-1994) was the most prominent of them. 
His play Look Back in Anger (1956) catches the mood of the frustrated youth in post-War England. 
In his plays, he exposes the wretchedness of the working class.Harold Pinter (1930-2008) mixes comedy and horror in his plays like The Birthday Party (1958).

Another group of dramatists drew their inspiration from France. 
The Absurd Theatre, as it was called, began in France with Albert Camus, Jean Genet anJ Ionesco as its pioneers. 

In England, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was the Irish dramatist of this school. 
His plays Endgame (1955), Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Waiting For Godot (1906) show the meaninglessness of human action and the unrelieved gloom of existence.

MAJOR AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Widowers' Houses
Candida
You Never Can Tell
Man and Superman
Back to Methuselah
Saint Joan
Heartbreak House
The Philanderer
Mrs. Warren's Profession
Caesar and Cleopatra
John Bull's Other Island
Major Barbara
The Doctor's Dilemma
Getting Married
The Apple Cart
Pygmalion
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant
The Millionaire
The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism
Everybody's Political What is What
Cashel Byron's Profession
Love Among the Artists
Androcles and the Lion
The Devil's Disciple
The Man of Destiny

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
The Land of Heart's Desire
The Countess Cathleen
The Shadowy Waters
The Hour-glass
The Resurrection
The King's Threshold
On Baile's Strand
The Cat and the Moon
Ideas of Good and Evil
Discoveries
The Wind among the Reeds
The Wanderings of Oisin
The Tower
The Winding Stair and Other Poems
Lake Isle of Innisfree
Byzantium

John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
The Silver Box
Strife
The Skin Game
The Man of Property
Justice
Loyalties
Escape
The Inn of Tranquility
The Forsyte Saga
The Country House
Fraternity
The Patrician
The Dark Flower
Saint's Progress
Maid in Waiting
Flower Wilderness

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Kim
The Jungle Book
Barrack-room Ballads
Departmental Ditties
The Seven Seas
The Five Nations
Tales from the Hills
Soldiers Three
Life's Handicap
The Phantom Rickshaw
Many Inventions
The Day's Work
Just-so Stories for Little Children
Rewards and Fairies
Debits and Credits

H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
The Time Machine
Love and Mr. Levisham
Kipps
The History of Mr. Polly
Mr. Britling Sees It Through
Christina Albertas Father
The Wonderful Visit
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Invisible Man
The War of the Worlds
The First Men in the Moon
The Food of the Gods
Marriage
Experiment in Autobiography
The Contemporary Novel

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
Typhoon
Lord Jim
Victory
Almayer's Folly A. Outcast of the Islands
Youth
Heart of Darkness
The Secret Agent
The Shadow of Line
Suspense-A Napoleonic Novel

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
The Old Wives' Tale
Clayhanger
Riceyman Steps
Buried Alive
Hilda Lessways
These Twain
Sacred and Profane Love
The Pretty Lady
The Love Match
The Author's Craft

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Peacock Pie
Memoirs of a Midget
Songs of Childhood
Bells and Grass
The Traveller
Early the Morning
Love

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
The Waste Land
Prufrock and Other Observations
Gerontion
The Hollow Men
Ash Wednesday
Four Quartets
Sweeney Agonistes
Murder in the Cathedral
The Rock
The Family Reunion
The Cocktail Party
The Confidential Clerk
The Sacred Wood
After Strange Gods
The Elder Statesman
The Idea of a Christian Society
What is a Classic?

For Lancelot Andrews
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
Elizabethan Essays
Points of View

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
The Voyage Out
Jacob's Room
Mrs. Dalloway
To The Light House
The Waves
Flush
Orlando : A Biography
The Common Reader
Roger Fry
The Death of the Moth
Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown
A Room of One's Own
Between the Acts (Unfinished)

E.M. Forster (1879-1970)
Abinger Harvest
Two Cheers for Democracy
A Passage to India
Howard's End
The Hill of Devi
The Celestial Omnibus
Collected Short Stories
Where Angels Fear to Tread
The Longest Journey
The Story of the Siren
A Room with a View
The Eternal Moment

James Joyce (1882-1941)

Ulysses
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Finnegans Wake
Dubliners

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Sons and Lovers
Woman in Love
Lady Chatterly's Lover
The Rainbow
The White Peacock
Kangaroo
The Plumed Serpent

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Point Counter Point
The Burning Wheel
Those Barren Leaves
Brave New World
After Many a Summer
Eyeless in Gaza
Antic Hay
Time Must Have a Stop
Crome Yellow
The Defeat of Youth
The Perennial Philosophy
The Devils of Loudun

George Orwell (1903-1950)
The Animal Farm
The Road to Wigan Pier
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Burmese Days
Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The Sphinx
The Ballad of Reeding Gaol
The Canterville Ghost D. Profundis
The Duchess of Padua
The Importance of Being Earnest A. Ideal Husband
Lady Windermere's Fan Salome
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Happy Prince and the Other Tales

Harold Pinter (1930-2008)
The Birthday Party
The Dumb Waiter
The Care Taker
A Night Out
The Home Coming
Old Times
Silence