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Thomas Hardy
English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. "A Pair of Blue Eyes" -
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Frances Hodgson Burnett
An Anglo-American playwright and author. She is best known for her children's stories, in particular "The Secret Garden", "A Little Princess", and "Little Lord Fauntleroy". -
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Kenneth Grahame
A British writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows, one of the classics of children's literature. -
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Rudyard Kipling
Was a British author and poet. Born in Bombay, in British India, he is best known for his works of fiction The Jungle Book. Poem Mandalay (1890). -
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Gilbert Keith Chesterton
An English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, journalism, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction. Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox". "Orthodoxy" and "The Everlasting Man". -
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John Buchan
British novelist and Unionist politician who, between 1935 and 1940, served as the 15th Governor General of Canada. He wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction. -
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Adeline Virginia Woolf
Was an English novelist, essayist, diarist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own. -
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James Augustine Aloysius Joyce
Was an Irish writer and poet, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses. -
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David Herbert Richards Lawrence
Was an English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct. -
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Siegfried Loraine Sassoon
Was an English poet and author. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I. He later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston Trilogy". -
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Rupert Chawner Brooke aka Chaucer
Was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War ("The Soldier"). He was also known for his boyish good looks, which prompted the Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England". -
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Thomas Edward Lawrence
Was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt. His vivid writings, along with the extraordinary breadth and variety of his activities and associations, have made him the object of fascination throughout the world as Lawrence of Arabia, a title popularised by the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia based on his life. -
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Thomas Stearns Eliot
An American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. His first notable publication, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915, is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement. -
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Agatha Christie
Was an English crime writer of novels, short stories and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Her works, particularly those featuring detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime.
Her stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run in the world. -
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Isaac Rosenberg
Was an English poet of the First World War who was considered to be one of the greatest of all English war poets. His "Poems from the Trenches" are recognised as some of the most outstanding written during the First World War. -
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works "The Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion". -
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Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
An English and Welsh poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon. Some of his best-known works were published posthumously, they include "Dulce et Dec". He was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended, -
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Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith
Was an English novelist and playwright. "The Hundred and One Dalmatians". -
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Edmund Charles Blunden
Was an English poet, author and critic. He wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong. He ended his career as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. -
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Enid Mary Blyton
Was a British children's writer known as both Enid Blyton and Mary Pollock. She was one of the most successful children's storytellers of the twentieth century. She is noted for numerous series of books based on recurring characters and designed for different age groups. Her books have enjoyed popular success in many parts of the world, and have sold over 600 million copies. Blyton is the fifth most translated author worldwide: over 3544 translations of her books were available in 2007. -
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Clive Staples Lewis
Was an Irish-born British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is also known for his fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy. -
The Nobel Prize in Literature
To an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" The "work" in this case refers to an author's work as a whole, though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy. -
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Ian Lancaster Fleming
was a British author and journalist. Fleming is best remembered for creating the character of James Bond and chronicling Bond's adventures in twelve novels and nine short stories. -
Modernism
Modernism is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. -
The Georgian Poets
Were, by the strictest definition, those whose works appeared in a series of five anthologies named Georgian Poetry, published by Harold Monro and edited by Edward Marsh. The first volume contained poems written in 1911 and 1912. The poets included Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Siegfried Sassoon. -
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World War I
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Dadaism
Began in Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Surrealism developed out of Dadaism. -
Surrealism
Is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members.
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. -
Brian Aldiss
English author of general fiction and science fiction. "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long"
Started out by writing short science fiction to various magazines. He wrote a number of short pieces for a booksellers trade journal about life in a fictitious bookshop, and this attracted the attention of Charles Monteith, an editor. As a result of this, Aldiss's first book was "The Brightfount Diaries" (1955), a novel in diary form about the life of a sales assistant. -
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John Robert Fowles
An English novelist and essayist. "The Ebony Tower"
"The Collector" 1963- first novel, very successful. Fowles was able to devote himself full-time to a literary career. In 1965 it became a film.
„The Magus“ 1965 – based in part on his experiences in Greece. Also adapted for cinema (awful!).
“The French Lieutenant's Woman” was also made into a film during 1981 with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and was nominated for an Oscar. -
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John James Osbourne
English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of The Establishment. The success of his 1956 play "Look Back in Anger" transformed English theatre. In a productive life of more than 40 years, Osborne explored many themes and genres. -
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Ted Hughes
English poet and children's writer. "Crow"
His early work is rooted in nature and he had a strong interest in animals. In his works animals serve as a metaphor for his view on life: animals live out a struggle for the survival of the fittest in the same way that humans strive for success. ("Hawk Roosting.") He often wrote of the mixture of peatury and violence in the natural world.
His later work relies upon myths, inflected with a modern viewpoint. -
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Harold Pinter
The longest established among prominent playwrights, who is regarded by many critics as Britain' s finest playwrights. "The Birthday Party", "The Homecoming" -
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James Graham Ballard
English novelist and short story writer.
With the exception of his autobiographical novels, Ballard most commonly wrote in the post-apocalyptic dystopia genre. "Crash" - in which cars symbolise the mechanisation of the world and man's capacity to destroy himself with the technology he creates.
Ballard has had a notable[30] influence on popular music (lyrics). -
John le Carré
A British author of morally complex espionage novels.
Until the success of his third book he worked in MI5 and MI6.
The first two novels were mystery fiction.
The third novel "The Spy Who Came In from the Cold" (1963) was about spies aware of their amoral work in the Cold War.
"The Naïve and Sentimental Lover "(1971), an autobiographic novel of a man’s post-marital existential crisis.
"The United States Has Gone Mad" (2003) - protested the impending Iraq War. -
V. S. Naipaul
British novelist and essayist. "A Bend in the River"
He insists that his work doesn't contain any political outlook beause "to have a political view is to be prejudiced. " He also said that he didn't have a political view.
His fiction and especially his travel writing have been criticised for their allegedly unsympathetic portrayal of the Third World.
Required reading in many schools. -
Tom Stoppard
British playwright. "Shakespeare in Love" -
Frederick Forsyth
English author and occasional political commentator. "The Afghan"
He has written about assassins, Nazis, murderers, terrorists, special forces soldiers etc. His books have psychologiical complexity, based on detailed and factual research. They contain full information about the technical details of such subjects as money laundering and identity theft. His moral vision is that the world is made up of predators and only the strong survive.
Double twists at the end. -
Seamus Heaney
An Irish poet, writer and lecturer. Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.
His origin is important for him which is why in many of his works he emhasises that he is Irish and not British. His works also often deals with the surroundings in Northern Ireland where he was born.
His work is concerned with the lessons of history, with his personal family history, the English language or with his political views.
He praises Eminem for arousing interest in poetry and lyrics. -
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Postmodernism
A movement which can be seen as a response to the elitism of high modernism as well as to the horrors of World War II. Postmodern literature is characterized by a disjointed culture that reflects the absence of tradition and structure in a world driven by technology and consumerism. -
Julian Patrick Barnes
Contemporary English writer. He has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize. He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.
"Flaubert's Parrot", "Staring at the Sun" , "A History of the World in 10½ Chapters " -
Philip Pullman
English writer. Best-selling author of "His Dark Materials" trilogy. One of the greatest British writers since 1945. -
Salman Rushdie
British-Indian novelist and essayist. He achieved notability with his second novel, "Midnight's Children" (1981), which won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world. -
Terry Pratchett
English fantasy novelist. "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents" -
Martin Louis Amis
British novelist, the author of some of Britain's best-known modern literature - "Money" (1986),"London Fields" (1989). He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, and has been described by Terry Eagleton as the "leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world." -
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Angry Young Men
A group of young British authors who began to write plays and novels which spoke from their heart. They criticised the ruling class of government, church and business-leaders. -
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Theatre of absurd
The movement referred to a group of playwrights who dramatised the strange, meaningless nature of life, in which people have no religious roots and have to suffer to survive. The plays offer no moral lessons and no story. They present the situation of character faced with the meaninglessness of their life. -
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Postcolonial literature
Literature by and about people from former European colonies. This literature aims both to expand the traditional canon of Western literature and to challange Eurocentric assumptions about literature, especially through examination of identity and race. -
Samuel Beckett
"Waiting for Godot"- One of the most celebrated works in the theatre of the absurd. Also recognised as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century and has a lasting effect on British drama -
Neil Richard Gaiman
English author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, audio theatre, and films. His notable works include "The Sandman" comic book series, "Stardust", "American Gods", "Coraline", and "The Graveyard Book." Gaiman's writing has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker, as well as the 2009 Newbery Medal. -
Booker Prize established
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Ian Russell McEwan
is a Booker Prize-winning English novelist and screenwriter. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize in 1999. "Atonement"
