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Emmeline Pankhurst
Pankhurst's most important work began with this founding of the WSPU.She defied politicians by disrupting party rallies, marching and smashing store windows, and going on hunger strikes when jailed. During World War I Pankhurst's tactics changed, and she won support for her cause by helping the war effort. In 1918, Parliament voted women age 30 or older the right to vote, and in 1928 voting age was lowered to 21 years old. -
Period: to
Moderns
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George Orwell
George Orwell, the pen name of Eric Blair, carried a lifelong "horror of politics" and concern for human freedom. This was transferred in his writings into two landmark books, Animal Farm and 1984, the former bitterly predicting the downfall of communism and the latter warning of what he saw as a trend toward totalitarian dominance by governments. -
Sinn Fein
Members of Sinn Fein--a militant group begun in 1905 by Irish Catholics--proclaimed Ireland a republic with themselves as its head, and Sinn Fein supporters and other Irish nationalists waged a guerrilla war against British troops. The passage of the Home Rule Bill divided Ireland into two sections. The six Protestant counties of Ulster, designated Northern Ireland, remained part of the United Kingdom. -
T.S. Eliot
Eliot blurred his national identification by becoming a British citizen. However, the St. Louis-born, Harvard-educated poet early on "was English in everything but accent and citizenship" according to his college classmates. "He smoked a pipe, liked to be alone, carefully avoided slang, and dressed the studied carelessness of a dandy. -
War
Since recent wars had been small-scale conflicts, a generation of patriotic young British men eagerly enlisted to fight Germany when war broke out; however, trench warfare was a new reality, and by war's end 908,000 men from the British Empire had been killed. -
Winston Churchill
To combat despair brought on Britons almost daily German air attacks, prime minister Winston Churchill used stirring words to rally the people to stand defiant. He declared that Britain would "wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all our strength that God can give us...against monstrous tyranny." -
Mansfield
With the publication of this book, Mansfield achieved front rank among British authors. Exclusively a writer of short stories, Mansfield had a style that was unique at the time, emphasizing subtlety and small but telling insights over broad plot developments. Mansfield suffered several personal tragedies in her short, 35-year life, and her death from tuberculosis in 1923 silenced a potentially masterful hand. -
Empire State Building
The term Art Deco derives from the name of a Paris exhibit: the Exposition Internatinale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes. This style is marked by geometric shapes and smooth lines suggesting elegance and sophistication. New York City's Empire State Building is a famous example of Art Deco architecture. -
Edward VIII
Edward VIII became the subject of one of the most popular love stories of the 20th century. After becoming king in 1936, he announced his intention to marry an American divorcee. When the British government objected to this, Edward abdicated after only 325 days as king, the first person ever to voluntarily relinquish the British throne. With the woman he loved, Edward VIII (1894-1972) lived out his days known as the duke of Windsor. -
Iron Curtain
In a speech delivered in the United States, Winston Churchill coined the phrase "iron curtain" as he warned of the threat posed by the Soviet Union, which a year earlier had been an ally in the defeat of Hitler. The United States quickly took the lead in containing communism's post-war expansion, and this Cold War became a fact of international life for the next 45 years. -
Qing Dynasty
China's Qing Dynasty was slow to modernize and underestimated the nationalism sweeping China after the unsuccessful Boxer Rebellion against foreign interference in Chinese affairs. Sun Yixian and his revolutionary alliance threw out China's last emperor, and the country went through a prolonged period of political turmoil until the Communists achieved supremacy in 1949. -
Ulysses
Initially judged obscene, early editions subjected to confiscation and book burning, long banned in England and the United States, Ulysses found its exalted stature confirmed in controversy in 1998 when it was chosen the best English-language novel of the 20th century by an editorial board of the Modern Library, a division of Random House publishers.
