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Published in 2011 by Britannica Educational Publishing (a trademark of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.) in association with Rosen Educational Services, LLC 29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010. Copyright © 2011 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, and the Thistle logo are registered trademarks of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Rosen Educational Services materials copyright © 2011 Rosen Educational Services, LLC. All rights reserved. Distributed exclusively by Rosen Educational Services. For a listing of additional Britannica Educational Publishing titles, call toll free (800) 237-9932. First Edition Britannica Educational Publishing Michael I. Levy: Executive Editor J.E. Luebering: Senior Manager Marilyn L. Barton: Senior Coordinator, Production Control Steven Bosco: Director, Editorial Technologies Lisa S. Braucher: Senior Producer and Data Editor Yvette Charboneau: Senior Copy Editor Kathy Nakamura: Manager, Media Acquisition J.E. Luebering: Senior Editor, Literature Rosen Educational Services Jeanne Nagle: Senior Editor Nelson Sá: Art Director, Designer Cindy Reiman: Photography Manager Matthew Cauli: Designer, Cover Design Introduction by Richard Barrington Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data English literature from the 19th century through today / edited by J.E. Luebering. p. cm. — (The Britannica guide to world literature) In association with Britannica Educational Publishing, Rosen Educational Services. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61530-232-1 ( eBook) 1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. English literature—20th century—History and criticism. I. Luebering, J.E. PR451.E555 2010 820.9—dc22 2010014261 On the cover: George Eliot (right) helped popularize the novel and Tom Stoppard continues to energize the stage and screen. London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (Eliot); Hal Horowitz/WireImage/Getty Images (Stoppard). On page 8: An illustration from an early edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Mansell/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Pages 16 (map), 280, 282, 284, 287 © www.istockphoto.com / Nicholas Belton; pp. 16 (books), 17, 141, 233 © www.istockphoto.com CONTENTS Introduction Chapter 1: The Post-Romantic and Victorian Eras 28 8 17 Early Victorian Literature: The Age of the Novel 19 Charles Dickens 19 Thackeray, Gaskell, and Others 40 The Brontës 41 Early Victorian Verse 42 Alfred, Lord Tennyson 43 Idyll 50 Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 50 Dramatic Monologue 54 Clough and Arnold 54 Early Victorian Nonfiction Prose 62 Thomas Carlyle 63 John Ruskin 69 Late Victorian Literature 80 The Novel 81 Anthony Trollope 97 Verse 111 Gerard Manley Hopkins 122 Pre-Raphaelite 129 Brotherhood The Victorian Theatre 132 Oscar Wilde 133 Arthur Wing Pinero 138 Victorian Literary Comedy 140 53 105 119 Chapter 2: The 20th Century: From 1900 to 1945 141 Edwardian Novelists 141 G.K. Chesterton 143 Writing for the New Century 146 Joseph Conrad 146 Edwardian Playwrights 152 George Bernard Shaw 152 Harley Granville-Barker 162 Anglo-American Modernism: Pound, Lewis, Lawrence, and Eliot 164 Celtic Modernism: Yeats, Joyce, Jones, and MacDiarmid 168 Stream of Consciousness 171 The Literature of World War I and the Interwar Period 172 Brooke and Sassoon 173 Aldous Huxley 174 The Old and New Guard 176 Noël Coward 177 Virginia Woolf 183 Bloomsbury Group 184 Women and Modernism 203 The 1930s 205 W.H. Auden 207 Elizabeth Bowen 212 George Orwell 213 The Literature of World War II (1939-45) 220 T.S. Eliot 221 Evelyn Waugh 230 148 160 188 222 Chapter 3: Literature After 1945 Fiction Influential Fiction Writers of the Period Kingsley Amis Angry Young Men Martin Amis Julian Barnes A