Twentieth Century Writers

 

RUDYARD KIPLING (1865- 1936)

·          He is the first writer in English to get Nobel Prize in literature in 1907.

·         George Orwell called him “the Prophet of British Imperialism”.

·         His father is the director of Lahore Museum.

·         He used to put the Swastika on cover page as a personal symbol because of its ancient Indian connotations of good luck and well- being.

·         He is best known for his novels The Jungle Book (1894), 2^nd Jungle Book is Kim (1901), the poem If (1910) as a tribute to Leander Starr Jameson. It is the literary example of Victorian-era stoicism.

·         The Jungle Book is a collection of stories. The novel Kim tells the story of Kimball O’ Hara who is orphaned son of a soldier in the Irish regiment stationed in India during the British Raj. It describes Kim’s life and adventure from street vagabond, to his adoption by his father’s regiment.

·         The novel Captain Courageous (1897) follows the adventures of 15-years old Harvey Cheyne the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic. It is his only novel set entirely in North America. The book’s title comes from the ballad “Mary Ambree”.     

·         The Phantom ‘Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales’ is a collection of seven popular short stories published in 1888.

·         Just So stories for Little Children (1902) is a collection of animal tales. It began as bedtime stories told by Kipling to his daughter “Effie”. It is considered as a classic of children’s literature.

·         Puck of Pook’s Hill is a fantasy book published in 1906 containing a series of short stories set in different period of English history.

·         The Barrack- Room Ballads, and other verses are a series of songs and poem dealing with the late- Victorian British Army and mostly written in vernacular dialect published in 1890.

·         The White man’s Burden (1899) is a poem about the Philippine- American War. It addressed to the Americans.

·         Recessional (1897) is also a poem about empire. It is written to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

·         False Dawn is a short story published the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888.

·         Kidnapped is a short story set in Scotland just after the Jacobite rebellions and is narrated by the teenager David Balfour. It was first published in Civil and Military Gazette on 1887 and in Indian edition 1888.

·          The other man is a short story first published in 1886 and in Indian edition 1888. The story is set in Simla, the hill station where the British used to spend their holidays during the hot weather.

·         They is a short story collected in Traffics and Discoveries (1904) has acquired interest in the first section of T.S.Eliot’s “Burnt Norton”

 

H.G.WELLS (1886- 1946)

·         He was a prolific writer in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. He is the father of Science fiction.

·         He is best known for his Science fiction works such as The Time Machine (1895), The war of the worlds (1898) and The Invisible Man.

·          The Time Machine is a science fiction novella published in 1895. This work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a using a vehicle or a device to travel forward or backward through time.

·         The War of the worlds is a science fiction novel, first serialised in 1897 by Pearson’s Magazine. It presents the factual account of the Martian invasion.

·         The Invisible Man is a science fiction novel serialised in Pearson’s weekly in 1897. The story concerns the life and death of a scientist named Griffin who has gone mad.

·         The History of Mr. Polly is a comic novel published in 1910. Mr.Polly is an ordinary middle-aged man who is tired of his wife’ nagging and his dreary job.

·         The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel. The text of te noevl is the narration of Edward Prendick who is a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat. He is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals. The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity. Wells described it as “an exercise in youthful blasphemy”.

·         The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian science fiction novel published in 1899. It is about a man who sleeps for 203 years, waking up in a completely transformed London in which he has become the richest man in the world.

·         Love and Mr. Lewisham (subtitled “The story of a Very young Couple)  is a 1900 novel set in the 1800s. It was his first fictional writing outside the science fiction genre.

·         The first Men in the Moon is a scientific romance serialised in The Strand Magazine from 1900 to 1901. It is one of his ‘fantastic stories’. The novel tells the story of a journey to the Moon undertaken by the two protagonists: a businessman narrator, Mr. Bedford; and an eccentric scientist, Mr. Cavor. They discover that the Moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilisation of insect-like creatures they call “Selenites”.

·         The New Machiavelli is a novel serialised in The English Review in 1911 and published as book in 1910. It is notoriously derived from Well’s affair with Amber Reeves and satirised Beatrice and Sidney Webb. It was the ‘literary scandal of its day’.

·         Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel published in 1905. It is his masterpiece.

·         Tono-Bungay is a realist semiautobiographical novel published in 1909. It has been called “arguably his most artistic book”.

·         Ann Veronica is a new woman novel published in 1909. It describes the rebellion of Ann Veronica Stanley, “a young lady of nearly 22” against her middle-class father’s stern patriarchal rule. The novel dramatizes the contemporary problem of the New Woman. It sketches the Women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain.

 

JOHN GALSWORTHY (1867- 1933)

·         He was born in 1867 the same year Arnold Bennett was born. 

·         He was chiefly known for his roman fleuve, The Forsyte Saga.

·         His first play The Silver Box (1906). It is a three-act comedy. It contains a social satire on unjust social partiality.

·         He got Nobel prize in 1932.

·         Strife is a three-act play produced in 1909. It was his third play. It is a social tragedy. The factory labourers involved in a prolonged unofficial strike. There arises a conflict between the company Chairman of Trenartha Tin Plate Works and Roberts, the leader of the workers.

·         The Skin Game is a play first performed at the St. Martin’s Theatre, London in 1920. The plot tells the story of the interaction between two different families in rural England just after the end of First World War.

·         The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921. The Man of Property (1906) is the first novel of Forsyte Saga. “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (1918) is a short interlude after the first novel of Forsyte Saga. “In Chancery” (1920) is second novel (the title refers to the Court of Chancery, dealt with domestic issues). “Awakening” (1920) is a the second interlude. To Let (1921), the novel concludes the Forsyte Saga.

·         It was followed by End Of the Chapter, final volume of The Forsyte Chronicles.

ARNOLD BENNETT (1867-1931)

·         He has completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, and13 plays.

·         He was influenced by French realism.

·         His first novel “A Man from the North” published in 1898. It is followed by “Anna of the five Towns” published in 1902.

·         The Grand Babylon Hotel is a novel about the mysterious disappearance of a German prince, published in 1902. It appeared as a serial in the Golden Penny. The titular Grand Babylon was modelled on the Savoy Hotel which head much later used as a model for his novel Imperial Palace (1930).

·         The Gates of Wrath: A Melodrama is a novel published in 1903.

·         The Old Wives’ Tale is a novel published in 1908. It deals with the lives of two different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines. It covers the period of about 70 years from 1840 to 1905.

·         The Clayhander Family is a series of four novels published between 1910 and 1918. It referred to as a “trilogy”. The first three novels were published in a single volume, as The Clayhanger Family, in 1925. All four are set in the “Five Towns.” The first novel “Clayhanger (1910) is a coming- of- age story set in the midlands of Victorian England. The second novel in the series Hilda Lessways (1911) is the story of Hilda’s coming -of –age, her working experience as a shorthand clerk and as a keeper of lodging houses in London and Brighton, her relationship with George Cannon. The Third novel in the series “These Twain” (1915) was published in serial form in Munsey’s Magazine in 1915. It chronicles the married life of Edwin and Hilda. The fourth novel in the series The Roll- Call (1918) concerns the early life of Edwin Clayhanger’s stepson, George who is an architect.

·         “Milestones” is a collaboration play with Edward Knoblock published in 1912.

·         “The Card” is a comic novel published in 1911.

·         “Mr. Prohack” (1922) is a novel tells the story of a civil servant who is extremely frugal with the government’s money; suddenly inherits a large fortune and become a spendthrift.    

·         “Lord Raingo” (1926) is a novel based upon the experience and dealings of his friend Lord Beaverbrook during the First World War.

·         “Riceyman steps” is a novel published in 1923.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856- 1950)

·         He was an Irish Playwright and political activist. He is famous for his role in revolutionizing comedic drama.

·         He is the only man to win Oscar and Nobel Prize. He was awarded Nobel Prize in literature in 1925 for his work marked by both idealism and humanity. He won Oscar in 1939 for best writing, screenplay for his role in adapting his own play Pygmalion.

·         He wrote more than 60 plays during his lifetime.

·         He was influenced by Henry Gibson.

·         “The quintessence of Ibsenism” is a essay written in 1891, providing an extended analysis of the works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.   

·         “Widowers’ Houses” was his first play to be staged in 1892. It comes under the genre “Play Unpleasant”. It deals with slum landlordism.

·         “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” is a play performed in 1902. The play is about a former prostitute. It contains four acts.

·         “Arms and the Man” is a comedy whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil’s Aeneid. It was produced on 1894 at Avenue Theatre and published in 1898 as a part of Plays Pleasant volume which also included Candida, You Never can Tell, The Man of Destiny. It is a humorous play that shows the futility of war and deals with the hypocrisies of human nature.

·         “Candida” is a comedy published in 1898, as part of his Plays Pleasant. The main theme of this play is about the Victorian notions of love and marriage, asking what a women desires from her husband.

·         “Man and Superman” is a four-act drama written in 1903.

·         “The Doctor’s Dilemma” is a drama in four acts and an epilogue, performed in 1906, and published in 1911.

·         “Pygmalion” is a play in 1912, contains five acts.

·         “Saint Joan” is a play about 15^th French military figure Joan of Arc, premiering in 1923, three years after her canonization by the Roman Catholic Church.     

·         “The Apple Cart: A Political Extravaganza” is a satirical comedy about several political philosophies, often in lengthy monologues. It was published in 1929.

·         “Major Barabara” is a three act published in 1907. The story concerns an idealistic young woman, Barabara Undershaft, who is engaged in helping the poor as a Major in the Salvation Army in London.

·         “The Irrational knot” is a book published in 1880.

·         “The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God” is a book of short stories published in London by Constable and Company in 1932. The story is satirical allegory relating the experience of an African black girl, freshly converted to Christianity.

 

 JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE (1871- 1909)

·         He was an Irish playwright, poet, collector of folklore, and a key figure in the Irish literary Revival. Irish Literary Renaissance or ‘The Celtic Twilight’ is a movement of increased literary and intellectual engagement in Ireland. 

·         He is the co-founder of Abbey Theatre

·         He is best known for his play “The Playboy of the Western World” (1907). It is a three act play performed in Abbey Theatre on 1907.

·         “Riders to the sea” is a one-act play published in 1904. It is set in the Aran Island off the west coast of Ireland.

·         “In the Shadow of the Glen” is a one-act play performed at Molesworth Hall on 1904. It was the first of Synge’s plays to be performed on stage.

·         “The Well of the Saints” is a three- act play published in 1905.

·         The Aran Islands is a four part collection of journal entries regarding the geography and the people of Aran Islands published in 1906.

·         “The Tinkers wedding” is a two- act play by Synge, whose main characters are Irish Tinkers. It is set on a roadside near a chapel in rural Ireland, published in 1904.

·         Deirdre of the Sorrows is a three-act play published in 1909. The play based on Irish mythology, in particular the myths concerning Deirdre, Naoise and Conchobar was unfinished. It was completed by W.B.Yeats and Synge’s fiancée Molly Allgood, first performed in 1910.

 

JOSEPH CONRAD (1857- 1924)

·          He was a Polish-British writer. He is best known for writing the novels Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), and The Secret Agent (1907), the novella Heart of Darkness (1902).

·         Almayer’s Folly is his first novel published in 1895, set in the late 19^th Century, it centres on the life of the Dutch trader Kasper Almayer in the Borneo jungle and his relationship to his mixed heritage daughter Nina.

·         “The Nigger of the “Narcissus”: A Tale of the Forecastle” is a novella published in 1897. The central character is an Afro-Caribbean man who is ill at sea while abroad the trading ship Narcissus heading towards London.

·         “Heart of Darkness” (1899) is his third novella, tells the story of Charles Marlow, a sailor who takes on an assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in the African interior. It was first serially published in Blackwood’s magazine.

·         “Lord Jim” is a novel published as a serial in Blackwood’s magazine published in 1900. The story is the abandonment of a passenger ship in distress by its crew, including a young British seaman named Jim.

·         “Nostromo: A tale of the Seaboard” is a novel set in the fictitious South American republic of “costaguana”, published in 1904.

·         “Typhoon” is a short novel serialized in Pall Mall magazine in 1902.

·         “The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale” is a novel published in 1907. The story is set in London in 1886 and deal with Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unnamed country.