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For information on how to proceed, first see the FAQ for blocked users and the guideline on block appeals. The guide to appealing blocks may also be helpful. Other useful links: Blocking policy · Help:I have been blocked You can view and copy the source of this page: == 20th century == {{Main|Twentieth-Century English literature|American literature|Scottish literature|Irish literature|Welsh literature in English}} ==={{Anchor|Modernism: 1901-1922}} Modernism (1901–1922)=== {{Main|Modernist literature|Modernism|Modernist poetry in English}} [[File:Kiplingcropped.jpg|left|upright|thumb|[[Rudyard Kipling]]]] English literary modernism developed in the early twentieth-century out of a general sense of disillusionment with [[Victorian era]] attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the idea of objective truth.M.H. Abrams,''A Glossary of literary Terms'' (7th edition). (New York: Harcourt Brace), 1999), p. 167. The movement was influenced by the ideas of [[Charles Darwin]] (1809–1882), [[Ernst Mach]] (1838–1916), [[Henri Bergson]] (1859–1941), [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] (1844–1900), [[James G. Frazer]] (1854–1941), [[Karl Marx]] (1818–1883) (''[[Das Kapital]]'', 1867), and the psychoanalytic theories of [[Sigmund Freud]] (1856–1939), among others.M.H. Abrams, p. 167. The continental art movements of [[Impressionism]], and later [[Cubism]], were also important.M.H. Abrams, p. 168. Important literary precursors of modernism, were: [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]] (1821–1881); [[Walt Whitman]] (1819–1892); [[Charles Baudelaire]] (1821–1867); [[Rimbaud]] (1854–1891); [[August Strindberg]] (1849–1912).Marshall Berman, ''All that is Solid Melts into Air''. (Harmsworth: Penguin, 1988), p. 23. A major British lyric poet of the first decades of the twentieth-century was [[Thomas Hardy]] (1840–1928). Though not a modernist, Hardy was an important transitional figure between the Victorian era and the twentieth-century. A major novelist of the late nineteenth-century, Hardy lived well into the third decade of the twentieth-century, though he only published poetry in this period. Another significant transitional figure between Victorians and modernists, the late nineteenth-century novelist, [[Henry James]] (1843–1916), continued to publish major novels into the twentieth-century, including ''[[The Golden Bowl]]'' (1904). Polish-born modernist novelist [[Joseph Conrad]] (1857–1924) published his first important works, ''[[Heart of Darkness]]'', in 1899 and ''[[Lord Jim]]'' in 1900. However, the Victorian [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]]'s (1844–1889) highly original poetry was not published until 1918, long after his death, while the career of another major modernist poet, Irishman [[W.B. Yeats]] (1865–1939), began late in the Victorian era. Yeats was one of the foremost figures of twentieth-century English literature. But while [[modernism]] was to become an important literary movement in the early decades of the new century, there were also many fine writers who, like Thomas Hardy, were not modernists. During the early decades of the twentieth-century the [[Georgian poets]] like Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), and [[Walter de la Mare]] (1873–1956), maintained a conservative approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism. Another Georgian poet, [[Edward Thomas (poet)|Edward Thomas]] (1878–1917){{Sfn | Drabble | 1996 | pp = 377, 988}} is one of the [[First World War]] poets along with [[Wilfred Owen]] (1893–1918), [[Rupert Brooke]] (1887–1915), [[Isaac Rosenberg]] (1890–1917), and [[Siegfried Sassoon]] (1886–1967). Irish playwrights [[George Bernard Shaw]] (1856–1950), [[J.M. Synge]] (1871–1909) and [[Seán O'Casey]] were influential in British drama. Shaw's career began in the last decade of the nineteenth-century, while Synge's plays belong to the first decade of the twentieth-century. Synge's most famous play, ''[[The Playboy of the Western World]]'', "caused outrage and riots when it was first performed" in Dublin in 1907.''The Oxford Companion to English Literature.'' (1996), p. 781. George Bernard Shaw turned the [[Edwardian]] theatre into an arena for debate about important political and social issues."English literature." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 15 November 2012. . Novelists who are not considered modernists include [[H. G. Wells]] (1866–1946), [[John Galsworthy]] (1867–1933), ([[Nobel Prize]] in Literature, 1932) whose works include ''[[The Forsyte Saga]]'' (1906–21), and [[E.M. Forster]]'s (1879–1970), though Forster's work is "frequently regarded as containing both modernist and Victorian elements".''The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature'', ed. Marion Wynne Davies (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), p. 118. Forster's most famous work, ''[[A Passage to India]]'' 1924, reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier novels examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of [[Edwardian]] society in England. The most popular British writer of the early years of the twentieth-century was arguably [[Rudyard Kipling]] (1865–1936), a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems. In addition to [[W.B. Yeats]], other important early modernist poets were the American-born poet [[T.S. Eliot]] (1888–1965) Eliot became a British citizen in 1927 but was born and educated in America. His most famous works are: "[[Prufrock]]" (1915), ''[[The Wasteland]]'' (1922) and ''[[Four Quartets]]'' (1935–42). Amongst the novelists, after [[Joseph Conrad]], other important early modernists include [[Dorothy Richardson]] (1873–1957), whose novel ''Pointed Roof'' (1915), is one of the earliest examples of the [[stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|stream of consciousness]] technique, and [[D.H. Lawrence]] (1885–1930), who published ''[[The Rainbow]]'' in 1915—though it was immediately seized by the police—and ''[[Women in Love]]'' in 1920.''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', ed. Margaret Drabble, p. 562. Then in 1922 Irishman [[James Joyce]]'s important modernist novel ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' appeared. ''Ulysses'' has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".Beebe, Maurice (Fall 1972). "Ulysses and the Age of Modernism". [[James Joyce Quarterly]] (University of Tulsa) 10 (1): p. 176. [[File:Revolutionary Joyce Better Contrast.jpg|150px|right|thumb|[[James Joyce]], 1918]] ===Modernism (1923–1939)=== The modernist movement continued through the 1920s, 1930s, and beyond. [[File:Virginia Woolf 1927.jpg|150px|left|thumb|[[Virginia Woolf]], 1927]] Important British writers between the [[World Wars]], include the [[Scottish poetry|Scottish poet]] [[Hugh MacDiarmid]] (1892–1978), who began publishing in the 1920s, and novelist [[Virginia Woolf]] (1882–1941), who was an influential [[Feminism|feminist]], and a major stylistic innovator associated with the [[Stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|stream-of-consciousness]] technique in novels like ''[[Mrs Dalloway]]'' (1925) and ''[[To the Lighthouse]]'' (1927). [[T.S. Eliot]] had begun this attempt to revive poetic drama with ''[[Sweeney Agonistes]]'' in 1932, and this was followed by others including three further plays after the war. ''[[In Parenthesis]]'', a modernist [[epic poem]] based on author [[David Jones (poet)|David Jones]]'s (1895–1974) experience of World War I, was published in 1937. An important development, beginning in the 1930s and 1940s was a tradition of working class novels actually written by working-class background writers. Among these were coal miner [[Jack Jones (novelist)|Jack Jones]], [[James Hanley (novelist)|James Hanley]], whose father was a stoker and who also went to sea as a young man, and coal miners [[Lewis Jones (writer)|Lewis Jones]] from [[South Wales]] and [[Harold Heslop]] from [[County Durham]].Chris Gostick, "Extra Material on James Hanley's ''Boy''", in the OneWorld Classics edition of ''Boy'' (2007), pp. 182–83. [[Aldous Huxley]] (1894–1963) published his famous [[dystopia]] ''[[Brave New World]]'' in 1932, the same year as [[John Cowper Powys]]'s ''[[A Glastonbury Romance]]''.{{Sfn | Drabble | 1996 | p = 660}} [[Samuel Beckett]] (1906–1989) published his first major work, the novel ''Murphy'' in 1938. This same year [[Graham Greene]]'s (1904–1991) first major novel ''[[Brighton Rock (novel)|Brighton Rock]]'' was published. Then in 1939 [[James Joyce]]'s published ''[[Finnegans Wake]]'', in which he creates a special language to express the consciousness of a dreaming character.{{Sfn | Davies | 1990 | p = 644}} It was also in 1939 that another Irish modernist poet, [[W.B. Yeats]], died. British poet [[W.H. Auden]] (1907–1973) was another significant modernist in the 1930s. ==={{Anchor|After modernism: 1940 to 2000}} Post–modernism (1940–2000)=== Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939,{{Citation | first = Kevin JH | last = Dettmar | contribution = Modernism | editor-first = David Scott | editor-last = Kastan | title = The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2005 | url = http://www.oxfordreference.com/}}. with regard to English literature, "When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to modernism occurred".{{Citation | contribution = modernism | title = The Oxford Companion to English Literature | editor-first = Dinah | editor-last = Birch | series = Oxford Reference Online | publisher = Oxford University Press | url = http://www.oxfordreference.com | year = 2011}}. In fact a number of modernists were still living and publishing in the 1950s and 1960, including [[T.S. Eliot]], [[Dorothy Richardson]], and [[Ezra Pound]]. Furthermore, [[Basil Bunting]], born in 1901, published little until ''[[Briggflatts]]'' in 1965 and [[Samuel Beckett]], born in Ireland in 1906, continued to produce significant works until the 1980s, though some view him as a [[post-modernist]].''The Cambridge Companion to Irish Literature'', ed. John Wilson Foster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Among British writers in the 1940s and 1950s were poet [[Dylan Thomas]] and novelist [[Graham Greene]] whose works span the 1930s to the 1980s, while [[Evelyn Waugh]], [[W.H. Auden]] continued publishing into the 1960s. [[Postmodern literature]] is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is difficult to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature. Among postmodern writers are the Americans [[Henry Miller]], [[William S. Burroughs]], [[Joseph Heller]], [[Kurt Vonnegut]], [[Hunter S. Thompson]], [[Truman Capote]] and [[Thomas Pynchon]]. ====The novel==== {{multiple image | align = right | image1 = George Orwell press photo.jpg | width1 = 130 | alt1 = | caption1 = | image2 = Aldous Huxley psychical researcher.png | width2 = 130 | alt2 = | caption2 = | footer = [[George Orwell]] (left) and [[Aldous Huxley]] (right). }} In 1947 [[Malcolm Lowry]] published ''[[Under the Volcano]]'', while [[George Orwell]]'s satire of totalitarianism, ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', was published in 1949. Other novelists writing in the 1950s and later were: [[Anthony Powell]] whose twelve-volume cycle of novels ''[[A Dance to the Music of Time]]'', is a comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century; [[Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize]] laureate [[William Golding]]'s [[Allegory|allegorical]] novel ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'' 1954, explores how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British schoolboys marooned on a deserted island. Philosopher [[Iris Murdoch]] was a prolific writer of novels throughout the second half of the 20th century, that deal especially with sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Scottish writer [[Muriel Spark]] pushed the boundaries of realism in her novels. [[The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (novel)|''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'']] (1961), at times takes the reader briefly into the distant future, to see the various fates that befall its characters. [[Anthony Burgess]] is especially remembered for his [[utopian and dystopian fiction|dystopian novel]] ''[[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|A Clockwork Orange]]'' (1962), set in the not-too-distant future. During the 1960s and 1970s, [[Paul Scott (novelist)|Paul Scott]] wrote his monumental series on the last decade of British rule in [[India]], ''[[The Raj Quartet]]'' (1966–1975). Scotland has in the late 20th century produced several important novelists, including the writer of ''[[How Late it Was, How Late]]'', [[James Kelman]], who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most grim situations and [[Alasdair Gray]] whose ''[[Lanark: A Life in Four Books]]'' (1981) is a [[dystopia]]n fantasy set in a surreal version of [[Glasgow]] called Unthank.Janice Galloway "Rereading Lanark by Alasdair Gray". ''The Guardian''. Saturday 12 October 2002 Two significant Irish novelists are [[John Banville]] (born 1945) and [[Colm Tóibín]] (born 1955). [[Martin Amis]] (1949), [[Pat Barker]] (born 1943), [[Ian McEwan]] (born 1948) and [[Julian Barnes]] (born 1946) are other prominent late twentieth-century British novelists. ====Drama==== An important cultural movement in the British theatre which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was [[Kitchen sink realism]] (or "kitchen sink drama"), a term coined to describe art, novels, film and [[television play]]s. The term [[angry young men]] was often applied to members of this artistic movement. It used a style of [[social realism]] which depicts the domestic lives of the working class, to explore social issues and political issues. The [[drawing room play]]s of the post war period, typical of dramatists like [[Terence Rattigan]] and [[Noël Coward]] were challenged in the 1950s by these [[Angry Young Men]], in plays like [[John Osborne]]'s ''[[Look Back in Anger]]'' (1956). Again in the 1950s, the [[Absurdism|absurdist]] play ''[[Waiting for Godot]]'' (1955), by Irish writer [[Samuel Beckett]] profoundly affected British drama. The [[Theatre of the Absurd]] influenced [[Harold Pinter]] (born 1930), ([[The Birthday Party (play)|The Birthday Party]], 1958), whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia. Beckett also influenced [[Tom Stoppard]] (born 1937) (''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead]]'', 1966). Stoppard's works are however also notable for their high-spirited wit and the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles in different plays. An important new element in the world of British drama, from the beginnings of radio in the 1920s, was the commissioning of plays, or the adaption of existing plays, by [[Radio drama|BBC radio]]. This was especially important in the 1950s and 1960s (and from the 1960s for television). Many major British playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio, including [[Caryl Churchill]] and [[Tom Stoppard]] whose "first professional production was in the fifteen-minute ''Just Before Midnight'' programme on BBC Radio, which showcased new dramatists".{{Citation | publisher = IRDP | url = http://www.irdp.co.uk/radiodrama.htm | first = Tim | last = Crook | title = International radio drama | place = [[United Kingdom|UK]]}}. [[John Mortimer]] made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, with his adaptation of his own novel ''Like Men Betrayed'' for the [[BBC]] [[Light Programme]]. Other notable radio dramatists included [[Brendan Behan]], and novelist [[Angela Carter]]. Among the most famous works created for radio, are [[Dylan Thomas]]'s ''[[Under Milk Wood]]'' (1954), [[Samuel Beckett]]'s ''[[All That Fall]]'' (1957), [[Harold Pinter]]'s ''[[A Slight Ache]]'' (1959) and [[Robert Bolt]]'s ''[[A Man for All Seasons]]'' (1954).[[J. C. Trewin]], "Critic on the Hearth." ''Listener''. London. 5 August 1954: 224. ====Poetry==== Major poets like T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas were still publishing in this period. Though [[W.H. Auden]]'s (1907–1973) career began in the 1930s and 1940s he published several volumes in the 1950s and 1960s. His stature in modern literature has been contested, but probably the most common critical view from the 1930s onward ranked him as one of the three major twentieth-century British poets, and heir to Yeats and Eliot.Smith, Stan (2004). "Introduction". In Stan Smith. ''The Cambridge Companion to W.H. Auden''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–14. {{ISBN|0-521-82962-3}}. New poets starting their careers in the 1950s and 1960s include [[Philip Larkin]] (1922–1985) (''[[The Whitsun Weddings]]'', 1964), [[Ted Hughes]] (1930–1998) (''[[The Hawk in the Rain]]'', 1957) and Irishman (born Northern Ireland) [[Seamus Heaney]] (1939–2013) (''[[Death of a Naturalist]]'', 1966). Northern Ireland has also produced a number of other significant poets, including [[Derek Mahon]] and [[Paul Muldoon]]. In the 1960s and 1970s [[Martian poetry]] aimed to break the grip of 'the familiar', by describing ordinary things in unfamiliar ways, as though, for example, through the eyes of a [[Martian]]. Poets most closely associated with it are [[Craig Raine]] and [[Christopher Reid]]. Another literary movement in this period was the [[British Poetry Revival]] was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces [[performance poetry|performance]], [[sound poetry|sound]] and [[concrete poetry]]. The [[Liverpool poets|Mersey Beat poets]] were [[Adrian Henri]], [[Brian Patten]] and [[Roger McGough]]. Their work was a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the [[Beat generation|American Beats]]. Other noteworthy later twentieth-century poets are Welshman [[R.S. Thomas]], [[Geoffrey Hill]], [[Charles Tomlinson]] and [[Carol Ann Duffy]]. [[Geoffrey Hill]] (born 1932) is considered one of the most distinguished English poets of his generation,{{Citation | editor-first = Harold | editor-last = Bloom | title = Geoffrey Hill | series = Modern Critical Views | publisher = Infobase | year = 1986}}. [[Charles Tomlinson]] (born 1927) is another important English poet of an older generation, though "since his first publication in 1951, has built a career that has seen more notice in the international scene than in his native England.{{Citation | place = UK | url = http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=770 | publisher = Carcanet Press | title = Charles Tomlinson}}. ====Literature from the Commonwealth of Nations==== See also: [[Postcolonial literature|Postcolonial]], [[Australian literature|Australian]], [[Canadian literature|Canadian]], [[Caribbean literature|Caribbean]], [[Indian English literature|Indian]], [[New Zealand literature|New Zealand]], [[Pakistani English literature|Pakistani]], [[African literature|African]].And see former [[British colonies]], [[Nigeria]], [[Kenya]], [[South African literature]], etc and [[Migrant literature]]. [[File:Doris lessing 20060312.jpg|thumb|upright|220px|[[Doris Lessing]], Cologne, 2006.]] From 1950 on a significant number of major writers came from countries that had over the centuries been settled by the British, other than America which had been producing significant writers from at least the [[Victorian period]]. There had of course been a few important works in English prior to 1950 from the then [[British Empire]]. The [[South African literature|South African writer]] [[Olive Schreiner]]'s famous novel ''[[The Story of an African Farm]]'' was published in 1883 and [[New Zealand literature|New Zealander]] [[Katherine Mansfield]] published her first collection of short stories, ''In a German Pension'', in 1911. The first major novelist, writing in English, from the [[Indian English literature|Indian sub-continent]], [[R. K. Narayan]], began publishing in England in the 1930s, thanks to the encouragement of English novelist [[Graham Greene]].{{Sfn | Drabble | 1996 | p = 697}} [[Caribbean literature|Caribbean writer]] [[Jean Rhys]]'s writing career began as early as 1928, though her most famous work, ''[[Wide Sargasso Sea]]'', was not published until 1966. South Africa's [[Alan Paton]]'s famous ''[[Cry, the Beloved Country]]'' dates from 1948. [[Doris Lessing]] from [[Southern Rhodesia]], now [[Zimbabwe]], was a dominant presence in the English literary scene, frequently publishing from 1950 on throughout the 20th century, and she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. [[File:Hayfestival-2016-Salman-Rushdie-1-cu.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Sir [[Salman Rushdie]] at the 2016 [[Hay Festival]], the UK's largest annual literary festival]] [[Salman Rushdie]] is another post Second World War writers from the former British colonies who [[Migrant literature|permanently settled in Britain]]. Rushdie achieved fame with ''[[Midnight's Children]]'' 1981. His most controversial novel ''[[The Satanic Verses]]'' 1989, was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. [[V. S. Naipaul]] (born 1932), born in [[Trinidad]], was another immigrant, who wrote among other things ''[[A Bend in the River]]'' (1979). Naipaul won the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].{{cite web | url = http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/ | work = Literature | title = 2001 Laureates |publisher= The Nobel Prize}} From [[Nigerian literature|Nigeria]] a number of writers have achieved an international reputation for works in English, including novelist [[Chinua Achebe]], as well as playwright [[Wole Soyinka]]. Soyinka won the [[Nobel Prize]] for literature in 1986, as did [[South Africa]]n novelist [[Nadine Gordimer]] in 1995. Other South African writers in English are novelist [[J.M. Coetzee]] (Nobel Prize 2003) and playwright [[Athol Fugard]]. [[Kenyan literature|Kenya]]'s most internationally renowned author is [[Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o]] who has written novels, plays and short stories in English. Poet [[Derek Walcott]], from [[St Lucia]] in the Caribbean, was another Nobel Prize winner in 1992. An [[Australian literature|Australian]] [[Patrick White]], a major novelist in this period, whose first work was published in 1939, won in (1973). Other noteworthy Australian writers at the end of this period are poet [[Les Murray (poet)|Les Murray]] (1938–2019), and novelist [[Peter Carey (novelist)|Peter Carey]] (born 1943), who is one of only four writers to have won the [[Man Booker Prize|Booker Prize]] twice.Man Booker official site: J.G. Farrell [http://themanbookerprize.com/search/node/j%20g%20farrell]; Hilary Mantel {{cite web |url=http://themanbookerprize.com/people/hilary-mantel |title=Archived copy |access-date=2016-03-22 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160313224147/http://themanbookerprize.com/people/hilary-mantel |archive-date=13 March 2016}}; J.M. Coetzee: {{cite web |url=http://themanbookerprize.com/people/j-m-coetzee |title=Archived copy |access-date=2016-03-22 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160317185406/http://themanbookerprize.com/people/j-m-coetzee |archive-date=17 March 2016}}. Major Canadian novelists include [[Carol Shields]], [[Lawrence Hill]], [[Margaret Atwood]] and [[Alice Munro]]. [[Carol Shields]] novel ''The Stone Diaries'' won the 1995 [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction]], and another novel, ''[[Larry's Party]]'', won the [[Orange Prize for Fiction|Orange Prize]] in 1998. [[Lawrence Hill]]'s ''[[Book of Negroes]]'' won the 2008 [[Commonwealth Writers' Prize]] Overall Best Book Award, while [[Alice Munro]] became the first Canadian to win the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 2013.{{Cite web | url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/alice-munro-is-1st-canadian-woman-to-win-nobel-literature-prize-1.1958383 | title=Nobel-winner Alice Munro hailed as 'master' of short stories | CBC News}} Munro also received the [[Man Booker International Prize]] in 2009. Amongst internationally known poets are [[Leonard Cohen]] and [[Anne Carson]]. Carson in 1996 won the [[Lannan Literary Award]] for poetry. The foundation's awards in 2006 for poetry, fiction and nonfiction each came with $US 150,000. ====American writers==== {{Main |American literature|American poetry|Theater of the United States}} From 1940 into the 21st century, American playwrights, poets and novelists have continued to be internationally prominent. ==={{Anchor|Genre fiction in the twentieth-century }} Genre fiction in the twentieth-century=== {{Main|Genre fiction}} Many works published in the twentieth-century were examples of [[genre fiction]]. This designation includes the [[crime novel]]s, [[spy novel]], [[historical romance]], [[fantasy]], [[graphic novel]], and [[science fiction]]. [[File:J. R. R. Tolkien, 1940s.jpg|upright|thumb|left|[[J.R.R. Tolkien]], 1940s]] [[Agatha Christie]] (1890–1976) was an important crime writer of novels, short stories and plays, who is best remembered for her 80 [[detective novel]]s as well as her successful plays for the [[West End theatre]]. Another popular writer during the Golden Age of detective fiction was [[Dorothy L. Sayers]] (1893–1957). Other recent noteworthy writers in this genre are [[Ruth Rendell]], [[P.D. James]] and Scot [[Ian Rankin]]. [[Robert Erskine Childers|Erskine Childers]]' ''[[The Riddle of the Sands]]'' (1903), is an early example of [[spy fiction]]. Another noted writer in the [[spy novel]] genre was [[John le Carré]], while in [[Thriller (genre)|thriller]] writing, [[Ian Fleming]] created the character [[James Bond 007]]. [[File:Jk-rowling-crop.JPG|thumb|right|upright|[[J.K. Rowling]], 2006]] The novelist [[Georgette Heyer]] created the [[historical romance]] genre. [[Emma Orczy]]'s original play, ''[[The Scarlet Pimpernel]]'' (1905), a "hero with a [[secret identity]]", became a favourite of London audiences, playing more than 2,000 performances and becoming one of the most popular shows staged in England to that date.Kabatchnik, Amnon (2008). ''Blood on the Stage: Milestone Plays of Crime, Mystery, and Detection: an Annotated Repertoire'', 1900–1925. Scarecrow Press. p. 28. The novel ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' was published soon after the play opened and was an immediate success. Among significant writers in the fantasy genre were [[J.R.R. Tolkien]], author of ''[[The Hobbit]]'' and ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. [[C.S. Lewis]] author of ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'', and [[J.K. Rowling]] who wrote the highly successful ''[[Harry Potter]]'' series. [[Lloyd Alexander]] winner of the [[Newbery Honor]] as well as the [[Newbery Medal]] for his ''[[The Chronicles of Prydain]]'' [[pentalogy]] is another significant author of [[fantasy novels]] for younger readers. Like fantasy in the later decades of the 20th century, the genre of [[science fiction]] began to be taken more seriously, and this was because of the work of writers such as [[Arthur C. Clarke]]'s (''[[2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)|2001: A Space Odyssey]]''), and [[Michael Moorcock]]. Another prominent writer in this genre, [[Douglas Adams]], is particularly associated with the comic science fiction work, ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]''. Mainstream novelists such [[Doris Lessing]] and [[Margaret Atwood]] also wrote works in this genre. Known for his macabre, darkly comic fantasy works for children, [[Roald Dahl]] became one of the best selling authors of the 20th century, and his best-loved children's novels include ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'', ''[[Matilda (novel)|Matilda]]'', ''[[James and the Giant Peach]]'', ''[[The Witches (novel)|The Witches]]'', ''[[Fantastic Mr Fox]]'' and ''[[The BFG]]''.{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-man-who-liked-to-make-up-stories-2158052.html|title=Once upon a time, there was a man who liked to make up stories ... |newspaper=The Independent|access-date=14 October 2017}} Noted writers in the field of [[comic book]]s are [[Neil Gaiman]], and [[Alan Moore]], while Gaiman also produces [[graphic novel]]s. === Literary criticism in the twentieth century === {{main|Literary Criticism|date=August 2019}} Literary criticism gathered momentum in the twentieth century. In this era prominent academic journals were established to address specific aspects of English literature. Most of these academic journals gained widespread credibility because of being published by university presses. The growth of universities thus contributed to a stronger connection between English literature and literary criticism in the twentieth century. Return to English literature. 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