This volume traces the history of twentieth-century English literature from the 1890s to the present.
"The story it tells" writes Martin Dodsworth in his introduction, "is an engrossing one, in which the First World War plays a central part, creating a vacuum in British culture that enabled the virtual triumph of self-consciously modernizing writers like Joyce and Eliot." A full chapter is devoted to the writers of the First World War, otherwise the volume is arranged chronologically by genre, concentrating on developments in drama, poetry and the novel. Generous space is inevitably given to the major writers of the century, for the aim is less to be inclusive than to give readers a sense of change and development through the century, to enlighten, inform and stimulate to further reading.
Published in ten volumes, The Penguin History of Literature is a superb survey of English and American literature covering fourteen centuries, from the Anglo-Saxons to the present, and written by some of the most distinguished academics in their fields.
About the Author
Martin Dodsworth is Professor of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is author of Hamlet Closely Observed (1985) and has edited The Survival of Poetry (1970), a book of essays on poetry since 1950. He has also written the introduction to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell for the Penguin Classics.
