Twentieth-century novels and other prose

Twentieth-century novels and other prose

The long reign of Queen Victoria ended in 1901. There was a sweeping social reform and unprecedented progress. The reawakening of a social conscience was found its expression in the literature produced during this period.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay but soon moved to Lahore. He worked as a news reporter in Lahore. Kipling was a prolific and versatile writer. His insistent proclamation of the superiority of the white races, his support for colonization, his belief in the progress and the value of the machine etc. found an echo on the hearts of many of his readers. His best-known prose works include Kim, Life’s Handicap, Debits and Credits, and Rewards and Fairies. He is now chiefly remembered for his greatest work, The Jungle Book.

E.M Forster wrote five novels in his life time. Where Angels Fear to Tread has well-drawn characters. Other novels are The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. A Passage to India is unequal in English in its presentation of the complex problems which were to be found in the relationship between English and native people in India. E.M Forster portrayed the Indian scene in all its magic and all its wretchedness.

H.G Wells began his career as a journalist. He started his scientific romances with the publication of The Time Machine. The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon and The Food of the Gods are some of his important science romances. Ann Veronica, Kipps and The History of Mr Polly are numbered among his sociological novels.

D.H Lawrence was a striking figure in the twentieth century literary world. He produced over forty volumes of fiction during his period. The White Peacock is his earliest novel. The largely autobiographical and extremely powerful novel was Sons and Lovers. It studies with great insight the relationship between a son and mother. By many, it is considered the best of all his works. Then came The Rainbow, suppressed as obscene, which treats again the conflict between man and woman. Women in Love is another important work. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a novel in which sexual experience is handled with a wealth of physical detail and uninhibited language.  Lawrence also excelled both as a poet and short story writer.

James Joyce is a serious novelist, whose concern is chiefly with human relationships- man in relation to himself, to society, and to the whole race. He was born in Dublin, Ireland. His first work, Dubliners, is followed by a largely autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is an intense account of a developing writer. The protagonist of the story, Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce himself. The character Stephen Dedalus appears again in his highly complex novel, Ulysses published in 1922. Joyce’s mastery of language, his integrity, brilliance, and power is noticeable in his novel titled Finnefan’s Wake.

Virginia Woolf famed both as a literary critic and novelist. Her first novel, The Voyage Out is told in the conventional narrative manner. A deeper study of characters can be found in her later works such as Night and Day, Jacob’s Room, To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando. In addition to her novels, Virginia Woolf wrote a number of essays on cultural subjects. Woolf rejected the conventional concepts of novel. She replaced emphasis on incident, external description, and straight forward narration by using the technique “Stream of Consciousness”. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf popularized this writing technique.

George Orwell became a figure of outstanding importance because of Animal Farm. It is a political allegory on the degeneration of communist ideals into dictatorship. Utterly different was Nineteen Eighty-Four on the surveillance of state over its citizen. Burmese Days and The Road to Wigan Pier are other works.

William Golding deals with man’s instinct to destroy what is good, whether it is material or spiritual.  His best known novel is Lord of the Flies. The Scorpion God, The Inheritors and Free Fall are other notable works.

Somerset Maugham was a realist who sketched the cosmopolitan life through his characters. The Moon and Sixpence, Mrs. Craddock and The Painted Veil are some of his novels. His best novel is Of Human Bondage. It is a study in frustration, which had a strong autobiographical element.

Kingsly Amis’s Lucky Jim, Take a Girl like You, One Fat Englishman, and Girl are notable works in the twentieth century.