1. British literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel
Islands. This includes literatures from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
 The most important literary movement in the early decades of the new century was modernism
 Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More
specifically, the term describes the modernist movement in the arts, its set of cultural
tendencies and associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-
reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In particular the
development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the
horror of World War I, were among the factors that shaped Modernism. Related terms are
modern, modernist, contemporary, and postmodern.
 In art, Modernism explicitly rejects the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the
past, through the application of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and
parody in new forms.
 Modernism is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and verse.
Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to the modernist maxim
to "Make it new“. The modernist literary movement was driven by a desire to overturn
traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time.
The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels produced by various
authors, all following similar patterns and style.
The culminating achievement of the early school of detective fiction was the Sherlock Holmes stories of
Arthur Conan Doyle, which formed the model for the Golden Age in general.
The Golden Age proper is in practice usually taken to refer to a type of fiction which was predominant in
the 1920s and 1930s.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859 –1930) was a Scottish writer, most noted for his stories about the
detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Conan Doyle. A London-based "consulting detective"
whose abilities border on the fantastic, Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, and his use of
forensic science skills to solve difficult cases.
Holmes, who first appeared in publication in 1887, was featured in four novels and 56 short stories. The
first novel, A Study in Scarlet, 1887.The character grew tremendously in popularity with the first series
of short stories in The Strand Magazine; further series of short stories and two novels published in serial
form appeared between then and 1927. The stories cover a period from around 1880 up to 1914.
Here you can see the pictures of some films. As you know, Sherlock Holmes stories adapted for the
screen.
The second representative of this development is Agatha Christie (1890 –1976) was a British crime
writer of novels, short stories, and plays. she is best remembered for the 66 detective novels and more
than 15 short story collections she wrote under her own name, most of which revolve around the
investigations of such characters as Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple.

2. Almost all of Christie's books are focusing on the British middle and upper classes. Usually, the detective
either stumbles across the murder or is called upon by an old acquaintance, who is somehow involved.
Gradually the detective interrogates each suspect, examines the scene of the crime and makes a note of
each clue, so readers can analyse it and be allowed a fair chance of solving the mystery themselves.
John Galsworthy (1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works
include The Forsyte Saga (1906–1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He
won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932.
He is now far better known for his novels, particularly The Forsyte Saga, his trilogy about the eponymous
family and connected lives. These books, as with many of his other works, deal with social class, upper-
middle class lives in particular. Although sympathetic to his characters, he highlights their insular,
snobbish, and acquisitive attitudes and their suffocating сомнительный moral codes. He is viewed as
one of the first writers of the Edwardian era who challenged some of the ideals of society depicted in
the preceding literature of Victorian England. The depiction of a woman in an unhappy marriage
furnishes another recurring theme in his work. The character of Irene in The Forsyte Saga is drawn from
Ada Pearson, though her previous marriage was not as miserable as that of the character the Edwardian
era - or Edwardian period in the United Kingdom is the period covering the reign of King Edward VII,
1901 to 1910.
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright . his main talent was for
drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays.
Some interesting facts:
-He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Oscar
(1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (adaptation of his play
of the same name)
Pygmalion 1912 the most popular.
Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, and one of the foremost
modernists of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society. Her most famous
works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928)
Orlando: A Biography is an influential novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. A
semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West, it is generally
considered one of Woolf's most accessible novels. The novel has been influential stylistically, and is
considered important in literature generally, and particularly in the history of women's writing and
gender studies
John Ronald Tolkien (1892 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best
known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings,
Genres Fantasy, high fantasy,

3. While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien,[5] the great success of The
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused
Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature-or, more precisely, of high
fantasy. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since
1945".Forbes ranked him the 5th top-earning dead celebrity in 2009.
The Hobbit-Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book called
The Hobbit, which he had written some years before for his own children, came in 1936 to the attention
of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the London publishing firm, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it for
publication.[86] However, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, and it became popular
enough for the publishers to ask Tolkien to produce a sequel.
The Lord of the Rings
The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epic
novel The Lord of the Rings (originally published in three volumes 1954–1955). Tolkien spent more than
ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for The Lord of the Rings
The 21 century.
1.Joanne "Jo" Rowling (born 1965) - is a British novelist, best known as the author of the Harry Potter
fantasy series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more
than 400 million copies. They have become the best-selling book series in history, and been the basis for
a series of films which has become the highest-grossing film series in history.
She conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series in 1990, but she finished the first novel in the series,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone only in 1997. Rowling subsequently published 6 sequels—the
last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published in2007. In 2012, Rowling parted with her
agency and resumed writing in the form of a tragicomedy novel aimed at adult readership, entitled The
Casual Vacancy. The book was published worldwide in 2012. Major themes in the novel, that was the
fastest-selling in the United Kingdom in three years, are class, politics and social issues like that of drugs
and delinquency. Rowling has said she is currently working on two books—one aimed for adults, the
other for children younger than the Harry Potter audience.
2. «Never let me go », Kazuo Ishiguro--is a Japanese-born British novelist. He was born in Japan, and his
family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in
the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations. The Times ranked
Ishiguro 32nd on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
A number of his novels are set in the past. His most recent, Never Let Me Go, published in 2005 has
science fiction qualities and a futuristic tone.