The new century 1900–1914

Abstract

‘History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them,’ A. J. P. Taylor has observed. Literature too gets thicker: more writers, more works, and more books written about both. Moreover the sifting process which publicly identifies literature of quality works so slowly that the contemporary scene is always cluttered with writers who will not survive it, and therefore a survey of recent literature cannot be made without sometimes premature use of the critical sieve. Nevertheless a firm sense of the broad pattern of literary development in our century already exists. The period roughly coterminous with the reign of George V (1910–36) has been recognised as one of the great epochs of English literature. A few writers of the period have been granted the kind of status granted to Shakespeare and Milton, Wordsworth and Dickens, as giants under whose shadow the lesser writers of their age must be judged. In so far as the Modern Movement which they initiated spilt over into the reign of George VI (1936–52) the Georgian periods together contained the most crucial literary developments of the century.