English Literature

HISTORY OF ENGLISH NOVEL (series 05) THE TWENTIETH CENTURY NOVEL The 20 th century is regarded as an age of fiction with novels on varied subjects by a multitude of writers and a simultaneous growth of the short story. It is actually in this century that English novel came of age and turned truly international. Its scope increased and its canvas became wide with the introduction of multifarious issues and divergent themes. H G WELLS Across the entire gamut of the 20 th century fiction the works of H G Wells (1866-1946) are scattered. He has written short stories and novels based on modern science. From biology and applied mechanics he passed on to the problems of the future of man. A socialist and sociologist, Wells has lived for nearly half a century in a daily intercourse of the mind with the efforts, the disappointments, the hopes, of the search for a better life extended to all. This energy of social reflection becomes the soul of his novel. The novel thus becomes...

HISTORY OF ENGLISH NOVEL (series 04) NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVEL There was tremendous growth in English novel during the 19 th century and the century was to produce works of fiction of far greater significance than the tales of terror. Seldom has the English novel been conceived with such deliberate and successful art as in the novels of the 19 th century. JANE AUSTEN Jane Austen (1775-1817), the daughter of the Rector of Stevenson, lived quietly at different homes in Hampshire and in Bath and was taught by her father. She did not travel, went to London only once, saw nothing of �high life�, and after a long period of bad health, died at Winchester at the age of forty two. She read the ordinary classics of her times and enjoyed Fanny Burney. She read the Gothic romances with amused contempt. Her inborn sense of comedy was aroused very early by the absurdities of sentimental novel and she made some juvenile literary efforts not printed till 1922. LOVE AND FRIEN...