| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Birth | St. Louis, Missouri, USA (1888) → British citizen (1927) |
| The Waste Land (1922) | 5 Sections: (1) The Burial of the Dead (2) A Game of Chess (3) The Fire Sermon (4) Death by Water (5) What the Thunder Said Epigraph: Sibyl in a cage ("I want to die") Dedication: "For Ezra Pound - il miglior fabbro" (the better craftsman) 434 lines, 33 languages/dialects Key symbols: Fisher King (sterility), Tarot cards (Madame Sosostris), Tiresias (unifying consciousness) Allusions: Frazer's Golden Bough, Weston's From Ritual to Romance, 35+ writers |
| Prufrock (1915) | Full title: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" Opening: "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table" Famous lines: "In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo" "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" "Do I dare disturb the universe?" "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each / I do not think that they will sing to me" |
| Four Quartets (1943) | 4 Poems: (1) Burnt Norton (1936) (2) East Coker (1940) (3) The Dry Salvages (1941) (4) Little Gidding (1942) Each named after a place Structure: 5 movements each (musical analogy) Famous opening: "Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future" |
| Other Major Poems | "Gerontion" (1920): "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" "The Hollow Men" (1925): "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper" "Ash Wednesday" (1930): First major poem after conversion to Anglo-Catholicism "Journey of the Magi" (1927): Ariel Poems series |
| Poetic Plays | Murder in the Cathedral (1935): About Thomas Becket's martyrdom The Family Reunion (1939) The Cocktail Party (1949) The Confidential Clerk (1953) The Elder Statesman (1958) |
| Critical Essays | "Tradition and Individual Talent" (1919): Introduced "Objective Correlative", "Impersonal Theory of Poetry", "Historical Sense" Definition: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion" "Hamlet and His Problems" (1919): Hamlet is "artistic failure" "The Metaphysical Poets" (1921): "Dissociation of sensibility" occurred in 17th century "The Function of Criticism" (1923) |
| Nobel Prize | 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" |
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Life | Born: Adeline Virginia Stephen, London Father: Leslie Stephen (editor of Dictionary of National Biography) Married: Leonard Woolf (1912) Bloomsbury Group member (intellectual circle in London) Death: Suicide by drowning (River Ouse, 1941) - struggled with mental illness |
| Mrs Dalloway (1925) | Full title: "Mrs. Dalloway" Time span: Single day in June 1923 (post-WWI London) Opening: "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself" Main characters: Clarissa Dalloway (50s, society hostess), Septimus Warren Smith (shell-shocked war veteran), Peter Walsh (Clarissa's former suitor) Structure: Stream of consciousness, interior monologue, Big Ben chiming marks time Theme: Time, memory, death, post-war trauma, upper-class English society |
| To the Lighthouse (1927) | 3 Sections: (1) "The Window" (2) "Time Passes" (3) "The Lighthouse" Setting: Ramsay family's summer home, Isle of Skye, Scotland Characters: Mr. & Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe (artist), James Ramsay (son) Central event: Postponed trip to lighthouse (Section 1) → completed 10 years later (Section 3) Mrs. Ramsay's death mentioned parenthetically in middle section Theme: Memory, loss, art, gender roles, passage of time |
| Orlando (1928) | Subtitle: "A Biography" Protagonist: Orlando (lives 400 years, changes sex from male to female) Dedicated to: Vita Sackville-West (Woolf's lover) Time span: Elizabethan era to 1928 Theme: Gender fluidity, biography/autobiography, time, English history |
| The Waves (1931) | Most experimental novel Structure: 6 friends' interior monologues from childhood to old age Characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, Louis + Percival (idealized absent figure) 9 sections interspersed with italicized interludes describing sea/sun Theme: Individual identity vs. collective consciousness |
| Other Novels | The Voyage Out (1915): First novel Night and Day (1919) Jacob's Room (1922): First experimental novel The Years (1937): Best-seller in her lifetime Between the Acts (1941): Published posthumously |
| Non-Fiction/Essays | A Room of One's Own (1929): Extended essay on women and fiction Famous argument: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" Invented character: Judith Shakespeare (William's imaginary sister) Three Guineas (1938): Pacifist/feminist essay "Modern Fiction" (1919): Essay attacking "materialist" writers (Bennett, Wells, Galsworthy) "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" (1924): "On or about December 1910, human character changed" |
| Hogarth Press | Founded with husband Leonard (1917) Published T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (1922), own works, Freud translations |
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Life | Born: Dublin, Ireland (1882) Self-imposed exile: Left Ireland (1904), lived in Trieste, Zurich, Paris Quote: "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church" Patron: Harriet Shaw Weaver (financial supporter) |
| Ulysses (1922) | Setting: Single day - June 16, 1904 ("Bloomsday") in Dublin Main characters: Leopold Bloom (Jewish ad canvasser), Stephen Dedalus (artist), Molly Bloom (Leopold's wife) Structure: 18 episodes parallel to Homer's Odyssey Bloom = Odysseus, Stephen = Telemachus, Molly = Penelope Final chapter: Molly Bloom's interior monologue (unpunctuated, 24,000 words) Famous ending: "yes I said yes I will Yes" Banned for obscenity (USA until 1933, UK until 1936) Techniques: Stream of consciousness, interior monologue, multiple styles |
| A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) | Protagonist: Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego) Development: Childhood → university → decision to become artist Famous ending: "I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race" Structure: 5 chapters, language evolves with Stephen's consciousness Key scenes: Christmas dinner political argument, hellfire sermon, epiphany on beach |
| Dubliners (1914) | 15 short stories depicting middle-class life in Dublin Organization: Childhood → Adolescence → Mature life → Public life Famous stories: "The Dead" (final story, longest), "Araby", "Eveline", "The Boarding House", "A Little Cloud" Central theme: Paralysis of Dublin life, epiphany moments "The Dead": Gabriel Conroy's epiphany, famous ending about snow falling "upon all the living and the dead" |
| Finnegans Wake (1939) | Most difficult work in English literature Structure: Circular (last sentence flows into first), 4 books Language: Multilingual puns, portmanteau words, dream logic Main character: HCE (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker) + family Based on: Giambattista Vico's cyclical theory of history Opening: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's..." Theme: Fall and resurrection, Dublin history, universal human experience |
| Poetry & Drama | Chamber Music (1907): 36 lyric poems (first published work) Pomes Penyeach (1927): Collection of poems Exiles (1918): Three-act play (Ibsen influence) |
| Epiphany Concept | Joyce's term: "sudden spiritual manifestation" - moment of revelation in ordinary life Collected epiphanies early in career, incorporated into fiction |
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Life | Full name: William Butler Yeats Born: Sandymount, Dublin Irish Literary Revival leader Abbey Theatre co-founder (1904) with Lady Gregory Nobel Prize: 1923 (first Irishman to win) Senator: Irish Free State Senate (1922-28) |
| Early Poetry (1889-1910) | "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1890): "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree" "When You Are Old" (1893): To Maud Gonne (unrequited love) "The Stolen Child" (1889) Style: Romantic, Celtic mythology, dreamy, Pre-Raphaelite influence Collections: The Wanderings of Oisin (1889), The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) |
| Middle Period (1910-1925) | "Easter 1916" (1916): About Irish rebellion Refrain: "A terrible beauty is born" Named rebels: MacDonagh, MacBride, Connolly, Pearse "The Second Coming" (1919): Post-WWI apocalyptic vision Famous lines: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" "Sailing to Byzantium" (1926): "That is no country for old men" Collections: Responsibilities (1914), The Wild Swans at Coole (1917), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) |
| Late Poetry (1925-1939) | "Byzantium" (1930): Companion to "Sailing to Byzantium" "Leda and the Swan" (1923): Sonnet about Greek myth "Among School Children" (1926): "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" "The Tower" (1928): Title poem of collection Collections: The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair (1929), Last Poems (1939) |
| Vision & Occult | A Vision (1925, revised 1937): Occult philosophy book Gyres theory: History moves in 2000-year cycles Based on: Automatic writing sessions with wife George Hyde-Lees 28 phases of the moon representing personality types |
| Plays | Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902): Irish nationalist play The Countess Cathleen (1892) Deirdre (1906) At the Hawk's Well (1916): Noh-influenced Total: 26 plays written |
| Maud Gonne | Irish revolutionary, Yeats's lifelong obsession Refused his marriage proposals multiple times Inspiration for many love poems "No Second Troy" compares her to Helen of Troy |
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Life | Born: Eastwood, Nottinghamshire (coal-mining town) Father: Coal miner (working class) Mother: Former teacher (middle class) - intense relationship depicted in Sons and Lovers Wife: Frieda von Richthofen (German aristocrat, married 1914) Wandering life: Italy, Ceylon, Australia, Mexico, New Mexico Death: Tuberculosis, age 44 (Vence, France) |
| Sons and Lovers (1913) | Autobiographical novel Main character: Paul Morel (Lawrence's alter ego) Central relationship: Oedipal attachment to mother (Gertrude Morel) Two girlfriends: Miriam Leivers (spiritual love), Clara Dawes (physical love) Original title: "Paul Morel" Editor: Edward Garnett heavily revised Theme: Mother-son bond, class conflict, sexual awakening |
| The Rainbow (1915) | Banned for obscenity (UK, 1915-26) 3 generations of Brangwen family (1840s-1905) Main characters: Tom Brangwen → Anna → Ursula Brangwen Setting: Rural Nottinghamshire Theme: Industrial society vs. pastoral life, women's emancipation, sexuality Ursula's development: From traditional to modern independent woman |
| Women in Love (1920) | Sequel to The Rainbow 4 main characters: Ursula Brangwen + Rupert Birkin (intellectual), Gudrun Brangwen + Gerald Crich (industrialist) Setting: Midlands + Alps Famous scene: Birkin's nude wrestling with Gerald Ending: Gerald's death in snow, Birkin's belief in male friendship Theme: Modern relationships, industrialization's destructive force |
| Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) | 3 versions: Published privately (Florence, 1928), expurgated UK edition (1932), unexpurgated (1960 after obscenity trial) Characters: Lady Constance Chatterley (upper class) + Oliver Mellors (gamekeeper/working class) Husband: Sir Clifford Chatterley (impotent, paralyzed from WWI) Theme: Class barrier, vitality vs. sterility, industrial vs. natural Obscenity trial (1960): Penguin Books acquitted, landmark for freedom of publication Famous: Explicit sexual descriptions, use of four-letter words |
| Other Novels | The White Peacock (1911): First novel The Lost Girl (1920) Aaron's Rod (1922) Kangaroo (1923): Set in Australia The Plumed Serpent (1926): Set in Mexico The Virgin and the Gypsy (1930): Novella |
| Short Stories | "The Prussian Officer" (1914): Collection title story "The Rocking-Horse Winner" (1926): Boy who predicts race winners "Odour of Chrysanthemums" (1911) "The Fox" (1923) "St. Mawr" (1925) |
| Poetry & Non-Fiction | Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923): Poetry collection "Snake": Famous poem Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921) Studies in Classic American Literature (1923): Literary criticism |
| Philosophy | Blood consciousness vs. mental consciousness Life force, vitality, instinct valued over intellect Criticized modern industrial civilization Influenced by Nietzsche, Frazer |
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Life | Born: Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Poland (under Russian rule) English: Third language (after Polish, French) - didn't speak until age 20 Sailor: 20 years in British Merchant Navy British subject: 1886 Master mariner certificate: 1886 Congo experience: 1890 (basis for Heart of Darkness) |
| Heart of Darkness (1899) | Frame narrative: Marlow tells story to men on boat "Nellie" on Thames Setting: Congo Free State (Belgian colony) Main character: Charles Marlow (narrator) seeks Kurtz (ivory trader) Kurtz's final words: "The horror! The horror!" Famous opening: "The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor..." Kurtz's report: "Exterminate all the brutes!" Theme: Imperialism's darkness, civilization vs. savagery, moral ambiguity Influence: Inspired Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979) |
| Lord Jim (1900) | Protagonist: Jim (merchant marine officer) Central event: Abandons ship "Patna" with pilgrims - lives in shame Redemption: Becomes leader in Patusan (fictional Malay state) Death: Accepts death to atone for past cowardice Narrator: Marlow (same as Heart of Darkness) Theme: Honor, guilt, redemption, romantic idealism vs. reality |
| Nostromo (1904) | Setting: Costaguana (fictional South American republic) Title character: Nostromo (Italian sailor, "our man") Central object: Silver from San Tomé mine Complex narrative: Multiple viewpoints, non-chronological Theme: Political corruption, material interests, imperialism F.R. Leavis: Called it Conrad's greatest work |
| Other Major Novels | Almayer's Folly (1895): First novel The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897): Sea novel The Secret Agent (1907): Anarchist bombing plot in London Under Western Eyes (1911): Russian revolutionaries Chance (1913): First commercial success Victory (1915) |
| Short Fiction | "Youth" (1902): Marlow's first voyage "Typhoon" (1902): Captain MacWhirr "The Secret Sharer" (1910): Captain hides fugitive (doppelgänger theme) "Amy Foster" (1901) |
| Style & Technique | Frame narrative (story within story) Unreliable narrators Impressionism: Subjective reality, sensory experience Delayed decoding: Reader experiences confusion before understanding Moral ambiguity, psychological depth |
| Critical Reputation | Called one of greatest English novelists despite English being third language F.R. Leavis placed him in "Great Tradition" Influenced Graham Greene, Faulkner, Naipaul |
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Life | Real name: Eric Arthur Blair Born: Motihari, Bengal, British India Education: Eton College (scholarship) Burma: Imperial Police officer (1922-27) - experience led to anti-imperialism Spanish Civil War: Fought for Republicans against Franco (1936-37), wounded BBC: Worked during WWII Death: Tuberculosis, age 46 |
| Animal Farm (1945) | Subtitle: "A Fairy Story" Allegory: Russian Revolution and Stalin's betrayal Farm: Manor Farm → Animal Farm → Manor Farm again Main animals: Old Major (Marx/Lenin), Napoleon (Stalin), Snowball (Trotsky), Squealer (propaganda), Boxer (working class) 7 Commandments → gradually altered → final: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" Original 7th: "All animals are equal" Slogans: "Four legs good, two legs bad" → "Four legs good, two legs better" Boxer's maxims: "I will work harder" + "Napoleon is always right" Ending: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig... impossible to say which was which" Rejected: Multiple publishers (pro-Soviet sentiment during WWII) |
| Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) | Setting: Oceania (superstate), Airstrip One (former Britain), 1984 Protagonist: Winston Smith (Ministry of Truth employee) Love interest: Julia Antagonist: O'Brien (Inner Party member) Big Brother: Totalitarian leader (possibly fictional) 3 Superstates: Oceania, Eurasia, Eastasia (perpetual war) 4 Ministries: Truth (propaganda), Peace (war), Love (torture), Plenty (starvation) Newspeak: Language designed to limit thought Doublethink: Holding contradictory beliefs simultaneously Thoughtcrime: Thinking against Party Room 101: Torture chamber with worst fear (Winston's = rats) Slogans: "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" Ending: "He loved Big Brother" (Winston's total defeat) Telescreen: Two-way surveillance device "The Book": Emmanuel Goldstein's "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" |
| Essays | "Politics and the English Language" (1946): Against obfuscation, 6 rules for clear writing "Shooting an Elephant" (1936): Burma, anti-imperialism "A Hanging" (1931): Capital punishment "Why I Write" (1946): 4 motives - egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, political purpose "The Prevention of Literature" (1946) |
| Other Books | Down and Out in Paris and London (1933): First book, poverty Burmese Days (1934): Anti-imperialism novel The Road to Wigan Pier (1937): Working-class conditions in North England Homage to Catalonia (1938): Spanish Civil War memoir Coming Up for Air (1939): Novel |
| Literary Criticism | "Charles Dickens" (1939): Long essay "Boys' Weeklies" (1940) "Inside the Whale" (1940): On Henry Miller |
| Concepts | "Orwellian": Totalitarian surveillance, propaganda, historical revisionism "Big Brother is watching": Pervasive surveillance Influenced political discourse permanently |
| Writer | Key Works & Details |
|---|---|
| Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) | Brave New World (1932): Dystopia, World State, year A.F. 632 (After Ford) Characters: Bernard Marx, Lenina Crowne, John "the Savage" (from Reservation) Society: Babies grown in bottles, 5 castes (Alpha to Epsilon), Soma drug (pleasure), Feelies (entertainment) Conditioning: Hypnopaedia (sleep-teaching) John's death: Suicide by hanging Motto: "Community, Identity, Stability" Other works: Point Counter Point (1928), Eyeless in Gaza (1936), The Doors of Perception (1954 - mescaline experience) |
| E.M. Forster (1879-1970) | A Passage to India (1924): British India, Marabar Caves incident, Aziz vs. Adela Quested trial Structure: 3 sections - "Mosque", "Caves", "Temple" Famous: "Only connect..." (epigraph from Howards End) Howards End (1910): Schlegel sisters + Wilcox family A Room with a View (1908): Lucy Honeychurch in Italy Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905): First novel Maurice (1971): Homosexual love story, published posthumously Aspects of the Novel (1927): Criticism, "flat" vs. "round" characters |
| Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) | Born: New Zealand Modernist short story pioneer "The Garden Party" (1922): Famous story, Laura's class consciousness "Bliss" (1918): Bertha Young's epiphany "Prelude" (1918): Burnell family "The Doll's House" (1922) Collections: In a German Pension (1911), Bliss (1920), The Garden Party (1922) Death: Tuberculosis, age 34 Husband: John Middleton Murry (critic) |
| Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) | The Good Soldier (1915): "saddest story", unreliable narrator John Dowell Parade's End tetralogy (1924-28): Christopher Tietjens, WWI Editor: The English Review (published early Lawrence, Pound) Impressionist technique |
| Poet | Key Works & Details |
|---|---|
| W.H. Auden (1907-1973) | Full name: Wystan Hugh Auden "September 1, 1939": Outbreak of WWII, "We must love one another or die" "Funeral Blues": "Stop all the clocks" (popularized by "Four Weddings and a Funeral") "Musée des Beaux Arts": About Brueghel's Icarus painting, suffering's insignificance "The Unknown Citizen": Satirical epitaph "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" (1939): "Poetry makes nothing happen" Moved to USA: 1939 Collaborated with: Christopher Isherwood (plays), Benjamin Britten (opera libretti) The Age of Anxiety (1947): Pulitzer Prize for Poetry |
| Stephen Spender (1909-1995) | "I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great" Poems (1933): First major collection Spanish Civil War volunteer Autobio: World Within World (1951) |
| Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) | Irish poet (Belfast born) "Bagpipe Music": Colloquial style "Snow": "World is crazier and more of it than we think" Autumn Journal (1939): Long poem BBC producer (radio plays) |
| C. Day-Lewis (1904-1972) | Poet Laureate: 1968-72 Communist sympathizer (1930s) Also wrote detective novels as Nicholas Blake Father: of actor Daniel Day-Lewis |
| Movement/Poet | Details |
|---|---|
| Imagism (1912-1917) | Founders: Ezra Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Richard Aldington 3 Principles: (1) Direct treatment of thing (2) No unnecessary words (3) Musical phrase, not metronome Key anthology: Des Imagistes (1914) edited by Pound Later: Amy Lowell took over movement (Pound called it "Amygism") |
| Ezra Pound (1885-1972) | "In a Station of the Metro" (1913): 2-line Imagist masterpiece "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough." The Cantos (1915-1962): Epic, 120 sections, unfinished Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920): "For an old bitch gone in the teeth... a botched civilization" Helped: T.S. Eliot edit The Waste Land, Yeats, Joyce Controversy: Pro-Mussolini broadcasts, arrested for treason, St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital (1945-58) Bollingen Prize: 1949 (for Pisan Cantos - controversial) |
| H.D. (1886-1961) | Full name: Hilda Doolittle "Oread": Famous Imagist poem Sea Garden (1916): First collection Trilogy (1944-46): War poems Helen in Egypt (1961): Epic poem |
| Georgian Poetry | Period: 1910s-early 1920s Editor: Edward Marsh (anthologies 1912-22) Poets: Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare, John Masefield, W.H. Davies Style: Traditional forms, pastoral subjects, reaction against Victorian excess Contrasted with: Modernist experimentalism |
| War Poets (WWI) | Rupert Brooke (1887-1915): "The Soldier" - "If I should die, think only this of me..." Wilfred Owen (1893-1918): "Dulce et Decorum Est", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Strange Meeting" - killed one week before Armistice Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967): "Counter-Attack", satirical anti-war poems, mentored Owen Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918): "Break of Day in the Trenches" Edward Thomas (1878-1917): "Adlestrop" |
| Year | Event/Publication |
|---|---|
| 1914 | Dubliners (Joyce), WWI begins |
| 1915 | Prufrock (Eliot), The Rainbow banned (Lawrence) |
| 1916 | A Portrait of Artist (Joyce), Easter Rising Ireland |
| 1922 | The Waste Land (Eliot), Ulysses (Joyce), Jacob's Room (Woolf) |
| 1923 | Yeats wins Nobel Prize |
| 1925 | Mrs Dalloway (Woolf), The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) |
| 1927 | To the Lighthouse (Woolf), Eliot becomes British citizen |
| 1928 | Orlando (Woolf), Lady Chatterley's Lover privately published (Lawrence) |
| 1929 | A Room of One's Own (Woolf) |
| 1939 | Finnegans Wake (Joyce), Auden emigrates to USA, WWII begins |
| 1945 | Animal Farm (Orwell), WWII ends |
| 1948 | T.S. Eliot wins Nobel Prize |
| 1949 | Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell) |
| 1960 | Lady Chatterley obscenity trial (acquitted), unexpurgated edition legal |