The English Novel at Mid-Century

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. The English Novel: Modernism and After

   • Michael Gorra

   Pages 1-20

3. Henry Green (1905–1973)

   • Michael Gorra

   Pages 21-57

4. Anthony Powell (1905–)

   • Michael Gorra

   Pages 58-107

5. Graham Greene (1904–)

   • Michael Gorra

   Pages 108-155

6. Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)

   • Michael Gorra

   Pages 156-197

7. Conclusion

   • Michael Gorra

   Pages 198-202

8. Back Matter

   Pages 203-220

   PDF

'So far as the young were concerned,' Orwell wrote of Britain in the years after the Great War, 'the official beliefs were dissolving like sandcastles.' Most critical accounts of that postwar generation have been constrained by having to deal with the myth of the 'thirties.' Michael Gorra's innovation in this exciting study of the postwar generation's major novelists lies in seeing the consequences of that dissolution in formal rather than political terms, arguing that the novelist's difficulty in representing human character in what Wyndham Lewis called a 'shell-shocked' age is itself a sign of that loss of belief. But while most studies of this generation end with the coming of World War 2, Gorra follows these novelists throughout their careers. The result is a book that not only shows how the British novel's increasing consciousness of its own limitations stands as a mirror to the country's loss of power, but also provides memorable portraits of four major twentieth century writers.

• 20th century
• Britain
• British novel
• consciousness
• English
• George Orwell
• Great Britain
• knowledge
• Modernism
• myth
• novel
• twentieth century

• Smith College, Northampton, USA

  Michael Gorra

Policies and ethics