British literature 1950 - now

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Event Date:	Event Title:	Event Description:
10/22/1919	Doris Lessing	Iranian-born British writer, author of works such as the novels The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook. In 2007, Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was described by the Swedish Academy as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
04/13/1939	Seamus Heaney	An Irish poet, writer and lecturer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.
04/28/1948	Terry Pratchett	English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best-known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels. He is currently the second most-read writer in the UK, and seventh most-read non-US author in the US.
01/01/1953	Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett	The play is often considered one of the most prominent works in the Theatre of the Absurd movement. Voted "the most significant English language play of the 20th century", Waiting for Godot is Beckett's translation of his own original French version, En attendant Godot
07/21/1954	The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.	An epic high fantasy novel published as three books. Tolkien intended his novel to act as a mythology for England, a group of fantastic tales about the prehistory of a world in which the values embodied those of the common British individual.
01/01/1955	The Quiet American by Graham Greene	Draws on Greene's experiences as a SIS agent spying for Britain in World War II in Sierra Leone in the early 1940s and on winters spent from 1951 to 1954 in Saigon reporting on the French colonial war for The Times and Le Figaro.
01/01/1956	Look Back in Anger by John Osborne	The play was a success on the London stage, and spawned the term "angry young men" to describe Osborne and those of his generation who employed harshness and realism in the theater in contrast to the more escapist fare previously seen.
01/01/1962	A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess	The novel satirizes extreme political systems that are based on opposing models of the perfectibility or incorrigibility of humanity. Written in a futuristic slang vocabulary invented by Burgess, in part by adaptation of Russian words, it was his most original and best-known work.
05/26/1963	Simon Armitage	British poet, playwright, and novelist. In 2000, he was made the UK's official Millennium Poet. His writing is characterised by a dry, native Yorkshire wit combined with "an accessible, realist style and critical seriousness.
01/01/1972	Watership Down by Richard Adams	A heroic fantasy novel about a small group of rabbits. Watership Down has been viewed as a statement about nature, an attempt to give us a glimpse into the beautiful yet removed world of the woods and grasslands.
01/01/1988	The Satanic Verses	Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie relied heavily on contemporary events and persons to create the characters in his book. In the Muslim community the novel caused great controversy for what many Muslims believed were blasphemous references.
01/01/1993	Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh	The novel is written in the form of short chapters narrated in the first person by various residents of Leith, Edinburgh who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are implicitly portrayed as addictions that serve the same function as heroin addiction.
Timespan Dates:	Timespan Title:	Timespan Description:
01/03/1892 to 09/02/1973	J. R. R. Tolkien	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, and The Silmarillion. Tolkien is popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature or, more precisely, of high fantasy.
09/19/1911 to 06/19/1993	William Golding	A British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.
03/31/1926 to 11/05/2005	John Fowles	English novelist and essayist, master of layered story-telling, illusionism, and purposefully ambiguous endings. Among Fowles's best-known novels are THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN (1969), and THE MAGUS (1965), which has gained a cult status.
08/17/1930 to 10/28/1998	Ted Hughes	English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.
01/01/1949 to 01/01/1954	The Chronicles of Narnia	A series of seven fantasy novels for children written by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over 120 million copies in 41 languages. In addition to numerous traditional Christian themes, the series borrows characters and ideas from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as from traditional British and Irish fairy tales.
01/01/1953 to 01/01/1966	James Bond series by Ian Fleming	Novels chronicling the adventures of a British secret agent James Bond, often referred to by his code name, 007.
01/01/1956 to 01/01/1965	Kitchen sink realism	A British cultural movement which developed in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men. It used a style of social realism which often depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons living in rented accommodation and spending their off-hours in grimy pubs to explore social issues and political controversies.
01/01/1960 to 01/01/1975	British Poetry Revival	The general name given to a loose poetic movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival was a modernist-inspired reaction to the Movement's more conservative approach to British poetry.
01/01/1960 to 01/01/1970	Liverpool poets	A number of influential 1960s poets from Liverpool, England, heavily influenced by 1950s Beat poetry. Their work is characterised by its directness of expression, simplicity of language, suitability for live performance and concern for contemporary subjects and references. There is often humour, but the full range of human experience and emotion is addressed.
06/30/1997 to 07/21/2007	Harry Potter series	A series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The books have gained immense popularity, critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide. The book series has sold more than 400 million copies and has been translated into 67 languages, and the last four books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history.