The Most Outstanding Personalities of British and American Literature

The Most Outstanding Personalities of British and American Literature. British Literature: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) wrote satirical pamphlets. His most popular work is ‘Gulliver’s Travels’- allegory of Lemuel Gulliver’s travelling through imaginary countries ( Lilliputians,the land of giants, the country of Houyhnhnms- horses with reason). He criticizes politics in England,corruption,armies etc.

Daniel Defoe (1660?-1731) was a politician, traveller and journalist. His most famous work is ‘Robinson Crusoe’, a sailor,who shipwrecked on a lonely island and lived there for 27 years.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is a founder of a historical novel. He draws the themes for his romantic novels from old folk ballads and medieval romances especially from Scottish history. ‘Ivanhoe’is from the period of Richard the Lionhearted.

The best romantic poets are Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). They represent revolutionary romanticism-unhappy and usually lonely heroes fight for freedom and their fight ends in vain.

Charles Dickens( 1812-1870) described truly the life of poor people in England in the 19th century. He combines comic and serious situations and accuses both the aristocracy and the middle class of acting heartlessly towards the common people. He himself suffered in his childhood and his bitter experience can be found in his works. Among his major novels belong: ‘Little Dorrit’, ‘David Copperfield’,’The Pickwick Papers’,’Óliver Twist’.

Robert Lewis Stevenson( 1850-1884) wrote adventurous stories( ‘Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde’,’Treasure Island’)

Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) was from Dublin.He wrote e.g. ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’and beautiful fairy tales ( e.g.’The Nightingale and the Rose) He was criticized by London society and even put to prison for homosexuality.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907 as the first British author. He wrote short stories about India,the sea,the jungle and its animals. (‘The Jungle Book’)

John Galsworthy (1867-1933), the Nobel Prize winner in 1932, was a critical novelist, dramatist and short stories writer.He described the decay of the Victorian upper middle class in the ‘Forsyte Saga’.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is the most famous personality in drama of his period. In his plays he attacked the whole society. (‘Pygmalion’) He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925.

William Golding (1911- ) a Nobel Prize winner in 1983,is famous for his ‘Lord of the Flies’, the story of which is set to the future,when an air-crash leaves a group of young boys on an island.First they are happy without their parents and try to form an ideal society,then they form two groups and the end is full of barbarian bestiality.

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) based the stories of his fairy tale novels on the old German and Celtic myths.In the phantasy world of Middle-Earth small hobbits seek happiness,goodness and live many adventures. (‘Hobbit’,’The Lord of the Rings’,’the Silmallirion’) Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the queen of a detective story.She wrote about 70 novels,20 dramas. Arthur C.Clarke (1917- ) is a well-known science-fiction writer (‘2001:A Space Odyssey’) George Orwell (1903-1950) wrote allegory novels criticizing totalitarian society(‘Animal Farm’, ‘ Nineteen Eighty-Four’)