Tentative List of Books for a
Comprehensive Examination List: Great Britain 1900-1940

Suggestions would be welcome; ideally lists should include examples from each genre (poetry, drama, nonfiction prose, short and longer fiction) and decade, with representation by gender, region, social class, and race.

Poetry

Anthologies: Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, ed. Keith Tuma; The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, ed. Richard Ellman and Robert O'Clair; The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, ed. Philip Larkin; British Poetry 1880-1920, ed. Paul Wiley and Harold Orel; The Norton Anthology of Women's Literature, ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar; An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets, ed. Catherine Kerrigan; The Faber Book of 20th Century Verse, ed. John Heath-Stubbs; The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse, ed. D. J. Enright; The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, ed. Douglas Dunn; Pillars of the House: An Anthology of Verse by Irish Women, ed. A. A. Kelly; The Women Poets in English, ed. Ann Stanford. There are also dozens of more specialized collections (e. g. The Distaff Muse: An Anthology of Poetry Written by Women, ed. Clifford Bax and Meum Stewart).

Charlotte Mew, "The Farmer's Bride," "The Trees Are Down," "Saturday Market," other selections from Val Warner, Charlotte Mew: Collected Poems and Prose.

D. H. Lawrence, selections in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; Selected Poems, edited Kenneth Rexroth.

Thomas Hardy, Poems of the Past and Present (1902); The Dynasts (1903-1908); Collected Poems (1919); Winter Words (1928).

Edwin Muir, selections in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse.

Anna Wickham, poems in The Writings of Anna Wickham, 1984

Alice Meynell, "The Father of Women," "Maternity," "England in 1914," "The Sunderland Children," others from Ann Stanford, The Women Poets in English

Emily Lawless, "A Wave," "After Aughrim," in Pillars of the House.

A. E. Housman, later poems, including "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries."

Wilfred Owen, "Strange Meeting," "Dulce et Decorum Est," "Disabled," "Mental Cases."

Siegfried Sassoon, "Repression of War Experience" and other from anthologies of First World War poetry; selections from British Poetry 1880-1920.

David Jones, In Parenthesis (1937), The Anathemata (1961). (Welsh)

Edward Thomas, selections from The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse; Faber Book of Twentieth Century Verse.

Ethel Carnie, selections from Songs Of A Factory Girl (1911).

Basil Bunting, selections in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Walter de la Mare, selections from British Poetry 1880-1920.

Ernest Rhys, selections from

W. H. Davies, selections from The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Poetry.

Robert Bridges, selections in the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse; British Poetry 1880-1920.

C. Day Lewis, selections in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Patrick Kavanagh, selections in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Vernon Watkins, selections in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. (Welsh)

W. B. Yeats, selections from the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry or Collected Poems (1983, new edition).

John Masefield, selections from the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse.

Edith Sitwell, "Facade," selections from Collected Poems (1968).

Ruth Pitter, selections from The Norton Anthology of Women's Literature.

Louis MacNiece, selections from The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse.

Geoffrey Hill, selections from The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse, 1945-1980.

Marion Angus, selections from An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets.

Violet Jacob, selections from An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets.

Dylan Thomas, selections from The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse.

Helen Carmichael, selections from An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets.

Katherine Tynan, selections from The Pillars of the House.

Mary Webb, selections from The Spring of Joy (1926).

Eva Gore-Booth, selections in The Pillars of the House.

Isaac Rosenberg, selections from British Poetry 1880-1920.

Rachel Taylor, selections in An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets.

Hugh MacDiarmid (C. M. Grieve), selections in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry; The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Verse, esp. "The Two Parents."

George Mackay Brown, selections from The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry.

Dora Sigerson Shorter, selections in The Pillars of the House.

T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Waste Land," "Four Quartets," "Ash Wednesday," "Gerontion," others according to taste.

W. H. Auden, selections from Collected Poetry (1945).

Stephen Spender, selections from The Oxford Book of English Verse.

Stevie Smith, selections in the Norton Anthology of Women's Literature.

William Plomer, selections in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Kathleen Raine, selections in Ann Stanford, The Women Poets in English; An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets.

Naomi Mitchison, selections in An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets.

Alun Lewis, Raiders' Dawn (1942). (Welsh)

Henry Reed, "Lessons of the War: The Naming of Parts."

Philip Larkin, Poems (1951).

Eithne Strong, selections in The Pillars of the House.

Recent and contemporary: Elizabeth Jennings, Ted Hughes; Thom Gunn; Grace Nichols; Jackie Kay; Jean Binta-Breeze, Barbara Burfurd, Judith Wright (Australian); John Wain, Liz Lochhead, Meg Bateman, Moniza Alvi, Nuala NÌ Dhomhnaill, EilÈan NÌ Chuilleanain, Eavan Boland, Ruth Padel, Maud Sulter, Olive Senior, E. A. Markham, Anne Stevenson, Fleur Adcock; Anne Ridler, Gillian Clarke (Welsh); Elizabeth Feinstein, Seamus Heaney, Tom Leonard, Alan Bold.

Drama:

Elizabeth Robins, Votes for Women: A Tract (1905).

Pearl Craigie (penname John Oliver Hobbes), The Wisdom of the Wise (1901).

Sean O'Casey, Juno and the Paycock (1924); The Plough and the Stars (1926).

Lady Gregory, The Rising of the Moon (1907).

Elizabeth Shane, The Warming Pan (19 ).

Stanley Houghton, Hindle Wakes (1912).

Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), Man and Superman (1903); Major Barbara (1905); Androcles and the Lion (1914), Pygmalion (1917), Heartbreak House (1917), Saint Joan (1924).

W. B. Yeats, Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902); The Hourglass (1903); The King's Threshold (1904); Deirdre (1907); The Golden Helmet (1908).

John M. Synge, Playboy of the Western World (1907), Riders to the Sea (1984), Deidre of the Sorrows (1910).

Hubert Davies, The Mollusc (1907).

John Galsworthy, Justice (1910).

Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty (1935).

T. S. Eliot, The Family Reunion (1939), Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Cocktail Party (1950).

Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not For Burning (1949).

Brendan Behan, The Quare Fellow (1956).

Enid Bagnold, Lottie Dundass (1944), The Chalk Garden (1954).

John Osborne, Look Back In Anger (1957); Inadmissable Evidence (1965).

John Arden, Sargeant Musgrave's Dance (1960).

Tom Stoppard, A Separate Peace (1966); Dirty Linen (1976); Artist Descending (1973); Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead (19 ).

Emlyn Williams, The Corn Is Green (1938).

more recent:

Maureen Duffy

Shelagh Delany, A Taste of Honey (1959).

Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party (1960); The Tea-Party and Other Plays (1967); Night (1969).

Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938); Waiting for Godot (1952); Krapp's Last Tape (1958).

Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning (1949).

Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons (19xx).

Anne Devlin, Ourselves Alone (1986).

Ena Lamont Stewart, Men Should Weep (1981).

Carol Churchill.

Fiction:

1900-1920:

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900), Heart of Darkness (1902), Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911)

Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale (1908); Hilda Lessways

John Galsworthy, The Man of Property (1906), first volume of The Forsythe Saga trilogy.

Elizabeth Robbins, The Convert (1907).

Gertrude Renton Weaver, The Angel and the Outcast (1907).

Mrs. Alfred Sedgwick, Below Stairs (1913).

Katharine Burdekin, Swastika Night (1937)

Raymond Williams, Border Country (1960)

Lewis Grassic Gibbon (C. R. Grieve), The Kingis Quair

Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903)

W. H. Hudson, Green Mansions (1904)

H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905); Ann Veronica (1909)

Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915)

John Cowper Powys, Visions and Revisions (1915)

Wyndham Lewis, Tarr (1918) (glance at)

James Joyce, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916); The Dubliners; Ulysses (1922); Finnegans Wake (1939).

Virginia Woolf, Night and Day (19 ); Mrs. Dalloway (1925); To the Lighthouse (1925); Orlando (1928); The Waves (1931); The Years (1937); Between the Acts (1941)

Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (19xx)

Ivy Compton-Burnett, Brother and Sisters (1929), Elders and Betters (1944).

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Vita Sackville-West, The Edwardians, All Passion Spent

Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (1939).

Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon (1940).

D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1922), Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), Aaron's Rod (1922); The Plumed Serpent (1926)

E. M. Forster, Maurice (1971), The Longest Journey 1907); A Room With a View (1908); Howard's End (1910); A Passage to India (1924)

Dorothy Richardson, Pilgrimage (especially Dawn's Left Hand.

Mary Webb, Precious Bane (1924)

Richard Aldington, Death of a Hero (19 ).

Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (1928); A Handful of Dust ( ); Men At Arms (1952); Brideshead Revisted (1945).

T. F. Powys, The Only Penitent (1931).

Pamela Hansford Johnson, This Bed Thy Centre (1935); The Humbler Creation (1959).

Terence H. White, The Once and Future King

Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca (1938)

Enid Bagnold, The Happy Foreigner (1920)

Rebecca West, The Judge (1922); The Return of the Soldier (1918); The Fountain Overflows (1956)

Stevie Smith, Me Again (1983)

Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm (1932).

Elizabeth Taylore, At Mrs. Lippincote's (1945), The Wedding Group (1968).

Helen Zenna Smith, Not So Quiet. . . (1930) (on First World War)

Joseph Keating, Son of Judith (1900) (Welsh coal-mining)

Caradoc Evans, My People (1915) (Welsh)

Gwyn Thomas, The Alone to the Alone (1947) Welsh

Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley (1939)

Hilda Vaughan, The Soldier and the Gentlewoman (1932)

Marigiad Evans, The Wooden Doctor (1933) Welsh

Geraint Goodwin, Come Michaelmas (1939)

George Orwell, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

May Sinclair, Mary Olivier (1919); The Tree of Heaven

Winifred Holtby, South Riding (1936)

Flann O'Brien, At-Swim-Two-Birds (1939)

Sylvia Townshend-Warner

George Moore, The Lake (1905)

Jean Rhys

Butler, Erewhon Revisited (1901)

Olive Schreiner, From Man to Man (1927)

Rudyard Kipling, Kim (1901)

Ada Leverson, The Little Ottleys (1908-1916)

Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1917-29)

Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (1928)

Rose Macaulay, As Told By An Idiot (1923)

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932), Eyeless in Gaza (1936).

Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934).

Katherine Burdekin, Swastika Night (1937).

Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing (1950), The Golden Notebook (1952-62), The Four-Gated City (1969)

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940); The Quiet American (1956); The Heart of the Matter (1948).

Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948).

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903)

J. D. Priestley, The Good Companions (1929).

Joyce Cary, A Fearful Joy (1949), Mister Johnson (1939), The Horse's Mouth (1944).

Iris Murdoch, Under the Net (1954); The Bell (1958); The Severed Head (1961); An Unofficial Rose (1962); The Unicorn (1963)

Nancy Mitford, Highland Fling (1931).

Allan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959); A Falling Out of Love (1965)

Angus Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956).

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1954).

William Plomer, Turbott Wolfe (1926) (an early anti-apartheid novel).

Rosamund Lehnman, The Echoing Grove (1953).

Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September (1928), The Death of the Heart (1938),The Heat of the Day (1949).

Lawrence Durrell, Alexandria Quartet (1956-60), The Revolt of Aphrodite (1974)

Mary Lavin, selected stories

C. P. Snow, The Conscience of the Rich (1958).

Henry Williamson, A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (1951-69).

Katherine Mansfield, selected stories, including "The Garden Party" (1922), "Prelude," "At the Bay," "The Daughters of the Late Colonel," "Marriage a la Mode."

Kate O'Brien, Mary Lavelle (1936)

Muriel Spark, Memento Mori (1959); The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961).

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career (1901) (Australian); All That Swagger (1936)

Some more recent writers:

Brigid Brophy, The Crown Princess (1953), In Transit (1969).

Angela Carter, Heroes and Villains (1969).

Elizabeth Jane Howard, After Julius (1965).

Storm Jameson, The White Crow (1968).

Anthony Burgess, Malayan Trilogy (1956-59).

Fowles, The Collector (1963), The Magus (1966), The Ebony Tower (1974), The French Lieutenant's Woman (19 ).

William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954), The Inheritors (1955).

Margaret Drabble, A Summer Bird-Cage (1963), Jerusalem the Golden (1967); Bird of Paradise (1969); The Waterfall (1969), The Needle's Eye (1972); The Realms of Gold (1975).

Nell Dunn, Poor Cow (1967), Up the Junction (1963).

Maureen Duffy, That's How It Was (19xx).

Olivia Manning, The Great Fortune (1960), The Spoilt City (1962).

Rattigan, The Deep Blue Sea (1952).

Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls (1960), A Pagan Place (1970).

A. S. Byatt, Possession (19 ).

Others: Edna O'Brien, John McGahern, Jennifer Johnston, Bernard McLaverty, Julia O'Faolain, Deirdre Madden, Desmond Hogan; Elizabeth Jennings.

Essays, Autobiographies, Non-Fiction Prose

Hannah Mitchell (1871-1956), The Hard Way Up (1968).

Margaret Penn, Manchester Fourteen Miles (1947).

Enid Bagnold, Diary Without Dates (1917).

Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement (1931).

Margaret Llewelyn Davies, Maternity: Letters from Working Women Collected by the Women's Co-operative Guild. (1915)

Beatrice Webb, My Apprenticeship (1926).

Dylan Thomas, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940); Under Milkwood (1954)

Edward Thomas, The Heart of England (1906).

Leonard Woolf, Sowing; Growing; Beginning Again: 1911-1918 (1963); Downhill All the Way: 1919-39; The Journey Not the Arrival Matters.

Katherine Mansfield, Journal (1927).

Elizabeth Bowen, Pictures and Conversations (1950).

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929); Three Guineas (1938).

Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (190 ).

Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (19 ).

Dora Russell, The Tamarisk Tree

Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, edited Jeanne Schulkind (1976); Essays; Letters

Freya Stark

Sean O'Casey

George Moore, Hail and Farewell (19

Yeats, Autobiographical Writings (?);

Ideas of Good and Evil

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933); Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

George Collingwood, The Principles of Art (1938)

Christopher Caudwell

Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (1958)

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (1945)

Zachery Mathers, Tales from the Welch Hills (1909)

Blanche Devereux, Star of Mercia (1922)

Stephen Spender, World Within World (1951)

Nancy Mitford

T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays (1932)

Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (19 ).

Enid Bagnold, Autobiography (1969)

Some more recent works:

Elizabeth Wilson, An Autobiography (1982).

Kate O'Brien, Presentation Parlour (1963).