Literature Essay ⋆ History Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Since 1950, vast numbers of new books have been published, and many from before 1950 have been republished as new editions, facsimiles of old editions, and, in recent years, as digital books. From the 1970s, there was also the emergence of what became known as “airport fiction,” describing books that were sold to air travelers with plenty of time to occupy. Digital books in particular have allowed access to many old and formerly out-of-print books and offer computer searchable functions giving readers and scholars the ability to find information more quickly. While this has allowed easier access to reference works, the vast majority of works of fiction continue to be published in book form. While many writers have other means of income, some have become very successful through their book sales, with British writer J. K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, becoming the first writer to make more than $1 billion from sales of her books.

British Writers

British writers have dominated much of the English-speaking world, with Bertrand Russell winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950, Sir Winston Churchill winning in 1953, William Golding—author of Lord of the Flies—winning in 1983, V. S. Naipaul in 2001, and Harold Pinter in 2005. Since 1950, other important British novelists include Richard Adams, author of Watership Down; Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky Jim; Martin Amis; Julian Barnes; H. E. Bates; Malcolm Bradbury, author of The History Man; John Braine, author of Room at the Top; Anita Brookner, author of Hotel du Lac; Anthony Burgess, author of Clockwork Orange; postfeminist writer Angela Carter; Norman Collins; Margaret Drabble; Daphne du Maurier; novelist and poet Lawrence Durrell, author of the Alexandria Quartet, and his younger brother naturalist and zoologist Gerald Durrell, author of My Family and Other Animals; John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman; Graham Greene; L. P. Hartley, author of The Go-Between; Laurie Lee, author of Cider with Rosie; Malcoln Lavry, author of Under the Volcano; Jessica Mitford, author of Hons and Rebels; John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey; Iris Murdoch, author of The Sea, The Sea, the 1978 winner of the Booker Prize; Anthony Powell, author of A Dance to the Music of Time; V. S. Pritchett, author of The Spanish Temper; Dame Edith Sitwell; Sir Osbert Sitwell; and C. P. Snow. There were also a number whose major literary work was in the first half of the 20th century who also produced more works in the second half, including W. H. Auden; Robert Graves, author of I, Claudius; Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World; W. Somerset Maugham; J. B. Priestley; Welsh-born novelist Howard Spring; Dylan Thomas, author of Under Milk Wood; and P. G. Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves.

There have been many writers of historical fiction, including a number who set their books during the Napoleonic Wars: Bernard Cornwell (pseudonym for Bernard Wiggins), creator of Sharpe; C. S. Forester (pseudonym for Cecil Louis Troughton Smith), creator of Horatio Hornblower; Alexander Kent (pseudonym for Douglas Reeman), creator of Richard Bolitho; Patrick O’Brian (pseudonym for Richard Patrick Russ), creator of the Aubrey-Maturin series; and Northcote Parkinson, creator of Richard DeLancey. Other writers of historical novels include: Charlotte Bingham; Catherine Cookson; George Macdonald Fraser, who resurrected Flashman from Tom Brown’s Schooldays for the “Flashman Papers”; Robert Harris; and Jean Plaidy (pseudonym for Eleanor Hibbert). Colonial and postcolonial themes have been explored by writers Joy Adamson, author of Born Free; Rumer Godden; Elspeth Huxley, author of The Flame Trees of Thika; Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author Heat and Dust, the 1975 winner of the Booker Prize; M. M. Kaye, author of The Far Pavilions; Richard Mason, author of The World of Suzie Wong; John Masters, author of Bhowani Junction; R. K. Narayan, author of Vendor of Sweets; Paul Scott, author of “The Raj Quartet”; and Leslie Thomas, author of The Virgin Soldiers. James Clavell, author of Shogun, covered Asian historical topics. Romance novelists include Barbara Cartland, author of 723 titles; Anne Baker; Barbara Taylor Bradford; Jackie Collins; Lena Kennedy; Anne Mather, author of over 150 novels; Betty Neels, author of over 130 titles. The publishers Mills and Boon print thousands of romance titles, many written to a formula.

Popular thriller writers include Eric Ambler; former politician Jeffrey Archer; Desmond Bagley; Len Deighton; Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond; Ken Follett; Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day of the Jackal; John le Carré (pseudonym for David Cornwell), creator of George Smiley; Alastair Maclean; and Douglas Reeman. War stories by Paul Brickhill; Nicholas Monsarrat (pseudonym for John Turney), author of The Cruel Sea; and Eric Williams, author of The Wooden Horse and The Tunnel have also sold well. Crime writers include Edward Aarons, author of the “Assignment” books; Margery Allingham; Agatha Christie; John Creasey; P. D. James (pseudonym for Phyllis White); and Ruth Rendell; and there have also been others who have set their stories during particular historical events such as Ellis Peters (pseudonym for Edith Pargeter), creator of Cadfael in medieval Shropshire; and H. R. F. Keating, who set his Inspector Ghote novels in British India. Mention should also be made of Josephine Tey whose novel The

Daughter of Time changed the way many people have viewed Richard III. Playwrights include Arnold Wesker, who wrote Chicken Soup with Barley, and Terence Rattigan, author of Separate Tables. Poets include T. S. Eliot, who won the Nobel Prize in 1948, and D. J. Enright, author of The Laughing Hyena.

Fantasy writers such as C. S. Lewis, creator of Narnia; Mervyn Peake; Terry Pratchett; and J. R. R. Tolkein, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have all been very popular. In science fiction, Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; J. G. Ballard, who became famous for his semi-autobiographical The Empire of the Sun rather than his science fiction; Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey; and John Wyndham have all been popular, with their books published in many languages.

Children’s story writers include Enid Blyton, creator of Noddy; Anthony Buckeridge, creator of Jennings; Richmal Crompton, author of Just Williams; and the historical fiction of Cynthia Harnett, Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, and Ronald Welch (pseudonym for Ronald Felton). The most famous playwrights include Harold Pinter, the Nobel laureate; John Osborne, author of Look Back in Anger; Dennis Potter, author of Son of Man; Tom Stoppard. Poets include John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, and Philip Larkin. Historians include Alan Bullock, E. H. Carr, Leonard Cottrell, Antonia Fraser, Christopher Hibbert, Christopher Hill, James/Jan Morris, John Prebble, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. There have also been a range of accounts of adventure, including Sir John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest; Colonel P. H. Fawcett’s Exploration Fawcett; A Dragon Apparent by Norman Lewis; Patrick Leigh Fermor’s The Travellers Tree, and similar books. Mention should also be made of Cornish writers A. L Rowse and Derek Tangye. Travel writers include H. V. Morton; Eric Newby, author of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush; and Freya Stark, author of Beyond the Euphrates and other books about the Middle East.

American Writers

There have also been many prominent U.S. writers in this era, including four who won the Nobel Prize in literature: Ernest Hemingway in 1954, John Steinbeck in 1962, Canadian-born Saul Bellow in 1976, and Toni Morrison in 1993. Others include James Baldwin, author of Another Country; Paul Bowles, who moved to Tangier, Morocco, in 1952; Allen Drury, author of Advise and Consent; Alex Haley, author of Roots; Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961; Mary McCarthy, author of Hanoi; Norman Mailer, author of Armies of the Night; James Michener; Chaim Potok; J. D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye; John Updike, author of Rabbit, Run and The Witches of Eastwick; Gore Vidal, author of Myra Breckenridge and historical novels; and Richard Wright, author of The Outsider. In recent years the writer who has achieved the largest number of sales has been Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code.

Cowboy books have always been popular. Historical novelists include Steven Saylor, author of the Roma SubRosa novels featuring Gordianus “the finder;” and surgeon and novelist Frank Slaughter. War stories include those by Irwin Shaw, author of The Young Lions; and Herman Wouk, author of The Caine Mutiny, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1952. Crime writers such as Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood; Patricia Highsmith; and Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather have also sold many copies of their books.

Science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov, fantasy writers such as Ursula Le Guin, and horror writers such as Stephen King have sold well. There have been many popular writers such as V. C. Andrews; Clive Cussler; John Grisham; Thomas Harris; Robert Ludlum, author of The Bourne Identity; satirist P. J. O’Rourke; Danielle Steel; and Kathleen Windsor, author of Forever Amber. Playwrights include Arthur Miller, author of The Crucible; Eugene O’Neill, whose Long Day’s Journey into Night was published posthumously in 1956; Thornton Wilder who started writing in the 1920s but whose plays included The Matchmaker; and Tennessee Williams whose most famous works such as A Streetcar Named Desire were written in the 1940s, and who won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Mention should also be made of Edward Albee, author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, his first full-length play. There have also been many important nonfiction writers, including Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring (1963); political commentator Noam Chomsky; economist and Professor J. K. Galbraith; and John Gunther, author of the “Inside” books. American poets include Robert Lowell, Ogden Nash, and Sylvia Plath.

Other Authors In English

Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, there have been many other Nobel laureates, including Samuel Beckett from Ireland, in 1969, author of Waiting for Godot; Patrick White from Australia, in 1973; Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, in 1986; Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, in 1991 (and the Booker Prize in 1974); Derek Walcott from St. Lucia, in 1992; Seamus Heaney from Ireland, in 1995; and J. M. Coetzee, author of The Life and Times of Michael K, from South Africa, in 2003. Prolific South African writer Bryce Courtney, author of The Power of One, moved to Australia.

Irish writers include Brendan Behan, author of Borstal Boy; James Donleavy, author of The Ginger Man; Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes; and William Trevor, author of The Old Boys. Australian writers include Thea Astley; Peter Carey; Albert Facey; feminist Germaine Greer; Xavier Herbert, author of Poor Fellow My Country; George Johnston, author of My Brother Jack; Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s Ark; Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds; David Malouf, author of Fly Away Peter; Alan Moorehead, author of The White Nile; poet Les Murray; Neville Shute (pseudonym for Nevil Shute Norway); Christina Stead; Arthur Upfield, creator of the aboriginal detective “Bonaparte”; and Morris West, author of The Devil’s Advocate and The Ambassador. New Zealand writers include Janet Frame, author of Owls Do Cry, crime writer Ngaio Marsh, and Alan Duff, author of Once Were Warriors.

The writer most strongly identified with South Africa is Wilbur Smith, who set most of his books in South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Other South African authors include Stuart Cloete, author of Rags of Glory, and Alan Paton, author of Cry, The Beloved Country. There have also been many Canadian authors, perhaps the most famous from this period being novelist Margaret Atwood and Thomas Costain.

European And South American Writers

French writers since 1950 include Nobel laureates François Mauriac (1952), Algerian-French writer and philosopher Albert Camus (1957), diplomat and poet Saint-John Perse (1960), Jean-Paul Sartre (1964; he declined the prize), and Claude Simon (1985). Other famous writers of this period include writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir; structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, author of Anthropologie structurale; André Malraux; historical novelist Zoë Oldenburg; and Jean Tardieu. Belgian writer Georges Simenon created Inspector Maigret and wrote over 500 books; and Frenchman Gerard de Villiers wrote the best-selling “S.A.S.” murder mysteries set in various countries around the world. Writers in Germany who won the Nobel Prize in literature include German-Swedish writer Nelly Sachs, in 1966; Heinrich Böll, in 1972; Günter Grass for The Tin Drum, in 1999; and Austrian feminist playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek, in 2004. Mention should also be made of Bulgarian-born novelist Elias Canetti, who won the prize in 1981 for his writing in German. The Italian Nobel laureates were lyrical poet Salvatore Quasimodo, in 1959; poet and writer Eugenio Montale, in 1975; and playwright and theater director Dario Fo, in 1997. Possibly the best-known Italian writers are Giuseppe di Lampedusa, who wrote The Leopard, which he completed just before his death, the book being published posthumously; Lois de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin; and Alberto Moravia, author of Women of Rome and Roman Tales.

A number of writers in Spanish won the Nobel Prize in literature: Juan Ramón Jiménez, in 1956, Vicente Aleixandre, in 1977, and Camilo José Cela, in 1989. Salvador de Madariaga wrote many books on Spain and the Spanish-speaking world, most of which were translated into English. The others were the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias, in 1967; Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (pen name for Ricardo Elicer Neftali Reyes Basoalto), in 1971; the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, in 1982; and the Mexican Octavio Paz, in 1990. From Portugal, José Saramago won the Nobel Prize in 1998, and in recent years there has been extensive literature about Portuguese Africa. Portuguese-language poets include the Angolan nationalist and later president Agostinho Neto; there have also been many books by Brazilian lyricist Paulo Coelho.

From the Soviet Union, Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1958 but declined it. Other Russians who became Nobel laureates include novelist Mikhail Sholokhov (1965), dissident novelist and dramatist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970), and Joseph Brodsky (1987). Mention should also be made of Russian-born writer Vladimir Nabokov. From Eastern Europe, Jewish-Hungarian writer and concentration camp survivor Imre Kertész won the Nobel Prize in 2002; writer and poet Jaroslav Seifert from the Czech Republic won the prize in 1984. Polish-born American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer won the prize in 1978 for his work in Yiddish, poet Czesław Miłosz in 1980, and Wisława Szymborska in 1996. In 1961 son, and poet Harry Martinson, in 1974, and Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness, in 1955. There was also much renewed interest in the Viking sagas, many of which were translated and published in English and French during this period.

The Middle East And India

For Middle Eastern literature, Israeli writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon was one of the joint Nobel Prize winners in 1966 for his work in Hebrew. Other important works of Israeli literature include Menachem Begin’s The Revolt, and books about Jerusalem by Teddy Kollek. Palestinian writers include American resident Edward Said and Lebanese writer Edward Atiyah, author of An Arab Tells His Story and Lebanon Paradise. North African writers include Naguib Mahfouz from Egypt who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1988; Gamal al-Ghitani from Cairo has written many books, including Zayni Barakat about the Mamluks in Egypt; and Algerian writer Albert Memmi wrote The Pillar of Salt. There have also been many prominent Turkish writers, including Yashar Kemal, author of Memed, My Hawk; Irgan Orga, who did much to explain Turkish history and culture to English-language readers; and postmodernist writer Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006. Most African books tend to have been written in English, French, or other European languages, but the author of what has been described as the most quintessentially African story is Camara Laye, from French Guinea, author of The Dark Child, or The African Child.

In India, there have also been large numbers of writers who have written in English, including Dom Moraes; India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who wrote The Discovery of India; and Salman Rushdie, author of the controversial Midnight’s Children and the even more controversial The Satanic Verses.

Asian Writers

Mao Zedong, the leader of China from 1949 until his death in 1976, wrote poetry, but is best known as a writer for his “Little Red Book,” for which 900 the Yugoslav writer and diplomat Ivo Andric´ won million copies were issued in Chinese, and in other the Nobel Prize for his Bosnian Chronicles, which covers many aspects of Bosnian history. Two Greeks became Nobel laureates: poet and diplomat Giorgos Seferis, in 1963, and modernist poet Odysseas Elytis, in 1979.

From Scandinavia, Nobel laureates since 1950 include Swedes Pär Lagerkvist, in 1951, Eyvind John languages, including Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Spanish, and Vietnamese. It was first published in April 1964, and its red plastic cover made it well known around the world. Many other Communist Party publications, such as the Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, also had millions of copies printed. To help promote new literary works published in China, the monthly journal Chinese Literature was published from 1951.

Of the other Chinese writers since 1950, perhaps the best-known is Han Suyin, whose five-volume autobiographical saga began with The Crippled Tree and whose A Many Splendoured Thing became a best seller around the world. In more recent times, Jung Chang wrote Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, describing the family’s life during the Cultural Revolution. Mention should also be made of the prolific writer and academic Lin Yutang and de Lucy Ching, author of One of the Lucky Ones. Xingjian Gao, who wrote about the Tiananmen Square protests, was declared a persona non grata in China; he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2000.

Two Japanese writers won the Nobel Prize in literature: Kawabata Yasunari in 1968, and Oe Kenzaburo in 1994. However, the most famous Japanese writers of this period were undoubtedly Abe Kobo and Mishima Yukio. Many Korean works have been translated into English and published by Heinemann Asia, but apart from translations of Lady Hong’s Memoirs of a Korean Queen, few Korean books have managed to achieve much literary interest outside Korea. The works of North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il have been published in many different editions and several languages, by the Foreign Languages Press in Pyongyang.

For mainland Southeast Asia, there have been many books published in Burmese, Khmer, Thai, and Vietnamese, and even a number being published in Lao. After independence, there have been many books published in Burmese, including many items on Burmese history. With the import of books now restricted, this has helped the Burmese publishing industry and local literature. Prior to 1970, there were a number of novels published in Khmer, with a massive increase in the Khmer-language publishing industry from 1970 to 1975, including the work of Long Boret, prime minister from 1973 to 1975.

Similarly Vietnamese literature has followed political trends, with many books published in South Vietnam until 1975, and then few works of literature published in Vietnam until the 1990s. In Thailand, the prosperity of the country has ensured a regular number of books in Thai being published. After Malaya became independent, the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur encouraged writing in Malay, which has flourished. In neighboring Singapore, there have been many books published, a large number being historical works covering aspects of Singapore’s history, but also many nostalgic novels about the country’s colonial past and a number of stories set in modern Singapore.

Bibliography:

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. London: B. T. Batsford, 1990;
Drabble, Margaret. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987;
Pynsent, R. B., and S. Kanikova, eds. The Everyman Companion to East European Literature. London: J.M. Dent, 1993;
Stringer, Jenny, ed. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996;
Welch, Robert, ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

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