Edwardian Period

(England 1901 – 1914)

• Named for King Edward
• Some sees as a continuation of
Victorian period; however, the status
quo is increasingly threatened.
• The Edwardian period is sometimes
imagined as a romantic golden age of
long summer afternoons and garden
parties, basking in a sun that never sets
on the British Empire. This perception
was created in the 1920’s and later by
those who remembered the
Edwardian age with nostalgia, looking
back to their childhoods across the
abyss of the great war. The Edwardian
age was also seen as a mediocre
period of pleasure between the great
achievements of the preceding
Victorian age and the catastrophe of
the following war.
Edwardian Society

• This period covered the reign of King Edward VII (1901 to 1910),
Edward was part of a fashionable elite which set a style
influence by the art and fashions of continental Europe. The era
had significant shifts in politics, great social changes and the
solidification of the power and luxury of the ruling elite. Wealth
was abundant and nearly income tax-free, society was no
longer a small, exclusive circle confined to those of aristocratic
birth; the arts produced genius and modern movements; travel
was cheap and easy and technological advances were thrilling
and amazing. The British class system was very rigid and there
was an increasing interest in socialism, attention to the plight of
the poor and the issue of women’s suffrage, as a result of rapid
industrialization.
Edwardian Literature

• Literature of the Edwardian era reflected the restless

ambivalence of the new millennium. Some playwrights
(mainly George Bernard Shaw) transformed Edwardian
theatre in a way of debate over the issues of his time:
political organization, armaments and war, family and
marriage, for instance. The Edwardian era gave birth to a
number of literary and poetic movements such as; Imagism,
Futurism and the Lost Generation.
Imagism, Futurism, and The Last Generation

• Imagism describes a movement in American and British poetry

beginning in 1910 that borrowed from haiku and free verse.

• Futurism was born in Europe and advocated the abandonment

of conventional syntax and the use of images drawn from the
age of technology.

• The Lost Generation refers to expatriate American writers

including Ernest Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald, who
came into prominence after the WW1 and whose works
reflected a deep disillusionment with their society.
Major Authors
and
Works
 Joseph Conrad
• was a Polish-British writer regarded as
one of the greatest novelists to write
in the English language. Though he
did not speak English fluently until his
twenties, he was a master prose stylist
who brought a non-English sensibility
into English Literature.
• Conrad wrote stories and novels,
many with a nautical setting, that
depict trials of the human spirit in the
midst of what he saw as an
impassive, inscrutable universe.
 Heart of Darkness
• is a novella by Polish-English
novelist Joseph Conrad about a
narrated voyage up the Congo
River into the Congo Free State in
the so-called heart of Africa.
Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells
his story to friends aboard a boat
anchored on the River Thames.
This setting provides the frame for
Marlow's story of his obsession with
the ivory trader Kurtz, which
enables Conrad to create a
parallel between what Conrad
calls "the greatest town on earth",
London, and Africa as places of
darkness.
 Lord Jim
• is a novel by Joseph Conrad
originally published as a serial in
Blackwood's Magazine from
October 1899 to November 1900.
An early and primary event in the
story is the abandonment of a
passenger ship in distress by its
crew, including a young British
seaman named Jim. He is publicly
censured for this action and the
novel follows his later attempts at
coming to terms with himself and
his past.
 H. G. Wells
• Herbert George Wells (21 September
1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English
writer. He was prolific in many genres,
writing dozens of novels, short stories,
and works of social commentary,
satire, biography, and
autobiography, and even including
two books on recreational war
games. He is now best remembered
for his science fiction novels and is
often called a "father of science
fiction", along with Jules Verne and
Hugo Gernsback.
 The War of the Worlds
• is a science fiction novel by English
author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897
by Pearson's Magazine in the UK and by
Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The
novel's first appearance in hardcover
was in 1898 from publisher William
Heinemann of London. Written between
1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest
stories to detail a conflict between
mankind and an extraterrestrial race. The
novel is the first-person narrative of both
an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of
his younger brother in London as
southern England is invaded by Martians.
The novel is one of the most
commented-on works in the science
fiction canon.
 E. M. Forster

• Edward Morgan Forster OM CH

(1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970)
was an English novelist, short
story writer, essayist and librettist.
 A Room with a View

• is a 1908 novel by English writer E.

M. Forster, about a young woman
in the restrained culture of
Edwardian era England. Set in Italy
and England, the story is both a
romance and a humorous critique
of English society at the beginning
of the 20th century. Merchant
Ivory produced an award-winning
film adaptation in 1985.
 A Passage to India
• is a novel by English author E. M. Forster
set against the backdrop of the British
Raj and the Indian independence
movement in the 1920s. It was selected
as one of the 100 great works of 20th
century English literature by the
Modern Library and won the 1924
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for
fiction. Time magazine included the
novel in its "All Time 100 Novels" list. The
novel is based on Forster's experiences
in India, deriving the title from Walt
Whitman's 1870 poem "Passage to
India" in Leaves of Grass.
 George Bernard Shaw
• known at his insistence simply as
Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright,
critic, polemicist and political activist.
His influence on Western theatre,
culture and politics extended from the
1880s to his death and beyond. He
wrote more than sixty plays, including
major works such as Man and
Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912)
and Saint Joan (1923). With a range
incorporating both contemporary
satire and historical allegory, Shaw
became the leading dramatist of his
generation, and in 1925 was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Literature.
 • is a three-act English play by George Bernard
Shaw, written and premiered in 1905 and first
published in 1907. The story concerns an
idealistic young woman, Barbara Undershaft,
who is engaged in helping the poor as a Major
in the Salvation Army in London. For many
years, Barbara and her siblings have been
estranged from their father, Andrew
Undershaft, who now reappears as a rich and
successful munitions maker. Undershaft, the
father, gives money to the Salvation Army,
which offends Major Barbara, who does not
want to be connected to his "tainted" wealth.
However, the father argues that poverty is a
worse problem than munitions, and claims that
he is doing more to help society by giving his
workers jobs and a steady income than Major
Barbara is doing to help them by giving them
Major Barbara bread and soup.
 A. C. Bradley
• Andrew Cecil Bradley, FBA (26
March 1851 – 2 September 1935)
was an English literary scholar,
best remembered for his work on
Shakespeare.
• He was the youngest of the
twenty-one children born to the
preacher Charles Bradley (1789–
1871) who was vicar of Glasbury
and a noted evangelical preacher
and leader of the so-called
Clapham Sect.
 Shakespearean tragedy
• is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright
William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers
of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real
figures throughout the History of England, they were classified as
"histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar,
Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on
historical figures, but because their source stories were foreign and
ancient they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than
histories. Shakespeare's romances (tragicomic plays) were written
late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or
comedy. They share some elements of tragedy featuring a high
status central character but end happily like Shakespearean
comedies. Several hundred years after Shakespeare's death,
scholar F.S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play,"
for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of
their subject matter, setting, or ending. The classifications of certain
Shakespeare plays are still debated among scholars.
Thank You !!