English Literature Between the Wars

First published in 1948, English Literature Between the Wars sets out to answer a question: to what extent did the years between the two wars constitute a period in literature? Its exploration leads the author to assess the changes in the reading public, and in the movement of taste. He is led to the conclusion that in the inter-war period some writers were aware that a crisis in civilization was taking place and that these were the more genuinely creative writers.

Apart from a consideration of these general problems, the volume contains studies of E.M. Forster, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and others. It also assesses the influence of war on the literature of the period, comments on the work of the younger writers, and adds a note on the theatre. Students of literature and history will find this book particularly interesting.