The period between 1910 and 1936 is called the Georgian Period after the name of George V who reigned over England during these years, It is the second phase of the Modem Age. However, literary features of the Modem Age continued till 1939, the year in which the Second World War broke out. For this reason, it is generally agreed that the Modem Age ended in 1939,

The important facts which influenced the literature Of this period are :

1. The Victorian peace and order were no more. Unrest and violence engulfed life.
2. Imperialism became a disturbing factor in the world. For colonial supremacy European nations engaged in a rivalry that led to the First World War (1914-18). This war marks the end of Victorian optimism.
3. Socialism had a great influence on English life and thought. The class feeling became stronger.
4. The Fabian Society which was founded in 1883 now started the transition of land and industrial capital from individuals to collective ownership in a peaceful way.
5. In 1918 women gained the right to vote in Great Britain.
6. The First World War and its aftermath changed the traditional way of life.
7. The National Guilds League established in 1914 worked out the programs of guild socialism for gradual change from capitalism to socialism without any violence. Bertrand Russell was one of its members of it.
8. In the twenties and thirties, frustration and discontent paralyzed life.
9. The Rhymers’ Club was formed. The members of the club concentrated on the beauty of sound and ornamentation of the subject. W.B. Yeats was a member of this club for some time.
10. Four anthologies entitled Georgian Poetry (1911-1922) were published.
11. Press tycoons started mass-audience newspapers. 
12. “Dadaism”, “Surrealism”, “Imagism”, “Impressionism” and “Expressionism” flourished as art movements.
13. The Titanic sank in 1912.
14. The October Revolution began in Russia in 1917.
15. W. B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and G. B. Shaw in 1926.
16. Foundation was laid for the British Commonwealth of Nations.
17. Irish demand for independence became stronger.
18. World War Il broke out in 1939.

Major Writers of the Period and Their Major Works:

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote most of his novels during the earlier period. During this period he wrote his poems and short stories,

George Berard Shaw (1856-1950):
Pygmalion (1913)
Heartbreak House (1921)
Saint Joan (1924)
The Apple Cart (1929)
Too True to Be Good (1932)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939):
* He was a psychologist known for his theory of psycho-analysis,
Interpretation of Dreams (trans, 1913)
Psychopathology of Everyday Life (trans, (1914)

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924):
Under Western Eyes (1911)
Chance (1913)
Victory (1915)
The Shadow Line (1917)
The Rescue (1920)
The Rover (1923)

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939):
* He was a poet, dramatist, and critic, famous for his use of
symbolism and mysticism,
The Resurrection (1913)
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
The Cat and the Moon (1926)
The Tower (1928)
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), a philosopher:
Mysticism and Logic (1918)
The Analysis of Mind (1921)
History of Western Philosophy (1946), published in the Post-modem age.
Authority and the Individual (1949), published in the Post-modern age.

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965):
* He was a novelist and short-story writer.
The Sacred Flame (1928)
Cakes and Ale (1930)
The Razor’s Edge (1944), published in the Post-modem age.

John Edward Masefield (1878-1967):
The Midnight Folk (1922)
Collected Poems (1923)
The Bird of Dawning (1933)
Dead Ned (1938)

Edward Morgan Forster (1979-1970):
A Passage to India (1924)
Aspects of Novel (1927), a critical work
The Celestial Omnibus (1911), a collection of short stories
The Eternal Moment and Other Stories (1928)

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975):
* He is better known as P.G. Wodehouse. He is famous for his use of language. He wrote about 96 books.
The Man with Two Left Feet (1917)
Jeeves (1923)
Blandings Castle (1935)
Lord Emsworth and Others (1937)

James Joyce (1882-1941):
* He was a novelist, famous for his narrative technique known as stream of consciousness.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Exiles (1918)
Ulysses (1922)
Finnegans Wake (1939)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), a feminist:
The Voyage Out (1915)
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
The Waves (1931)
Flush (1933)
The Years (1937)

Franz Kafka (1883-1924):
* He was a novelist, short story writer, and existentialist.
The Metamorphosis (1915)
The Trial (1925)
The Castle 1926)
Amerika (1927)

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), a novelist:
The White Peacock (1911)
Sons and Lovers (1913)
The Rainbow (1915)
Women in Love (1921)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972):
* He is one of the exponents of “Imagism”.
He wrote a two-line the poem as an example of imagist poetry: Here is the poem:

“In a Station of the Metro”
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

His major writings are:
Umbra: Collected Poems (1920)
Cantos I- XXVII (1925-28)
Literary Essays (1954)
Make It New (1934)

Thomas Steams Eliot (1888-1965):
* He was a poet, dramatist, literary critic, and editor. His theory of ‘objective correlative is very famous.
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
“The Waste Land” (1922)
Poems (1919)
Selected Essays 1917-1932 (1932)
Four Quartets (1942)
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
The Family Reunion (1939)
The Cocktail Party (1950), published in the Post-modem age.

Henry Miller (1891-1980):
Tropic of Cancer (1934)

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940):
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Tender Is the Night (1934)
The Love of the Last Tycoon (1941)

William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897-1962):
The Sound and the Fury (1929)
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Light in August (1932)
Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961):
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
The Old Man and the Sea, published in the next age in 1952

Graham Greene (1904-91):
It’s a Battlefield (1934)

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973):
Poems (1930)
The Oxford Book of Light Verse (1938)

Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-53):
Twenty-five Poems (1936)

Main Literary Features of the Age:

1. The poets who published their poems in four anthologies entitled Georgian Poetry (1911-1922) are called “Georgian’ Poets”. Georgian poetry is rural in subject matter, delicate in manner, and traditional in form and technique. W.W. Gibson, Rupert Brooke, J. Masefield, and Ralph Hodgson are among the best-known Georgian poets.
2. However, in the 1920s and 1930s poets’ search for a new poetic tradition is noteworthy. The late Victorians (Decadents) give way to the Georgians. Then the Imagists replace the Georgians but after a few years, they themselves disappear. In the second decade of the 20th century, there has been another movement known as dadaism. In the 1920s surrealism replaces dadaism. There have also been experiments with “impressionism” and “expressionism”.
3. The disillusionment of the hope for a better world following the First World War finds expression in the poetry of this period. New writers in the 1930s find socialism and communism as the possible solution to overcome the economic depression caused by the First World War. With the change of subject and attitude, the poetic techniques have also been changed. Many Modernist poets imitate techniques of the seventeenth-century metaphysical poets. Thus, these poets have wanted to break away from the convention, but at the same time, they are not entirely against tradition. They introduce verse Libres or free verse. Symbols, conceits, allusions, and quotations are so frequently used that poetry becomes obscure. A new kind of poetry composed with the fragments of the old appears.
4. Modern literature is dominated by novels. It is more realistic and more concerned with social problems. Influenced by psychology, modern novelists focus on the inner problems of the characters along with their social problems. Instead of a simple, chronological narrative technique, the use of “stream of consciousness” or the “interior monologue” is accepted as a main narrative technique of novels.
5. The drama of the period also becomes realistic. Ibsen, a Norwegian dramatist, deeply influences English dramatic art by mirroring social and family problems. Contemporary problems have been so realistically intellectualized in the drama of this period that these plays, except the plays of Shaw, seem to miss imagination. The poetic drama begins in this period.