English language modernism who was entirely English. On inspection, modernist
literature turns out to be not very English, and English literature turns out not to be
very modernist. It was largely written by exiles.Exiles is the name of a play by James
Joyce, who avoided England. When the Irish Free State was created in 1921, Joyce
had been thirty-nine years a British citizen. W. B. Yeats, a citizen of the UK of Great
Britain and Ireland, aged 57, who was soon to become an Irish Senator, continued to
spend much of his time in England. Samuel Beckett (1906–89), sometimes called the
last modernist, left Ireland in 1937 for Paris. (Yeats and Pound get far less space here
than they would in histories of Irish or American literature.)D.H.Lawrence
D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence(1885–1930) was more of a prophet than an artist. His
first mature work,Sons and Lovers (1913), like his play The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd
(1914), has a 19th-century base – a slice of domestic life – and purpose: to make a
strong emotional impact. When the son (Paul Morel) has escaped from his mother’s
suffocating love and from two love-affairs – one spiritual, one carnal – the narrative
stops. It is autobiographical: Lawrence grew up in a Nottinghamshire pit village; at
home, his high-minded Nonconformist mother cherished him; his father, a miner,
felt out of place at home.342 13 · FROM POST-WAR TO POST-WAR: 1920–55
Events 1920–39
1920 The League of Nations is founded. Civil War in Ireland. Oxford University admits women to
degrees
1921 The Irish Free State is established
1922 Liberals are succeeded by Conservatives. The BBC begins to broadcast
1923 Stanley Baldwin (Conservative Party) becomes Prime Minister
1926 The General Strike
1927 General strikes are made illegal
1928 The vote is given to women
1929 Prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapse. Ramsay Macdonald’s Labour
Government takes office
1930 107 Nazis are elected to the Reichstag. Josef Stalin oppresses Kulaks
1931 Britain leaves the Gold Standard; the pound is devalued. Nearly three million are
unemployed. MacDonald forms a ‘National Government’. Independence is granted to the
Dominions
1932 Hunger march from Jarrow to London. Stalin purges the Communist Party, the
intelligentsia, and the army
1933 Nazis become the largest party in the Reichstag. Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor.
F. D. Roosevelt offers the USA a ‘New Deal’
1934 Hitler purges the Nazi Party in ‘The Night of the Long Knives’
1935 Baldwin forms a National Government. Italy invades Abyssinia
1936 George V dies. Edward VIII accedes, then abdicates. George VI reigns (to 1952).
Spanish Civil War. Soviet Union purges
1937 Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister
1938 Hitler annexes Austria. Chamberlain signs the Munich Agreement with Hitler
1939 A Nazi–Soviet Pact is made. Hitler invades Czechoslovakia and Poland. General Franco
wins the Spanish Civil War. Britain declares war in support of Poland