British Literature

[cockandbull]

Not sure where to start...any ideas?

[tbach24]

Animal Farm is my favorite book not written by Michael Lewis.

[Blarg]

Orwell is a pretty good recommendation.

T.S. Eliot, who actually was an American originally, is pretty damn astonishingl good, if you can stomach poetry, as was Philip Larkin, among the somewhat modern guys.

You can also try Lord Jim or P.G. Wodehouse. Then there's Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, the Bronte sisters(I think they were all Brits). Who wrote Daisy Miller? Name slips my mind, probably because I hated his stuff, except for Daisy Miller, actually.

And there's always that Shakespeare dude. And James Joyce, if you want to count the Irish in with the Brits. And Rudyard Kipling.

Ian McEwan(I think his name is) is well-regarded and more recent.

I'm pretty lackluster on my knowledge of the Brits, but those aren't a bad place to start.

I'm not sure if V.S. Naipaul is normally considered a Brit or not.

[M2d]

dubliners

[blatz]

Clockwork Orange and the Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess.

Heart of Darkness by Conrad.

Besides Paddington Bear, thats all the British literature I can think of.

[Blarg]

It came back to me now -- Kingsley Amis is the guy who wrote Lord Jim. His son, Martin Amis, is at the top of British letters these days.

And Thomas Hardy, for Tess of the D'urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, etc.

And Harold Pinter, for a modern playwright. He also did a lot of screenplays, some for Joseph Losey.

If we're counting Joyce, we should count Samuel Beckett of Waiting for Godot fame. That play is actually a very fun, good read.

[Blackjack]

Books were made by Satan. God made DVDs.

Blackjack
A /images/graemlins/diamond.gifJ /images/graemlins/diamond.gif

[The once and future king]

Graham Greene.

[mmbt0ne]

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And Thomas Hardy, for Tess of the D'urbervilles

[/ QUOTE ]

This book sucks as much as anything I've ever read. It just really didn't do it for me.

William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies
Dickens was British as well.
John Milton
Geoffrey Chaucer
Daniel Defoe

[2planka]

Depends what you're looking for.

Shakespeare is the obvious choice.

I like Doyle's Holmes stories. Read Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone and Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue first, though.

Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf is excellent.

Others not yet mentioned: Bronte, Milton (dense), Austen (beautiful language if verbose), Dickens, Woolf...

Tristan and Isult, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight... I could go on and on.

More contemporary/trashy: Nick Hornby (High Fidelity), Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Dashell Hammett (Maltese Falcon)

[spamuell]

[ QUOTE ]
Ian McEwan(I think his name is) is well-regarded and more recent.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah Ian McEwan is really fantastic, Atonement is my favourite book by him but all that I've read are good.

Kazuo Ishiguro is British I think.

JK Rowling.

[AdamK]

Can't understand why DH Lawrence hasn't been mentioned yet.

[sfer]

[ QUOTE ]
dubliners

[/ QUOTE ]

Ireland is seething.

[sfer]

[ QUOTE ]
Graham Greene.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Olof]

Some of my favourite books by British authors:

A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh

Money - Martin Amis

Brighton Rock - Graham Greene

Billy Liar - Keith Waterhouse

Loot - Joe Orton (play)

Tarinpsotting - Irvine Welsh

The Comfort of Strangers - Ian McEwan

[RunDownHouse]

TS Eliot is incredible, although its poetry, so not "literature" in the vein of novels you'd read in an English class.

Similarly, Nick Hornby is easily my favorite British novelist, but I don't know if his work can be considered literature.

[shadow29]

The Brontes (I recommend Jane Eyre, it's a lot more than just a romance book)

I think that we can count Joyce. Screw Ireland /images/graemlins/grin.gif

I'm a Dickens fan, some aren't. Great Expectations is a good intro to Dickens, I think.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And Thomas Hardy, for Tess of the D'urbervilles

[/ QUOTE ]

This book sucks as much as anything I've ever read. It just really didn't do it for me.

William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies
Dickens was British as well.
John Milton
Geoffrey Chaucer
Daniel Defoe

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't like Defoe or Milton at all, and Chaucer was funny and good but that Olde English is hardly recreational. I never really liked Lord of the Flies, either.

I'm surprised Dickens didn't even occur to me. I loved Great Expectations; I don't really remember what else I read of his except David Copperfield.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ian McEwan(I think his name is) is well-regarded and more recent.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah Ian McEwan is really fantastic, Atonement is my favourite book by him but all that I've read are good.

Kazuo Ishiguro is British I think.

JK Rowling.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the only one of McEwan's I've read was The Cement Garden. I wouldn't mind reading more, though.

[Blarg]

Yeah, Eliot is so good though that you can read a paragraph of his 50 years after the first time you read it -- and maybe the last time -- and recognize it instantly.

I don't like all his stuff, but some of his stuff really gets you and is impossible to forget.

[AsiaKurosawa]

Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Wilde, Dorian Gray
William Blake, (x)
Shelley (Mary), Frankenstein
Conrad, Heart of Darkness
More, Utopia
Huxley, Brave New World
Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
Eliot (george, aka rose ashton), Middlemarch
Carroll, Alice - Looking Glass
Swift, Gulliver's Travels
James, Washington Square

Shakespeare!!!!!!!!!!!!

[M2d]

in hs, a couple of friends and I jokingly referred to the book as "doobie liners". a stoner in our class overheard this and read the book. he was a little pissed when he got to the end with nary a 420 reference.