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British writers include the English writers, the Welsh writers and the Scottish writers. The ranks of the writers from Britain not only include absolute masters of the various well-established literary forms, but also some of the greatest innovators of the literary world. Britain's writers have excelled in all forms including poetry, novel, drama, short stories, philosophical treatises and autobiographies. In fact, some of the greatest exponents in these fields have come from Britain.
British Poets
Britain has been gifted with a number of outstanding poets through its literary history. Spencer, Shakespeare and Sidney dominated the Renaissance period. Shakespeare wrote verses and sonnets that nearly equal his celebrated plays in beauty and grace. Sidney almost perfected the art of sonnet sequences in his sequence named 'Astrophel and Stella'. Spenser was by far the most representative poet of the Elizabethan age, securing literary glory with 'Faery Queene'.
Soon after the Jacobean era, the genius of Milton started to overshadow others. With works of the magnitude of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, his seat among the literary greats was permanent. The Restoration saw the geniuses of Pope and Dryden flowering. and Milton and Pope, with their fabulous mock-epic poems. This period was followed by the glorious Renaissance period of English poetry. Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge were the greatest early Romantic poets; while Shelley, Keats and Browning became the very epitomes of later Romantic movements. The Victorian period saw the flowering of the geniuses of Tennyson and Robert Browning.
The trauma of the Great War and the period following it brought about the wave of Modernism in Britain. In fact, UK became the very hotbed of High Modernism. T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats were the two greatest poets of this period. Poets like Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes carried on the legacy of modern poetry in Britain.
British Playwrights
The art of the drama started to develop in a coherent manner from the end of the Medieval age. However, it came to its own in the Renaissance age. A number of dramatists, all of excellent calibre, gave British drama a stature that remains untarnished till date. The Elizabethan age was truly the golden age of British drama. If Kyd and Marlowe started the march with their grand “Spanish Tragedy” and Tamburlaine” respectively, it needed the genius of Shakespeare to perfect it. Shakespeare took a vibrant local phenomenon and universalized it almost single-handedly. Ben Johnson was the biggest figure in the Jacobean dramatic scene.
The Resotration brought about a new era of British drama, that was exciting in its own terms. The most important Restoration playwrights were Wycherley, Dryden, Congreve and Etherage. The modern period saw the emergence of the genius of George Bernard Shaw as well as the Absurdist school.
British Novelists
The art of novel developed in Britain in a way different from other places of the continent. In fact, some of the early novelists of Britain were instrumental in giving the novel the form in which we know it today. Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding are two renowned British novelists who rose to prominence around the middle of eighteenth century. Samuel Richardson has pioneered the epistolary form of novel whereas Henry Fielding is known for creating the picaresque style. The name of Jane Austen deserves a special mention as she was the first major women novelist from Britain. Charles Dickens is the most eminent Victorian dramatist, although Thackeray was also popular in his times. Among the modern British writers the novels by Thomas Hardy, E M Forester and D H Lawrence are widely read.
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