History of English culture and literature, mainly through poetry

Brother Anthony (An Sonjae)


Contents

Prehistoric England
The Roman occupation
Old English
The Middle Ages
The Renaissance
Early 17th century
The Civil War and the Restoration
The 18th century, Augustan Poetry
 Pre-romanticism
 Revolution & Romanticism
The Victorian age
20th century

 
Prehistoric England

    For hundreds of thousands of years, during the last Ice Age, all the land now forming the island of Britain lay far below the vast polar ice cap. At the end of the ice age, as the ice melted, the resulting huge rivers cut deep ravines through the land bridge linking Britain with the continent and as the sea levels rose the Channel was formed. During the Ice Age, the ice withdrew occasionally, humans entered at those times but then withdrew as the ice returned. After 50,000 BC the island of Britain was inhabited for many thousands of years by nomadic hunter-gatherers. Around 3,000 BC the first Neolithic (New Stone Age) people arrived, coming from Spain or Northern Africa. They brought an advanced culture, living in settlements with domestic animals, growing crops, using pottery and refined stone tools.

    The first remaining monuments from this period are the great barrows in which whole families were buried, and the henges, circles of wood or stone that served as gathering points for the inhabitants, presumably for relgious ceremonies. The most famous is Stonehenge, which began as a wooden henge before 3,000 BC, then in 2,500 BC it was rebuilt using blue stones brought from a place in Wales 380 kms away; no one knows what special meaning was attached to them. The labor involved was unimaginable, each stone weighing about 5 tons. But work stopped, and in 2,300 BC the blue stones were relocated in a circle dominated by far larger stones, weighing up to 45 tons, brought from 30 kms away, with stones laid on top of them to form linked lintels.

    After 2,400 BC people came bringing a new culture, the "Beaker" people, Indo-Europeans who introduced barley. They buried their dead in individual graves. Their technology was more advanced and they produced the first bronze tools, marking the beginning of the Bronze Age.  It was they who constructed the outer circle of stones at Stonehenge. From 1,300 BC, the population shifted off the chalk uplands to the Thames valley and the south-east. Life seems to have become more violent; villages arose, offering mutual protection, and hill-forts were constructed on hill-tops, which were then expanded until the Roman period. Some of them remained as important centers long after the Roman period. The largest is Maiden Castle, in Dorset.

    Around 700 BC, Celts began to enter Britain from Europe, where their culture and language covered a large area. They had mastered the technology of iron-smelting, marking the arrival of the Iron Age. The links with Europe encouraged continuing trade across the Channel but after 500 BC this declined, allowing the British and Irish Celts to develop their own culture and specific dialects. Celtic society was essentially tribal, the generations of a single family forming a clan with a single chief. Shortly before the Roman period, new Belgic tribes of Celts arrived from just across the Channel, from what is now called Belgium after them, and settled in south eastern Britain and along the coast, keeping the names of their original tribes. Among the Celts, religious ceremonies and the memory of tribal history  were entrusted to Druids, but they had no writing system.


The Roman occupation

    Gaul had been the source of tribal groups that invaded Italy; at the same time, east of Gaul across the Rhine river, the Germanic tribes were slowly preparing to move westward and southward, an even greater threat to Rome. Therefore from 58 - 51 BC the Roman army led by Julius Caesar fought the Gallic War across what is now France. As a result of their victory over the Gallic rebel leader Vercingetorix at Alesia in 52, the whole of Gaul came under Roman control and was turned into a Province of the Roman Empire. The Roman presence was so dominant that the entire population lost their Celtic language and by the end of the empire (around AD 460) spoke only Latin. This then evolved into the Provencal and French languages. In 55 BC and then again a few years later, Julius Caesar crossed to Britain (the Greeks and Romans called the British Pretani, so the Romans gave the name Britannia to the whole island). He was interested in its fertility, its mineral wealth, and its leather but also he was preoccupied by the support being given to the Gauls. It was only later, however, that Britain was made a province of Rome. From AD 43 until about 404, the central region of Britain was a province of the Roman Empire, with a strong military presence ensuring Roman domination over the native population. 

    The Romans established their control by means of over 100 military camps (castra) that soon turned into small towns, and also by the creation of some 20 larger town with 5,000 inhabitants. The city they built at the lowest point where the River Thames could be crossed on foot, Londinium (London), grew into the largest Roman city north of the Alps. London Bridge was first built by the Romans. English town names have often kept the Roman -castra ending (Chester, Lancaster, Winchester, Manchester). Southern Wales was also part of the Roman-controlled area, but the Picts living in the northern area they called Caledonia (Scotland) was too wild for them. The emperor Hadrian built a wall from sea to sea to mark the limit of Roman control, between what are now the cities of Carlisle and Newcastle. Hadrian's Wall is still a popular tourist attraction.

    Roman culture included a money economy, literacy (reading and writing), a standardized legal system, buildings of stone or brick bound by mortar, and such amenities as public baths and hypocausts to heat the floors of the rooms. A hot spring gave rise to the city still called Bath. Most important, since the Romans always feared uprisings, they constructed well-paved roads running almost straight across the country; those roads underlie the modern major roads of England. Six of the roads met at London, which had some 20,000 inhabitants. In the rural areas, intensive farming was organized through "villas," compounds containing elaborate housing for the rich owner-manager as well as accommodation for many slaves and storage rooms for the produce destined to be exported. Yet most of the British people continued to speak Celtic, and to live in traditional ways.



Anglo-Saxon England

(Click here for a full-length account of the pre-1066 period, from my book)
(Click here for my page of Medieval links)

    In the early years of the fifth century, the Roman legions were withdrawn to defend Rome against the Germanic tribes that had been moving into Italy for several centuries. In 410 the capture of Rome by the Visigoths led by Alaric heralded the beginning of the collapse of Roman control over western Europe. The towns of Roman Britain soon ceased to function; the use of Latin ceased. Traditional Celtic ways continued unchanged.

    Before the Romans left Britain, they had been employing Saxon mercenaries from north Germany (part of which is still known as Saxony). In the century following the Roman withdrawal, more Saxons and other groups from north Germany and the Netherlands, speaking various West Germanic dialects  settled in the eastern and southern parts of Britain. They subjugated or eliminated the Celts, who remained dominant in the north and west, and in Ireland.  The Germanic people were not Christian, but had the traditional religion of northern Europe, with multiple gods led by Thor and Woden. It is not clear if this process should be seen as an invasion or as a gradual arrival. One mystery is why the new arrivals did not learn the local Celtic language. There is no other example from this age of migration where the language of a small number of outsiders took over from the native language so totally. Virtually no word of Celtic origin was adopted. Some suggest that an epidemic might have decimated the Celtic population of eastern Britian so that the arriving Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc found no one living there..

    One of the Germanic group was known as “Angles” from the name of their spears, just as “Saxon” derives from the short sword they used. The Angles were to give their name to England (Angle-land). Soon after the Roman withdrawal, groups from Ireland, known as “Scots,” began to settle in the western parts of what is now Scotland. Much of the region was originally controlled by the mysterious Picts who later disappeared completely. Ireland started to become Christian through contacts with Wales during the later Roman period (Christianity became the official imperial religion around 380) but the main name associated with the foundation of Irish Christianity is that of Patrick, who brought Christianity to much of northern Ireland in the later 5th century.

    In 597, a team of Christian missionaries sent from Rome, led by a priest called Augustine, arrived in the place now called Canterbury, in Kent. They began to bring Christianity and Latin (Roman) culture to the rulers of the various kingdoms. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, the mother church of English Christianity. The copy of the Gospels that he brought with him can still be seen. Other missionaries from western Scotland brought Christianity to northern England at the same time. With this new religion came the language, literature, and legal traditions of Rome and, above all, the art of writing. The Germanic language and culture of Angles and Saxons now united with the language and culture of southern Europe.

The old oral tradition of memories and stories was replaced by written records. Germanic society was centered in the hall of the farms (in German Hof, the French name for which gave the English name of the royal court) where lords and thanes lived together. There the scop was the professional singer and teller of tales. Now a shift happened, as the old oral poetry was transformed in the libraries of Christian monasteries into written “literature.” The famous story of Caedmon's hymn told by Bede (c.673 - 735) is symbolic of the transformation of oral, pagan or heroic Germanic poetry into written, Christian poetry. Bede's Ecclesiastical History and his many other works were made possible by the foresight of Benedict Biscop, the founder of the monasteries at Wearmouth, who brought back dozens of books from his visits to Italy and established a library that was to serve as the link between Rome and the chaotic post-Roman world. The artistry displayed in some of the great illuminated texts of the Gospels is breathtaking, as seen in the Lindisfarne Gospels.


Old English Elegy

Old English elegy seems to spring from heroic society's experience of history as glory and loss. It may perhaps best be seen as a poetic expression of human fragility, of the pain of the loss of what deserved not to be lost. It is also strongly marked by an experience of human solitude, the speaker being isolated from normal social existence. There is a way of viewing life in this world as a combination of glory and doom that does not look beyond the tomb, but leads the reader of the poem back to the poem, since what had to die is yet memorialized and thus perpetuated in the elegiac text itself. That the poetics of temporality and transience should be so strongly present at so early a stage of English poetry is striking.

The poems which are generally termed elegies are all found in one manuscript. The Exeter Book was given to the library of the Cathedral at Exeter (Devon) by Leofric, the first bishop, who died in 1072. It is still there. It was probably written about a century before this. It contains over thirty Old English poems, as well as almost a hundred short riddles. Some of the poems it contains are religious, such as Christ, The Judgement Day, or saints' lives, but it also includes some the oldest heroic fragments, like Widsith and Deor. The most famous elegies are The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin.

The greatest Old English heroic poem, Beowulf, contained in another manuscript, is also full of elegaic passages stressing the future disasters that will overwhelm the now successful 'nations' led by Hygelac and Beowulf. Beowulf tells of three separate battles fought by Beowulf (Bear's son) against supernatural enemies of human society: Grendel,  Grendel's Mother, and (fifty years later) a treasure-guarding dragon. In this last battle, Beowulf is abandoned by all but one of his cowardly thanes, and dies of his wounds after killing the dragon.

The Old-English elegies have been especially popular in the 20th century, because their suggestive evocations of what seem to be (but is not) intense individual experience are in some ways close to the dramatic monologues which Robert Browning developed in the 19th century and which represent one major form of modern lyric poetry. Ezra Pound ventured to write his own version of The Seafarer, freer than a strict translation since he knew little Old English. The Seafarer depicts a situation of mysterious isolation, the speaker is seemingly adrift in a boat. Much the same motif is found in The Wanderer, in which the general moral application of the poem is clearer, and the rhetorical development more varied. Some critics consider that the Christian passages at the beginning and end were added later but this is not very likely. The central figure has lost his social role and finds no replacement; misfortune drives him to meditate on the fragility of all human relations. He contemplates the ruins of abandoned Roman buildings and tries to imagine what life in them was like. He asks a series of questions echoing the classical ubi sunt theme -- "where have they all gone?" that stresses the transience of all earthly life.


 

The Wanderer

1.    He who is alone often survives to find mercy, pity from God,
2.    though he long must stir with his arms the frost-cold sea,
3.    troubled in heart obliged to tread paths of exile over watery ways.
4.    Full-fixed is that man's fate.
5.    So spoke the traveller, recalling hard times,
6.    fierce battle-slaughter, the deaths of dear kinsfolk.
7.    Before day broke, many times I have had to tell out alone my cares;
8.    there is no-one alive now to whom I dare reveal my secret thoughts.
9.    True, it's a fine habit for a man to keep his heart's vaults locked tight,
10.    to keep the hoard-casket of his mind close shut, whatever his thoughts.
11.    A weary heart's thoughts cannot resist Fate,
12.    an angry mind's cannot bring help.
13.    Those eager for fame shut their sorrowful thoughts
14.    captive in their breast's treasure-chest. So wretched with cares,
15.    I have left my homeland and family behind,
16.    and here am obliged to use fetters to fasten the thoughts of my heart.
17.    All this since the time, many years ago now,
18.    that I enclosed my gold-friend in the darkness of his grave;
19.    then I crossed the web of the waves winter-grieving for the loss of a hall.
20.    I sought again a giver of treasure, a place somewhere, be it far or near,
21.    where in some mead-hall I might find a man
22.    who would recognize my family's name, or comfort me in my friendlessness,
23.    happy to see me come.
24.    Any who have felt it know how cruel is the sorrow of one
25.    who must live alone without love or protection.
26.    There is nothing left but the path of exile, no sign of twisted gold armlets;
27.    in his heart-case frozen thoughts, no earthly joys.
28.    He can only remember former hall-warriors, the taking of treasure,
29.    the eager feasts of youthful days with the lost gold-friend.
30.    All those delights are gone now.
31.    Any who have long been obliged to forgo the guiding of a lord they love,
32.    will know: when the poor lonely fellow lies sleeping sadly
33.    it will seem at times that he is once again there kissing and holding his liege,
34.    expressing thanks, laying hands and head on his knees as in former times
35.    when gifts were being shared out.
36.    But then he wakes, and has no lord,
37.    but only the tawny waves and the gulls bathing with wings outstretched,
38.    under frost and snowfall, mingled with hail.
39.    Then his heart aches more, longing for the lord he once loved;
40.    sorrows renew with the sudden memory of long lost kinsmen:
41.    he thinks to hail them gladly, gazes eagerly at that company of warriors
42.    whose shadows fade, gliding away over the waters.
43.    No familiar voices come echoing from those passing shades,
44.    and cares deepen as he sets out again, time after time, over the web of the waves.
45.    No wonder, then, if my thoughts grow dark
46.    when I consider human life in this world;
47.    how terribly swiftly the brave young thanes leave the hall-floor for ever!
48.    Daily this middle-earth fails and falls.
49.    Wisdom can only be found with time, the fruit of many winters endured.
50.    The wise man knows patience, must not be inflamed, not quick to speak,
51.    be neither too fearful nor too blithe, not greedy for gain,
52.    or eager to boast without prior thought.
53.    A man who boasts must first wait and reflect where his words may lead.
54.    A wise warrior should think of the dreadful days
55.    when all this world's wealth will lie waste;
56.    just as we see in many places wind-blown walls covered with layers of frost,
57.    storm-beaten and drear. The old wine-halls totter, their former lords lie bereft of joy,
58.    for all the heroes have fallen who formerly sat against the wall;
59.    some went in war, carried away, this one borne by a bird over the deep,
60.    and this devoured by a wolf and Death, while another sadly hid in an earthen grave.
61.    Mankind's Maker laid waste all those buildings,
62.    the old work of giants stood there useless, no echo now of their former guards' songs.
63.    So the wise man ponders deeply upon these ruins, and this dark life,
64.    recalls the slaughters of the past, and speaks:
65.    Hwaer cwom mearg? Hwaer cwom mago? Hwaer cwom maththumgyfa?
66.    Hwaer cwom symbla gesetu? Hwaer sindon seledreamas?
67.    Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga!
68.    Eala theodnes thrym! Hu seo thrag gewat,
69.    genap under nihthelm, swa heo no waere.
70.    Where did the horse go? Where the bold youth? Where is the treasure-giver?
71.    Where is the feast-place? Where the hall's bliss?
72.    Alas, bright cup! Alas, man of arms!
73.    Alas, the lord's might! How those days have gone,
74.    dark under night, as if they never had been.
75.    Now the snake-adorned wall stands there marvellously high,
76.    towering over signs of what was, dear companions.
77.    Spears have taken the lords away, blood-thirsty weapons of Fate almighty.
78.    Storms beat at the walls, and snow heralds winter,
79.    falling thick it binds the earth as darkness falls
80.    while northern hailstones harshly proclaim hatred for men.
81.    Earth's kingdoms are wretched, for Fate intervenes to change the world.
82.    Wealth is fleeting, friends, all men, and women too are fleeting.
83.    Every home shall soon lie bare.
84.    So spoke the man whose heart was wise, sitting apart at the council-meeting.
85.    The good man does not break his word,
86.    and one should never speak before one knows what will truly bring relief,
87.    such is a leader with his courage.
88.    And all will be well for the one who seeks favor and comfort from the Father above,
89.    with whom alone all stability dwells.


 

From Old English to Middle English

(Click here for a full account of the pre-1300 period, French and English, from my book)
(Click here for my page of Medieval links)

    Old English came to England as the West Germanic languages of Angles and Saxons. After about 790, more and more Danes and Norwegian “Vikings” settled in northern and eastern England, as well as Scotland and Ireland. Alfred, leader of mostly Saxon Wessex in the south, succeeded in bringing these new arrivals into the Church and united them with English-speaking society around 880. Meanwhile, other Norwegian settlers had found a new home in western France. Coming from the North, these became known as Normans (North men) and the region in France where they lived received their name, Normandy. In 1066, William of Normandy claimed the throne of England after the death of Edward the Confessor and won it in the Battle of Hastings against Harold. This whole saga is the subject of the Bayeux Tapestry.

    William took control of England, and gave its land to his companions without regard for the rights and legal titles of the Anglo-Saxons. Very quickly, the entire ruling class of England (in state and Church) was of Norman origin, spoke French, and had strong roots in France. For almost 150 years, the English language was spoken but not written. The government of England was done using French while Latin was the language of the Church and of legal records. During this time, the English language grew simpler in grammar and slowly began to absorb many new words from French and Latin. Today that new language is called “Middle English.”

    In France and in the French-speaking English court, literature developed. The old heroic poems were soon overshadowed by “romances” in which stories of knights’ heroic deeds of “chivalry” gave equal importance to their “courtesy.”  Romances set in the court of King Arthur  with its Round Table developed, first in verse thanks to Chretien de Troyes, then in prose. The great love story of Tristan and Iseult was expanded into a huge prose romance clearly designed to entertain rich people with much spare time. Love thus became as important a theme as heroism, and more interesting because it led to intense self-analysis and reflection on the tension between passion and one's social obligations. This new experience of "romantic love" (courtly love) first developed in the poems written by the troubadors in southern France (Provence).

13th century English society saw some vital developments. Early in the century King John lost the trust of the barons (most powerful lords) by his poor rule. In 1215, they and the merchants of London joined to force the king to sign an agreement guaranteeing their rights and freedom, Magna Carta. This document became a powerful symbol of the limitations of the English monarch in later centuries and has been celebrated in the United States as the origin of the ideals of equality and justice. By limiting and defining the power of the king, as well as by bringing together landowners and city merchants, it played a major role in the development of the English system of government. This was in contrast to the day in 1170 when King Henry II was so sure of his power that he sent knights to murder the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, who had challenged what he felt were his rights. He was wrong, as it happened and the Church brought him to his knees.

John might have tried a come-back but died the next year. Hie son Henry III was only 9 and grew up under the control of the nobles. When he became fully king he began to spend much money financing the Pope's wars and enjoying himself. In 1258, the earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort, led a revolt. The nobles elected a council, called parliament (discussion meeting) which took control of the nation's finances, derived from taxes paid by the merchants. In 1265, the king and his allied nobles defeated Simon de Montfort and killed him. Henry died in 1272.

The new king, Edward I, saw that most of his father's income came not from dues paid by the nobility but from taxes, paid by people involved in business in the cities. Legally, taxes could only be demanded if those taxed agreed, there was no traditional legal obligation for them to give the king money. The earlier Council was composed of lords. In 1275, Edward summoned a parliament that would include representatives of the "commons" --  "gentry" (land-owning knights from the rural areas) and city merchants. This became the House of Commons and its mixed composition made it unique in Europe. From the start, it was agreed that all laws (statutes) and taxes had to be agreed by the two houses of parliament (lords and commons), that the king could not make or change laws or levy taxes otherwise.

    During the 12th and 13th centuries, cities expanded; a free class of rich merchants began to develop there, universities were founded in Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge, much changed. Great "Gothic" cathedrals were built across Europe. Philosophers learned Greek from the Arabs and translated the works of Aristotle into Latin. The logic and interest in distinguishing between categories they learned from him gave birth to the systematic theology known as “Scholasticism.” By the later 13th century, the members of the high classes in England were speaking English as their first language, although most could also speak and read French. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries in Italy, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) showed that his native Italian was as capable as Latin of expressing deep emotions and thoughts, in the Divine Comedy, especially.


The 14th century

(Click here for a full account of the 14th century from my book)
(Click here for my page of Medieval links)

    From about 1350, two other Italians were continuing his task: Petrarch and Boccaccio. Dante took the love lyrics that had first been composed by the troubadors of southern France (Provence) and applied their conventions in writing about the lady he was devoted to, Beatrice, in his Vita Nuova. Petrarch is commonly known as the “Father of Christian Humanism,” the founder of the Italian Renaissance. As a poet writing (like Dante) in Italian, he composed his Canzoniere to celebrate a woman named Laura. Like Beatrice, Laura died in her youth and the devotion of both poets is idealistic, even mystical. In addition to writing long narrative poems that Chaucer adapted in his Troilus and Criseyde and the “Knight’s Tale,” Boccaccio gave renaissance Europe a collection of stories about the fall of great men, De Casibus, that established the almost senseless fall of a great man from prosperity to ruin as the essence of tragedy.

The 14th century was a turbulent century for England and France. In 1327 King Edward II was forced by Parliament to abdicate for failing to rule effectively. He was murdered in prison soon after. His young son became Edward III who in 1338 launched a military campaign against France, the start of what is know as the Hundred Years' War. The claim was that the king of England was the legal king of France. The main reason for the war was in fact a need to provide the nobility of England with opportunities for plunder and ransom. In 1346, the English army, armed with longbows, defeated the French at Crecy, killing many of the leading noblemen.

In 1347-8 the whole of Europe fell victim to the Black Death, which killed between 30 and 50% of the population, leaving some villages completely empty. It is only amazing that society continued to function during such a terrible plague.

Edward III's eldest son, the Black Prince, was a ferocious fighter who had won major battles at Bordeaux and Poitiers in 1355-6 but he died suddenly in 1376, and Edward III died in1377. The new king was the son of the Black Prince, Richard II, but he was only 10. He ruled with great difficulty, opposed fiercely by his uncle Thomas, duke of Gloucester. Richard's only glorious moment came when he confronted the rebel army of peasants during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, aged only 14. Richard wanted peace with France, so he married a French princess in 1396, though she was only 8. Thomas of Gloucester, hostile to peace, prepared to depose Richard so Richard ordered his murder. Also involved in this plot was Richard's cousin, Henry, son of John of Gaunt, who was sent into exile. On hearing of the death of his father, fearing to lose all his property, Henry raised an army, invaded England and deposed Richard. He was murdered in prison soon after. Henry IV had to confront a number of revolts led by other lords. His son Henry V returned to France and won a famous battle at Agincourt in 1415. He too wed a French princess and it was agreed their son should be king of both England and France. But Henry died when that son was only 6 months old and the ensuing struggle for power led to the Wars of the Roses. Meanwhile, Joan of Arc helped give new courage to the French and England was driven out of France.


    Geoffrey Chaucer

(Click here for a full account of Petrarch, Boccaccio and Chaucer from my book)
(Click here for my Chaucer-related links)

    Chaucer was born in London in 1343 or so, died in 1400. His family was a merchant family but he grew up in the royal court and spent his life in the king’s service. He knew Latin, French and Italian. Having twice been sent to Italy, he was able to bring back books by the 3 great Italian writers and translated (adapted) some of what he found in them. He also translated Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy from Latin. His adaptation of Boccaccio’s Filocolo as Troilus and Crisseyde. Once that was completed, he began to compose the Canterbury Tales, presented as a collection of very disparate stories of varying kinds related within the framework of a pilgrimage to Canterbury. A similar external “frame” is faound in Boccaccio’s Decameron but it is not sure that Chaucer knew that work directly. However, Chaucer never completed the Canterbury Tales, which remained unfinished at his death.

    Far more than Boccaccio, Chaucer gave life to the people of his “frame,” the pilgrims he introduces in the “General Prologue.” The skill with which he portrays people of differing social levels, both secular and religious, has made this the most popular part of the Canterbury Tales. The pilgrims’ portraits are often inspired by conventional ideas about the kind of people in various activities found in Chaucer’s time. The doctor loves gold, the friar likes money and young girls, but dislikes poor people, the monk enjoys the expensive sport of hunting, while the miller steals corn. By contrast, the clerk (student), parson, the plowman, and in a sense the knight seem almost over-idealized. At the same time, each pilgrim is described with traits that mark them out as individuals.


 
The Renaissance

(Click here for a full account of the English 15th century, as well as the European renaissance, from my book)
(Click here for my Renaissance-related links)

    After Chaucer, literature continued to be written but there is little that can be read with much pleasure today. In the royal court, courtiers liked to write poetry to display their verbal and emotional skills. All over Europe, Petrarch’s Canzoniere led to an explosion of love poetry, mostly in the form of “complaints” in which a man expresses frustration with his “cruel lady.” He loves a woman who does not return his love, or who refuses to remain faithful. “Unrequited love” became the oddly popular subject of thousands of poems, often written in the sonnet form that Petrarch and his Italian imitators made so popular.

    In England, the mid-15th century was a time of great social conflict as different branches of the royal family, mostly divided between the dukes of York and Lancaster, fought for the throne in the Wars of the Roses. In 1485, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III (the last Plantagenet ruler) and became Henry VII. A few years before this, in the mid-1470s, William Caxton brought printing to London. Gutenberg had first introduced printing to Europe in the 1450s, printing the Latin Bible. The books that Caxton printed and sold were almost entirely medieval romances and included the works of Chaucer.


The 16th century

(Click here for a full account of the English renaissance, including More's Utopia, from my book)

The “Northern Renaissance” came to England with a visit by the Dutchman Erasmus just before 1500 and led to a new stress being put on education in the Latin classics as the best preparation for the leading citizens in the increasingly prosperous towns; “grammar schools” were founded for that purpose. Erasmus’s closest friend in England was Thomas More, who wrote his Utopia for him. Thomas More rose to be Lord Chancellor but he opposed the king when he wanted to separate the English Church from the universal Catholic Church under the Pope, so he was executed as a traitor. He is a Catholic saint.

    Henry VII died in 1509 and his son, Henry VIII, initiated the Reformation in England by separating the English Church from the control of Rome (in order to be free to divorce his Spanish wife because she seemed unable to give him a son) and abolishing all the monasteries in order to steal their land and wealth. A more idealistic kind of Protestantism arose across Europe, led by Luther, Zwingli, Calvin in Germany and Swizterland. Between 1548 when Henry died and 1558, England was first drawn towards Protestantism by those ruling in the name of the child Edward VI (Henry’s only son despite his six marriages) but when he died aged 17, in 1553, his older half-sister Mary tried to bring back Catholicism. By this time, western Europe was divided politically and culturally between the Catholic South and the Protestant North. While the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and its subsequent exploitation brought Spain and Portugal immense wealth, the merchant cities of north Germany and the Baltic were in fact far more dynamic. The English merchants felt no affinity for the conservative Catholicism of the south and were delighted when “bloody” Mary died in 1558, after marrying the king of Spain, and her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth became the last Tudor monarch.

(Click here for a full account of the events of Elizabeth's reign, from my book)
(Click here for a full account of the works of Edmund Spenser, from my book)
(Click here for a full account of the development of fiction in Europe and the works of Sir Philip Sidney, from my book)
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    Elizabeth was only 25 when she became Queen, she reigned until 1603 and left the memory of the “Elizabethan Era” as a time of national prosperity, full of a new patriotism. Many felt that God had a special plan for Protestant England. The greatest crisis came in 1588 when Catholic Spain sent a large fleet, the “Armada,” to conquer England. Thanks to the skill of the English sailors, and a sudden violent storm, the Armada was defeated.


 
William Shakespeare : Sonnets

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    Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. Little is known of his life before he arrived in London and in about 1590 joined the world of the theatre, perhaps first as an actor, but then as a writer of plays. That main activity is not one that can be covered in a few minutes or a few lines. Here, we can only focus on a few of his sonnets. Again, nothing is known of the origin of these sonnets; no one can say whether they are autobiographical in any direct sense. Many were surely written in the mid-1590s, at the same time as plays like Romeo and Juliet, which includes several sonnets. The sonnets were not published until 1609, however, and again it is not clear if Shakespeare wanted them published. It is not even certain that they are in the order he wanted but no other edition was published in his lifetime.

    Many have been startled to realize that most of Shakespeare’s sonnets are addressed by a male speaker (a poet) to a younger nobleman. The word “love” is used quite naturally and it is not sure that in Shakespeare’s culture this would have been found strange. The later sonnets are addressed to a woman, the poet’s mistress, but their tone is harsh, far removed from the Petrarchan style of love complaint. Here are a few sonnets that are particularly valued as models of their kind. Shakespeare retired to his home town in about 1611 and died in 1616, only 52 years old.


73.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
 


The Earlier 17th Century

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     When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, her distant cousin King James VI of Scotland was called south to inherit the throne. His family name was Stuart. His son Charles duly followed him when he died in 1625. Both kings believed that as monarchs they had absolute God-given rights. They tried to ignore the old English constitutional law that obliged the king to rule “in Parliament”. According to several centuries of tradition, no king could impose taxes, make new laws, or raise an army without the consent of Parliament, which included an elected House of Commons as well as the House of Lords. As a result, the Stuarts lost the affection of their subjects and the royal court became an extravagant private spectacle. In 1603, the king’s service still offered many possible jobs for ambitious young men like John Donne, but within a few years that changed and modern, business-oriented ideas of society began to take over among the citizens of London.


John Donne

(Click here for a full account of the life and works of John Donne, from my book)

    Born in 1572 in London, John Donne lost his father when he was 4 and his mother was obliged to remarry at once. She was the grandaughter of Sir Thomas More’s sister and two of her brothers were Catholic priests. After the Pope declared in 1570 that Elizabeth was not the legitimate queen of England, Catholics were suspected of being potential traitors, priests were seen as agents of an enemy power. Donne grew up in this Catholic milieu, where people struggled to remain faithful to the Church while showing themselves to be loyal subjects of the queen. After the Armada in 1588, this became even more difficult.

    Donne’s father had been a highly respected citizen, his first step-father was a well-known medical doctor. He grew up eager to become a powerful and respected citizen too, but he soon realized that being a Catholic was by now a very serious obstacle. Since his family had no land, no wealth, he turned to the Inns of Court (law school) in London where rich young men and poor but ambitious young men mingled and useful connections could be made. Like many of his fellow-students, Donne enjoyed plays, entertainments, and he cultivated his verbal talents by composing poems as a way of making others notice him.

(Click here for a full account of the life and works of Ben Jonson, from my book)

    Donne was born within a year of Ben Jonson, and both wrote poetry that turns away from the mannered, rather old-fashioned styles of the Elizabethan age. Donne was precocious, and his sensual, Ovidian Elegies and epigrams as well as other poems were almost certainly written in the 1590s, not long after Shakespeare’s sonnets. Yet they sound very different. Donne follows and develops the use of “conceits” that was admired all over Europe, especially in Italy. The “conceit” is an artificial image that demands thought, that is unexpected and causes the reader to pause for reflection before provoking an admiring response when its aptness is recognized. Donne's complicated use of such images inspired the Restoration writer and critic John Dryden (1631 - 1700) to write in his essay Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693): "he affects the metaphysics . . . and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love." Later, Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) developed Dryden's ideas in his life of Abraham Cowley (1618 - 1667) in Lives of the Poets (1779): 

The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. (. . . .)  Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together, nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased. 

These quotations are the source of the idea that there was a "school" (group) of "Metaphysical Poets" led by Donne.  It is a mistaken idea, but certainly several poets of the earlier 17th century used rather "baroque" images to introduce a new energy into their poetry. They were much admired by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot in the 1920s, as they formulated their vision of Modernism, in which poetry should be difficult.

Donne probably wrote his poems for a closed circle of sophisticated, high-class young men. It is impossible to know when any given poem was written. Some of his poems are conventionally libertine, declaring that faithfulness in love is wrong. Some are anti-feminist, insisting that women are always unfaithful. Others are wooing poems, urging the female to accept a sexual relationship. A few are intensely positive in their affirmation of ecstatic mutual love. There is no way of telling how “sincere” or “personal” any poem was. They were not published in printed form until 1633, after Donne’s death in 1631, yet it is clear that he valued them and had prepared a collection for future publication.

    By 1600, Donne had got a very promising job in the household of a very powerful lord, Sir Thomas Egerton. But early in 1601 he secretly married Anne More, the young niece of Lady Egerton, who was living in the house. He was socially inferior, she was only 17 while he was nearing 30. He lost his job and the trust of his employer, though he kept the affection of some of his friends who helped him financially. Later Donne became a famous churchman and preacher, and was Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London from 1621 until he died in 1631. He wrote religious poems which betray considerable emotional strain and express doubts about his salvation, doubts which the poem strives to overcome.


The Sun Rising

1.    Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
2.    Why dost thou thus
3.    Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
4.    Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
5.    Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
6.    Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
7.    Go tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
8.    Call country ants to harvest offices;
9.    Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
10.    Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

11.    Thy beams, so reverend, and strong
12.    Why shouldst thou think?
13.    I could eclipse and cloud them-with a wink,
14.    But that I would not lose her sight so long:
15.    If her eyes have not blinded thine,
16.    Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
17.    Whether both the India's of spice and Mine
18.    Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
19.    Ask for those Kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
20.    And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

21.    She is all States, and all Princes, I,
22.    Nothing else is.
23.    Princes do but play us; compar'd to this,
24.    All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
25.    Thou sun art half as happy as we,
26.    In that the world's contracted thus;
27.    Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties be
28.    To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
29.    Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
30.    This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.



A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
1.    As virtuous men pass mildly away,
2.    And whisper to their souls to go,
3.    Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
4.    The breath goes now, and some say, No;

5.    So let us melt, and make no noise,
6.    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
7.    'Twere profanation of our joys
8.    To tell the laity our love.

9.    Moving of th'earth brings harms and fears,
10.    Men reckon what it did and meant;
11.    But trepidation of the spheres,
12.    Though greater far, is innocent.

13.    Dull sublunary lovers' love
14.    (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
15.    Absence, because it doth remove T
16.    hose things which elemented it.

17.    But we, by a love so much refined
18.    That our selves know not what it is,
19.    Inter-assured of the mind,
20.    Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

21.    Our two souls therefore, which are one,
22.    Though I must go, endure not yet
23.    A breach, but an expansion,
24.    Like gold to airy thinness beat.

25.    If they be two, they are so
26.    As stiff twin compasses are two;
27.    Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
28.    To move, but doth, if th'other do.

29.    And though it in the centre sit,
30.    Yet when the other far doth roam,
31.    It leans and hearkens after it,
32.    And grows erect, as that comes home.

33.    Such wilt thou be to me, who must
34.    Like th'other foot, obliquely run;
35.    Thy firmness makes my circle just,
36.    And makes me end where I begun.


Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God
1.    Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
2.    As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
3.    That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
4.    Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
5.    I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
6.    Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
7.    Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
8.    But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
9.    Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
10.    But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
11.    Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
12.    Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
13.    Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
14.    Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.


The starting point of John Donne's Meditation 17 in his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), written after he had recovered from a serious illness,  is the experience of hearing the church bell ring to announce that someone in the neighborhood is dying. The sick man wonders for a moment if the bell is not ringing for him. From there Donne passes to a characteristically unexpected image of Heaven as a library:

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that!

The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me, for that child is thereby connected to that Head which is my Head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one Author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is, not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.  (....)    No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,as well as if a promontory were,as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death dimin­ishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. (....)

(Click here for a full account of the drama of the Jacobean and Caroline period, from my book)
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George Herbert  (1593 - 1633)

Twenty years younger than John Donne, Herbert spent much of his life at the university of Cambridge. His mother and elder brother were closer to John Donne than he was. A devout Christian, Herbert did not become a priest until 1630, but from 1626 he was responsible for a parish in Huntingdonshire. It was not far from Little Gidding, where Nicholas Ferrar and his brothers with their families had recently established a new kind of pious community, not unlike a monastery, with regular prayers, community service, and study. The community enjoyed the support of the king, who visited it (he was a pious and moral-living man).   In April 1630, Herbert became rector (parish priest) of Bemerton, a small rural village near Salisbury. He was ordained priest in September 1630 and served humbly the simple people of that remote village until he died of tuberculosis in 1633. Herbert often visited Little Gidding and was extremely close to its founder. Just before he died, he sent the manuscript of his poems to Nicholas Ferrar, asking him to decide whether to publish them or burn them. On receiving the manuscript containing Herbert's poems, Ferrar read them with deep emotion and immediately had them published.  They formed a small book entitled The Temple. He is often considered to be the first truly "Anglican" poet; some of his poems were later turned into hymns.


The later 17th Century: Civil War, Interregnum, Restoration, Glorious Revolution

    King Charles, after becoming king in 1625, soon provoked great anger in his subjects. In England he tried to rule without Parliament, raising money by other means than regular taxes. In Scotland, he tried to impose a more Catholic form of worship that was unacceptable to the strictly Protestant (Presbyterian) Scots. When the Scots rose in rebellion in 1638, he needed an army and was forced to summon Parliament. Parliament demanded a radical change in his way of ruling; they decided that the army should be controlled by them, and not be subject to the king. In 1642, civil war broke out between Parliamentarians and Royalists (Cavaliers and Roundheads). Much of the dispute was religious; The Parliamentarian army came under the command of Oliver Cromwell, a devout Protestant from East Anglia and a military genius. Soon the Royalists were defeated (there were only a few real battles) and the king was imprisoned. Parliament abolished the monarchy, and the House of Lords, changed the system of church government to the Calvinist, “presbyterian” form, rejecting the Catholic system of bishops and priests. Because many people still supported the king, and threatened rebellion to reinstate him, a group of radicals decided he should be executed and staged a summary trial. King Charles I was executed in Whitehall in January 1649, the first modern revolution.

The period during which there was no king in England came to be known later as the Interregnum. The new system of government, known as the Commonwealth (translating the Latin Res publica, republic) saw intense debate about the best form of government, usually religious and based on texts from the Bible, but no agreement was reached and Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector ruled with even more absolute powers than the old king had, since he did not need to call Parliament. He died suddenly in 1658, with nothing settled for the future, and a group of leading citizens decided that there would have to be a return to the old systems with king, lord, and bishops. Charles’ son returned from exile in France as Charles II and in 1660 England experienced the “Restoration.”

    Charles II was a very sensitive politician and he became a popular monarch, especially by refusing to leave London during the Great Plague of 1665 (the last great outbreak of the plague)  and by helping to fight the Great Fire which destroyed 80% of London in 1666. He had many children, but none by his wife, so when he died in 1685 his brother James became king. Since 1660, the citizens of London especially had been increasingly alarmed by the Catholic sympathies of the court; the years of exile in France were no doubt partly to blame, and the support the Catholic Church gave to the most absolute forms of monarchy when England had learned to value open debate and had fought the Civil War to protect the rights of Parliament. Where Charles was obviously pro-Catholic but remained outside the Church, although his wife was Catholic, his brother James was a practising Catholic and when he became king it was clear that he wished to challenge the 1660 settlement, by which the Church of England was the one national church.

By 1688, the public opposition to James was so intense that his nerve suddenly broke and he fled from England without abdicating. This is known as the Glorious (bloodless) Revoution. His sister Mary was a Protestant, wed to the ruler of the Netherlands, William of Orange, and finally the two were invited to become joint rulers of Great Britain. In 1689 the Bill of Rights gave legal form to the future succession and declared clearly that the monarch could be deposed legally by Parliament if the contract between monarch and nation were clearly broken. This marks the beginning of modern Britain’s “constitutional monarchy.”  James’s subsequent arrival in northern  Ireland in an attempt to regain the crown in 1689, and the support he received there from the native, Catholic population, prompted William of Orange to reassert Protestant domination there in a violent repression in 1690 after the Battle of the Boyne. The memory of those events underlies the recent Troubles in Northern Ireland.



John Milton

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Milton was born in London in1608 and died in 1674. Milton's first major poem, "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (often called "The Nativity Ode") was composed for Christmas 1629, when he had just turned twenty-one. For Milton, it seems to have marked his birth as a mature poet. He was at Cambridge then and probably wrote the parallel poems "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" while still at Cambridge, in 1631. In all these poems, he is writing poetry about the possible ways in which poetry (or what we know as "literature") may be written and received in society. The poems are full of contrasts between sounds and silence, outwardness and inwardness, pleasure and thoughtfulness, day and night. In each poem, Milton can be felt posing the question of his future career, but without finding any clear reply. While he was waiting for his future course to become clear, he left Cambridge in 1632 and went to live at his father's country house at Horton in Buckinghamshire. There he continued to read intensively for another six years.

In 1637 Milton wrote the elegy Lycidas in memory of Edward King who had also been a student at Cambridge and who died when the ship he was going to Ireland on struck a rock and sank. This poem was published in a collection of tributes to King in 1638. It is not sure that King and Milton were close friends; the poem mentions that King wrote poetry and was preparing to become a minister (pastor) in the church. Much of the poem seems to dwell on the possibility of combining poetry and public service of God, which was Milton's great concern. From 1637 to 1639 Milton travelled in Europe, meeting other noted humanists such as Galileo. Hearing of the approaching conflicts of the Civil War, he returned home. From that moment the only poems he wrote for many years were a few sonnets, and occasional poems in Latin or Italian. All his energies went into writing polemical pamphlets.

    After the execution of Charles I, Milton published tracts in favour of a republican form of society and became the Latin secretary to the new Council of State. His skills in writing Latin made him invaluable for correspondence with the rulers of Europe who wanted to know how a king could be executed. Many of his writings were so powerfully radical that they were condemned and burnt in France. In the mid-1640s, Milton realized that his sight was growing weak, in part at least because of his endless reading. By 1652 he was completely blind. The Commonwealth's collapse meant the failure of the social and religious dream he had worked for. He was arrested at the Restoration, but the poet Andrew Marvell was able to secure his release. The rest of his life was devoted to the composition of the three great works: Paradise Lost (1667 & 1674), Paradise Regained, and  Samson Agonistes (1671). In 1673 there appeared a second edition of his Poems.
 

The 18th century

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Augustan Satire

In Restoration London, the court was not very important. Wealthy citizens now began to meet in coffee houses, where they did business and exchanged reports of the latest news. The wealthy were now involved in the search for profit, although with their new wealth they tended to buy country estates and titles. The “wit” with which young men like Donne had tried to impress powerful courtiers a century before was now applied in daily conversation to impress one’s colleagues. The dominant tone was satire because almost every aspect of traditional society had become fragile and uncertain, while there was much corruption.

The name “Augustan Age” given to the early 18th century reflects the sense of new beginnings and increased prosperity that marked the first years of the Roman Empire, (Augustus was the first Roman emperor) although England very precisely had no Augustus ruling it with dictatorial powers. Instead it had a new Horace (great Augustan poet of satire) in Alexander Pope. His writing reflects the intense tensions that were at work in him and the society of his time, between tradition and innovation. In Parliament these tensions were shown in the division between “Tories” and “Whigs” as political “parties” began to evolve.

One element of conflict was the difference between “town” and “country.” The older nobility owned land in the “shires” and lived as gentry without needing much money; the newly rich and dynamic class lived in the towns and cities. Their money was invested to make more money. The values of the Tory countryside were conservative, nostalgic for the past, royalist and Anglican. The Whigs represented the radical new ways of urban capitalism, many were “non-conformist” (Presbyterian), not nostalgic but rather upstart and forward-looking.

The disappearance of the court as a focus of power and the rising importance of the House of Commons, led to a massive increase in the power of “public opinion” and this in turn was reflected by increasing public debate of every issue and policy. The growth of the influence of the press went hand in had with a realization that journalism was not always reponsible, that the “news” reported was not always true. Many of the Augustan concerns sprang from a sense that truth was becoming the victim of modern finance. Their desire was therefore to educate people through their writings to think clearly and wisely, so that they could distinguish the folly and falsehood of modern society from what was of real value.

The Augustans were people of sharp intelligence who had been deeply influenced by the developments in philosophy of the previous 100 years, beginning with Galileo, Montaigne and Descartes. In England, Francis Bacon was followed by Thomas Hobbes (author of Leviathan) and the extremes of Hobbes’s materialism provoked the work of John Locke and George Berkeley. This latter, born in Ireland, was close to the Augustans. At the same time, science (known as natural philosophy) was developing, with Isaac Newton the crowning glory. His Principia Mathematica was published in 1687, the Opticks in 1704, and his message of the universal harmony sustaining the universe underlies the optimism of the 18th century’s Rationalism and Enlightenment.



Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

    Pope’s family was Catholic and as a result were obliged to live outside of London after the events of 1688. He had a tutor but mostly studied alone. He spent much of his adult life in Twickenham, up the Thames from London. In his childhood he contracted a disease which left him stunted, deformed and hunch-backed, although his head grew to the normal size and his face was of striking beauty. The double handicap of Catholicism and physical deformity meant that he was cruelly treated in many ways and he came to value immensely the people who gave him their friendship. His closest companion in youth was Jonathan Swift, who then went to Ireland and later wrote “Gulliver’s Travels.”

Pope’s talents as a poet were accompanied by a sharp desire to chastise folly. He made his money by translating Homer into classically dignified “heroic couplets” (the most popular kind of verse since Denham and Dryden); he made his enemies in many ways, and wrote poems to vindicate himself. The tone of his poems is always calm, reasonable, detached, but the satire is sharp and sometimes extreme.

    In his youth, Pope established his reputation with his Essay on Criticism (1711) and The Rape of the Lock (a mock heroic poem on a stolen lock of hair). After the Homer translations were done, the Illiad in 1720, the Odyssey in 1726, he edited Shakespeare. In later years, following Horace, he wrote a number of epistles; An Essay on Man (1733-4) is a philosophical poem in four epistles, which were published separately. The first three were anonymous, and critics habitually hostile to Pope acclaimed them, only to be made to look foolish when the last was published with the poet’s name. The four Moral Essays (1731-5) include an Epistle Of the knowledge and Characters of Men and the Epistle on Women. At the same time he published a number of splendid, free translations of the Satires of Horace, transposing them to contemporary London. The Dunciad is perhaps his fiercest satire, a mock-epic that expanded until its final form was published in 1743.

    Pope was very attached to Martha Blount, one of his rare female friends, throughout his life. She too was from an old Catholic family and some claimed they were lovers. On the whole, Pope did not like women; his other intense friendship, with the rather adventurous Lady Mary Montagu, broke down. The following poem, not one of Pope’s major works (which are all too long for use here), is not to be seen as an expression of personal feelings celebrating a particular woman. It anticipates (and may have helped inspire) Gray’s “Elegy.”

 


Sensibility before Romanticism

    Pope and the other Augustans sometimes seem utterly intellectual and skeptical; yet their sense of irony, their awareness of the contradictions that co-exist within the apparent harmonies of classicism, underlie the birth of the novel and its development at least as far as Jane Austen. At the same time, Pope was strongly interested in landscape gardening, the expoitation of the natural within the artificial, and in this he was not alone. The Augustan age was marked by a growing interest in the “picturesque” that was slowly to develop into a taste for the “Gothic” which begins to be visible in the mid-18th century’s taste for medieval ruins. Before Romanticism, among the earliest novels we find a number of “Gothic novels” set in the middle ages or in medieval buildings.

    Nature in itself had been part of renaissance literature mainly in pastoral poetry. The first poem to celebrate nature from a new, often Newtonian, perspective was James Thomson’s The Seasons (1726-30). Here we begin to find a new sense of the “sublime” in the evocation of storms. At the same time as Pope was writing in a satirical, often acid tone about the corruptions of urban society, Thomson (who was born and educated in Scotland) was offering readers a completely un-ironic picture of the appearance of the natural countryside through the different seasons, seen reflecting Newton's harmony. Yet his diction is as artificial as that of Pope and later romantics turned against him. The Seasons remained immensely popular and long continued to be published.

In art, the English painters of the 18th century produced a vast number of portraits, corresponding to the wealth of the upper classes. Sir Joshua Reynolds and John Gainsborough were the most famous portrait painters. The carcicatures of William Hogarth were also originally paintings, before being copied as cheap engravings.

    Thomas Gray (1716-1771) lived a very quiet life. As a young man he was at Eton with Horace Walpole, who later became one of the first admirers of “the Gothic” and the author of  The Castle of Otranto (1764), the first Gothic novel. Gray moved to Cambridge in 1742 and began to write poetry. His small number of works include the Elegy printed below (1751), by far the most popular and for almost 2 centuries one of the most popular poems in English. He then wrote The Progress of Poesy and The Bard, both much more intense and “romantic” with a greater sense of the numinous and the sublime. He travelled in the Lake District and Scotland in search of sublime landscpaes and traditional poetry.


Thomas Gray : Elegy written in a Country Churchyard

1.    The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
2.    The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
3.    The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
4.    And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

5.    Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
6.    And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
7.    Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
8.    And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

9.      Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
10.    The moping owl does to the moon complain
11.    Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
12.    Molest her ancient solitary reign.

13.    Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
14.    Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
15.    Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
16.    The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

17.    The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
18.    The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
19.    The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
20.    No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

21.    For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
22.    Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
23.    No children run to lisp their sire's return,
24.    Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

25.    Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
26.    Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:
27.    How jocund did they drive their team afield!
28.    How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

29.    Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
30.    Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
31.    Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
32.    The short and simple annals of the poor.

33.    The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
34.    And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
35.    Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:
36.    The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

37.    Nor you, ye Proud, impute to These the fault,
38.    If Memory o'er their Tomb no Trophies raise,
39.    Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
40.    The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

41.    Can storied urn or animated bust
42.    Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
43.    Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
44.    Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?

45.    Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
46.    Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
47.    Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
48.    Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

49.    But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
50.    Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
51.    Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
52.    And froze the genial current of the soul.

53.    Full many a gem of purest ray serene
54.    The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
55.    Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
56.    And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

57.    Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
58.    The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
59.    Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
60.    Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

61.    Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
62.    The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
63.    To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
64.    And read their history in a nation's eyes,

65.    Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
66.    Their glowing virtues, but their crimes confined;
67.    Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
68.    And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

69.    The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
70.    To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
71.    Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
72.    With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

73.    Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
74.    Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
75.    Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
76.    They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

77.    Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect
78.    Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
79.    With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
80.    Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

81.    Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,
82.    The place of fame and elegy supply:
83.    And many a holy text around she strews,
84.    That teach the rustic moralist to die.

85.    For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
86.    This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
87.    Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
88.    Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

89.    On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
90.    Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
91.    Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
92.    Ev'n in our Ashes live their wonted Fires.

93.    For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead,
94.    Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
95.    If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
96.    Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

97.    Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
98.    'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
99.    Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
100.    To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

101.    'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
102.    That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
103.    His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
104.    And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

105.    'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
106.    Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
107.    Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
108.    Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

109.    'One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
110.    Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;
111.    Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
112.    Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

113.    'The next with dirges due in sad array
114.    Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.
115.    Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
116.    Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn:'

The Epitaph

117.    Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
118.    A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
119.    Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
120.    And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

121.    Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
122.    Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
123.    He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
124.    He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

125.    No farther seek his merits to disclose,
126.    Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
127.    (There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
128.    The bosom of his Father and his God.



The first novels

(Click here for a full account of the development of the English novel, from my book)

(Those bolded remain popular today)

Samuel Richardson  (1689-1761) 1740 Pamela; 1748 Clarissa : The History of a Young Lady; 1749 Sir Charles Grandison
Henry Fielding  (1707-1754) 1742 Joseph Andrews; 1743 Jonathan Wild the Great; 1749 Tom Jones; 1751 Amelia
Tobias Smollett  (1721-1771) 1748 Roderick Random; 1751 Peregrine Pickle; 1771 The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker;
Laurence Sterne  (1713-1768) 1760 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy; 1768 Sentimental Journey
Oliver Goldsmith  (1728-1774) 1766 The Vicar of Wakefield
Henry Mackenzie  (1745-1831) 1771 The Man of Feeling
Horace Walpole  (1717-1797) 1765 The Castle of Otranto
Frances Burney  1752-1840) 1778 Evelina; 1782 Cecilia; 1796 Camilla
Ann Radcliffe  (1764-1823) 1794 The Mysteries of Udolpho; 1797 The Italian
"Monk" Lewis  (1775-1818) 1796 The Monk
William Godwin  (1756-1836) 1794 Caleb Williams
William Beckford  (1760-1844) 1786 The Caliph Vathek

(Click here for my 18th-20th century related links)
 

Revolution and Romanticism

    The 18th century was marked by competition and warfare between England and France, and England won.  As a result, Britain gained control of the parts of Canada and India where France had previously held power. It is almost not worth noting that in 1714 Queen Anne died, the last of the Stuart family. Laws had already been passed that ensured that the next ruler would be from Germany. The ruling family of Hanover was Protestant and related by marriage to the Stuarts. The new king, George I, could not speak English but it did not really matter; he had no power. Instead, he asked the Whigs to form a government (the Tories had some sympathy for the Stuarts in exile) and Robert Walpole became the first real "Prime Minister," a position he held for 20 years. When the war with France ended in 1763, Britain was already becoming an industrial power and the new colonies, including the West Indies, where plantations were worked by slaves shipped from West Africa, were a major market. The press grew, daily newspapers began to be published, and they encouraged political debate. Free speech was encouraged by the victory of John Wilkes against government attempts at censorship.

    The British colonies in North America expanded from 200,000 colonists in 1700 to 2.5 million in 1770. They were not represented in Parliament, yet they were expected to pay taxes. They protested: no taxation without representation! In 1773, people in Boston threw imported tea into the port rather than pay tax on it, and the “Boston Tea-party” marks one beginning of the War of Independence, which lasted from 1775 until the total defeat of the British was recognized in 1783. The war was fought in the name of democracy and freedom; it was supported in England by “radicals” who wanted the same ideals to be put into practice in Britain. The main radical writers were Edmund Burke and Tom Paine. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, the Declaration of Independence expresses the ideals of the newly emerging United States, while the Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. It was adopted in its original form on September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and later ratified by conventions in each state.

Industrial revolution

     The great social changes in 18th-century Britain began with the enclosure (privatisation) of land and the resulting expulsion of the landless villagers who had traditionally farmed the “common land” that was now taken by the rich gentry. The upper class were rich because they were also the leaders of trade and manufacturing. There was a huge difference between rich and poor. The large numbers of landless poor moved toward the cities just as factories were being invented to replace the home-based "cottage indutries." At this time coal was replacing wood as fuel, iron and steel were becoming basic materials, and the steam engine was perfected, making a pumping motion turn fly-wheels to drive machines. The “Industrial Revolution” transformed English society, as great cities sprang up, full of wretched housing which quickly became “slums.” The proletariate (as they were later called) provided the workforce for a manufacturing industry that quickly found markets at home and abroad, as the earning class grew in size. The main products were cloth in wool and cotton, knives and swords made of steel.

    Several influences came together at the same time to revolutionise Britain's industry: money, labour, a greater demand for goods, new power, and better transport. By the end of the eighteenth century, some families had made huge private fortunes. Growing merchant banks helped put this money to use. By the early eighteenth century simple machines had already been invented for basic jobs. They could make large quantities of simple goods quickly and cheaply so that "mass production" became possible for the first time. Each machine carried out one simple process, which introduced the idea of "division of labour" among workers. This was to become an important part of the industrial revolution.
    Increased iron production made it possible to manufacture new machinery for other industries. No one saw this more clearly than John Wilkinson, a man with a total belief in iron. He built the largest ironworks in the country. He built the world's first iron bridge, over the River Severn, in 1779. He saw the first iron boats made. He built an iron chapel for the new Methodist religious sect, and was himself buried in an iron coffin. Wilkinson was also quick to see the value of new inventions. When James Watt made a greatly improved steam engine in 1769, Wilkinson improved it further by making parts of the engine more accurately with his special skills in ironworking. But in 1781 Watt produced an engine with a turning motion, made of iron and steel. It was a vital development because people were now no longer dependent on natural power.
    One invention led to another, and increased production in one area led to increased production in others. Other basic materials of the industrial revolution were cotton and woollen cloth, which were popular abroad. In the middle of the century other countries were buying British uniforms, equipment and weapons for their armies. To meet this increased demand, better methods of production had to be found, and new machinery was invented which replaced handwork.
    Soon Britain was not only exporting cloth to Europe. It was also importing raw cotton from its colonies and exporting finished cotton cloth to sell to those same colonies, The social effects of the industrial revolution were enormous. Workers tried to join together to protect themselves against powerful employers. They wanted fair wages and reasonable conditions in which to work. But the government quickly banned these "combinations", as the workers' societies were known. Riots occurred, led by the unemployed who had been replaced in factories by machines. In 1799 some of these rioters, known as Luddites, started to break up the machinery which had put them out of work. The government supported the factory owners, and made the breaking of machinery punishable by death. The government was afraid of a revolution like the one in France.

Society and religion

    Britain avoided revolution partly because of a new religious movement. The new movement which met the needs of the growing industrial working class was led by a remarkable man called John Wesley. He was an Anglican priest who travelled around the country preaching and teaching. For fifty-three years John Wesley travelled 224,000 miles on horseback, preaching at every village he came to. Sometimes he preached in three different villages in one day. Very soon others joined in his work. John Wesley visited the new villages and industrial towns which had no parish church. John Wesley's "Methodism" was above all a personal and emotional form of religion. It was organised in small groups, or "chapels", all over the country. At a time when the Church of England itself showed little interest in the social and spiritual needs of the growing population, Methodism was able to give ordinary people a sense of purpose and dignity. The Church was nervous of this powerful new movement which it could not control, and in the end Wesley was forced to leave the Church of England and start a new Methodist Church.
    He carefully avoided politics, and taught people to be hardworking and honest. As a result of his teaching, people accepted many of the injustices of the times without complaint. Some became wealthy through working hard and saving their money. As an old man, Wesley sadly noted how hard work led to wealth, and wealth to pride and that this threatened to destroy his work. "Although the form of religion remains," he wrote, "the spirit is swiftly vanishing away." However, Wesley probably saved Britain from revolution. He certainly brought many people back to Christianity. The Methodists were not alone.
    Other Christians also joined what became known as "the evangelical revival", which was a return to a simple faith based on the Bible. Some, especially the Quakers, became well known for social concern. One of the best known was Elizabeth Fry, who made public the terrible conditions in the prisons, and starred to work for reform. It was also a small group of Christians who were the first to act against the evils of the slave trade, from which Britain was making huge sums of money. Slaves did not expect to live long. Almost 20 per cent died on the voyage. Most of the others died young from cruel treatment in the West Indies.
    The first success against slavery came when a judge ruled that "no man could be a slave in Britain", and freed a slave who had landed in Bristol. This victory gave a new and unexpected meaning to the words of the national song, "Britons never shall be slaves." In fact, just as Britain had taken a lead in slavery and the slave trade, it also took the lead internationally in ending them. The slave trade was abolished by law in 1807. But it took until 1833 for slavery itself to be abolished in all British colonies.
    Others, also mainly Christians, tried to limit the cruelty of employers who forced children to work long hours. In 1802, as a result of their efforts, Parliament passed the first Factory Act, limiting child labour to twelve hours each day. In 1819 a new law forbade the employment of children under the age of nine. Neither of these two Acts were obeyed everywhere, but they were the early examples of government action to protect the weak against the powerful.

The French Revolution

    In France, too, there was also increasing social unrest and instability caused by differences of wealth but somehow, unlike in Britain, no compromise was found. In Britain, the House of Commons represented the interests of both the small landowners (gentry) and the new “middle class" of industrialists and merchants. In France there was no such representative assembly; all power was kept by aristocratic and royal elites to which even the wealthy had little access. As a result, the French Revolution erupted , fuelled by discontent among both lower and middle classes.

    The symbolic date of July 14, 1789, marks the day on which the citizens of Paris broke the gates of the Bastille prison. It was a small tower in eastern Paris in which members of the nobility could imprison anyone they wished for an indefinite period. There was no appeal, no right to a trial, no system of habeas corpus, a right which had been guaranteed in England since Magna Carta in 1215. The early months of the Revolution were full of hope and enthusiasm, as the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” echoed with memories of the democratic vision of the American Revolution, which had itself looked back to the English Civil War.

    The French Revolution was seen as a grave threat by many in England, conscious of how fragile the social balances were. Some welcomed it enthusiastically as a prophetic event heralding a radically new world. Among them was William Blake, one of the greatest of English poets and a visionary, as well as a painter and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts.



William Blake  (1757 - 1827)

Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon those clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.


The Chimney-Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry ‘Weep! weep! weep! weep!’
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved; so I said,
‘Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.’

And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!—
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind:
And the angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.


The Chimney-Sweeper (Songs of Experience)

A little black thing among the snow,
Crying! ‘weep! weep!’ in notes of woe!
‘Where are thy father and mother?  Say!’—
‘They are both gone up to the church to pray.

‘Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter’s snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

‘And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and His priest and king,
Who made up a heaven of our misery.’


William Wordsworth  (1770 - 1850)

    Born in 1770, Wordsworth lost both parents in childhood. He grew up in the Lake District, attended Cambridge Univeristy, and in 1790-2 spent much of his time in revolutionary France. At this time he was filled with revolutionary enthusiasm but soon the early idealism of the revolutionaries was abolished and the Terror, in which thousands of innocent people were guillotined, put an end to Wordsworth’s political radicalism. In 1795, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy went to live near Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Somerset. The two poets developed a close relationship and in 1789 they published Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems mostly by Wordsworth but in which the works of the two were not distinguished. The first poem below is from this volume, which marks the beginning of “Romanticism” in England. In 1799, the three moved back to the Lake District where they lived in Dove Cottage, Grasmere. Wordsworth wrote much that was included in a new edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) which also included a Preface written by Wordsworth using many ideas of Coleridge, the more philosophical of the two. Later, Coleridge and Wordsworth disagreed strongly and Coleridge criticized Wordsworth in his Biographia Literaria (1817). Wordsworth’s major work was almost all published in the Poems in Two Volumes (1807) although the final version of his great autobiographical poem The Prelude was only published after he died in 1850.


I wandered lonely as a cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


John Keats

The English Romantic poet John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, in London. The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a young age.  When Keats was fifteen, his guardian withdrew him from school, to be apprentice with an apothecary-surgeon and study medicine in a London hospital. In 1816 Keats became a licensed apothecary, but he never practiced his profession, deciding instead to write poetry.

Around this time, Keats met Leigh Hunt, an influential editor of the Examiner, who published his sonnets "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" and "O Solitude." Hunt also introduced Keats to a circle of literary men, including the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. The group's influence enabled Keats to see his first volume, Poems by John Keats, published in 1817. Shelley, who was fond of Keats, had advised him to develop a more substantial body of work before publishing it. Keats, who was not as fond of Shelley, did not follow his advice. Endymion, a four-thousand-line erotic/allegorical romance based on the Greek myth of the same name, appeared the following year.
Keats spent the summer of 1818 on a walking tour in Northern England and Scotland, returning home to care for his brother, Tom, who suffered from tuberculosis.

While nursing his brother, Keats met and fell in love with a woman named Fanny Brawne. Writing some of his finest poetry  between 1818 and 1819, Keats mainly worked on "Hyperion," a Miltonic blank-verse epic of the Greek creation myth. He stopped writing  "Hyperion" upon the death of his brother, after  completing only a small portion, but in late 1819 he returned to the piece and rewrote it as "The Fall of Hyperion" (unpublished until 1856). That same autumn Keats contracted tuberculosis, and by the following February he felt that death was already upon him, referring to the present as his "posthumous existence."

In July 1820, he published his third and best volume of poetry, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. The three title poems, dealing with mythical and legendary themes of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance times, are rich in imagery and phrasing. The volume also contains the unfinished "Hyperion," and three poems considered among the finest in the English language, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode to a Nightingale." The book received enthusiastic praise from Hunt, Shelley, Charles Lamb, and others, but by that time he had reached an advanced stage of his disease and was too ill to be encouraged. Under his doctor's orders to seek a warm climate for the winter, Keats went to Rome with his friend, the painter Joseph Severn. He died there on February 23, 1821, at the age of twenty-five, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery.

Romantic novels

(Those writers bolded remain popular today)

Maria Edgeworth  (1767-1849) 1801 Belinda; 1800 Castle Rackrent; 1809 The Absentee; 1817 Ormond

Thomas Love Peacock  (1785-1866) 1816 Headlong Hall; 1818 Nightmare Abbey; 1831 Crotchet Castle

Jane Austen  (1775-1817) Sense and Sensibility (written 1795-1797 published 1811); Pride and Prejudice (1796-7:1813); Northanger Abbey (1798:1818); Mansfield Park (1812:1814); Emma (1814:1816); Persuasion (1815:1818)

Walter Scott  (1771-1832): 1814 Waverley; 1815 Guy Mannering; 1816 The Antiquary; 1816 The Black Dwarf, Old Mortality; 1818 Heart of Midlothian; 1818 Rob Roy; 1819 The Bride of Lammermore, The Legend of Montrose; 1820 Ivanhoe; 1820 The Monastery; 1820 The Abbot; 1821 Kennilworth; 1822 The Pirate; 1822 The Fortunes of Nigel; 1822 Peverill of the Peak; 1823 Quentin Durward; 1824 St Ronan's Well; 1824 Redgauntlet; 1825 The Betrothed, The Talisman; 1826 Woodstock; 1827 Chronicles of the Canongate; 1828 The Fair Maid of Perth; 1829 Anne of Geierstein; 1832 Count Robert of Paris, Castle Dangerous.

Mary Shelley  (1797-1851): 1818 Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus;

(Click here for my 18th-20th century related links)

Napoleon

    The French Revolution had created fear all over Europe. The British government was so afraid that revolution would spread to Britain that it imprisoned radical leaders. As an island, Britain was in less danger, and as a result was slower than other European states to make war on the French Republic. But in 1793 Britain went to war after France had invaded the Low Countries (today, Belgium and Holland). One by one the European countries were defeated by Napoleon, and forced to ally themselves with him. Most of Europe fell under Napoleon's control.
    Britain decided to fight France at sea because it had a stronger navy, and because its own survival depended on control of its trade routes. British policy was to damage French trade by preventing French ships, including their navy, from moving freely in and out of French seaports. The commander of the British fleet, Admiral Horatio Nelson, won brilliant victories over the French navy, near the coast of Egypt, at Copenhagen, and finally near Spain, at Trafalgar in 1805, where he destroyed the French—Spanish fleet. Nelson was himself killed at Trafalgar, but became one of Britain's greatest national heroes. His words to the fleet before the battle of Trafalgar, "England expects that every man will do his duty," have remained a reminder of patriotic duty in time of national danger.
    In the same year as Trafalgar, in 1805, a British army landed in Portugal to fight the French. This army, with its Portuguese and Spanish allies, was eventually commanded by Wellington, a man who had fought in India. Like Nelson he quickly proved to be a great commander. After several victories against the French in Spain he invaded France. Napoleon, weakened by his disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia, during which nearly 500,000 soldiers died in the Retreat from Moscow, surrendered in 1814 and was exiled to the Italian island of Elba. But the following year he escaped and quickly (in 100 days) assembled an army in France. Wellington, with the timely help of the Prussian army, finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in Belgium in June 1815. He was exiled to the remote south-Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he died. He is buried in the church of Les Invalides, in Paris.


The early 19th century

The population of Britain in 1815 was 13 million; by 1871 it had doubled. By 1914 it was over 40 million. In 1815, with Napoleon exiled for ever in St. Helena and France impoverished in every way, Britian too was in crisis, with 300,000 soldiers and sailors discharged and looking for work. Imported corn was cheap but the landowners imposed a protectionist policy, the Corn Law, so the price of bread rose, Everything else followed while wages remained low. Thise with no work, no money and no homes were forced into dreadful workhouses where families were divided; everywhere crime rates soared, there were occasional large riots. Masses moved into the industrial cities -- Birmingham, Sheffield, Anchester, Glasgow and Leeds soon doubled in size. In 1820, London counted 1.25 million people. The governing classes feared revolutionary uprisings. The Tories wanted simply to use force to control the poor. The Whigs advocated social transformation, "Reform." The first focus for reform was the House of Commons and the electoral system. The Tories thought Parliament should represent the owners of property; the radicals, inspired by the American and French revolutions, said it should represent the people as a whole. The Whigs were sympathetic to the radical approach and in 1832 a Reform Bill was passed. This changed the electoral system, increasing the number of urban constituencies electing MPs as well as widening the qualification for being a voter. It was a symbolic beginning of an ongoing development that took over 100 years.

In 1824 it became legal for worker to organize unions, designed both to negociate better wages and to prevent unfair competition. In 1834, 6 farm workers in Tolpuddle (Dorset) were imprisoned for forming such a union. They became known as the "Tolpuddle Martyrs" and widespread demonstrations forced the government to free them and accept the right of workers to form labor unions.

In 1829, Sir Robert Peel established a police force in London to deal with crime; London's police are still known as "Bobbies" after his name. In 1838, workers joined with radicals to demand far more radical reform through a People's Charter. Many of these Chartists' idealistic demands were ultimately met, but only much later: the universal right to vote (for women, too), secret voting in elections, payment for MPs . . . The workers' movement was helped by the introduction in 1840 of a national postal system, allowing anyone to mail a letter anywhere for one penny. Payment was indicated by a stamp stuck to the letter. The Penny Black was the world's first postage stamp. The same Sir Robert Peel then abolished the old Corn Law, which had made food so expensive. The farming gentry were angry, the rich industrialists were happy since workers had less reason to demand higher wages once food was cheaper.

A symbolic event happened in 1834, when the Palace of Westminster caught fire. The entire complex, home to the two houses of Parliament since the middle ages, was destroyed. Only Westminster Hall survived. The old House of Commons had originally been St. Stephen's Chapel and the seating in today's House of Commons still follows the way the medieval seats in a chapel face one another. New, modern Houses of Parliament had to be built and they were designed by Pugin in the style of the Gothic Revival. In painting, John Constable and William Turner made landscapes immensely popular. Later in the century, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood transformed British art.

(Click here for my 18th-20th century related links)

 
 
The Victorian Era

    Victoria became queen in 1837, on the death of her uncle, William IV, when she was only 18 and she died in 1901. During her reign, Britain expanded its colonies into the British Empire, and consolidated its influence over huge areas of the world. The construction of the railway across England at the start of her reign brought even remote areas within easy reach of London. The results of the late 18th-century and early 19th-century Industrial Revolution, largely based on the perfection of the steam engine and improved methods of iron- and steel-production, led to ever larger industrial cities in central and northern England. After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, Europe knew a century of virtual peace. The growth of the “professional” middle class, the improved standard-of-living of the working class, and  the spread of basic education to almost everyone meant that reading now became an almost universal habit.

Queen Victoria's husband (the Prince Consort) was a German prince, Albert, with progressive ideas. He encouraged the organizers of a "Great Exhibition of the Industries of All Nations" that was held  in 1851 in a specially constructed Crystal Palace, a great hall of iron and glass, In London. Because of the cheap travel offered by railways, thousands came to visit it from all over Britain, 100,000 or more in one day. It was the first world trade fair, and especially it gave visitors a glimpse of the cultures of the various countries forming the British Empire. The railway system around London gave rise to the suburbs from which people could "commute" to work each day by train. London spread immensely. One major problem remained -- hygiene. Most drinking water came from shallow wells that were easily polluted by the sewage from primitive toilets; as a result, thousands of people regularly died of typhoid and cholera, including Prince Albert in 1861. Finally the connection was recognized; piped water and modern systems of sewage disposal were established.

Electoral reform continued, with secret voting being introduced in 1872, and by 1884 most men over 21 were entitled to vote. The Whigs had by now changed their name into the Liberal Party. while the Tories were officially known as the Conservative Party; both parties developed into nationwide social organizations with local branches in every town organizing events among their supporters. The number of MPs increased to over 650 and slowly the House of Lords lost its power. The working class was still weak, but the growth of Co-operative stores (where the shoppers were the share-holders / owners, receiving dividends from profits) prepared the way for other advances. The workers in each particular skilled labour joined the national trade union representing thier particular job; in 1868 the Trades Union Congress was inaugurated, and soon began to work for the election of representatives of the working class as MPs. In the 1870s, wages were lowered in many factories and this provoked the unions to turn to strikes as the ultimate means of action. The British working class did not on the whole try to impose change by force or revolution; instead, it always looked for democratic ways of gaining influence in Parliament, to effect social change by legal methods in a relative consensus.

Across the world, imperialistic Britain was involved in a variety of conflicts. In China, the two (very shameful) Opium Wars (1840-1843 and 1856-1860) were intended to break Chinese resistance to the smuggling of opium from India, itself a measure intended to punish China for its unequal trading policies and force it to open its markets. China was totally defeated in both wars, and was forced to grant the western powers unequal treaties. By contrast, a war in Afghanistan designed to prevent Russia from moving its sphere of influence south toward India was a disaster for Britain. In 1854, fearing that Russia would take control of Turkey, Britain launched the Crimean War which was widely covered by the British newspapers. The corruption of the officers, the sufferings of the soldiers and the courage of Florence Nightingale and her fellow nurses in the military hospitals were all covered in great detail for the first time. In India, the Indian Mutiny of 1857 was a revolt by Indian soldiers in the British army was used by local rulers as an attempt to force the British out of India; the British response was extremely violent and the cruelty of the British prepared the way for the Indian independence movement of the 20th century.

Meanwhile, with the growth of the population people from Britain were encouraged to emigrate and start a new life in the Dominions, in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where the settlers were soon given self-government, the Queen remaining the titular head of state. South Africa enjoyed similar status although it had a far larger native population as well as a very substantial number of Dutch settlers (Boers).

Apart from England, which was flourishing, the people in the other parts of the United Kingdom were far less happy. In Wales, industry grew around the coal-mining area to the south around Cardiff and Swansea and the workers there expressed their identity by joining the Baptist and other Non-conformist chapels rather than the state church, and developing a radical political stance. The rural population remained backward and retained the use of the Welsh language. In Scotland the people living in the Highlands, where there had been much violence in the 18th century, were forced off their land by new landowners wishing to raise either sheep or deer (for hunting by the elite).

The worst was in Ireland, where the Protestants (descendants either of English settlers from centuries back or of Scottish settlers introduced in the 18th century) felt a need for English protection against the native Irish Catholics. As part of the United Kingdom, the Irish elected MPs to Westminster and since 1829 the freedom-seeking nationalists elected Catholics when possible. But many were extremely poor, having been deprived of their land in the 18th century when Catholics were not recognized as landowners. The staple diet of the poor was potatoes but in 1845, 1846, and 1847 a disease destroyed the potato harvest, leaving millions with nothing to eat. There was enough corn in Ireland, but the poor had no money and the ruling elite did nothing to help relieve the famine. The authorities in England also remained inactive. In those 3 years 1.5 million people died of starvation and at least a million emigrated either to the mainland or to the United States (many dying on the long journey). In the following decades Ireland continued to lose population, some 5 million settling in the United States in that period. Before the Famine there had been 8 million people, even today there are less 5 million.

Along with industrialization went the development of modern science. The single most significant name must be that of Charles Darwin, whose 1859 work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection introduced the notions of evolution of life's diversity and  of natural selection by the "survival of the fittest." His other most noted title, The Descent of Man (1871) dealt with the development of human culture among other topics. The work of geologists had already established the immense age of the earth and thus of the universe; Darwin's theory of evolution was quickly accepted by the general public. Accepting natural selection as the main mechanism of evolution took longer and the debate over the role of chance in evolution remains open. (See the very complete account in Wikipedia)

In education, the later 19th century saw the spread of universal education and the foundation of new ("red-brick") universities with a focus on science and technology. With growing prosperity, spectator sports (soccer, rugby and cricket) became popular among the working class. The literature of the 19th century grows out of the poetry and novels of the Romantic period but is marked by a growing seriousness of moral purpose. The culture of the Victorian period is too cast a topic to be covered here. By the end of the century, England was already being challenged by the new industrial might of Prussia-led Germany.
Victorian novels

(Those writers bolded remain popular today)

William Makepeace Thakery  (1811-1863): 1847 Vanity Fair; 1852 Henry Esmond; 1848 Pendennis

Charles Dickens   (1812-1870): 1835 Sketches by Boz; 1836 Pickwick Papers; 1837 Oliver Twist; 1838 Nicholas Nickleby; 1840 Barnaby Rudge, The Old Curiosity Shop; 1843 Martin Chuzzlewit, A Christmas Carol; 1844 The Chimes; 1845 The Cricket on the Hearth; 1846 The Battle of Life; 1847 The Haunted Man, Dombey and Son; 1849 David Copperfield; 1852 Bleak House; 1854 Hard Times; 1857 Little Dorrit; 1859 A Tale of Two Cities; 1861 The Uncommercial Traveller; 1860 Great Expectations; 1864 Our Mutual Friend; 1870 The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished).

Anthony Trollope  (1815-1882)-wrote 60 novels- 1855 The Warden; 1857 Barchester Towers;  1861 Framley Parsonage; 1864 The Small House at Allington; 1867 The Last Chronicles of Barset; 1869 Phineas Phinn....

Charlotte Bronte  (1816-1855) 1847 Jane Eyre; 1849 Shirley; 1853 Villette

Emily Bronte  (1818-1848) Wuthering Heights.

Mary Ann Evans - George Eliot  (1819-1881): 1857 Mr Gilfill’s Love Story; 1859 Adam Bede;  1860 The Mill on the Floss; 1861 Silas Marner; 1863 Romola; 1866 Felix Holt; 1871 Middlemarch; 1876 Daniel Deronda.

Benjamin Disraeli  (1804-1881); 1844 Coningsby; 1845 Sybil; 1847 Tancred.

Mrs. Gaskell  (1810-1865): 1853 Cranford; 1855 North and South; 1863 Sylvia’s Lovers; 1865 Cousin Phillis.

Lewis Carroll  (1832-1898) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Alice Through the Looking Glass; The Hunting of the Snark.

Wilkie Collins  (1824-1889) The Dead Secret, 1860 The Woman in White; 1868 The Moonstone;

Thomas Hardy  (1840-1928) 1871 Desperate Remedies; 1872 Under the Greenwood Tree; 1873 A pair of Blue Eyes; 1874 Far from the Madding Crowd; 1878 The Return of the Native; 1880 The Trumpet Major; 1886 The Mayor of Casterbridge; 1891 Tess of the D’Urbervilles; 1896 Jude the Obscure; 1897 The Well-Beloved;

George Meredith  (1829-1909) 1859 The Ordeal of Richard Feverel; 1861 Evan Harrington; The Adventures of Harry Richmond; 1865 Rhoda Fleing; 1867 Vittoria; 1879 The Egoist; 1885 Diana of the Crossways; 1891 One of our Conquerors; 1895 Lord Ormont and his Aminta; The Amazing Marriage.

Henry James  (1843-1916) born in New York. 1875 A Passionate Pilgrim; 1876 Roderick Hudson; 1881 Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady; 1877 The American; 1878 The Europeans; 1879 Daisy Miller; 1886 The Bostonians; The Princess Casamassima: 1897 The Spoils of Poynton; 1898 What Maisie Knew; 1898 The Turn of the Screw; 1902 The Wings of the Dove; 1903 The Ambassadors; 1904 The Golden Bowl;.

   

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)

    After becoming a Catholic at Oxford in 1866, under the influence of John Henry Newman, Hopkins decided to become a Jesuit in 1868. He had already written some poems but felt that writing poetry was not suitable for someone intending to become a priest. In 1876 he returned to poetry-writing and many of his best poems were written in 1877 while he was preparing to be ordained a priest. He found life in the poor areas of Liverpool in 1880 a great challenge. In 1884 he was sent to Dublin as professor of Greek and Latin at University College. He fell into deep depression, and wrote some very dark sonnets. This passed and he was able to write some more positive poems before dying suddenly of typhoid. In his lifetime he published almost nothing. His friend, the poet Robert Bridges, preserved his papers and it was only in 1918 that he finally published a collection of Hopkins’ poems. He had not been sure that the English public could accept such “oddity”!


God's Grandeur

     THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.
       It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
       It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
     Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
     Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
       And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
       And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
     Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

     And for all this, nature is never spent;
       There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
     And though the last lights off the black West went
       Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
     Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
       World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
 

The Windhover:       To Christ our Lord

     I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-
       dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
       Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
     High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
     In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
       As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
       Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
     Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

     Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
       Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
     Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

       No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
     Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
       Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
 

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

    Hardy was born in Dorchester, in the county of Dorset, and that region, which he called “Wessex” dominates his fiction. He first published a series of novels that were increasingly attacked by critics for their pessimism. After Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) he stopped writing fiction and for the rest of his life published only poetry. The death of his wife in 1912 provoked some very powerful poetry, as he struggled to come to terms with the end of their very difficult relationship. In his lifetime, his poetry was not widely admired but the plain style and rhythmic subtlety he cultivated have been very important models for the British poets of the generations following T. S Eliot.


The Darkling Thrush

1     I leant upon a coppice gate
2         When Frost was spectre-gray,
3     And Winter's dregs made desolate
4         The weakening eye of day.
5     The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
6         Like strings of broken lyres,
7     And all mankind that haunted nigh
8         Had sought their household fires.

9     The land's sharp features seemed to be
10       The Century's corpse outleant,
11   His crypt the cloudy canopy,
12       The wind his death-lament.
13   The ancient pulse of germ and birth
14       Was shrunken hard and dry,
15   And every spirit upon earth
16       Seemed fervourless as I.

17   At once a voice arose among
18       The bleak twigs overhead
19   In a full-hearted evensong
20       Of joy illimited;
21   An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
22       In blast-beruffled plume,
23   Had chosen thus to fling his soul
24       Upon the growing gloom.

25   So little cause for carolings
26       Of such ecstatic sound
27   Was written on terrestrial things
28       Afar or nigh around,
29   That I could think there trembled through
30       His happy good-night air
31   Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
32       And I was unaware.
  
 
The 20th Century: War

(Click here for my 18th-20th century related links)

   The 20th century was a period of constant warfare, latent or actual. It began with the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902).

The First World War (1914-1918) was a terrible experience, with hundreds of thousands  of British soldiers, mostly from the working class neightborhoods of the industrial cities, dying wretchedly in the mud of Flanders (northern France and southern Belgium). In all 750, 000 British soldiers died, 2.5 million were seriously wounded. An equally large number of French and German soldiers died. 
    Germany nearly defeated the Allies, Britain and France, in the first few weeks of war in 1914. It had better trained soldiers, better equipment and a clear plan of attack. The French army and the small British force were fortunate to hold back the German army at the River Marne, deep inside France. Four years of bitter fighting followed, both armies living and fighting in the trenches, which they had dug to protect their men. Apart from the Crimean War, this was Britain's first European war for a century, and the country was quite unprepared for the terrible destructive power of modern weapons. In addition, poison gas was used with terrible effect. At Passchendaele, the following year, the British army advanced five miles at the cost of another 400,000 dead and wounded. Modern artillery and machine guns had completely changed the nature of war. The invention of the tank and its use on the battlefield to break through the enemy trenches in 1917 could have changed the course of the war.
    In the Middle East the British fought against Turkish troops in Iraq and in Palestine, and at, Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles. There, too, there were many casualties, but many of them were caused by sickness and heat. It was not until 1917 that the British were really able to drive back the Turks. Somehow the government had to persuade the people that in spite of such disastrous results the war was still worth fighting. The nation was told that it was defending the weak (Belgium) against the strong (Germany), and that it was fighting for democracy and freedom. German submarines managed to sink 40 per cent of Britain's merchant fleet and at one point brought Britain to within six weeks of starvation. When Russia, following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, made peace with Germany, the German generals hoped for victory against the Allies. But German submarine attacks on neutral shipping drew America into the war against Germany. The arrival of American troops in France ended Germany's hopes, and it surrendered in November 1918.



Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

"My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

     Wilfred Owen, one of approximately 9,000,000 million fatalities in World War I, was killed in action on the Sambre Canal just seven days before the Armistice on November 4, 1918. He was caught in a German machine gun blast and killed. He was twenty-five years old.

     Teaching in continental Europe in 1915, Owen visited a hospital and became acquainted with many of the war's wounded. Deeply affected by these visits, the 22 year-old young Owen decided to enlist in the British Army. Owen described his decision to enlist in September, 1915: "I came out in order to help these boys--directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can. I have done the first." Owen was injured in March 1917 and sent home; he was fit for duty in August, 1918, and returned to the front where he was killed shortly afterwards. The bells were ringing on November 11, 1918, in Shrewsbury, England, to celebrate the Armistice when the doorbell rang at his parent's home, bringing them the telegram informing them their son was dead.
 

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
    -Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
   Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
  Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
  And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
   Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
  The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
 

    The period prior to the Second World War saw Germany systematically re-arming after being humiliated and brought to economic disaster by the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1935-6 Italy waged a colonial war against Ethiopia, and from 1936 - 9 Spain was torn apart by a civil war in which Republicans (liberals, socialists and communists) fought against the Nationalists (royalists, Catholics, fascists). The "Axis" (Germany and Italy) supported the Nationalists while many idealists from across Europe fought on the Republican side. The Nationalists won, and General Franco became dictator of Spain until his death in 1975. In many ways this was a rehearsal for the Second World War, with the introduction of a new form of warfare in which civilian populations were bombed from the air, illustrated by the 1937 raid on the Basque town of Guernica made famous by the painting by Picasso.
    The rise of the National Socialists (Nazis) in Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler led to the outbreak of war in 1939, when the German army invaded Poland. Britain had been fiercely pacifist after the horrors of the First World War, so was not prepared. Germany quickly took control of most of western Europe  In 1940, England under the leadership of Winston Churchill, was expecting an invasion after the intense bombing and aerial battles in May (the Battle of Britain). Instead, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, with which it had signed a non-aggression treaty. That cost them the war. After the United States entered the conflict in December 1941 (with the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor) preparations began for the Normandy landings of June 1944. Fighting in Europe stopped in May 1945, after a race to take control of Germany led to the Russians having control of the eastern regions, the British and Americans with the Free French having occupied the western portion. For the rest of the 20th century, the world was dominated by the Cold War. The Korean War was the last intense conflict in which the British army was involved. The end of the Cold War with the break-up of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, together with the establishment of the European Union, mark the beginning of a new stage in European relations.

Social Welfare

As it entered the 20th century, British society continued the developments begun in the 19th. Social welfare provisions were introduced by the "New Liberal" government eager to earn working-class support: free school meals came in 1907, an old age pension scheme in 1908; state-run employment exchanges for people seeking information about available jobs opened in 1909; in 1911 national insurance payments were introduced, to provide funding for payments to those who were sick or unemployed. In 1911 the House of Lords (dominated by Conservatives) caused a crisis when it tried to block a Liberal government bill to increase taxation of the rich. The king himself intervened, the government passed the Parliament Act, and the House of Lords found itself deprived of almost all its power. Also in 1911, MPs began to receive a salary instead of it being assumed that they would have private means. In 1906 29 Labor Party MPs had been elected, working-class men who had no money. In 1918 the right to vote at elections was given to all men aged 21, and (at last!) to some women. The number of voters was doubled by this. In 1924, the Labour Party (founded by the TUC in 1900) won the majority in Parliament and formed its first government. The vote was given to women in part because during the war they had replaced men in every kind of occupation, and proved that their supposed "weakness" and "inferiority" were nonsense.

Ireland

The Irish had for long campaigned for self-government. The Protestant Irish nationalist Charles Parnell had founded an Irish Party campaigning for home rule and in the 1885 elections 86 of its members were elected to Westminster. The Liberals were sympathetic but the Conservatives refused to accept the idea. The main problem lay in the northern regions, the only part where Protestants were in the majority. They realized that most of the Irish population was Catholic and threatened to start a civil war if Ireland was given its own government. When war came in 1914, the Irish were asked to wait for peace to come, and serve as British soldiers. At Easter 1916, a group of fiery young radical Irish nationalists staged a small armed uprising, taking control of the main post office in Dublin. The British put this down with great violence, then executed all the leaders, alienating many moderate Irish. Elections were held in 1918, where Irish Republicans were elected everywhere except in the north (Ulster). Those elected did not go to London, but formed an Irish parliament in Dublin. They established a separate army, the Irish Republican Army, whose members started a guerrilla campaign against the British. In 1921, London agreed to independence for the southern part, with Ulster still part of the United Kingdom. The British king would still be titular head of state. Radical republicans fought against this. In 1937, the southern portion (Eire) was declared an independent republic. In 1969, the situation in Ulster degenrated, social resentments turned into violence and a small civil war developed between militia of the two opposing sides, with the British army caught in the middle. The situation only reached apparent reconciliation in 2007.

The Welfare State

After the end of the Second World War in 1945, a Labour government was elected in 1946 and it introduced the Welfare State, with the National Health Service providing free health care for all. National Assistance ensured payments for the old, the unemployed etc. Also the Labour Party undertook a radical policy of nationalization -- the Bank of England, power and transport were all brought under state control.

The post-war period saw the end of the British Empire. India gained independence in 1947, with the new state of Pakistan being created for Moslems who felt unsafe in Hindu-dominated India. Britain abandoned Palestine and the state of Israel was established. Then one by one independence was granted to the other colonies. Instead, these were invited to join a free-trade association known as the Commonwealth.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many young people from the West Indies, former African colonies, as well as India and Pakistan, were allowed to come to Britain to provide cheap labour in the industrial cities. Then British industry declined rapidly, and many social problems developed when Britain found itself a radically changed country, with a significant number of its population having different cultures, languages and faiths. The challenge of living in a multi-cultural country is now widely recognized.

The new politics

    Few of the problems of the 1980s were entirely new. However, many people blamed them on the new Conservative government, and in particular, Britain's first woman Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher had been elected in 1979 because she promised a new beginning for Britain. This basic change in British politics caused a major crisis for the Labour Party.  Margaret Thatcher had come to power calling on the nation for hard work, patriotism and self-help. She was not, however, a typical Conservative, for she wanted free trade at home and abroad, individual enterprise and less government economic protection or interference. She wanted more "law and order" but was a good deal less willing to undertake the social reform for which later nineteenth-century Liberals were noted. By the beginning of 1982 the Conservative government had become deeply unpopular in the country. However, by her firm leadership during the Falklands War Thatcher captured the imagination of the nation, and was confidently able to call an election in 1983. As expected, Thatcher was returned to power with a clear majority of 144 seats in the 650-seat Parliament. It was the greatest Conservative victory for forty years.
    Thatcher had promised to stop Britain's decline, but by 1983 she had not succeeded. Industrial production since 1979 had fallen by 10 per cent, and manufacturing production by 17 per cent. By 1983, for the first time since the industrial revolution, Britain had become a net importer of manufactured goods. There was a clear economic shift towards service industries. Unemployment had risen from 1.25 million in 1979 to over 3 million. Thatcher could claim she had begun to return nationalised industries to the private sector, that she had gone even further than she had promised. By 1987 telecommunications, gas, British Airways, British Aerospace and British Shipbuilders had all been put into private ownership The most serious accusation against the Thatcher government by the middle of the 1980s was that it had created a more unequal society, a society of "two nations",  one wealthy, and the other poor. According to these critics, the divide cut across the nation in a number of ways. The number of very poor, who received only a very small amount of government help, increased from twelve million in 1979 to over sixteen million by 1983. In the meantime, reductions in income tax favoured the higher income earners.
    The division was also geographical, between prosperous suburban areas, and neglected inner city areas of decay. More importantly, people saw a divide between the north and south of the country. Ninety-four per cent of the jobs lost since 1979 had been north of a line running from the Wash, on the east coast, to the Bristol channel in the west. The black community also felt separated from richer Britain. Most blacks lived in the poor inner city areas, not the richer suburbs, and unemployment among blacks by 1986 was twice as high as among the white population. In spite of these problems, Thatcher's Conservative Party was still more popular than any other single party in 1987. There were other reasons why the Conservative Party, with only 43 per cent of the national vote, The 1987 election brought some comfort, however, to two underrepresented groups. In 1983 only nineteen (3 per cent) of the 650 members of Parliament had been women, almost the lowest proportion in western Europe. In 1987 this figure more than doubled to forty-one women MPs (6.5 per cent), a figure which suggested that the political parties realised that without more women representatives they might lose votes. Blacks and Asians, too, gained four seats, the largest number they had ever had in Parliament, although like women they remained seriously underrepresented.

The future?

    Britain has more living symbols of its past than many countries. It still has a royal family and a small nobility. Its capital, cities and countryside boast many ancient buildings, castles, cathedrals, and the “stately homes” of the nobility. Every year there are historical ceremonies, for example the State Opening of Parliament, the Lord Mayor’s Show, or the meeting of the Knights of the Garter at Windsor each St George’s Day. It is easy to think these symbols are a true representation of the past. Britain's real history, however, is about the whole people of Britain, and what has shaped them as a society. This means, for example, that the recent story of black and Asian immigration to Britain is as much a part of Britain's "heritage" as its stately homes. Indeed more so, since the immigrant community's contribution to national life lies mainly in the future.
    When looking at Britain today, it is important to remember the great benefits from the past. No other country has so long a history of political order, going back almost without interruption to the Norman Conquest. Few other countries have enjoyed such long periods of economic and social wellbeing. It is also important, however, to remember the less successful aspects of the past. For example, why did the political views of the seventeenth-century Levellers or nineteenth-century Chartists, which today seem so reasonable, take so long to be accepted? Why did the women's struggle to play a fuller part in national life occur so late, and why was it then so difficult and painful? Why is there still a feeling of division between the north and south of Britain? Is Britain, which in many ways has been a leader in parliamentary democracy, losing that position of leadership today, and if so, why? 
    The questions are almost endless, and the answers are neither obvious nor easy. Yet it is the continued discussion and reinterpretation of the past which makes a study of Britain's history of value to its present and its future.