NOVEL

The first novelists in English literature were Daniel Defoe and Johathan Swift. Daniel Defoe was born in London in a very rich family. It is way he could travel a lot, he visited Spain, Germany, France and many others countries. His greates work is a book The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York. The story is based on real experiences of a Scottish Saylor. Robinson Crusoe is a typical character of the period. He loves adventure, is hard-working and optimistic. Another famous book of Daniel Defoe is Moll Flanders.

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin.His life was dark and sad becouse he suffered from madness caused by a brain tumour. He wrote famous satiries, e. g. The Tale of Tub and many pamphlets. The most famous of them is The Modest Proposal. The greatest work of Jonathan Swift is the novel Gulliver´s Travels in which he critisized politicions, church,queen and court.Another famous novelist is Samuel Richardson. His famous book Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded has a form of a long seris of love-letters. His masterpiese is a book Clarissa. It ends tragically. This book gave rise to sentimentalism. The first real novel in English literature is a book by Henry Fielding Tom Jones, a Foundling. In this book Fielding describes real characters and showed real life during the long period.

The most famous realistic novelists were Charles Dickens and Brontë sisters. Charles Dickens was the greatest representative of realism of the 19^th century and one of the world´s famous novelists. His first book The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club made Dickens the most popular novelist of the day. Then he started writing novels that describe English society. Other famous books of Charles Dickens are f. e. Oliver Twist, Hard Times, Little Dorrit or David Copperfield, which is an autobiography. Something about the Brontë sisters – Charlotte Brontë is known for her novels The Professor and Jane Eyre, which is the most famous book of her. It is an autobiographical, realistic tale. The masterpiece of Emily Brontë is Wuthering Heigts. It has a romantic plot but is realistic in scenery and characters. The most famous author of naturalism is Thomas Hardy. He was interested mainly in rural life in England. One of his most famous works is a book The Mayor of Casterbridge that is a story of a man who sells his wife witch a child after having drunk too much. Another famous book of him is Tess of the D´Urbervilles.

The period from WW 1 to WW 2 is represented by many famous novelists. In the twenties and thirties some authors tried to reflect aspects of mood and thinking which affect the behavior of people. This type of writting is called modernism. One of the major technical developments of modernism was the stream of consciousness, developed by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.Their novels tell little or no story, but presents a cinematographic picture of the inner life of the characters. James Joyce wrote an autobiographical novel A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and his masterpiece Ulysses. Virgina Woolf is known for her novel To the Lighthouse in which there is no traditional plot. Another famous novel of her is Missis Dalloway. In the last time Virgina Woolf is popular again because of the film The Hours which is  the story of her life and was written by Michael Cunningham.

Another famous novelist of this period were Rudyard Kipling who wrote The Jungle Book and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907.  Joseph Conrad grew up in the time of Polish revolution. His wrote short stories and novels, the most famous of them are Lord Jim or Heart of Darkness. John Galsworthy was a representative of the social novel. He wrote The Forsyte Saga. It is a generation novel describing the decline of the younger generations. This book continuous in Modern Comedy which is the second part of The Forsyte Saga.Georg Orwell is another writer born in India, with an excellent education. In his novel Animal Farm he expressed his satirical and moral vision of a totalitarian future in Russia.David Herbert Lawrence is another famous writer of this period. His most famous books are Women in Love and Lady Chatterley´s Lover which caused a great scandal and was not published in Britain until the 1950s.

The post-war period is represents mainly by Graham Green, Kingsley Amis and J. A. R. Tolkien. Graham Green divided his writings into entertainments and novels. His most famous entertainment book is A Gun for Sale, which is a detective story. The most famous novel of Graham Green is Quiet American that was also filmed. Kingsley Amis is a famous member of the group called „Angry young man“. He wrote campus novel, well-known Lucky Jim. The las protagonist of the literature of this period is J. A. R. Tolkien. In the last time he is very famous because two of his books, Hobit and The Lord of the Rings were filmed and are very beautiful and succesful.