Writers through the centuries - 20th Century

episode 15

Literature in the 20th century went through tumultuous and rapid changes. At the beginning of the century, works from the 19th century born authors began to emerge and delight their readers.

Fiction books from Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway or Fitzgerald, Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo or Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien or Agatha Christie were published in the first half of the 20th century and brought joy to the eyes.

The readers’ numbers started to increase, in a much greater percentage than the rise of population, now including people from all social statuses, and from all financial categories. People from the middle or even lower-income could now start to afford books, and especially between World War I and World War II people had an increasing demand for reading. Fiction was on the rise as people wanted to celebrate the end of the war and wanted to educate themselves.

Authors from the past century, generation perdu (“lost generation”) now searched for new places where they could get inspiration and bring to fruition their creativity, one such example is an important group of authors who went on often visits or relocated themselves from the United States to Paris. One such example is Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.

With World War II, the literature started once more to diversify, and especially as we advance further through the 20th century, we will observe even more modifications. More and more publishing houses started to emerge, and steadily but with certainty they started to merge into bigger commercial conglomerates. Eventually, this will create the “Big five” of the publishing world: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster.

The second half of the 20th century will bring to literature, further changes. The emergence and further popularizing of the cinema and movie industry will transform the reader into a movie enthusiast. As such, more and more books will start to be transformed into movies: “James Bond” series, “Hercule Poirot”, “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” are such examples, although the last two will see their movie transformation at the beginning of the 21st century.

With this transformation, it meant authors would now get more appreciation for their hard work, and some of them could almost reach star status. It would also mean more and more people would like to have their work published.

If at the beginning of the 20th-century authors could submit their work to publishers, the increasing number of submissions diversified the profession of the literary agent into literary agencies. As such literary agencies began to be created at a faster pace. It was required in a demanding market where the literary agents and publishers had their workload increased. Literary agents were able to triage the submissions, guide or polish their manuscripts if accepted and eventually present them in front of publishers or movie production houses.

More authors and more books also meant the transformation from a more literary fiction concentrated on the beauty of writing, and complex characters with profound principles behind them, into a more money-making industry, the apparition of the commercial fiction or commercial novel. Especially towards the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st-century books that were sold were books that focused on the present, on the current issues, or responded to a social event.

Unfortunately, because of the diminished quality of books, the readers started to lose interest in them. If between the ’40s and late ’70s people were reading at a fantastic rate, the commercial novel, with the increase of non-fiction books of self-help, self-educational books, people started steadily to read less, and turn towards the movie version of the book, if even that.

Children were reading less, as well as did the younger adults, the book industry seemed to have had its peak and now it was going for an off-cliff finish. Writers started to have their best-selling moment, and the book would be soon forgotten as it appeared.

In this grim surrounding, there are still a few 20ths century born authors that managed to create quality literary books, books that will probably stand the test of time, and be regarded as quality or even classic fiction literature in the fullness of time.

Some examples of these authors are in this list. Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of “The Little Prince”) influenced positively a vast mass of people, selling over 140 million copies today. Fortunately, such success was recorded by JRR Tolkien’s book (born in the previous century), “The Lord of the Rings” which sold over 150 million copies. Today we will also reference “Animal Farm” or “1984” which saw the light of the printing press due to the creative energy of George Orwell.

Stephen King gave a new chance and new birth to horror novels. Many fictional works from Stephen King were transformed into movies, but people still enjoy reading the book version of the story. Stephen King is on the list of authors that struggled and probably succeeded to create quality literary work.

Also in the horror genre, we will find Shirley Jackson (author of “The Haunting of hill house”), or the great Dame Daphne du Maurier and her Gothic novel “Rebecca” which can be seen as one of the finest works of Gothic mystery book. Another female great author born in the 20th century is Anne Rice, who gave us “The Vampire Chronicles” and is read which can be on the same pedestal as Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”.

The list does not stop here, historical fiction saw a chance for posterity, due to at least two very talented and gifted authors. The way they managed to maintain, as much as possible for a fictional book, the historical accuracy is something that can be regarded as beyond talent and skill, but work of genius. The two authors of historical fiction that need mentioning here are of course: Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory. Their books are read by an increasing number and their books are and should be regarded as a reference point for all avid literature enthusiasts.

In the 20th century, we will find William P. Young, author of the amazing book: “The shack” which was required in a world more inclined to move away from Christianity in an atheism frenzy, specific for the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. Alice Sebold, born in the 20th century, author of “The lovely bones” showed us the strength of a woman that went through a traumatic event, to rise above it and become one of the greatest authors of our contemporary times.

Without disregarding the importance of the other authors born in the 20th century, I think the most influential author of the 20th and 21st centuries, that managed to bring back to reading so many children, to make them rediscover the beauty of literature and spark the enjoyment of literature in children, teenagers and adults alike is Joanne Rowling.

The positive influence that J.K. Rowling had over literature and readers across the world can be seen, not only in the number of books she sold (over 500 million), the fact that her books were translated into over 70 languages, and that she launched a movie franchise which made other child actors into stars, characters into personas with fan pages of themselves, but she gave an example of a role model author.

JK Rowling is an author, a philanthropist and a fighter for feminist rights, a person that aided greatly women’s rights. An author with principles, and an author that started from modest beginnings and achieved huge popularity, shows still her greatness by her attitude of a true erudite, a true author that valued more the literary quality of her books, and not the commercial aspect, making sure that the movies will not modify the true intent of the books.

Everyone now knows the name of: “The boy who lived”, Harry Potter, and that is because her books have a meaning, ideas behind the plot, and things we can learn behind the beautifully crafted fiction. We still have so much to thank her for.

More current, and more recently in terms of their birth date, and the date of their published work, to be able to clearly state if their work will become a future classic, they still hold a great amount of literary quality, and genius creativity is Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island), David Nicholls (One day), Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the train), Stephenie Meyer (Twilight series), John Green (The fault in our stars), Darcey Bell (A simple favour), Cecelia Ahern (PS, I love you).

I do hope that the list of these 20th-century-born authors is not exhaustive and that the current fog over literature will lift, a literature fog, in which to be popular you need to write something that sells (and limit your literary work to that), to write something that touches on current issues, or on current popular waves.

I do hope that besides this list of 20th-century-born authors there will be authors who will appear to make this literature fog vanish. A current literature fog in which you need to be careful what you write so that an increasingly dangerous “cancel culture” can obliterate you, this type of attitude hopefully will end in the next years or decades, and what will remain will be not just this list, but a list 10 times wider, of authors born in the 20th century, or even 21st.

We need to thank these nineteen authors, and not only them, for keeping the flag up, for fighting the good fight, for refusing to succumb to the commercial aspect, and give us authors born in the 20th century that we can be proud of. Thank you!

Nihil sine Deo