20th Century

At the beginning of this century England had become a huge Empire. The new king was Edward VII, a beloved monarch. He tried to improve relationships with the other European country failing with Germany. George V tried to solve the problem between the parties. The reasons that brought Europe to be politically divided had to be found in the economic superiority, industrial progress and population increase of France, Germany and England.
The end of the war marked the fall of the British economy that culminated in 1929 with the Wall Street crisis.
Ireland wanted to obtain independence from Britain so the nationalistic party arranged an army (IRA) to fight the British troops. The civil war started and in 1921 Ireland had his independence.
Edward the VIII succeeded his father George.
In 1939 Europe was entering a new world conflict, the Second World War, that brought deaths and misery.
In 1952 Elizabeth II became queen of Britain and North Ireland and she represented the Head of State.
The passage from Victorian to modern fiction is embodied with psychological novels by Forster. Around 1910 fiction began to reflect a new trend, which perceived man as an irrational, unconscious world. In this period the most important writers are James Joyce (“stream of consciousness”) and George Orwell and as concerns poetry Eliot and Auden.