I’m a great fan of literature about Britain between WWI and WWII (flexible, but that’s the rough period).
I’ve read Anthony Powell (Dancers to the Music of Time), the Nancy Mitford novels, Dorthy Sayers, Christie, Wodehouse, and many others that don’t come to mind now.
My question:
What can anyone recommend for me from this era? As you can see I’ll take comedy, mystery, straight fiction or anything else.
I’ll stretch to pre-WWI (late Victorian, Edwardian) as well, though WWII and postwar fiction strike me as a different breed. Nothing wrong with it, just not my sweet tooth.
I’ll even go steampunk, or whatever you might call retro-sci fi set in the 20s, though actual speculative fiction from the era seems a bit lame to me; but please, show me I’m wrong.
I know this is pretty broad request, but hoping many will weigh in.
Some C. P. Snow is written or set in that period, although most of his books are post war… He coined the phrase ‘the corridors of power’.
Or R. F. Delderfield was once very popular although modern readers might find his style overly sentimental. To Serve Them All My Days and the A Horseman Riding By trilogy are his best known works, I think. Both of them were made into popular UK tv series.
I came in to mention Waugh. Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite novels.
I also highly recommend EF Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels (where my user name comes from). They’re like Wodehouse, if Wodehouse had focused on Aunts Agatha and Dahlia rather than Bertie Wooster.
If you can find them, you might also see the later (and less well known) novels and short stories in John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga: To Let, A Modern Comedy, The White Monkey, The Silver Spoon, Swan Song. All are set in the 1920s, beginning just after the end of WWI.
Also Down And Out In Paris And London, and The Road To Wigan Pier. About as far from Wodehouse and Christie as you can get. And for a taste of the pulp fiction of the period, try Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond series, and *The Saint * series of Leslie Charteris.
The Avenue!! It follows the stories of several families living on an unnamed avenue in a London suburb from right after the end of WW I up until not long after the end of WW II. Available as one volume, The Avenue, or as two, The Dreaming Suburb (1919- 1940, I think) and The Avenue at War (1940-1947 or thereabouts). I first read this around 1972, and have reread it several times since.
The “Horseman Riding By” trilogy (Long Summer’s Day, Post of Honour and The Green Gauntlet) is set in Devon, from the second Boer War up until, again, after WW II; the second volume, I think, covers the between-wars period. I’ve read this one several times, too.
Based on these books and the Swann saga (three books, Indian Mutiny-WW I), I’d recommend just about anything by Delderfield.
If you’re looking SPECIFICALLY for novels set between the two world wars, start with Waugh’s ***Decline and Fall ***and A Handful of Dust.
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway works, too.
AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book stretches from 1895 to WW I and captures a certain late-colonial mood. Byatt isn’t everyone’s cup of tea,but I enjoyed it.