page_title: British literature
section_title: Early twentieth-century
hierarchical_section_title: British literature / Twentieth-century / Twentieth-century genre fiction / Early twentieth-century
caption_attribution_description: Agatha Christie
context_page_description: British literature is literature from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. Anglo-Saxon literature is included, and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature. There is also some brief discussion of major figures who wrote in Scots, but the main discussion is in the various Scottish literature articles.
  The article Literature in the other languages of Britain focuses on the literatures written in the other languages that are, and have been, used in Britain. There are also articles on these various literatures: Latin literature in Britain, Anglo-Norman, Cornish, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Latin, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, etc.
  Irish writers have played an important part in the development of literature in England and Scotland, but though the whole of Ireland was politically part of the United Kingdom between January 1801 and December 1922, it can be controversial to describe Irish literature as British. For some this includes works by authors from Northern Ireland.
context_section_description: Among significant writers in this genre in the early twentieth-century were Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands (1903), who wrote spy novels, Emma Orczy (Baroness Orczy) author of  The Scarlet Pimpernel, an historical romance which recounted the adventures of a member of the English gentry in the French Revolutionary period. The title character established the notion of a "hero with a secret identity" into popular culture. John Buchan wrote adventure novels like Prester John (1910). Novels featuring a gentleman adventurer were popular between the wars, exemplified by the series of H. C. McNeile with Bulldog Drummond (1920), and Leslie Charteris, whose many books chronicled the adventures of Simon Templar, alias The Saint.
  The medieval scholar M. R. James wrote highly regarded ghost stories in contemporary settings.
  This was called 'the Golden Age of Detective Fiction'. Dame Agatha Christie, a writer of crime novels, short stories and plays, is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Other female writers dubbed "Queens of crime" include Dorothy L. Sayers (gentleman detective, Lord Peter Wimsey), Margery Allingham (Albert Campion – supposedly created as a parody of Sayers' Wimsey) and New Zealander Dame Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn). Georgette Heyer created the historical romance genre, and also wrote detective fiction.
  A major work of science fiction, from the early 20th century, is A Voyage to Arcturus by Scottish writer David Lindsay, first published in 1920, and was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.
  From the early 1930s to late 1940s, an informal literary discussion group associated with the English faculty at the University of Oxford were The Inklings. Its leading members were the major fantasy novelists; J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Lewis is known for The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy, while Tolkien is best known as the author of The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
caption: Dame Agatha Christie
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