english books from the 1930s

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what would you recommend? any style, but must be english, and from the 30s. i won't put any more conditions on it than that

― -- (688), Monday, 28 August 2006 17:09 (nineteen years ago)

I have a copy of "scouting for boys" from around that time that you can borrow if you like.

― Porkpie (porkpie), Monday, 28 August 2006 17:14 (nineteen years ago)

ford madox ford - the good soldier (1927)

― hippo eats dwarlf (lfam), Monday, 28 August 2006 17:27 (nineteen years ago)

Evelyn Waugh should be good for you, in maybe the following order: A Handful of Dust (1934), Vile Bodies (1930), Scoop (1938), and then (if you're really into his "hoho these Ethiopians are hilarious" thing) Black Mischief (1932). But Brideshead Revisited (1945) and The Loved One (1947) are better than a bunch of those, I think.

Also if you like teh chuklees there is Wodehouse, though I can't seem to find a timeline and pick out what he was producing through the 30s.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 28 August 2006 17:35 (nineteen years ago)

Party Going by Henry Green (1939).

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 28 August 2006 17:51 (nineteen years ago)

I, Claudius by Robert Graves (1934). Also, the sequel Claudius the God. Also, Count Belisarius (1938).

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 28 August 2006 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

Patrick Hamilton - 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (1935) and Hangover Square (1941). Quintessential London books. Ladies of the Night, rainy nights in Soho. Pubs, poverty and bitter.
Graham Greene of course. In particular with England as setting, Brighton Rock (1938). Not my favourite Greene, but very good all the same.
Agatha Christies The ABC Murders was in the 30's for a good crime read, though I know it better from the telly.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell, or The Road To Wigan Pier are both important novels for that decade, the class system. The Angry Young men have this writing as a natural antecedent.

― Major Alfonso (Major Alfonso), Monday, 28 August 2006 18:21 (nineteen years ago)

henry green seconded.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 10:34 (nineteen years ago)

also actually this should top any list of any books, but is from the '30s and written by a britishes: george dangerfield's 'the strange death of liberal england'.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 10:35 (nineteen years ago)

Seven Types of Ambiguity - William Empson (1930)

and Henry Green thirded

― Ward Fowler (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 10:45 (nineteen years ago)

i am a little over midway through john haffenden's biog of empson (vol one of it, that is; he's all of 24 years old at p. 270...) and it's a great, great read, if you like that sort of thing, which i do obviously.

i was gonna propose 'some versions...' simply because THE WHOLE OF MY ACADEMIC CAREER is bound up in the essay 'proletarian literature'.

i didn't cos in all honesty i have not read the whole book.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 10:50 (nineteen years ago)

academic career? i thought you had never been to school?

― -- (688), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 10:56 (nineteen years ago)

i didn't go to school with the internets, because it was the 90s.

(they probably did have it, really.)

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 10:59 (nineteen years ago)

The Virgin and the Gypsy by DH Lawrence was published after his death in 1930, but was actually written in 1926. Does that count?

If so, it's well worth a read — sex, class, religion, small-town boredom, over-blown metahphors... Basically everything you expect from David Herbet.

― Hello Sunshine (Hello Sunshine), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 11:22 (nineteen years ago)

i read cyril connolly's the rock pool recently, but i dunno if i can be bothered to recommend it.

― rtccc (mwah), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 11:51 (nineteen years ago)

isherwood too i suppose.

― rtccc (mwah), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 11:55 (nineteen years ago)

yeah i'm having trouble really *recommending* those guys! they're ok *if you're interested in that kind of thing*, and i don't think they compel *that* much attention. isherwood's 'lions and shadows' is ok.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 11:58 (nineteen years ago)

anyone read stevie smith's novel on yellow paper? sounds like a laugh.

― rtccc (mwah), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 12:01 (nineteen years ago)

yeah tbf, heated heartfelt recommendation is not the vibe of any 30s britlit i ever read. strike a pose like how gareth is doing.

― rtccc (mwah), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 12:05 (nineteen years ago)

who is the english nathaniel west, if there could be such a thing?

― -- (688), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 12:09 (nineteen years ago)

heartfelt recommendation is not the vibe of any 30s britlit i ever read

this is partly why i started the thread, i haven't been recommended lots of britlit from this time, i don't hear a lot about it. but...i hear the same reticence about british popular music from the 1930s, and that was a great time for british music...

― -- (688), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 12:13 (nineteen years ago)

who is the english nathaniel west, if there could be such a thing?
-- -- (68...), August 29th, 2006.

isherwood's 'prater violet' would maybe do for a book abt uk cinema & fascism. it deals with the 30s but was published in the 40s. i think it may have been written earlier.

i can't guess at recommendations people gave you, but if anything isn't it british poetry that gets most of the attention in this decade?

auden et al.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 12:17 (nineteen years ago)

I second, third, fourth and generally foist Patrick Hamilton. George Barker is my favourite 30s poet.

I feel that I should be thinking of a few women other than Agatha Christie, here... ooh JEAN RHYS (Good Morning Midnight, Voyage in the Dark). I guess a little bit of Woolf (eg The Waves) spills over into the thirties too...

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 12:43 (nineteen years ago)

Richmal Crompton was rockin in the 1930s.

― Pete W (peterw), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 12:48 (nineteen years ago)

Daphne DuMaurier was the '30s, too, wasn't she? I haven't read any of the Graham Greene novels of the 30s, but Power and the Glory is 1940, and that's a great great book.

It's weird; I can think of a million American books in this period, but I'm blanking a little on British novels.

― horseshoe (horseshoe), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:12 (nineteen years ago)

Down and Out in Paris and London and Coming Up for Air, George Orwell. Mr. Norris Changes Trains, Christopher Isherwood.

― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:15 (nineteen years ago)

The Power And The Glory seconded, heartily. It features one of the greatest scenes in literary history, with a priest, a bum, a local publican and some other dude drinking quality wine in a deserted, dilapidated building, to which my response is 'awesome'. I'm not a religious man, but this book is so well-written that its religion really did speak to me.

― Obvious Ninja (Haberdager), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:19 (nineteen years ago)

I guess Somerset Maugham was still writing in the 30s? I'm not sure what, though...

― horseshoe (horseshoe), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

The Power and the Glory is indeed great, it's one of my favourite of his. The Lawless Roads is a non fiction book about his travels in Mexico and it's a brilliant companion piece to The Power and the Glory.
A Gun For Sale would be another book he wrote in the 30's, about an assasination of a Minister. Quite film noirish, precursor to The Third Man which is superior.

― Major Alfonso (Major Alfonso), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

Ivy Compton-Burnett!

― dud Hab 'C' dEva (Dada), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:25 (nineteen years ago)

I haven't read them in ages but Huxley's 'Brave New World' and 'Eyeless in Gaza' were OK.

'Cakes & Ale' isn't his best by far, but neither is it Maugham's worst work.

Stella Gibbons' 'Cold Comfort Farm' is quite funny.

I'm not sure that Elizabeth Bowen really counts as English, but her novel, 'The Death of the Heart' published in '36 is excellent.

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 15:34 (nineteen years ago)

Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust...Henry Green's Party Going.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 16:33 (nineteen years ago)

dornford yates (summed up as "Snobbery with violence") very dated and rather funny.

― Menelaus Darcy (Menelaus Darcy), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 22:13 (nineteen years ago)

Finnegans Wake. A lot of it's inEnglish. The Big Sleep second.

― Pier Paolo Semolina (noodle vague), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 22:17 (nineteen years ago)

PG Wodehouse's greatest work was published in 1932 (we own an original edition!), namely the great one-off novel Hot Water. It's honestly the best taster Wodehouse I can recommend.

― Obvious Ninja (Haberdager), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 22:21 (nineteen years ago)

I'm wit ya there Looey.

― Pier Paolo Semolina (noodle vague), Tuesday, 29 August 2006 22:23 (nineteen years ago)

haha chandler seconded BUT 'ver big sleep' was 1940, so it'll have to be the two short stories he made it out of.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Wednesday, 30 August 2006 07:13 (nineteen years ago)

dh lawrence's "studies in classic american lit" is the greatest work of criticism ever - funny and brilliant and devastating on every page, just about. i've never been able to get through a single one of his novels.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 30 August 2006 07:22 (nineteen years ago)

five years pass...

The Unquiet Grave!!

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 12 January 2012 02:53 (thirteen years ago)

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