Twentieth century literature can be broadly divided into two stylistic periods: Modernism, and Postmodernism, These periods roughly correspond to literature written before the Second World War (1939-1945) and literature written after it. Both are characterized by a high degree of experimentation.

Modernism in literature can be seen as a reaction against the nineteenth century forms, which can be thought of as assuming understanding between writer and reader, resulting in the simple communication of an agreed version of the “world”. This approach to writing is known as “Realism.” Instead， Modernist writers express the difficulty they see in understanding and communicating how the world works. Often, therefore, Modernist writing seems disorganized, hard to understand. It often portrays the action from the viewpoint of a single confused individual, rather than from the viewpoint of an all-knowing impersonal narrator outside the action.

One of the most famous of English Modernist writers is Joseph Conrad. He was raised in Poland, but became a sailor, and ended up as the Captain of a British ship. He got British citizenship and settled in England, where he wrote his books in English. They are Modernist in their concerns with mcral uncertainty: what is right? And in their concerns with factual uncertainty: what is true?

Conrad's most famous novel is The Heart of Darkness (1902), a story of a riverboat journey in central Africa to investigate and exploitative European ivory trader called Mr. Kurtz. The journey is a symbolic one representing the darkness at the heart of man. Mr. Kurtz s last words, “The horror! The horror!”are among the best-known in English literature. A film based on the novel has been made by the American director, Francis Fcrd Coppola, but set in Vietnam in the 1960s, and called Apocalypse Now.

Virginia Woolf is another writer associated with Modernism, and one of the most famous writers of the century. She was part of the intellectual “Bloomsbury group” named after the fashionable area of London in which they lived, which included other writers, philosophers, painters, and the economist, J. M. Keynes. Her work was concerned with the individual consciousness, especially the female consciousness. Her novels have become important to feminists for the way they show womens personalities to be limited by society. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) is one of her best-known works. She sometimes used what has been called the “stream of consciousness” technique: the apparently unorganized flow of thought onto page.

Less experimental, D. H. Lawrence, and E. M. Forster both wrote novels in this period which are critical of the modern world. In Forster's Howard's End (1910, recently made into a very successful film) he contrasts the artistic, romantic Schlegel sisters with the forceful, unethical business-people, the Wilcoxes. But in what we might see as a typical move for a British writer, the two families are brought together to create a new hybrid.

Moving into the post-war period, one of the most famous novels in English appears: George Orwell's 1984 (1948) is a powerful satire on the totalitarian tendency in modern states. It is set in an extremely unpleasant England ruled absolutely by “Big Brother”. This depressing story is charactalstic of the post-war years, and begins “Postmodernism”. The horrors of the second-world war undermined ideas of human progress, and of meaning in life, however well hidden. So while Modernists were scientists of human existence, looking for buried meaning below confusing surfaces, Postmodernists can be thought of as abandoning that search. Meaning does not exist outside of the human head, likewise it does not exist inside a book, waiting to be discovered, instead it is made in the process of reading a book, or of making sense of the world.

So writers like John Fowles play a game with the reader, constantly demonstrating the fictionality of their writing, and inviting the reader to put together different pieces freely. Fowles⁵ most successful novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1968), set in the small holiday resort of Lyme Regis, describes a Victorian gentleman's education into his own freedom by the mysterious girl, Sarah. It was also made into a well-known film. The story's main postmodern “trick” is that the reader is offered a choice of endings.

Not all writers can be squeezed into the definitions Modern or Postmodern. Many post-war writers continue traditional themes: Graham Greene (1904-1991) wrote novels of morally and religiously troubled expatriates, sometimes concerned with spies. Spy fiction in general is one of the strong points of contemporary British fiction: the best-known is John Le Carre. His novels (such as Smiley's People, 1980) have been made into internationally distributed TV serials. In popular fiction, Ian Fleming's fantastic James Bond stories are even better known, especially for their numerous film versions.

The best-known Welsh writer is the poet Dylan Thomas, whose compelling rhythms and rich natural imagery make his poetry very accessible and popular. Scotland too has produced many writers of note in recent times. Irvine Welsh's 1993 novel, Train-spotting, tells a shocking and powerful story of drug abuse, crime and unemployment among young people in Edinburgh. Written in the local dialect, it was made into a controversial and popular film in 1996. The northern Irish playwright, Brian Fuel, has had recent international success with his investigations of Irish history and Irishness such as Dancing at Lughnasa.

To look at a list of the most respected contemporary British writers is to be struck by the variety of many of their origins: Salman Rushdie (India), Grace Nichois (Guyana), Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan), V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad) amongst many others. This too is an aspect of the postmodern world: a mixing of cultures on a grand scale. But this mixture, this “hybridity”as I have called it, has always been a part of British writing, with its multinational and class-divided internal status, its imperial past, and its current highly international economy. British literature continues to reflect that complexity.

Modernist writing seems hard to understand because the understanding between writer and reader can't be reached.

The Heati of Darkness tells a riverboat journey in central Africa, which symbolizes the darkness at the heart of man.

The novels of Virginia Woolf remain popular today, and several have been made into well-known Hollywood films.

George Orwell's 1984， which begins “Postmodernism”， tends to seek buried meaning below confusing surfaces.

In some literary works Postmodernism is characterized by a choice of endings.