The early Twentieth Century produced some of the most exhilarating literature in the English language. Writers from Britain, America and Ireland challenged literary conventions as their perspectives evolved in a dynamic but newly unsettling world. Social pressures, urbanization, new technologies, and political activism from women's groups and others within the British Empire, all raised the awareness of writers and prompted them to rethink and reshape their work. In addition, intellectual and literary debates from the late nineteenth century lingered into the next century and World War I provided a shocking jolt to the established ways of life and changed a generation of writers and the course of literature.This book considers the major authors and texts of the modernist period, mapping the literary alongside the historical, social and literary issues of the time. It provides a clear overview and analysis of works by Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster and many others.