Brit Lit

Postby **aliveinHim** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:06 pm

How many of you are into Brittish literature? I haven't been reading as much in a while but I loved Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. What britlit books do you all like?

my last fm profile! · Postby **rocklobster** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:11 pm

I'm a fan of Charles Dickens, Eoin Colfer, JK Rowling, and Agatha Christie.

Postby **Edward** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:37 pm

I just started reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld books last year in December and I'm already on my third one! I also like Sherlock Holmes stories and LOTR and Harry Potter.

Postby **Atria35** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:55 pm

I have a bunch of faves- Shakespeare, Chaucer, Terry Prachett, JK Rowling, Christopher Marlowe, Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Susan Cooper, JRR Tolkien.... and a bunch of others!

(I don't count Eoin Colfer because he's technically Irish, not English, though he does count of you're going for Great Britain instead of England specifically. But if you're going for Great Britian, then I'm also counting Bram Stoker.)

Postby **TopazRaven** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:46 pm

I like J.K. Rowling and Terry Pratchett. xD I need to read more British stuff considering I've always been fond of England.

Postby **Htom Sirveaux** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:11 pm

Huge Terry Pratchett fan here. He really is a modern day Geoffrey Chaucer. And I can read Clive Barker's short stories and novellas, but I've never been able to finish a full-length novel. They just get too . . . yeesh.

Postby **aliveinHim** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 4:56 pm

I'm not into Harry Potter so I don't read Rowling (I have my convictions). I really like Wells and Chaucer. Mary Shelley is excellent.

Postby **Warrior 4 Jesus** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 5:50 pm

I've read many of the authors already listed. I'd like to add C.S. Lewis.

Postby **aliveinHim** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:11 pm

I <3 CS Lewis!

MAL · Postby **MomentOfInertia** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:54 pm

Eoin Colfer is English? I didn't know that.

So, he's on my list along with Terry Pratchett(awesome), JRR Tolkien(very good), JK Rowling(eh, okay) and Douglas Adams(Hilarious).

Postby **ich1990** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:33 pm

This thread should probably be about which authors you like that aren't British, because the majority of everything good ever put down by a pen has come from their shores. It is no accident that out of my top five greatest authors of all time, three of them are English. In no particular order:

C.S. Lewis
G.K. Chesterton
Evelyn Waugh

As a bonus I will throw Gerard Manley Hopkins in as the representative poet. Shakespeare didn't have anything on him.

Postby **Warrior 4 Jesus** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:07 am

I've only ever read G.K. Chesterton's A Man Called Thursday but it was very good, if rather odd.

my last fm profile! · Postby **rocklobster** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:17 am

MomentOfInertia (post: 1459996) wrote:Eoin Colfer is English? I didn't know that.

So, he's on my list along with Terry Pratchett(awesome), JRR Tolkien(very good), JK Rowling(eh, okay) and Douglas Adams(Hilarious).

Technically, Colfer's Irish. However, Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, so that's why I count him among the others. It's kind of like how come a writer from Mississippi (Faulkner) can still be called American.

Postby **TopazRaven** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:32 am

Well technically wither Ireland is part of the UK depends on which one you are talking about. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, however the Republic of Ireland is not. In least not anymore. Just felt the need to point that out. xD Also, I forgot to add C.S. Lewis and are the Warriors (Erin Hunter writers) from England? I'm not sure.

Postby **Atria35** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:57 am

TopazRaven (post: 1460049) wrote:Well technically wither Ireland is part of the UK depends on which one you are talking about. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, however the Republic of Ireland is not. In least not anymore. Just felt the need to point that out. xD

Very true. There was a lot of discussion about that when I was studying in England.

MAL · Postby **Kaori** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 6:55 am

my favorite British authors would include the Pearl poet, Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Milton, Donne, Herbert, Tennyson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Matthew Arnold, Mary Shelley, and of course Lewis and Chesterton.

Though he was more of a translator than an author, I also want to put in a plug for William Tyndale, because I think he is vastly underappreciated. His influence on the English language was as great as that of Shakespeare, and he was also the first person to translate the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into English (Wycliffe translated from the Vulgate), although he was martyred before he was able to finish.

Postby **the_wolfs_howl** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:56 am

ich1990 (post: 1460027) wrote:As a bonus I will throw Gerard Manley Hopkins in as the representative poet. Shakespeare didn't have anything on him.

Ohhh, I recently read a poem by him, "God's Grandeur." It was absolutely the most beautiful thing in the world <3

Anyway, yeah, I've noticed that most of my favorite books (especially classics) are British or UK or however you want to classify it. A brief list:

Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
J.R.R. Tolkien
C.S. Lewis
J.K. Rowling
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (and I don't think of it as some kind of Austen-esque romance, by the way]Jane Eyre[/i]
Bram Stoker's Dracula (if that counts)

...I'm probably forgetting somebody painfully obvious, but yeah.

Postby **TopazRaven** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 2:33 pm

Atria35 (post: 1460053) wrote:Very true. There was a lot of discussion about that when I was studying in England.

Yeah, I've noticed it seems to be a mistake a lot of people make. I just warn you now, never walk up to an Irish person and say, "so you're British then right?" It will not end well. Lol. Okay, so I'm just being a little silly here, but I've noticed a lot of Irish people get really insulted when people still think they are a part of the United Kingdom instead of their own independent country.

Postby **aliveinHim** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:36 pm

Kaori (post: 1460066) wrote:Though he was more of a translator than an author, I also want to put in a plug for William Tyndale, because I think he is vastly underappreciated. His influence on the English language was as great as that of Shakespeare, and he was also the first person to translate the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into English (Wycliffe translated from the Vulgate), although he was martyred before he was able to finish.

I love Tyndale. I want to read some of his writings. I think that he was an excellent man. He's one of my favorite reformers.

Postby **Maledicte** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 11:20 pm

I loves me some Chesterton, Wilde (okay, fine, he's Irish), and Conan Doyle.

Along newer lines I like Kit Whitfield, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke.

MAL · Postby **Kaori** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 12:15 am

aliveinHim (post: 1460137) wrote:I love Tyndale. I want to read some of his writings. I think that he was an excellent man. He's one of my favorite reformers.

Yes, I admire that man.

You can download his translation of Jonah from Gutenberg, and his 1526 New Testament can be read online via Google Books. Alternately, there are always hard copies.

Postby **aliveinHim** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 4:41 am

Oh, and we musn't forget George Orwell. Animal Farm is one of my favorite books and I'm almost done with 1984.

Postby **Nami** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 7:13 am

O_O Really? No one mentioned Lewis Carroll? He is one of my favorites. Regardless of what people think of him. ^_^ I love Alice in Wonderland. A CLASSIC! :3 I want to own every edition, an excellent read for anyone looking for a story that doesn't make a lot of sense (and yet it does to me.)

I love Jane Austen, but most of the author's mentioned are ones I like. >>; I can't think of any others...

Postby **aliveinHim** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 8:52 am

And we also forgot Huxley! How can anyone forget Aldous Huxley?

my last fm profile! · Postby **rocklobster** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 4:55 pm

Actually, the only thing I read from him was Brave New World. But he was a member of the Inklings with Lewis and Tolkien, I know that much.

Postby **aliveinHim** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:07 am

I've also only read Brave New World. It definately wasn't my favorite but I didn't mind it. I thought it was creepy. I like Bram Stoker also.

Postby **Nami** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:15 am

I just bought Bram Stoker's Dracula. I can't wait to dig in! :3

Postby **Atria35** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 9:25 am

aliveinHim (post: 1460607) wrote:I've also only read Brave New World. It definately wasn't my favorite but I didn't mind it. I thought it was creepy.

Hint: It's supposed to be.

I personally thought the book was a brilliant social commentary. It changed how I looked at the world in a lot of ways.

Reading it when I was 13 probably also had something to do with how much I was affected, but I think that I'd still get a lot out of it if I read it today.

Postby **Mouse2010** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 2:08 pm

Those of you are fans of Chesterton and Waugh should check out Rumer Godden's novels. Her style is nothing like theirs, but her religious sensibilities are similar (she's another British convert to Roman Catholicism, though a few decades later than Waugh, Greene, and Chesterton). One of her distinctive traits as a novelist is a focus on children --including child narrators-- in novels which are otherwise really for adults, such as the Battle for the Villa Fiorita, which is a fairly unusual novel about adultery. The Greengage Summer is really good, as is In This House of Brede.

Postby **aliveinHim** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 5:40 pm

Nami (post: 1460609) wrote:I just bought Bram Stoker's Dracula. I can't wait to dig in! :3

Trust me, you'll love it. I had nightmares when I first started reading it but then I got used to it.

Brit Lit

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