E.M. Forster once said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and his friends, he hoped he'd have the courage to betray the former. This preference for personal loyalty over patriotism reveals the core of Forster's values, the liberalism that he brought to his fictional explorations o

Bloomsbury, Elegant, Homoerotic, Political, Sincere, Witty

T. S. Eliot looked out on the landscape of the modern world after World War I and saw a place of disillusionment, shattered community, and lost spirituality. His poems describe the greyness of this sterile terrain and summon the traditions of the past -- both literary and religious -- to transcend t

Bloomsbury, Death, Elegant, Existentialist literature, Melancholy, Modernist literature, Modernist poetry, The lost generation

Though he became identified as the voice of the Beat generation, Jack Kerouac was always haunted by the knowledge that the voice he was famous for was not really his own, but something that he couldn't and wouldn't live up to. Ultimately, the schism between who Kerouac was and who the world wanted hi

Beats, Bloomsbury, Event, Excessive, Improvised, Loose, Open-ended, Sprawling

Both as a novelist and as an essayist, Virginia Woolf was a pioneer of what Marguerite Duras would later call "ecriture feminine." Her unusual style, lyrical and slow as aging, is best exemplified in her later novels, which include "Mrs. Dalloway" (1925), "To The Lighthouse" (1927), and "Orlando" (19

Bloomsbury, Feminine, Feminism, Intimate, Modernist literature, Queer literature, Quirky, Sprawling, Women's literature