ENRICHMENT

20th Century Essentials playlist

These are the some of the most important texts from the 20th century. It takes a bit of time for the cultural significance of a text to be understood, but we’re far enough into the 21st century now to evaluate the books from the last century and understand which ones had the biggest impact. These are those books – or at least some of them (there are too many to list here). These books are more readable than the texts in our All-Time Essentials playlist because they’re more modern. You should look them up and read the ones that most appeal to you.

20th Century Essentials

  1. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (1922)

  2. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1924)

  3. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

  4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

  5. Animal Farm by George Orwell (1944)

  6. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)

  7. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1949) - recommended read

  8. The End of The Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

  9. The Whitsun Weddings (collection) by Philip Larkin (1964)

  10. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)

  11. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979) - recommended read

  12. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

  13. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1983) - recommended read

  14. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (1985)

  15. Watchmen by Alan Moore (1987)

  16. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)

  17. Possession by AS Byatt (1990)

  18. Regeneration by Pat Barker (1991)

  19. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (1996)

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