Literature in English

Wells, H. G. (1866–1946). Shopkeeper's son who jumped the counter to become successful author and eventually teacher‐at‐large to the human race. A scholarship to what is now Imperial College, London, where he studied under T. H. Huxley, suggested the power of science to make us free, though it was an imaginative energy which fuelled his early romances The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898). Moving in literary and Fabian circles, he saw the novel as a medium for discussing contemporary problems. The best‐selling Outline of History (1920) offered mankind ‘salvation by history’, lasting world peace only to be secured by learning its lessons.

Canterbury Tales Late 14th‐cent. unfinished masterpiece by Chaucer. The General Prologue presents portraits of diverse pilgrims congregated at the Tabard inn (Southwark), including a battle‐worn Knight, sweetly pretentious Prioress, and emaciated scholar‐Clerk. They lighten the journey to Thomas Becket's shrine at Canterbury by exchanging twenty‐four tales, which range from high romance set in ancient Greece (Knight) to low comedy in contemporary England (Miller, Reeve).

E. E. Cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings), 1894-1962, American poet, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1915. His poetry, noted for its eccentricities of typography, language, and punctuation, usually seeks to convey a joyful, living awareness of sex and love. Among his 15 volumes of poetry are Tulips and Chimneys (1923), Is 5 (1926), and 95 Poems (1958). A prose account of his war internment in France, The Enormous Room (1922), is considered one of the finest books ever written about World War I. Cummings was also an accomplished artist whose paintings and drawings were exhibited in several one-man shows. Bibliography: See his Complete Poems, 1913-1962 (2 vol., 1972); biographies by R. S. Kennedy (1980) and C. Sawyer-Lauçcanno (2004); N. Friedman, Cummings: The Growth of a Writer (1980).