Only Poetry

Jo mausam beet jata hai dobara kyon nahin ata
kahin se laut ker bachpan hamara kyon nahin ata

yahan anay ko to har din kissi ke saath ata hai
jesay is dil ne reh reh kar pukara kyon nahin ata

who jis ki lo mohabbat ki jabeen ka istara thi
to phir rastay mai hamary wo roshan sitara kyon nahin ata

bohat heart hai ab bagon mein jab kalian chataktin hain
hamary dehyan mein lehja tumhara kyon nahin ata

kabhi phelay hoay pairon se jab kirnein jhalakty hain
tasawur main un ankhoon ka ishara kyon nahin ata

bhatakta phir raha hoon din ke is weran jangal mein
mehakti sham ka rangeen kinara kyon nahin ata

Dard kia hota hai btayein gein kisi roz
Kamal ki ghazal tum ko sunaein gein kisi roz

Thi unki zid k mai jaun unko manane
Mujko yeh veham tha vo bulayein gein kisi roz

kabi b maine to socha b nahi tha
Vo itna mere dil ko dukhaein gein kisi roz

Har roz aieene sey yehi poochti hun mae
Kia rukh pe tabassum sajayein gein kisi roz?

Urney do in parindon ko azaad fizaon mein
Tumhare hon agar to lout ayein gein kisi roz

Apne sitam ka dekh lena khud hi Saqi tum
Zakham e jigar tamaam log dekhein gein kisi roz !

Yehi Wafaa ka silaah hai, to koi baat nahi
Yeh dard tum ne diya hai, to koi baat nahi

Yehi bohot hai ke tum dekhte ho sahil se
Safeena doob raha hai, to koi baat nahi

Rakha tha aashiyana-e-dil main chhupa ke tumko
Woh ghar tumne chor diya hai to koi baat nahi

Tum hi ne aayena-e-dil mera banaya tha
Tum hi ne tod diya hai to koi baat nahi

Kis kii majaal kahe koi mujh ko deewana
Agar yeh tumne kaha hai to koi baat nahi

Meray Allah larai se bachana mujh ko,
Aur sikha day koi banduk chalana mujhko!

Khair se laut k ayain meray abbu ghar main
Urr na jain woh dhamakay sai kahin daftar main !

Raat din jaam traffic na rahay sarkon per
Koi nala na gatar bhar kar bahay sarkon per!

Qalma gawaion ko musalman banaday yarab
Naik aur saheb-e-iman banaday yarab !

Naam-e-Islam ki hurmat ko bachalay yarab
Waqt kai sarazy yazidon ko uthalay yarab

Lub pai aati hai dua ban kay tamanna meri

Ussay Keh Dou Kay Woh Mujh Ko Ronay Say Mat Rokay.....
Bikhray Huwoon Ko Toofan Sanbhala Nahi Kartay...

Ab Mehar Banion Ki Tumhari Tamana Nahi Humko.....
Barastay Huway Baadil Kabhi Ujala Nahi Kartay.....

Mat Qareeb Aao Meray Mujhe Bas Younhi Rehnay Dou...
Tootay Huway Paimanay Mein Jaam Dala Nahi Kartay......

Mat Sunao Logoon Ko Meri Barbaadi Ka Qissa...
Kissi Kay Dil Kay Zakhmoon Ko Younh Uchala Nahi Kartay

Wo sunta to main kehta,mujhe kuch aur kehna tha,
wo pal bhar ko jo ruk jata,mujhe kuch aur kehna tha.

kamai zindagi bhar ki,usi k naam to kar di,
mujhe kuch aur karna tha,mujhe kuch aur kehna tha.

kahan us ne suni meri,suni b un-suni kar di,
usay maloom tha itna,mujhe kuch aur kehna tha.

meray dil main jo dar aya,koi mujh main b dar aya,
waheen ik rabta toota,mujhe kuch aur kehna tha.

rawan tha piyar NUS NUS main,bohat qurbat thi apis main,
usay kuch aur sun-ana tha,mujhe kuch aur kehna tha.

ghalat fehmi ne baton ko barha dala younhi warna,
kaha kuch tha,wo kuch samjha,mujhe kuch aur kehna tha.

usey yaad ker k na dil dukha, jo guzar gia wo guzar gia,
kahan lout ker koi ayai ga, jo guzar gia wo guzar gia,

Nayai subah hay, nayai shaab hay, naya shahar hay, naya naam hai,
Woh chala gaya usay bhool jaa, jo guzar gia woh guzar gia,

Koi ayai ga koi jayai ga, koi jayai ga koi ayai ga,
Suno raston ki sada, jo guzar gaya wo guzar gia,

Teray paas tera habai hay, jo nahin mila woh naseeb hay,
Koi phool kehta hai muskura, jo guzar gaia woh guzar gia,

Mujhey pat jharon ki kahanian na suna suna kay udaas ker,
Nayai mausamon ka pata bata, jo guzar gia wo guzar gia,

Yahan aetbar-o-yaqeen hai, yeh haqiqaton ki zameen hay,
Zara dair ka koi khuwab tha, jo guzar gia wo guzar gia

Mein Haqeeqat Houn Samajhtey Hein Woh Afsaana Mujhey
Khud Jalaatey Hein Bana Kar Apna Parwaana Mujhey

Gardash-e-Dauraan Se Kehdo Housh Ke Baatein Karey!
Gham Ke Toofaanoun Se Bhi Aata Hey Takraana Mujhey

Un Se Un Ki Bazm Mein Itna Hi Keh Ke Uthh Gaya
Raunaqein Tum Ko Mubarak Aur Veeraana Mujhey

Jaaney Kya Aadmi Tha, Na-Aashna Lagta Tha Woh
Kar Gaya Sarey Shanasaaoun Se Be-Gaana Mujhey

Aisey ChhupChhup Kar Kahan Tak Zahmat-e-Jalwa- Gari
Hashar Jo Bhi Ho, Nazar Aa Be-Hijabaana Mujhey

Meri Tark-e-May Kashi Per, Meri Har Tauba Ke Baad,
Ehtiraaman Leney Aaya Meer-e-May Khaana Mujhey

Har Naye Saaqi Ne Uff! Hasb-e-Riwayat He Diya
Meray He Khoon-e-Jigar Se Bhar Ke Pemaana Mujhey

Dekh Kar Iss Dil Ki Thandi Aag Mein Jaltey Howye
Hogay Rukhsat Duaayen De Ke Parwana Mujhey

Wo samne aye to Nazron ko Jhukaa loon ga
Dekhoon ga nahi phir bhi Tasweer bana loon ga

Aana ho to aa jao Ruswayee nahi hogi
Dekhega nahi koi Palkon mai chupa loon ga

Jo Hum per guzarni hai ek bar guzar jaye
Her Gham ki tarha Tujh ko Seene se laga loon ga

Weeran agar Dil ho Aankhon mai Andhera ho
Yaadon ke Diye apni Palkon mai saja loon ga

Manzoor agar hogi Ruswayi Teri Mujh ko
Mai beth ke Sahil se Toofaan utha loon ga

Naraz agar wo hain Mere Nasheman se
Mai apne Nasheman ke Tinkon ko hata loon ga

Kyun Mujh se Khafa ho ker wo Door gaye
Baanhon mai wo aa jayaen mai un ko Mana loon ga

Gungunatay Hue Anchal Ki Hawa De Mujh Ko
Ungliyaan phair Ke BAloon Main Sulla De Mujh Ko

Jis Tarah Faltu Guldaan Paray Rehtay Hain
Apne Ghar Ke Kisi Konay Se Lagga De Mujh Ko

Yaad Kar Ke Mujhe Takleef He Hoti Hogii
Aik Kissa Hoon Purana Sa Bhulla De Mujh Ko

Doobtay Doobtay Awaaz Teri Sunn Jaoon
Akhiri Baar Tu Sahil Se Sadah De Mujh Ko

Main Tere Hijr Main Chup Chaap Na Marr Jaoon Kahin
Main Hoon Saktay Main Kabhii Aa Ke Rulla De Mujh Ko

Dekh Main Hogaya Badnaam Kitaboon Ki Tarah
Merii Tasheer Na Kar Ab Tu Jalla De Mujh Ko

Rhootna Tera Meri Jaan Liye Jata Hai
Aesay Naraaz Na Ho Hans Ke Dekha De Mujh Ko

Aur Kuch Bhi Nahi Manga Mere Malik Tujh Se
Us Ki Galiyoon Main Parii Khaak Banaa De Mujh Ko

Log Kehtay Hain Ke Yeh Ishq Niggal Jata Hai
Main Bhi Is Ishq Main Aya Hoon,Dua De Mujhe Ko

Yahi Okaat Hai Meri Tere Jeevan Mein Ke Main
Koi Kamzoor Sa Lamha Hoon, Bhulla De Mujh Ko

KOI TO HOTA....
mai jis k dil ki kitaab benta
mai jis ki chahet ka khawab benta
mai hijr k mosem ki lembi raaton mein
yaad ben ker azaab benta
KOI TO HOTA.....

jo meri khawahish mein uthh ker raaton ko khoob rota
dukhon ki chader lapeit ker hajoom_e_dunya se door hota
mai rooth jata manata mujh ko
k chahe mera kasoor hota
KOI TO HOTA....

mai jis k itna kareeb hota
na paas koi rakeeb hota
mai itna uus ka habeeb hota
ye silsila bhi ajeeb hota
KOI TO HOTA........

"Mein ne to bohat chaha magar wo mila he nahi ...
Laakh koshish ki magar fasla mita he nahi...
Us ko majboor zamane ne is kadar kar diya k...
Meri kisi saada par woh thehra he nahi...
khuda se jholi pehla kay manga tha usay ...
Khuda ne meri kisi dua ko sunna he nahi...
Har aik se pucha sabab us kay na milne ka ...
Har eik ne kaha woh tere liye bana hi nahi...!!

Hazar rahen mud ke dekhien, Kahien se koi sada na ayie
Badi wafa se nibhayie tum ne, Humari thodisi Bewafaie

Jahan se tum mod mud gaye the, ye mod ab bhi yahie pade hain
Hum apne pairon me jane kitne, Bhanwar lapete huwe khade hain

Kahien kisi roz yun bhi hoga, humari halat tumhari hogi
Jo rat humne guzari mar k, wo rat tumne guzari hoti

Tumhe ye zid hai k hum bulate, hume ummis k wo pukaren
Hai naam honton pe ab bhi lekin, Aawaz me pad gayie dararen

Tu Ne Jo Chonk Kar Her Jagha Nigah Ki Hogi
Mere Hi Dard-e-Mohabbat Ne Sada Di Hogi

Ye Jo Moti Baraste Hey, Teri Yaad Mein Aksser
Badloon Ne Meri Aankhon Ko Dua Di Hogi

Jhilmillati Hooye Ek Baat Jo Sochi Mene
Yaser Ne Jaake Ussay Zaroor Bata Di Hogi

Zikir Aaya Jo Kabhi Mera Uss Ki Mehfil Mein
Khefiyet Mittane Ko Uss Ne Baat Ghhuma Di Hogi

Wo Rah Se Guzrey Bhi Plutt Ker Bhi Na Dekhe
Aakhiri Ummed Mareez-e-Ishq ki Bujha Di Hogi

Dill Saada Tu Barra Khush Fehum Hey Lekin Yaser
Uss Ne Soorat Bhi Teri Kab Ki Bhulla Di Hogi

Naam Koi Bhi Na Le Meri ZINDAGI ka Yahaan
Shehar Mein Uss ne, Yeh MaNaDi karwa Di Hogi

Khaali jaam liye baithe ho,un aankhon ki baat karo,
Raat bahut hai, pyaas bahut hai, Baarsaton ki baat karo,

Jo peekar mast huey hain un ke ziker se kya hasil
Jin tak jaam nahin pahuncha hai un pyaason ki baat karo

Chup rehney se kut na sakegi saadiyon lambi raat yahan,
Jin yaadon se dil roshan hai, un yaadon ki baat karo

Phir palkon par jugnu chamke,aankhon mein ghata si lehrai
Thandi hawa ka ziker karo, Kuch bheegi ruton ki baat karo

Raat bahut hai, pyaas bahut hai, Baarsaton ki baat karo,
Khaali jaam liye baithe ho, un aankhonki baat karo..

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Literary forms
Literary forms such as the novel or lyric poem, or genres, such as the horror-story, have a history. In one sense, they appear because they have not been thought of before, but they also appear, or become popular for other cultural reasons, such as the absence or emergence of literacy. In studying the history of literature (or any kind of art), you are challenged to consider

what constitutes a given form,
how it has developed, and
whether it has a future.
The novels of the late Catherine Cookson may have much in common with those of Charlotte Brontë, but is it worth mimicking in the late 20th century, what was ground-breaking in the 1840s? While Brontë examines what is contemporary for her, Miss Cookson invents an imagined past which may be of interest to the cultural historian in studying the present sources of her nostalgia, but not to the student of the period in which her novels are set. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is a long work of prose fiction, but critics do not necessarily describe it as a novel. Why might this be? Knowing works in their historical context does not give easy answers, but may shed more or less light on our darkness in considering such questions.

Old English, Middle English and Chaucer 

Old English

English, as we know it, descends from the language spoken by the north Germanic tribes who settled in England from the 5th century A.D. onwards. They had no writing (except runes, used as charms) until they learned the Latin alphabet from Roman missionaries. The earliest written works in Old English (as their language is now known to scholars) were probably composed orally at first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. We know the names of some of the later writers (Cædmon, Ælfric and King Alfred) but most writing is anonymous. Old English literature is mostly chronicle and poetry - lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. By the time literacy becomes widespread, Old English is effectively a foreign and dead language. And its forms do not significantly affect subsequent developments in English literature. (With the scholarly exception of the 19th century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who finds in Old English verse the model for his metrical system of "sprung rhythm".)



Middle English and Chaucer

From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English. Ideas and themes from French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at about this time, but the first great name in English literature is that of Geoffrey Chaucer (?1343-1400). Chaucer introduces the iambic pentameter line, the rhyming couplet and other rhymes used in Italian poetry (a language in which rhyming is arguably much easier than in English, thanks to the frequency of terminal vowels). Some of Chaucer's work is prose and some is lyric poetry, but his greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we find in Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Other notable mediaeval works are the anonymous Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight (probably by the same author) and William Langlands' Piers Plowman.



Tudor lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while Surrey (as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse) thus inventing the verse form which will be of great use to contemporary dramatists. A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth comes with such writers as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The major works of the time are Spenser's Faerie Queene, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's sonnets.



Renaissance drama
The first great English dramatist is Marlowe. Before the 16th century English drama meant the amateur performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on public holidays. Marlowe's plays (Tamburlaine; Dr. Faustus; Edward II and The Jew of Malta) use the five act structure and the medium of blank verse, which Shakespeare finds so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually exhausts this form, his Jacobean successors producing work which is rarely performed today, though some pieces have literary merit, notably The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil by John Webster (1580-1625) and The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626). The excessive and gratuitous violence of Jacobean plays leads to the clamour for closing down the theatres, which is enacted by parliament after the Civil war.



Metaphysical poetry
The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose short love poems are characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest meaning from experience. The preoccupation with the big questions of love, death and religious faith marks out Donne and his successors who are often called metaphysical poets. (This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an essay of 1779, was revived and popularized by T.S. Eliot, in an essay of 1921. It can be unhelpful to modern students who are unfamiliar with this adjective, and who are led to think that these poets belonged to some kind of school or group - which is not the case.) After his wife's death, Donne underwent a serious religious conversion, and wrote much fine devotional verse. The best known of the other metaphysicals are George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).


Epic poetry
Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) and Roman (Virgil's Æneid) poetry. John Milton (1608-1674) who was Cromwell's secretary, set out to write a great biblical epic, unsure whether to write in Latin or English, but settling for the latter in Paradise Lost. John Dryden (1631-1700) also wrote epic poetry, on classical and biblical subjects. Though Dryden's work is little read today it leads to a comic parody of the epic form, or mock-heroic. The best poetry of the mid 18th century is the comic writing of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope is the best-regarded comic writer and satirist of English poetry. Among his many masterpieces, one of the more accessible is The Rape of the Lock (seekers of sensation should note that "rape" here has its archaic sense of "removal by force"; the "lock" is a curl of the heroine's hair). Serious poetry of the period is well represented by the neo-classical Thomas Gray (1716-1771) whose Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard virtually perfects the elegant style favoured at the time.



Restoration comedy
On the death of Oliver Cromwell (in 1658) plays were no longer prohibited. A new kind of comic drama, dealing with issues of sexual politics among the wealthy and the bourgeois, arose. This is Restoration Comedy, and the style developed well beyond the restoration period into the mid 18th century almost. The total number of plays performed is vast, and many lack real merit, but the best drama uses the restoration conventions for a serious examination of contemporary morality. A play which exemplifies this well is The Country Wife by William Wycherley (1640-1716).



Prose fiction and the novel
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known for the extended prose work Gulliver's Travels, in which a fantastic account of a series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing familiar English institutions, such as religion, politics and law. Another writer who uses prose fiction, this time much more naturalistic, to explore other questions of politics or economics is Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

The first English novel is generally accepted to be Pamela (1740), by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761): this novel takes the form of a series of letters; Pamela, a virtuous housemaid resists the advances of her rich employer, who eventually marries her. Richardson's work was almost at once satirized by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) in Joseph Andrews (Joseph is depicted as the brother of Richardson's Pamela Andrews) and Tom Jones.

After Fielding, the novel is dominated by the two great figures of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Jane Austen (1775-1817), who typify, respectively, the new regional, historical romanticism and the established, urbane classical views.

Novels depicting extreme behaviour, madness or cruelty, often in historically remote or exotic settings are called Gothic. They are ridiculed by Austen in Northanger Abbey but include one undisputed masterpiece, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1797-1851).



Romanticism
The rise of Romanticism

A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William Blake (1757-1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a significant event in English literary history, though the poems were poorly received and few books sold. The elegant latinisms of Gray are dropped in favour of a kind of English closer to that spoken by real people (supposedly). Actually, the attempts to render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly convincing. Robert Burns (1759 1796) writes lyric verse in the dialect of lowland Scots (a variety of English). After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the most often quoted of writers in English: we sing his Auld Lang Syne every New Year's Eve.


Later Romanticism

The work of the later romantics John Keats (1795-1821) and his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822; husband of Mary Shelley) is marked by an attempt to make language beautiful, and by an interest in remote history and exotic places. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) uses romantic themes, sometimes comically, to explain contemporary events. Romanticism begins as a revolt against established views, but eventually becomes the established outlook. Wordsworth becomes a kind of national monument, while the Victorians make what was at first revolutionary seem familiar, domestic and sentimental.



Victorian poetry
The major poets of the Victorian era are Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Both are prolific and varied, and their work defies easy classification. Tennyson makes extensive use of classical myth and Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities of his writing.

Browning's chief interest is in people; he uses blank verse in writing dramatic monologues in which the speaker achieves a kind of self-portraiture: his subjects are both historical individuals (Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto) and representative types or caricatures (Mr. Sludge the Medium).

Other Victorian poets of note include Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is notable for his use of what he calls "sprung rhythm"; as in Old English verse syllables are not counted, but there is a pattern of stresses. Hopkins' work was not well-known until very long after his death.



The Victorian novel
The rise of the popular novel

In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide education by the state, and self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly the result of the popularity of the novel. Publication in instalments means that works are affordable for people of modest means. The change in the reading public is reflected in a change in the subjects of novels: the high bourgeois world of Austen gives way to an interest in characters of humble origins. The great novelists write works which in some ways transcend their own period, but which in detail very much explore the preoccupations of their time.



Dickens and the Brontës

Certainly the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and possibly of all time, is Charles Dickens (1812-1870). The complexity of his best work, the variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create surface problems for the modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading. But Great Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit are works with which every student should be acquainted.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) and her sisters Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) are understandably linked together, but their work differs greatly. Charlotte is notable for several good novels, among which her masterpiece is Jane Eyre, in which we see the heroine, after much adversity, achieve happiness on her own terms. Emily Brontë's Wüthering Heights is a strange work, which enjoys almost cult status. Its concerns are more romantic, less contemporary than those of Jane Eyre - but its themes of obsessive love and self-destructive passion have proved popular with the 20th century reader.



The beginnings of American literature

The early 19th century sees the emergence of American literature, with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), Herman Melville (1819-91), and Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910), and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-92) and Emily Dickinson (1830-86). Notable works include Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby Dick, Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Whitman's Leaves of Grass.



Later Victorian novelists

After the middle of the century, the novel, as a form, becomes firmly-established: sensational or melodramatic "popular" writing is represented by Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne (1861), but the best novelists achieved serious critical acclaim while reaching a wide public, notable authors being Anthony Trollope (1815-82), Wilkie Collins (1824-89), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans; 1819-80) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Among the best novels are Collins's The Moonstone, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede and Middlemarch, and Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.



Modern literature
Early 20th century poets

W.B. (William Butler) Yeats (1865-1939) is one of two figures who dominate modern poetry, the other being T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965). Yeats was Irish; Eliot was born in the USA but settled in England, and took UK citizenship in 1927. Yeats uses conventional lyric forms, but explores the connection between modern themes and classical and romantic ideas. Eliot uses elements of conventional forms, within an unconventionally structured whole in his greatest works. Where Yeats is prolific as a poet, Eliot's reputation largely rests on two long and complex works: The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943).

The work of these two has overshadowed the work of the best late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian poets, some of whom came to prominence during the First World War. Among these are Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), A.E. Housman (1859-1936), Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The most celebrated modern American poet, is Robert Frost (1874-1963), who befriended Edward Thomas before the war of 1914-1918.



Early modern writers

The late Victorian and early modern periods are spanned by two novelists of foreign birth: the American Henry James (1843-1916) and the Pole Joseph Conrad (Josef Korzeniowski; 1857-1924). James relates character to issues of culture and ethics, but his style can be opaque; Conrad's narratives may resemble adventure stories in incident and setting, but his real concern is with issues of character and morality. The best of their work would include James's The Portrait of a Lady and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent.

Other notable writers of the early part of the century include George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and E.M. Forster (1879-1970). Shaw was an essay-writer, language scholar and critic, but is best-remembered as a playwright. Of his many plays, the best-known is Pygmalion (even better known today in its form as the musical My Fair Lady). Wells is celebrated as a popularizer of science, but his best novels explore serious social and cultural themes, The History of Mr. Polly being perhaps his masterpiece. Forster's novels include Howard's End, A Room with a View and A Passage to India.



Joyce and Woolf

Where these writers show continuity with the Victorian tradition of the novel, more radically modern writing is found in the novels of James Joyce (1882-1941), of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Where Joyce and Woolf challenge traditional narrative methods of viewpoint and structure, Lawrence is concerned to explore human relationships more profoundly than his predecessors, attempting to marry the insights of the new psychology with his own acute observation. Working-class characters are presented as serious and dignified; their manners and speech are not objects of ridicule.

Other notable novelists include George Orwell (1903-50), Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), Graham Greene (1904-1991) and the 1983 Nobel prize-winner, William Golding (1911-1993).



Poetry in the later 20th century

Between the two wars, a revival of romanticism in poetry is associated with the work of W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907-73), Louis MacNeice (1907-63) and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72). Auden seems to be a major figure on the poetic landscape, but is almost too contemporary to see in perspective. The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-53) is notable for strange effects of language, alternating from extreme simplicity to massive overstatement.

Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century, evaluation is even more difficult, but writers of note include the American Robert Lowell (1917-77), Philip Larkin (1922-1985), R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), Thom Gunn (1929-2004), Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and the 1995 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney (b. 1939).



Notable writers outside mainstream movements
Any list of "important" names is bound to be uneven and selective. Identifying broad movements leads to the exclusion of those who do not easily fit into schematic outlines of history. Writers not referred to above, but highly regarded by some readers might include Laurence Sterne (1713-68), author of Tristram Shandy, R.L. Stevenson (1850-94) writer of Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), author of The Importance of Being Earnest, and novelists such as Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), John Galsworthy (1867-1933) and the Americans F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), John Steinbeck (1902-68) and J.D. Salinger (b. 1919). Two works notable not just for their literary merit but for their articulation of the spirit of the age are Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. The American dramatist Arthur Miller (b. 1915) has received similar acclaim for his play Death of a Salesman (1949). Miller is more popular in the UK than his native country, and is familiar to many teachers and students because his work is so often set for study in examinations.



Literature and culture
Literature has a history, and this connects with cultural history more widely. Prose narratives were written in the 16th century, but the novel as we know it could not arise, in the absence of a literate public. The popular and very contemporary medium for narrative in the 16th century is the theatre. The earliest novels reflect a bourgeois view of the world because this is the world of the authors and their readers (working people are depicted, but patronizingly, not from inside knowledge). The growth of literacy in the Victorian era leads to enormous diversification in the subjects and settings of the novel.

Recent and future trends
In recent times the novel has developed different genres such as the thriller, the whodunnit, the pot-boiler, the western and works of science-fiction, horror and the sex-and-shopping novel. Some of these may be brief fashions (the western seems to be dying) while others such as the detective story or science-fiction have survived for well over a century. As the dominant form of narrative in contemporary western popular culture, the novel may have given way to the feature film and television drama. But it has proved surprisingly resilient. As society alters, so the novel may reflect or define this change; many works may be written, but few of them will fulfil this defining rôle; those which seem to do so now, may not speak to later generations in the same way.

Evaluating literature
The "test of time" may be a cliché, but is a genuine measure of how a work of imagination can transcend cultural boundaries; we should, perhaps, now speak of the "test of time and place", as the best works cross boundaries of both kinds. We may not "like" or "enjoy" works such as Wüthering Heights, Heart of Darkness or The Waste Land, but they are the perfect expression of particular ways of looking at the world; the author has articulated a view which connects with the reader's search for meaning. It is, of course, perfectly possible for a work of imagination to make sense of the world or of experience (or love, or God, or death) while also entertaining or delighting the reader or audience with the detail and eloquence of the work, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Great Expectations.



Have I missed anything out? Of course I have, in the search for brevity. But have I missed out writers or their works which are as important as those I have included, or even more important? If you would like to add a comment or section to this page, you may submit suggestions to me. I don't guarantee that I'll add them - this is NOT a forum for personal favourites (not even mine). But when I see that you are right to recall my attention to an overlooked author or work, I will be happy to edit this guide, and acknowledge your additions. If you are a teacher or student, you could see this as a task for a seminar or discussion. It will help with critical commentary tasks (sometimes called critical explorations).

Indian English literature (IEL) refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora, such as V.S. Naipaul, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri and Salman Rushdie, who are of Indian descent.
It is frequently referred to as Indo-Anglian literature. (Indo-Anglian is a specific term in the sole context of writing that should not be confused with the term Anglo-Indian). As a category, this production comes under the broader realm of postcolonial literature- the production from previously colonised countries such as India.
Contents
1 History
2 Later history
3 Debates
4 Poetry
5 Alternative Writing
6 See also
7 References
7.1 Foonotes
History

IEL has a relatively recent history, it is only one and a half centuries old. The first book written by an Indian in English was by Sake Dean Mahomet, titled Travels of Dean Mahomet; Mahomet's travel narrative was published in 1793 in England. In its early stages it was influenced by the Western art form of the novel. Early Indian writers used English unadulterated by Indian words to convey an experience which was essentially Indian. Raja Rao's Kanthapura is Indian in terms of its storytelling qualities. Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his own work into English. Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first Indian author to win a literary award in the United States. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a writer of non-fiction, is best known for his The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian where he relates his life experiences and influences. P. Lal, a poet, translator, publisher and essayist, founded a press in the 1950s for Indian English writing, Writers Workshop.
R.K. Narayan is a writer who contributed over many decades and who continued to write till his death recently. He was discovered by Graham Greene in the sense that the latter helped him find a publisher in England. Graham Greene and Narayan remained close friends till the end. Similar to Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Narayan created the fictitious town of Malgudi where he set his novels. Some criticise Narayan for the parochial, detached and closed world that he created in the face of the changing conditions in India at the times in which the stories are set. Others, such as Graham Greene, however, feel that through Malgudi they could vividly understand the Indian experience. Narayan's evocation of small town life and its experiences through the eyes of the endearing child protagonist Swaminathan in Swami and Friends is a good sample of his writing style. Simultaneous with Narayan's pastoral idylls, a very different writer, Mulk Raj Anand, was similarly gaining recognition for his writing set in rural India; but his stories were harsher, and engaged, sometimes brutally, with divisions of caste, class and religion.
Later history

Among the later writers, the most notable is Salman Rushdie, born in India, now living in the United Kingdom. Rushdie with his famous work Midnight's Children (Booker Prize 1981, Booker of Bookers 1992, and Best of the Bookers 2008) ushered in a new trend of writing. He used a hybrid language – English generously peppered with Indian terms – to convey a theme that could be seen as representing the vast canvas of India. He is usually categorised under the magic realism mode of writing most famously associated with Gabriel García Márquez.


Salman Rushdie
Vikram Seth, author of A Suitable Boy (1994) is a writer who uses a purer English and more realistic themes. Being a self-confessed fan of Jane Austen, his attention is on the story, its details and its twists and turns.Vikram Seth is notable both as an accomplished novelist and poet. Vikram Seth's outstanding achievement as a versatile and prolific poet remains largely and unfairly neglected.
Shashi Tharoor, in his The Great Indian Novel (1989), follows a story-telling (though in a satirical) mode as in the Mahabharata drawing his ideas by going back and forth in time. His work as UN official living outside India has given him a vantage point that helps construct an objective Indianness.
Other authors include Richard Crasta, Manoj Das, Vikram Chandra, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Gita Mehta, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Samit Basu, Raj Kamal Jha, Jhumpa Lahiri, Bharti Kirchner, Khushwant Singh, Vijay Singh, Tarun Tejpal, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikas Swarup, Anil Menon, Rohinton Mistry, Suketu Mehta, Kiran Nagarkar, Bharati Mukherjee, Preeti Shenoy, Vandana Singh, Chetan Bhagat, Abhay Kumar and Lakshmi Raj Sharma.


Khushwant Singh
Debates

One of the key issues raised in this context is the superiority/inferiority of IWE (Indian Writing in English) as opposed to the literary production in the various languages of India. Key polar concepts bandied in this context are superficial/authentic, imitative/creative, shallow/deep, critical/uncritical, elitist/parochial and so on.
The views of Rushdie and Amit Chaudhuri expressed through their books The Vintage Book of Indian Writing and The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature respectively essentialise this battle.
Rushdie's statement in his book – "the ironic proposition that India's best writing since independence may have been done in the language of the departed imperialists is simply too much for some folks to bear" – created a lot of resentment among many writers, including writers in English. In his book, Amit Chaudhuri questions – "Can it be true that Indian writing, that endlessly rich, complex and problematic entity, is to be represented by a handful of writers who write in English, who live in England or America and whom one might have met at a party?"
Chaudhuri feels that after Rushdie, IWE started employing magical realism, bagginess, non-linear narrative and hybrid language to sustain themes seen as microcosms of India and supposedly reflecting Indian conditions. He contrasts this with the works of earlier writers such as Narayan where the use of English is pure, but the deciphering of meaning needs cultural familiarity. He also feels that Indianness is a theme constructed only in IWE and does not articulate itself in the vernacular literatures. He further adds "the post-colonial novel, becomes a trope for an ideal hybridity by which the West celebrates not so much Indianness, whatever that infinitely complex thing is, but its own historical quest, its reinterpretation of itself".
Some of these arguments form an integral part of what is called postcolonial theory. The very categorisation of IWE – as IWE or under post-colonial literature – is seen by some as limiting. Amitav Ghosh made his views on this very clear by refusing to accept the Eurasian Commonwealth Writers Prize for his book The Glass Palace in 2001 and withdrawing it from the subsequent stage.
The renowned writer V. S. Naipaul, a third generation Indian from Trinidad and Tobago and a Nobel prize laureate, is a person who belongs to the world and usually not classified under IWE. Naipaul evokes ideas of homeland, rootlessness and his own personal feelings towards India in many of his books.
Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer prize winner from the U.S., is a writer uncomfortable under the label of IWE.
Recent writers in India such as Arundhati Roy and David Davidar show a direction towards contextuality and rootedness in their works. Arundhati Roy, a trained architect and the 1997 Booker prize winner for her The God of Small Things, calls herself a "home grown" writer. Her award winning book is set in the immensely physical landscape of Kerala. Davidar sets his The House of Blue Mangoes in Southern Tamil Nadu. In both the books, geography and politics are integral to the narrative. In his novel Lament of Mohini [1] (2000), Shreekumar Varma [2] touches upon the unique matriarchal system and the sammandham system of marriage as he writes about the Namboodiris and the aristocrats of Kerala.
Poetry

A much over-looked category of Indian writing in English is poetry. As stated above, Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his own work into English. Other early notable poets in English include Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt, Romesh Chunder Dutt, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, and her brother Harindranath Chattopadhyay.
A generation of exiles also sprang from the Indian diaspora. Among these are names like Agha Shahid Ali, Sujata Bhatt, Richard Crasta, Yuyutsu Sharma and Vikram Seth.
In modern times, Indian poetry in English was typified by two very different poets. Dom Moraes, winner of the Hawthornden Prize at the age of 19 for his first book of poems A Beginning went on to occupy a pre-eminent position among Indian poets writing in English. Nissim Ezekiel, who came from India's tiny Bene Israel Jewish community, created a voice and place for Indian poets writing in English and championed their work.
Their contemporaries in English poetry in India were Jayanta Mahapatra, Gieve Patel, A. K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre, Eunice De Souza, Kersi Katrak, P. Lal and Kamala Das among several others. Younger generation of poets writing in English include Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Smita Agarwal, Makarand Paranjape, Vattacharja Chandan, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Ranjit Hoskote, Sudeep Sen, Jerry Pinto among others.
Alternative Writing

India's experimental and avant garde counterculture is symbolized in the Prakalpana Movement. During the last four decades this bilingual literary movement has included Richard Kostelanetz, John M. Bennett, Don Webb, Sheila Murphy and many others worldwide and their Indian couterparts. Vattacharja Chandan is a central figure who contrived the movement.[1] Prakalpana fiction is a fusion of prose, poetry, play, essay, and pictures. An example of a Prakalpana work is Chandan's bilingual Cosmosphere 1[3] (2011).
Some bilingual writers have also made significant contributions, such as Paigham Afaqui with his novel Makaan in 1989.
See also

Indian literature
List of English poets from India
Stephanian School of Literature
Literature from North East India
References

Haq, Kaiser (ed.). Contemporary Indian Poetry. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990.
Hoskote, Ranjit (ed.). Reasons for Belonging: Fourteen Contemporary Indian Poets. Viking/Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2002.
King, Bruce Alvin. Modern Indian Poetry in English: Revised Edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987, rev. 2001. ("the standard work on the subject and unlikely to be surpassed" — Mehrotra, 2003).
King, Bruce Alvin. Three Indian Poets: Nissim Ezekiel, A K Ramanujan, Dom Moraes. Madras: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna (ed.). The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets. Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna (ed.). A History of Indian Literature in English. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.Distributed in India by Doaba Books Shanti Mohan House 16,Ansari Road, New Delhi
Parthasarathy, R. (ed.). Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets (New Poetry in India). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Souza, Eunice de. "Nine Indian Women Poets", Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Souza, Eunice de. Talking Poems: Conversations With Poets. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Haq, Rubana (ed.). The Golden Treasure of Writers Workshop Poetry . Writers Workshop , Calcutta., 2008 .
Souza, Eunice de. Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology : 1829-1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Srikanth, Rajini. The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America'. Asian American History and Culture. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2004.