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CHARLES PERCY SNOW

(1905-1980)

Sir Charles Percy Snow was born in Leicester in 1905. By the end of the twenties he graduated from the University of Cambridge and went on working there in the field of molecular physics. Snow's academic life continued until the beginning of World War II.

Charles Percy Snow began writing in the thirties. 'The Search', the first of his novels, was published in 1934. Six years later, in 1940, appeared his novel 'Strangers and Brothers' which then became the title of a whole sequence of novels written in the forties, fifties and sixties. The second novel of the sequence entitled 'The Light and the Dark' was published in 1947. It was succeeded by the novels 'Time of Hope' (1949) and 'The Masters' (1951). Later on 'The New Men' (1954), 'Homecomings' (1956), 'The Conscience of the Rich' (1959) and 'The Affair' (1960) were added to it. 'Corridors of Power' appeared in 1964. The author himself divided all the books of the sequence into two main groups. The

first group is called 'novels of private experience' and includes 'Time of Hope' (1947) and 'Homecomings' (1956).

All the rest belong to the group of 'novels of conditioned experience'. The main hero of all the books is Louis Eliot, a scientist and statesman. English literary critics call them 'the Louis Eliot sequence'. In the so-called 'novels of private experience', Snow describes the life of Louis Eliot in his youth ('Time of Hope') and in the middle age ('Homecomings'), while in other novels the lives of his friends, relatives and acquaintances is seen through his eyes. In general, Snow makes an impressive study of English society in the twentieth century. True to the method of modern critical realism, the writer places the representatives of different classes and social circles in the centre of his artistic attention.

Being a scientist by profession, he manages to create convincing pictures of the relations between intellectuals and the upper classes. And, though Snow is very far from communist views himself, his description of the social and political struggle contains certain points of criticism of bourgeois society. As a realist, Charles Percy Snow mainly gives a generalizing picture of English society of yesterday and today, of its most characteristic and typical trends and features. This does not prevent him, however, from being a master of individual psychology. In some of his works (especially 'Time of Hope' and 'Homecomings') the inner life of the characters is brilliantly disclosed. However traditional in descriptions he is, Snow is a subtle and sensitive artist of landscape.


Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1669


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Theme 10: English Literature of the 20th Century (2nd half). | NORMAN LEWIS
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