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a novel by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1922. Aaron Sisson, a checkweighman in a Nottinghamshire colliery, and amateur piccolo player, suddenly leaves his wife and children on Christmas Eve immediately after the First World War. He goes to London, where he joins the Covent Garden orchestra and becomes involved with a smart set of bohemian people, led by Jim Bricknell, a man obsessed with the importance of filling himself with food and love. Aaron encounters the writer Rawdon Lilly and his Norwegian wife, Tanny. When Aaron becomes ill in body and soul, Lilly nurses him and the two become intimate friends. Though they quarrel, particularly over the war, Lilly exercises a powerful influence over Aaron; after an emotional visit to his abandoned wife in the Midlands, Aaron follows Lilly to Italy. There, an unfulfilling affair with an American-born marchesa, and the shattering of his flute in an anarchist bomb attack, lead Aaron to despair. Lilly urges him to yield to the ‘deep power-soul’ and unfold his own destiny. Loosely episodic in form, the novel contains some of Lawrence's most passionate writing about the First World War and reveals the sense of release that Italy provided him. The title of the book refers to the biblical Aaron, the brother of Moses and founder of the priesthood, whose blossoming Rod is a symbol of miraculous authority....

(1938– ),

Guyanese play-wright, born in British Guyana, educated there and in Quebec and Montreal. His plays offer a view of black immigrant life in Britain and present difficult situations within a broad tradition of comedy. The humour arises primarily from incongruity, though there are fine instances of verbal felicity and wit. He established his reputation with his play ...

the home of the Irish National Theatre Society, named after Abbey Street in Dublin, where its permanent theatre was established in ...

(1874–1953) married (1926) Katherina Wallace.

Born at Haydonton, New South Wales, into an influential family, he was educated at the King's School, Parramatta, and briefly at the University of Sydney before going to work on a family sheep farm and beginning to write; he contributed his first articles to the Australian ...

(1881–1938),

British poet, dramatist, and critic, born in Ashton-under-Mersey, Cheshire, educated at Victoria University, Manchester. Having distinguished himself as a literary journalist, he lectured at the universities of Liverpool and Leeds before becoming Goldsmiths' Reader in English at New College, Oxford. With Wilfrid ...

(1931– ),

American novelist and short-story writer, born in Vienna; he grew up in China and Israel before settling in the USA. He has worked as a lecturer and teacher in a variety of American colleges and universities since ...

(1919– ),

South African novelist and journalist, born in Vredetorp, Johannesburg, and largely self-taught. His first work, a collection of short stories, ...

a novel by William Faulkner, published in 1936. The story, which centres on the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen, begins in ...

(1923– ),

British poet, born of a Welsh-Jewish family in Cardiff, where he attended the Welsh National School of Medicine before studying in London at King's College and Westminster Hospital. He qualified as a doctor in ...

was a term pioneered by the British critic Martin Esslin and used to characterize the work of certain key playwrights in the 1950s and 1960s. Though its roots may be traced back as far as ...

a play by Alan Ayckbourn, first performed in 1972; it well exemplifies its author's technical adventurousness and the moral seriousness he brings to comedy. Each of the three acts is set in a different kitchen on a consecutive Christmas Eve, and each charts the changing circumstances of three couples: the lower middle-class Sidney Hopcroft, who moves from insecurity to assurance with his growing business success, and his wife Jane; the adulterous architect Geoffrey, whose reputation collapses along with one of his buildings, and Eva, who is transformed by his failure from an anguished neurotic to the dominant figure in their marriage; and Ronald, the manager of the local bank, and Marion, whose upper middle-class arrogance is subverted by worsening alcoholism. The play ends with a graphic reminder of the social mobility that has been its main theme, a frantic party in which the educated professionals literally dance to the ...