This is a survey of the British novel from the 1930s to the present day. The book includes commentary on all the major novelists of the period and also on a number of lesser known writers. The examination of individual writers is, however, subordinate to the main purpose of the book which is to provide a coherent account of the nature and development of British fiction over the last 50 years. Two main influences are shown at work here: the strength of conventions continuing from the Victorian era and the impulse given towards innovation and experiment by modernist authors in the early decades of the twentieth century, culminating in the work of such writers as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Continuing reference to these influences and to the contemporary political, social and cultural background establishes a framework for the assessment of individual novelists, placing each within a pattern of overall development. Concluding sections dealing with current experimental fiction, and with other directions recently followed by the novel, further define the situation of the novelist as it has developed up to the present day.