In this study, Frederick R. Karl defines and evaluates the main movements in the English novel beginning with Joyce. Karl devotes separate chapters to the works of C. P. Snow, Samuel Beckett, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Graham Greene, Lawrence Durrell, Elizabeth Bowen, Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, Henry Greene, and Joyce Cary. In a series of composite chapters he considers Iris Murdoch, Anthony Powell, the Angry Young Men, Rosamond Lehmann, Nigel Dennis, William Golding, Doris Lessing, and Angus Wilson.