Modern British Literature is the literature of the 20th century.

Modern British Literature is the literature of the 20th century. 
The WWI marked very brutal and irreversible end of the old world, the old Europe and the old way of life. This end was marked both physically through devastation of the cities and human losses and mentally and culturally through devastation of old values.
    Influential Ideas and Trends:
•    Charles Darwin and his book “The Origin of Species” that came out in 1859. It introduces the new view on the origin of men and challenged the Christian world view. It largely diluted the Christian view. It also forced people to recognise for the first time that social development was very relative and that development was in constant change. So that idea of constant flux, of constant changes and dynamism, became one of the main ideas of the 20th century.
•    Apart from Darwin, there emerged some political ideas, namely Socialism and later on Communism. People were dissatisfied increasingly with the social injustice. It comes as no surprise that people were increasingly displeased.
•    Speaking of Great Britain, Communism never took root for some reason. That was the matter of criticism of Marx and other philosophers of the time. They always insisted that British workers were not so enthusiastic about the overthrow of the ruling classes. Though some people were the exception, for example George Bernard Shaw, who was a socialist and who proclaimed socialist ideas in his work. He promoted a moderate kind of socialism which opposed the idea of revolution.
•    Appearance of Sigmund Freud was another major influence. The appearance of psychoanalysis made an important impact on the modern literature. Even after his death, Freud had many followers. Freud was someone who founded psychology as a science. His work, the Interpretation of Dreams came out in 1900; it introduces new way of thinking about the human mind. It was very upsetting and very uncomfortable, and it infuriated the Christian community. He showed that human mind consisted of different layers namely the conscious and subconscious layers and he divided the human mind into id, ego and superego, explaining that id represented instincts, the cave man residing in each and every one of us, which explained atrocities human beings were clearly capable of.
•    Quantum theory was important influence in 1900. The theory changed forever our view of how Universe is structured.
•    Albert Einstein in 1905 published his Special Theory of Relativity. Along with the Quantum theory it presented an entirely new concept of the universe.
•    Film
•    In painting, new trends emerged as well, which went hand in hand with changes in literature. The traditional rules and notions were rejected, new techniques were developed. It started with post impressionism, the first post impressionist exhibition was organised in London in the year of King Edward’s death. Post impressionism was followed by Cubism, Dadaism etc.
Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, D.H.Lawrence, T.S.Elliot, Ezra Pound, etc. already published their first works prior to 1920s, some during the WWI, but were unknown at the literary scene at the time of the publication of their first works and only became known later, namely in the 1920s. Virginia W., for instance, publishes her first work, The Voyage Out in 1915, T.S. Elliot publishes his firs collection of poem Proofrock and Other Observations in 1916, that is, during the WWI. With the WWI, came the sense of break with tradition, the sense of novelty.