Angry Young Men

angry young men, term applied to a group of English writers of the 1950s whose heroes share certain rebellious and critical attitudes toward society. This phrase, which was originally taken from the title of Leslie Allen Paul's autobiography, Angry Young Man (1951), became current with the production of John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956). The word angry is probably inappropriate; dissentient or disgruntled perhaps is more accurate. The group not only expressed discontent with the staid, hypocritical institutions of English society—the so-called Establishment—but betrayed disillusionment with itself and with its own achievements. Included among the angry young men were the playwrights John Osborne and Arnold Wesker and the novelists Kingsley Amis, John Braine, John Wain, and Alan Sillitoe. In the 1960s these writers turned to more individualized themes and were no longer considered a group.

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Angry Young Men

Group of mid-20th-century young British writers. Their works express the bitterness of the lower classes toward the established sociopolitical system and the mediocrity and hypocrisy of the middle and upper classes. The label came from a press agent's description of John Osborne, whose play Look Back in Anger (1956) is the movement's representative work. The group includes John Wain (1925–1994), Kingsley Amis, Alan Sillitoe, and Bernard Kops (b. 1926). A dominant literary force in the 1950s, the movement had faded by the early 1960s.

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Angry Young Men

disillusioned postwar writers of Britain, such as Osborne and Amis. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 37]

See : Disillusionment

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Angry Young Men

the name used in literary criticism to refer to a group of English writers of the 1950’s. The term, which came from L. A. Paul’s autobiographical book Angry Young Man (1951). became widely used after the 1956 London staging of J. Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger. The passionate misanthropic monologues of this play’s hero epitomize the feelings of the Angry Young Men.

The most typical Angry Young Men were the novelists J. Wain, K. Amis, and J. Braine and the playwright Osborne; however, they did not form a literary school. The group was united by dissatisfaction with the English bourgeoisie and, in particular, with the position of youth in society. They spoke out against social inequality, class arrogance, lies, and hypocrisy. Their hero was usually a young man with a university education, disillusioned with life and dissatisfied with his work and with a society that has no place for him. He manifests his rebellion against the accepted norms of behavior and morals in extravagant pranks, scandalous adultery, and an ostentatious solidarity with the working class.

The Angry Young Men did not advance a positive program, and their criticism bore an individualistic character. Toward the late 1950’s, they abandoned their earlier subjects and heroes.

REFERENCES

Ivasheva, V. V. Angliiskaia literatura XX veka. Moscow, 1967.
Gozenpud, A. A. Puti i pereput’ia. Leningrad, 1967.
Shestakov, D. Sovremennaia angliiskaia drama (Osbornovtsy). Moscow, 1968.
[Declaration, by Colin Wilson and others.] Edited by T. Maschler. London, 1957.
Allsop, K. The Angry Decade. London, 1958.
Gindin, J. Postwar British Fiction. Berkeley, Calif., 1962.