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.