This seminar will consider 20th century British fiction beginning with the development of literary modernism in its first decades and ending with the emergence of post-modernism after the Second World War. Our discussions will involve how innovations of both movements are related to major social, technological, and cultural changes in Britain during this time period. We will explore several related issues here: the conflicted history of modernist canon formation; the significance of personal relationships and coteries in literary production, and how the influence of psychoanalysis and new theories of sexuality are reflected in fictional texts. Some of the writers we will probably read are Virginia Woolf, E.M.Forster, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Julian Barnes, and Zadie Smith.