The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John Osborne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger. It is thought to be derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose Angry Young Man was published in 1951. Following the success of the Osborne play, the label was later applied by British media to describe young British writers who were characterised by a disillusionment with traditional English society. The term, always imprecise, began to have less meaning over the years as the writers to whom it was originally applied became more divergent, and many of them dismissed the label as useless.
Read more about Angry Young Men: John Osborne, Definition and Divisions, Crosscurrents in The Late 1950s, Associated Writers, Other Media
Famous quotes containing the words young men, angry, young and/or men:
“The enemy are no match for us in a fair fight.... The young men ... of the upper class are kind-hearted, good-natured fellows, who are unfit as possible for the business they are in. They have courage but no endurance, enterprise, or energy. The lower class are cowardly, cunning, and lazy. The height of their ambition is to shoot a Yankee from some place of safety.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“For both parties, the most disagreeable way of responding to a polemic is to be angry and keep silent: for the aggressor usually takes the silence as a sign of disdain.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“How distant, the departure of young men
Down valleys....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Did men but consider that the sun, moon, and stars, and every other object of the senses, are only so many sensations in their minds, which have no other existence but barely being perceived, doubtless they would never fall down and worship their own ideas; but rather address their homage to that eternal invisible Mind which produces and sustains all things.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)