Angry Young Men

Angry young men were a group of British novelists and playwrights of the early 1950s whose work was marked by irreverence toward the Establishment and disgust at the survival of class distinctions and privilege. Writers like Kingley Amis, John Braine, and Alan Sillitoe and playwright like John Osborne were in this group.

In an era of greatly increased upward mobility of the social classes, they manifested hostility towards the traditions, standards, and manners of what has come to be called “the Establishment”. These writers depicted the oppressiveness, hypocrisy, and stultifying values in the English school or university, or in the social, commercial, or industrial world in their work in comic or satiric fashion.

The writings of such kind survived also till late 1960s. It also influenced the English literature of the absurd and cinema.