Osborne's The Entertainer (1957) chronicles the downfall of music hall performer Archie Rice in a period when that venue had become practically obsolete. Osborne parallels Rice's decline with that of Britain in a scathing attack on what he considered to be his country's moral bankruptcy.

Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956) is often said to have inspired a revolution in the theater due to its reaction against the sentimental, middle-class plays of the previous decade. The play focuses on Jimmy Porter, an “angry young man” who has turned his back on his middle-class roots and on the society that he feels has failed him.

Doris Lessing's “To Room Nineteen,” one of the collected stories in her A Man and Two Women (1963), centers on a middle-aged English woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery that ultimately becomes a descent into madness. The...