Room at the Top (novel) Room at the Top (novel) Room at the Top is a novel by John Braine, first published in the United Kingdom by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1957, about the rise of an ambitious young man of humble origin, and the socio-economic struggles undergone in realising his social ambitions in post-war Britain. A film adaptation was made in 1959, followed in 2012 by a TV film. John Minton's cover art from the first edition was restored and used on the new edition by Valancourt Books in 2013. Joe Lampton, demobilised at the end of the Second World War, is starting in
English novel characters of low social standing, not nobility. Another significant late 19th-century novelist is George Gissing (1857–1903) who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best known novel is "New Grub Street" (1891). Important developments occurred in genre fiction in this era. Although pre-dated by John Ruskin's "The King of the Golden River" in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author of "The Princess and the Goblin" and "Phantastes" (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet who also wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of