Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native (1878)
This novel opens cinematically with Diggory Venn’s cart crossing Egdon Heath on 5 November. When bonfires are lit as darkness arrives, they symbolise the underlying paganism of Hardy’s Wessex, rather than the defeat of the forces embodied by Guy Fawkes.
Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913)
At the start of the novel, fireworks form a bond between watchful Francois, the narrator, and the eponymous hero as Meaulnes discovers some old ones and sets them off in the schoolyard, symbolising his own bold, charismatic personality and casting a spell on Francois.
TS Eliot, “The Hollow Men” (1925)
The straw man representing Guy Fawkes (“A penny for the old Guy”), used by children on 5 November to solicit money for fireworks, is right at the heart of Eliot’s vision of the living hell of the post-1918 era: “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men”. And Fawkes and his failed apocalypse reappear in the last lines: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper”.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)
The first UK edition of Hemingway’s debut changed its title to Fiesta, reflecting the fact that it climaxes at a carnival in Pamplona, where tensions between the expat characters (representatives of the 20s “lost generation”) come to a head just as fireworks explode around them – a much-imitated backdrop in fiction and film alike.
Stephen King, Cycle of the Werewolf (1983)
A horror novella with a key scene centring on Fourth of July fireworks, rather than the British autumn festival. Marty, the disabled boy hero, is upset that the town fireworks are cancelled because of a werewolf that kills every full moon. Secretly provided with fireworks by his uncle, he is attacked by the werewolf while having a private pyrotechnic party but uses firecrackers to scare him off and partly blind him.
Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (1989)
A dystopian graphic novel (drawn by David Lloyd and Tony Weare) that draws on Guy Fawkes, rather than Bonfire night, although using cleansing fire is among its titular anarchist hero’s subversive strategies. The Fawkes mask used by V has been adopted by Occupy and other radical movements.
Philip Pullman, The Firework-maker’s Daughter (1995)
In the same year that Lyra made her debut in Northern Lights, Pullman also published this one-off “fairy story” about another girl adventurer. To prove she has the right stuff to make fireworks, Lila makes a quest to acquire Royal Sulphur; then she has to win a pyrotechnic contest to rescue her imprisoned father.
