20th century
The year 1922 marked a significant change in the relationship between Great Britain and Ireland,with the setting up of the Irish Free State in the predominantly Catholic South, while the predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom. This separation also leads to questions as to what extent Irish writing prior to 1922 should be treated as a colonial literature. There are also those who question whether the literature of Northern Ireland is Irish or British. Nationalist movements in Britain,
especially in Wales and Scotland,also significantly influenced writers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.