The article is dedicated to the influence of existentialism on modern English literature. Existentialism was originated in the twentieth century, in Germany and France, and became a political, cultural and artistic movement, which serves as the main force for the emergence of modern philosophical tendencies in English prose, poetry and drama. Existentialism arose from the position of the German philosophers of the nineteenth century, who defended the individuality of the individual and the concepts of freedom and free choice by showing reaction to the Hegelian philosophy of absolute conscious and unity. Existentialism is the doctrine of the existence of a person as an individuum. This movement promotes the idea of creating one’s own values, abandoning all traditional and universal moral codes. After the two world wars, existentialism began to penetrate into Western culture, despite the fact that in Great Britain, where the role of traditions and manners was great, this philosophical tendency received a special shade of criticism and found its own place in literature. The purpose of this article is to study the peculiarities of existentialism in the prose of English literature of the XX century. The research uses a philosophical approach, historical and cultural, empirical and comparative methods. Also, novels and short stories written by famous thinkers and writers like William Golding and John Fowles are used to substantiate the peculiarities of existentialism in English literature. The article discusses the main ideas of existentialism and its place in English literature. According to the results of the research, the common and distinctive features of English existentialism from German and French existentialism, as well as new concepts that arose under the influence of the movement to English literature, are revealed.