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OCR A Level English Literature Context

I'm currently revising for my end of year mock for English lit and one of the questions we have to do is the critical appreciation of an unseen passage. Obviously context is weighted quite heavily in this question, and you get marks for putting in points about what was happening in society at the time that the passage was published.
My problem is I don't take history and am unsure what key context points I should be putting in about each decade. For example, one the practice questions I'm doing is on 'The Giver' by Lois Lowry (1993) but I dont have any idea about the social context of that time. I could guess about rise of technology etc, but are there any more specific points I could put in (not just 90's but for from the 50's - 2000 too)??? any help would be really appreciated