British Literature Timeline

By braxh2010
  • 555

    The Wanderer

    Translated by Charles W. Kennedy
  • May 7, 607

    The Wife's Lament

    Translated by Ann Stanford
  • Beowulf
    May 7, 666

    Beowulf

    Translated by Burton Raffel
  • May 9, 732

    from Gilgamesh The Prologue

    Translated by David Ferry
  • from The Canterbury Tales The Prologue
    May 9, 754

    from The Canterbury Tales The Prologue

    Geoffrey Chaucer Translated by Nevill Coghill
  • from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
    May 9, 1023

    from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

    Translated by Marie Boroff
  • Morte d' Arthur
    May 9, 1164

    Morte d' Arthur

    Sir Thomas Malory
  • May 9, 1251

    Twa Corbies

  • May 9, 1342

    Get Up and Bar the Door

  • May 9, 1343

    Geoffrey Chaucer

  • May 9, 1442

    Barbara Allan

  • May 9, 1477

    Sir Thomas More

  • May 9, 1485

    Sonnet 1

    by Edmund Spenser
  • Period: May 9, 1485 to

    1485-1625 Celebrating Humanity

  • May 9, 1486

    Sonnet 35

    by Edmund Spenser
  • May 9, 1487

    Sonnet 75

    by Edmund Spenser
  • Utopia
    May 9, 1488

    Utopia

    by Sir Thomas More
  • May 9, 1510

    Sonnet 31

    by Sir Philip Sidney
  • May 9, 1511

    Sonnet 39

    Sir Philip Sidney
  • May 9, 1520

    The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

    by Christopher Marlowe
  • May 9, 1530

    The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

    by Sir Walter Raleigh
  • May 9, 1552

    Edmund Spenser

  • Sir Philip Sidney
    May 9, 1554

    Sir Philip Sidney

  • Sir Walter Raleigh
    May 9, 1554

    Sir Walter Raleigh

  • May 9, 1564

    Christopher Marlowe

  • May 9, 1564

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is born
  • May 9, 1565

    Sonnet 29

    by William Shakespeare
  • May 9, 1566

    Sonnet 106

    by William Shakespeare
  • May 9, 1567

    Sonnet 116

    by William Shakespeare
  • Sonnet 130
    May 9, 1568

    Sonnet 130

    by William Shakespeare
  • John Donne
    May 9, 1572

    John Donne

  • May 9, 1572

    Ben Jonson

  • Robert Herrick

  • John Milton

  • Sir John Suckling

  • The King James Bible

    The King James Bible

  • Psalm 23

    from The King James Bible

  • The Parable of the Prodigal Son

    from The King James Bible

  • The Tragedy of Macbeth

    by William Shakespeare

  • Andrew Marvell

  • Period: to

    1625-1798 A Turbulent Time

  • Song

    by John Donne

  • A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

    by John Donne

  • Holy Sonnet 10

    by John Donne

  • Meditation 17

    by John Donne

  • On My First Son

    by Ben Jonson

  • Song: To Celia

    by Ben Jonson

  • To His Coy Mistress

    by Andrew Marvell

  • Johnathon Swift

  • To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

    by Robert Herrick

  • Song

    by Sir John Suckling

  • Paradise Lost

  • Rape of the Lock

    by Alexander Pope
  • from Gulliver's Travels

    from Gulliver's Travels

    by Johnathon Swift

  • Thomas Gray

  • Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

  • A Modest Proposal

    A Modest Proposal

    by Johnathon Swift

  • William Blake

  • Robert Burns

  • Joanna Baillie

  • William Wordsworth

  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  • To a Mouse

    To a Mouse

    by Robert Burns

  • George Gordon, Lord Byron

  • Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • John Keats

  • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  • Period: to

    1798-1832 Rebels and Dreamers

  • The Lamb

    The Lamb

    by William Blake
  • The Tyger

    The Tyger

    by William Blake

  • Introduction to Frankenstein

    by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  • Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

    by William Wordsworth

  • The World is Too Much With Us

    by William Wordsworth

  • Robert Browning

  • Charles Dickens

  • London, 1802

    by William Wordsworth

  • Charlotte Bronte

  • The Time Of The Ancient Mariner

    by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  • She Walks In Beauty

    by George Gordon, Lord Byron

  • Matthew Arnold

  • Ozymandias

    by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • Ode to the West Wind

    by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • To a Skylark

    by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer

    by John Keats

  • When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

    by John Keats

  • Ode to a Nightengale

    by John Keats

  • Ode On A Grecian Urn

    by John Keats

  • In Memoriam, A.H.H.

    by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • Period: to

    1833-1901 Progress and Decline

  • The Lady Of Shalott

    by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  • Ulysses

    by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  • My Last Duchess

    by Robert Browning

  • Thomas Hardy

  • Love Among The Ruins

    by Robert Browning

  • Sonnet 43

    by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  • Hard Times

    by Charles Dickens

  • Jane Eyre

    by Charlotte Bronte
  • Dover Beach

    Dover Beach

    by Matthew Arnold

  • Rudyard Kipling

  • William Butler Yeats

  • Recessional

    by Rudyard Kipling
  • Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?

    Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?

    by Thomas Hardy

  • T.S. Eliot

  • To an Athlete Dying Young

    by A.E. Housman

  • When You Are Old

    by William Butler Yeats
  • Period: to

    1901-Present A Time of Rapid Change

  • George Orwell

  • The Second Coming

    by William Butler Yeats

  • The Hollow Men

    by T.S. Eliot
  • Shooting an Elephant

    Shooting an Elephant

    by George Orwell
  • The Soldier

    The Soldier

    by Rupert Brooke

  • The Seafarer

    Translated by Burton Raffel

  • from The Pardoner's Tale

    by Geoffrey Chaucer translated by Nevill Coghill

  • The Wife of Bath's Tale

    by Geoffrey Chaucer Translated by Nevill Coghill
  • Period: to May 7, 1485

    449-1485 A.D. From Legend to History