Classics

English Literature: From The Renaissance toThe Modern Period

  • Christopher Marlowe
    Feb 26, 1564

    Christopher Marlowe

    Also known as Kit Marlowe, he was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe.
  • William Shakespeare
    Apr 26, 1564

    William Shakespeare

    He was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon'.
  • Daniel Defoe

    Daniel Defoe

    Born Daniel Foe, he was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe.
  • Jonathan Swift

    Jonathan Swift

    Swift is remembered for his work Gulliver's Travels. Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland.
  • Jane Austen

    Jane Austen

    She was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature.From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818.
  • Lord Byron

    Lord Byron

    Born George Gordon Byron 6th Baron Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and the short lyric "She Walks in Beauty".
  • Mary Shelley

    Mary Shelley

    She was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein.
  • Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens

    An English writer and social critic. He is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. Notable works:

    The Pickwick Papers , Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations.
  • Charlotte Bronte

    Charlotte Bronte

    Charlotte Brontë (/ˈbrɒnti/, commonly /ˈbrɒnteɪ/;[1] 21 April She was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. She first published her works (including her best known novel, Jane Eyre) under the pen name Currer Bell.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
  • Virginia Woolf

    Virginia Woolf

    She was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929).
  • D.H. Lawrence

    D.H. Lawrence

    He was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. Lawrence is perhaps best known for his novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover.
  • Harold Pinter

    Harold Pinter

    A Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007).