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Period: 450 to 1066
Old English (Anglo-Saxon)
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650
Caedmon
He was an uneducated cowherd who had a vision in which a voice admonished him to sing the praises of the creation. -
849
Alfred, King
he made good laws and believed education was important. -
955
Ælfric
a Latin grammar with glossary which was compiled in English. -
1000
Cynewulf
Author of four Old English poems preserved in late 10th-century manuscripts. Elene and The Fates of the Apostles are in the Vercelli Book, and The Ascension (which forms the second part of a trilogy, Christ, and is also called Christ II) and Juliana are in the Exeter Book. -
Period: 1066 to 1500
Middle English Period
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1340
Chaucer
He composed dream visions such as The Book of the Duchess, The Legend of Good Women and The Parliament of Fowls, as well as Troilus and Criseyde – the great exploration of love and loss set during the Trojan War. He also produced philosophical and scientific works: he translated the Consolation of Philosophy, by the Roman senator and philosopher Boethius (c. 480–524 CE), and he wrote a treatise – a kind of how-to guide – on the astrolabe, which was an astronomical device. -
1405
Thomas Malory
The author of Le Morte Darthur, the first prose account in English of the rise and fall of the legendary king Arthur and the fellowship of the Round Table -
1460
Robert Henryson
Henryson’s longest work is The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian, Compylit in Eloquent & Ornate Scottis, a version of 13 fables based mainly on John Lydgate and William Caxton and running to more than 400 seven-line stanzas. -
Period: 1500 to
The Renaissance
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1552
Edmund Spenser
Spenser's masterpiece is the epic poem The Faerie Queene -
1554
Sir Walter Raleigh
Works
A Vision Upon This Conceit of The Fairy Queen. A description of love -
Period: 1558 to
Elizabethan Age
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1561
Francis Bacon
Scientific works
The Great Instauration
Novum Organum (New Method)
Advancement of Learning (Partition of Sciences)
Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature
History of Life and Death
Religious and literary works
The New Atlantis Religious and literary works
The New Atlantis
Essays
The Wisdom of the Ancients
Masculine Birth of Time
Meditationes Sacrae
Theological Tracts -
1563
Michael Drayton
Englands Heroicall Epistles was the most popular of Drayton’s works -
1564
Christopher Marlowe
Dido, Queen of Carthage
Tamburlaine
Doctor Faustus
The Massacre at Paris -
1564
William Shakespeare
Works The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Othello, King Lear, Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, Macbeth and Hamlet. -
1572
John Donne
Works Biathanatos
Pseudo-Martyr
Ignatius His Conclave
An Anatomy of the World
The First Anniversary
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions -
1572
Ben Jonson
Works: A Tale of a Tub,
The Isle of Dogs,
The Case is Altered,
Every Man in His Humour,
Every Man out of His Humour,
Cynthia's Revels
The Poetaster,
Sejanus His Fall,
Eastward Ho, comedy -
1577
Robert Burton
His works:
"Philosophaster"
"The Alchemist" -
1580
John Webster
Works: The Malcontent
Northward Ho
The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt
Westward Ho
The White Devil
A Monumental Column
The Devil's Law Case
The Duchess of Malfi
Monuments of Honour
Appius and Virginia
A Cure for a Cuckold
Anything for a Quiet Life -
Elizabeth Cary
the most important work was: The Tragedy of Mariam -
Lady Mary Wroth
Works: Love's Victory
pastoral closet drama
The Countess of Montgomery's Urania - (The first extant prose romance by an English woman) -
Thomas Hobbes
Latin translation of Euripides' Medea (lost).
"A Discourse of Tacitus", "A Discourse of Rome", and "A Discourse of Laws." In The Horae Subsecivae: Observation and Discourses.
"De Mirabilis Pecci, Being the Wonders of the Peak in Darby-shire" — a poem on the Seven Wonders of the Peak
Eight Books of the Peloponnesian Warre, translation with an Introduction of Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
A Short Tract on First Principles. -
George Herbert
His works:
The Temple,
The Country Parson,
Jacula Prudentum -
Period: to
The Neoclassical Period
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Period: to
The Jacobean Age
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Thomas Percy
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John Milton
His work "Paradise Lost" -
Thomas Fuller
David's Heinous Sinne, Heartie Repentance
Heavie Punishment, Fuller published a poem on the subject of David and Bathsheba.
The Historie of the Holy Warre, Broadwindsor, compiled history of the crusades.
Joseph's party-coloured Coat, his first published volume of sermons -
Abraham Cowley
Cowley's Works -
Andrew Marvell
His works: "To His Coy Mistress",
"The Garden",
"An Horatian Ode" -
Period: to
The Caroline Age
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Period: to
The Commonwealth Period
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Daniel Defoe
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John Bunyan
is best known for his famous allegorical works, Pilgrim’s Progress and The Holy War, his autobiographical Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners and his allegorical novel The Life and Death of Mr. Badman. -
Aphra Behn
Works: The Forc'd Marriage
The Amorous Prince, or, The Curious Husband
The Dutch Lover
Abdelazer
The Town Fop or, Sir Timothy Tawdry
The Rover
Sir Patient Fancy
The Feigned Courtesans
The Young King
The False Count -
John Locke
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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Samuel Richardson
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John Dryden
Works: The Wild Gallant,
The Rival Ladies,
The Indian Queen,
The Indian Emperor, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards
Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen
Sir Martin Mar-all, or the Feigned Innocence
The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island
An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrology -
William Congreve
Works:
The Old Batchelor, The Double-Dealer, Love for Love; Volume II: The Mourning Bride, The Way of the World, The Judgement of Paris, Semele, Poems; Volume III: Incognita, Prose, Letters -
Samuel Johnson
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Laurence Sterne
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Samuel Butler
famous as the author of Hudibras, the most memorable burlesque poem in the English language -
Edmund Burke
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William Cowper
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Edward Gibbon
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James Boswell
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Hester Lynch Thrale
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Henry Fielding
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Tobias Smollett
-
Period: to
The Romantic Period
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William Beckford.
He is remembered as author of the Gothic novel Vathek, builder of the lost Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire and of Lansdown Tower ("Beckford's Tower") in Bath, and above all for his art collection. -
William Blake,
Works: Songs of Innocence and of Experience[1] is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. -
Anne Radcliffe
her literary reputation, today, rests largely on the three Gothic romances that she published during the turbulent, post-French Revolutionary decade of 1790s: The Romance of the Forest, Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry in 1791; The Mysteries of Udolpho -
Samuel Taylor
Works: The Watchman
The Friend
Lay Sermons -
Mary Wollstonecraft
Among Wollstonecraft's late notable works are Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, a travelogue with a sociological and philosophical bent, and Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman -
Matthew Lewis
He was frequently referred to as "Monk" Lewis, because of the success of his 1796 Gothic novel The Monk. -
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth wrote most of his major works during the “great decade” -
Jane Austen
works: Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Lady Susan -
Lord Byron,
Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular. -
John Keats
Keats left London briefly for a trip to the Isle of Wight and Canterbury and began work on Endymion, his first long poem. -
Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias", "Ode to the West Wind" , "To a Skylark", and the political ballad “The Mask of Anarchy” -
Mary Shelley
best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. -
Charles Lamb
best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764–1847). -
Thomas Carlyle
Signs of the Times. The Victorian Web
Sartor Resartus. Project Gutenberg
The French Revolution: A History. Project Gutenberg
Chartism. Google Books
(On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History. Project Gutenberg
Past and Present. Project Gutenberg -
Period: to
The Victorian Period
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Charles Dickens,
Among Charles Dickens's many works are the novels The Pickwick Papers , Oliver Twist , A Christmas Carol , David Copperfield , Bleak House , and Great Expectations -
Alfred Lord Tennyson,
Tennyson published Poems, in two volumes, one containing a revised selection and the other, new poems. The new poems included “Morte d’Arthur,” “The Two Voices,” “Locksley Hall,” and “The Vision of Sin” and other poems that reveal a strange naïveté, such as “The May Queen,” “Lady Clara Vere de Vere,” and “The Lord of Burleigh.” -
Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
remembered for such poems as "How Do I Love Thee?" and Aurora Leigh -
Charlotte and Emily Bronte
English novelist and poet who produced but one novel, Wuthering Heights, a highly imaginative work of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire moors. -
William Makepeace Thackeray
English novelist whose reputation rests chiefly on Vanity Fair , a novel of the Napoleonic period in England, and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq, set in the early 18th century. -
Matthew Arnold
The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems
'The Forsaken Merman'
'The Sick King in Bokhara'
Empedocles on Etna and other Poems
"The Buried Life"
"Empedocles on Etna"
Lines in Kensington gardens"
'Tristram and Iseult'
"Summer Night"
""Switzerland" -
Elizabeth Gaskell
Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters, each having been adapted for television by the BBC -
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Her major works include Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. -
Anthony Trollope
Trollope's Palliser series: Can You Forgive Her?, Phineas Finn, The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister and The Duke's Children were well-received, and he also produced insightful novels on political and social issues of the day during this time. -
Thomas Hardy
The Poor Man and the Lady
Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Return of the Native
The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character
The Woodlanders -
John Ruskin
His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last marked the shift in emphasis. Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera -
Samuel Butler
He is best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon and the semi-autobiographical The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously in 1903. -
Christina Rossetti
She wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in the UK: "In the Bleak Midwinter", later set by Gustav Holst and by Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down at Christmas" -
Walter Pater
"Marius the Epicurean" is his most substantial work -
Thomas De Quincey
The Works of Thomas De Quincey appeared in fourteen volumes in 1889 and 1890. Yet De Quincey's writings were so voluminous and widely dispersed that further collections followed: two volumes of The Uncollected Writings , and two volumes of Posthumous Works -
Joseph Conrad
during which time he composed The Nigger of the Narcissus, Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes, among other works. -
Rudyard Kipling
Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book, Kim, and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King". -
James Barrie
Some works:
Quality Street
The Admirable Crichton
Little Mary
Alice Sit-by-the-Fire -
Period: to
The Edwardian Period (1901–1914)
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William Butler Yeats
Some of his works: Cathleen Ní Houlihan,
Ideas of Good and Evil
In the Seven Woods,
Where There is Nothing,
The Hour Glass, play,
The Hour-Glass; Cathleen ni Houlihan -
Alfred Noyes
his first collection of poetry, The Loom of Years, was published when he was only 21 years old, and received compliments from esteemed poets such as George Meredith and William Butler Yeats. -
Henry James
Some of his works: The Golden Bowl
“The Aspern Papers”
The Ambassadors -
John Galsworthy.
Notable works include "The Forsyte Saga" and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize -
H.G. Wells
His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man , The War of the Worlds and the military science fiction The War in the Air -
Period: to
The Georgian Period
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Joseph Conrad
During which time he composed The Nigger of the Narcissus, Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes, among other works. -
W.H. Davies
Davies produced 4 novels, including The True Traveller and The Adventures of Johnny Walker, Tramp ; other prose works included Beggars, Nature and My Birds and my Garden -
George Bernard Shaw
Shaw's most financially successful work, Pygmalion, was adapted into the popular Broadway musical My Fair Lady -
Ralph Hodgson
His private press, "At the Sign of the Flying Fame," played host to several of his poems as chapbooks and broadsides. These included "The Song of Honour , " and "The Bull, -
D.H. Lawrence
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Rupert Brooke
His most famous work, the sonnet sequence 1914 and Other Poems, -
Period: to
The Modern Period
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Ford Madox Ford
One of Ford's most famous works is the novel The Good Soldier. Set just before World War I -
Dorothy Richardson
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T.S. Eliot
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Wilfred Owens
His best known poems include "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility", "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "The Parable of the Old Men and the Young" and "Strange Meeting". -
Edward Marsh
He became Rupert Brooke's literary executor, editing Brooke's Collected Poems -
W.B. Yeats
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James Joyce
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E.M. Forster
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Virginia Woolf
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John Masefield
Among his best known works are the children's novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and the poems The Everlasting Mercy and "Sea-Fever". -
Aldous Huxley
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Dylan Thomas
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Graham Greene
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W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney
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Period: to
The Postmodern Period (1945–?)
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Robert Graves
he published numerous works, including: King Jesus, The White Goddess, Seven Days in New Crete , The Nazarene Gospel Restored with Joshua Podro, The Greek Myths, and Catacrok! Mostly Stories, Mostly Funny, and The Hebrew Myths -
Doris Lessing
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Samuel Beckett
Notable works: Murphy
Watt
Molloy
Malone Dies
The Unnamable
Waiting for Godot
Endgame
Krapp's Last Tape
How It Is
Happy Days -
Joseph Heller
Notable works: Catch-22,
Something Happened -
John Fowles
Notable works:
The Collector
The Magus
The French Lieutenant's Woman -
Coleridge,
Works: Aids to Reflection
On the Constitution of the Church and State
Shorter Works and Fragments
Marginalia
Logic
Table Talk
Opus Maximum -
Penelope M. Lively
she is a British writer of fiction for both children and adults Notable works:
Astercote
The Whispering Knights
The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy
The Driftway
The Ghost of Thomas Kempe – Carnegie Medal -
Iain Banks
Notable works: Wasp Factory
Walking on Glass
The Bridge
Espedair Street
Canal Dreams
The Crow Road
Complicity -
Anthony Burgess
In total, he wrote thirty-three novels and more than twenty-five works of non-fiction, including two volumes of autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God and You've Had Your Time