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450
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period (450–1066)
One of the most important spoken poems is the 'Beowulf', there many written versions of it but originally it was orally transmitted through generations. Some highlighted poets in this period are Caedmon and Cynewulf. -
1066
Middle English Period (1066–1500)
In this period secular literature began to rise, there can be found authors like Thomas Malory, and RobertHenryson. Notable works include "Piers Plowman", "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." and "The Canterbury Tales' wriiten by Geoffrey Chaucer. -
1500
The Renaissance (1500–1660)
This period is subdivided in 4 parts
The Elizabethan Age (1558–1603) William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Edmund Spenser, and Sir Walter Raleigh
The Jacobean Age (1603–1625) John Webster John Donne, Shakespeare, Michael Drayton, Elizabeth Cary, BenJonson, and Lady Mary Wroth
The Caroline Age (1625–1649) John Milton, RobertBurton, and George Herbert
The Commonwealth (1649–1660). Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and the prose of Andrew Marvell. -
The Neoclassical Period (1600–1785)
The Neoclassical period is subdivided into ages:
The Restoration (1660–1700) includes authors like like William Congreve, John Dryden, Samuel Butler, Aphra Behn, John Bunyan,and John Locke.
The Augustan Age (1700–1745) includes famous authors such as Daniel Defoe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift
The Age of Sensibility (1745–1785) was the time of EdmundBurke, Edward Gibbon, Hester Lynch Thrale, James Boswell, and Samuel Johnson. -
The Romantic Period (1785–1832)
It starts with the publication of William Wordsworth andSamuel Taylor Coleridge’s book Lyrical Ballads. This era also includes the works of Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas DeQuincey, Coleridge, William Blake, LordByron, John Keats, Charles Lamb, and Mary Shelley. A renown novel in this period is ' Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen. -
The Victorian Period (1832–1901)
This period includes poets like Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and MatthewArnold. Regarding prose fiction, there are authors like Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Samuel Butler. One of the most famous Victorian novelists is Charles Dickens, his most important work includes 'Oliver Twist' and 'A Christmas Carol A Ghost Story of Christmas' -
The Edwardian Period (1901–1914)
This era includes classic novelists such as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Rudyard Kipling,H.G. Wells, and Henry James; some notable poets such as Alfred Noyes and William Butler Yeats, and dramatists such as James Barrie, George Bernard Shaw, and John Galsworthy. -
The Georgian Period (1910–1936)
This period is known by the Georgian poets, such as Ralph Hodgson, John Masefield, W.H. Davies, and Rupert Brooke. The most famous novels of this area include the work of 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley, 'Robinson Crusoe' by Daniel Defoe, 'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift, 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray, and 'And other Poems' by Rupert Brooke. -
The Modern Period (1914–?)
Some of the most notable writers of this period include the novelists Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Stearns Eliot, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats John Galaworthy. An important novel in this period is 'Watt' by Samuel Beckett. -
The Postmodern Period (1945–?)
This period starts after the end of world war II. During this time Poststructuralist literary theory and criticism was developed. Some notable writers of the period includes John Fowles, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Heller, AnthonyBurgess, Penelope M. Lively, and Iain Banks.
