-
Period: 450 to 1066
Old English Period
The Old English period (Anglo-Saxon period): language from the middle of the 5th to the beginning of the 12th century. -
500
Four ballads
-
673
Bede
-
800
Beowulf
-
975
The Seafarer
-
1000
The Wanderer
-
Period: 1066 to 1500
Middle English Period
Middle English: diverse forms of the English language in use between the late 11th century and the 1480s. -
1072
The Exeter Book
-
1343
Geoffrey Chaucer
Canterbury Tales -
1455
The Gutenberg Bible
-
1477
Sir Thomas More
Utopia (1516) -
Period: 1500 to
The Renaissance
This period is often subdivided into four parts, including the Elizabethan Age (1558–1603), the Jacobean Age (1603–1625), the Caroline Age (1625–1649), and the Commonwealth Period (1649–1660). -
1552
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene (1590-1596) -
1564
Christopher Marlowe
Doctor Faustus (1604) -
1564
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Richard III, Hamlet, Sonnets, The Tempest (1592-1611) -
Period: to
The Neoclassical Period
The Neoclassical period is subdivided into ages, including The Restoration (1660–1700), The Augustan Age (1700–1745), and The Age of Sensibility (1745–1785). -
Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels (1726) -
William Blake
Songs of Innocence (1789), Songs of Experience (1794) -
William Wordsworth
Lyrical Ballads (1798) -
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lyrical Ballads (1798) -
Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) -
Period: to
The Romantic Period
The beginning date for the Romantic period is often debated. Some claim it is 1785, immediately following the Age of Sensibility. Others say it began in 1789 with the start of the French Revolution, and still others believe that 1798, the publication year for William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s book Lyrical Ballads is its true beginning.
The time period ends with the passage of the Reform Bill (which signaled the Victorian Era) and with the death of Sir Walter Scott. -
Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron)
She Walks in Beauty (1814), When We Two Parted (1817) -
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Queen Mab (1813) -
John Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819), Ode to a Nightingale (1819) -
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter (1850) -
Edgar Allan Poe
The Black Cat (1834), The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) -
William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair (1848) -
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist (1837), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1849), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860) -
Charlotte Brontë
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), Jayne Eyre (1847) -
Emily Brontë
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), Wuthering Heights (1847) -
Mary Ann Evans (pen name George Eliot)
The Mill on the Floss (1860) -
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass (1855) -
Anne Brontë
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1847), Agnes Grey (1847) -
Period: to
The Victorian Period
This period is named for the reign of Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne in 1837, and it lasts until her death in 1901. It was a time of great social, religious, intellectual, and economic issues, heralded by the passage of the Reform Bill, which expanded voting rights. The period has often been divided into “Early” (1832–1848), “Mid” (1848–1870) and “Late” (1870–1901) periods or into two phases, that of the Pre-Raphaelites (1848–1860) and that of Aestheticism and Decadence (1880–1901). -
Thomas Hardy
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) -
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), The Importance of Being Earnest (1899) -
George Bernard Shaw
Pygmalion (1912) -
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness (1899) -
Rudyard Kipling
The Jungle Book (1894) -
William Butler Yeats
The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889) -
H. G. Wells
The War of Worlds (1898) -
Stephen Crane
The Red Badge of Honour (1895) -
James Joyce
Dubliners (1914), Ulysses (1921) -
Virginia Woolf
A Room of One's Own (1929) -
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World (1932) -
William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury (1929) -
Period: to
The Edwardian Period
This period is named for King Edward VII and covers the period between Victoria’s death and the outbreak of World War I. -
Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot (1949) -
Period: to
The Georgian Period
The Georgian period usually refers to the reign of George V (1910–1936). -
Period: to
The Modern Period
The modern period traditionally applies to works written after the start of World War I. Common features include bold experimentation with subject matter, style, and form, encompassing narrative, verse, and drama. W.B. Yeats’ words, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” are often referred to when describing the core tenet or “feeling” of modernist concerns. -
Doris Lessing
The grass is singing (1950), The golden notebook (1062) -
Allen Ginsberg
Howl (1956) -
Period: to
The Postmodern Period
The postmodern period begins about the time that World War II ended. Many believe it is a direct response to modernism. Some say the period ended about 1990, but it is likely too soon to declare this period closed. -
Terry Pratchett
Discworld (1983) -
J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter (1997-2007)