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the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons
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A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman
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The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur
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Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy
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Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death
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Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur
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The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer
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Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama
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After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III
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Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age
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The satirical voice of the English playwright Ben Jonson is heard to powerful effect in Volpone
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Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest, is performed
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Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton just £10
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Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol, is published and is immediately popular
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John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience
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25-year-old George Berkeley attacks Locke in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
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Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel
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Jonathan Swift sends his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels in Gulliver's Travels
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David Hume publishes his Treatise of Human Nature, in which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science
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English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard
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Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language
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Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception
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English historian Edward Gibbon, sitting among ruins in Rome, conceives the idea of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire English author Horace Walpole provides an early taste of Gothic thrills in his novel Castle of Otranto
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A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre
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William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself In his Principles Jeremy Bentham defines 'utility' as that which enhances pleasure and reduces pain
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English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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Thomas Paine moves hurriedly to France, to escape a charge of treason in England for opinions expressed in his Rights of Man
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Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame
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Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake brings tourists in unprecedented numbers to Scotland's Loch Katrine
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English author Jane Austen publishes her first work in print, Sense and Sensibility, at her own expense
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The first two cantos are published of Byron's largely autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bringing him immediate fame
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Pride and Prejudice, based on a youthful work of 1797 called First Impressions, is the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published
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Two of Jane Austen's novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, are published in the year after her death Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, a Gothic tale about giving life to an artificial man
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Byron begins publication in parts of his longest poem, Don Juan an epic satirical comment on contemporary life
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Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838)
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English author William Makepeace Thackeray begins publication of his novel Vanity Fair in monthly parts (book form 1848) Charlotte becomes the first of the Brontë sisters to have a novel published — Jane Eyre Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights follows just two months after her sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre
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In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school
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Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research Charles Dickens publishes his French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities
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English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede
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Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier
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Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass, a second story of Alice's adventures
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English author Thomas Hardy has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd
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Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure story, Treasure Island, features Long John Silver and Ben Gunn
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Explorer and orientalist Richard Burton begins publication of his multi-volume translation from the Arabic of The Arabian Nights
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Robert Louis Stevenson introduces a dual personality in his novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
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Sherlock Holmes features in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet
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Oscar Wilde publishes his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the ever-youthful hero's portrait grows old and ugly Thomas Hardy publishes his novel Tess of the Durbervilles, with a dramatic finale at Stonehenge
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Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book surrounds the child Mowgli with a collection of vivid animal guardians
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Oscar Wilde's most brilliant comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest is performed in London's St. James Theatre Oscar Wilde loses a libel case that he has brought against the marquess of Queensberry for describing him as a sodomite Oscar Wilde is sent to Reading Gaol to serve a two-year sentence with hard labour after being convicted of homosexuality H.G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, a story about a Time Traveller whose first stop on his journey is the year
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English author Bram Stoker publishes Dracula, his gothic tale of vampirism in Transylvania
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Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Lord Jim about a life of failure and redemption in the far East
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Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit
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J.M Barrie's play for children Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has its premiere in London
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James Joyce completes the 15 short stories eventually published in 1914 as Dubliners
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The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her first novel, The Voyage Out
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The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot features in Agatha Christie's first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles
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Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes his influential study of the philosophy of logic, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
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Virginia Woolf publishes her novel Mrs Dalloway, in which the action is limited to a single day
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Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and the others make their first appearance in A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh
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Virginia Woolf publishes the most fluid of her novels, The Waves, in which she tells the story through six interior monologues
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T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral has its first performance in Canterbury cathedral
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George Orwell reveals the harsh realities of contemporary British life in The Road to Wigan Pier
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C.S. Lewis gives the first glimpse of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
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English author L.P. Hartley sets his novel The Go-Between in the summer of 1900 James Bond, agent 007, has a licence to kill in Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale
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Politician and author Winston Churchill completes his six-volume history The Second World War William Golding gives a chilling account of schoolboy savagery in his first novel, Lord of the Flies
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British philologist J.R.R. Tolkien publishes the third and final volume of his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings
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The Hawk in the Rain is English author Ted Hughes' first volume of poems
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British author Roald Dahl publishes a novel for children, James and the Giant Peach
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Anthony Burgess publishes A Clockwork Orange, a novel depicting a disturbing and violent near-future
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Roald Dahl publishes a fantasy treat for a starving child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
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English novelist Paul Scott publishes The Jewel in the Crown, the first volume in his 'Raj Quartet
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Ayatollah Khomeini declares a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses British physicist Stephen Hawking explains the cosmos for the general reader in A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes
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Regeneration is the first volume of English author Pat Barker's trilogy of novels set during World War I
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English novelist Sebastian Faulks publishes Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of World War I
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The poems forming Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters describe his relationship with Sylvia Plath A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
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The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials
