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731
The Venerable Bede (674 AD - 735 AD)
He wrote around 40 books mainly dealing with theology and history. His most famous work, which is a key source for the understanding of early British history and the arrival of Christianity, is 'Ecclesiastical History Gentis Anglorum' or 'The Ecclesiastical History of the English People' which was completed in 731 AD. Bede died in his cell at the monastery in May 735 AD. -
800
Beowulf
Is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important works of Old English literature. The author was an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, referred to by scholars as the "Beowulf poet". The full story survives in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. -
950
The material of the Eddas (950)
The Old Norse name given to two important collections of early Icelandic writing. The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy -
1299
Duns Scotus (1265-1308)
Known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce. In the academic year 1297-98 John Duns prepared his first theological course which would change his life. During the next year he gave this course, on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the most important textbook of systematic theology at the time. -
1340
William of Ockham (1287-1347)
He is among the most prominent figures in the history of philosophy during the High Middle Ages. He is probably best known today for his espousal of metaphysical nominalism; indeed, the methodological principle known as “Ockham’s Razor” is named after him. -
1367
Will- Piers Plowman
The narrator of Piers Plowman calls himself Will; occasional references in the text suggest that his name may be Langland. Nothing else, apart from this poem, is known of him. Piers Plowman exists in three versions, the longest amounting to more than 7000 lines. It is considered probable that all three are by the same author. If so he spends some twenty years, from about 1367, adjusting and refining his epic creation. -
1375
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight belongs to a literary genre known as romance. A romance is a tale of adventure involving knights on a quest. Elements of fantasy and magic are always present: There may be dragons or monsters to battle, mysterious places to visit, or peculiar spells or curses to be broken. -
1385
Geoffrey Chaucer (1345-1400)
Troilus and Criseyde is an epic poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war during the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid-1380s. The Canterbury Tales was enormously popular in medieval England, with over 90 copies in existence from the 1400s. -
1469
Thomas Malory
Le Morte d'Arthur is a reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of existing tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. Malory interpreted existing French and English stories about these figures and added original material -
1510
Erasmus and Thomas More
Thomas More’s Utopia is in many respects a typical product of Renaissance humanism. Utopia bears all the signs of a humanist interest in the classical languages and forms and like Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly and Valla’s On the True and False Good was preoccupied with ancient philosophical views on ethical values. -
1524
William Tyndale (1494-1536)
He was an English scholar who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known for his (incomplete) translation of the Bible into English. -
1549
Thomas Cranmer
The First Prayer Book, enacted by the first Act of Uniformity of Edward VI in 1549, was prepared primarily by Thomas Cranmer, who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. -
Christopher Marlowe
Tamburlaine the Great, first play by Christopher Marlowe, produced about 1587 and published in 1590. ... Marlowe's “mighty line,” as Ben Jonson called it, established blank verse as the standard for later Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic writing. -
Edmund Spense
Edmund Spense was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse, and is often considered one of the greatest poets in the English language. -
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III -
Hamlet
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1602. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. -
Ben Jonson
The Masque of Blackness was written by Jonson at the request of King James I's wife, Anne of Denmark, who specifically chose the topic so she and her ladies of court, who would star with her in the production, could dress up in blackface. Blackface is when white performers use make-up to appear black. -
John Smith (1580-1631)
Smith made two attempts in 1614 and 1615 to return to the same coast. On the first trip, a storm dismasted his ship. ... He escaped after weeks of captivity and made his way back to England, where he published an account of his two voyages as A Description of New England. He remained in England for the rest of his life.
William Shakespeare dies at New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and is buried in Holy Trinity Church -
First Folio
The printing of the First Folio in 1623 was a massive undertaking; it included thirty six plays, eighteen of which had never been published before*. The editors of the volume, Shakespeare's fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell*, arranged the plays in three genres*, Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. -
George Herbert
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633)[1] was a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devotional lyricists." -
John Milton
"Lycidas" is a poem by John Milton, written in 1637 as a pastoral elegy. It first appeared in a 1638 collection of elegies, entitled Justa Edouardo King Naufrago, dedicated to the memory of Edward King, friend of Milton's at Cambridge who drowned when his ship sank in the Irish Sea off the coast of Wales in August 1637. -
The poems of Massachusetts
Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672), née Dudley, was the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first writer in England's North American colonies to be published. Her early works read in the style of Du Bartas, but her later writings develop into her unique style of poetry which centers on her role as a mother, her struggles with the sufferings of life, and her Puritan faith. Her first collection, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was widely read in America and England. -
The compleat Angler
The Compleat Angler was published by the bookseller Richard Marriot whose business was based in Fleet Street near where Walton had a shop. ... The first edition featured dialogue between veteran angler Piscator and student Viator, while later editions change Viator to hunter Venator and added falconer Auceps. -
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
John Bunyan was an English writer and Puritan preacher. During his last years in prison, Bunyan began his most famous work, The Pilgrim's Progress, a two-part allegorical tale of the character Christian and his journey to salvation. Part I was published in 1678 and Part II in 1684. -
Aphra Behn (1640–1689)
Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a short work of prose fiction by Aphra Behn, published in 1688 by William Canning and reissued with two other fictions later that year. The eponymous hero is an African prince from Coramantien who is tricked into slavery and sold to British colonists in Surinam where he meets the narrator. Behn's text is a first-person account of his life, love, rebellion, and execution. -
Jhon Locke
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a work by John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. ... These secondary qualities, Locke claims, are dependent on the primary qualities. He also offers a theory of personal identity, offering a largely psychological criterion. -
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
The outstanding English mock-epic is Alexander Pope’s brilliant tour de force The Rape of the Lock (1712–14), which concerns a society beau’s theft of a lock of hair from a society belle; Pope treated the incident as if it were comparable to events that sparked the Trojan War. -
Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe, in full The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With an Account how he was at last as Strangely Deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself., novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in London in 1719. -
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Gulliver's Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is a prose satire[1][2] of 1726 by the Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it". -
David Hume
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40) is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, considered by many to be Hume's most important work and one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. The Treatise is a classic statement of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. -
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Samuel Johnson often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. He was a devout Anglican. -
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, also known as just Tristram Shandy, is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years. It purports to be a biography of the eponymous character. Its style is marked by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices. -
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium. -
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Regarded as a founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke proved an influential yet controversial writer and politician. Published in 1790, when the Revolution was still young, this is Burke's most well-known work and remains a classic of Western political thought and rhetoric. -
Robert Burns
Tam o'Shanter is a poem that encompasses humour, horror and social comment as the unsightly, tailless condition of poor Maggie serves as an awful reminder to the Carrick farmers, not to stay too late drinking in Ayr. Written in 1790, it is one of Burns finest poems and his own favourite. -
Mary Wollstonecraft
From her experiences teaching, Wollstonecraft wrote the pamphlet Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787). Within four years, she published her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). -
Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature.[1] The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry. -
Walter Scott
The Lay of the Last Minstrel, long narrative poem in six cantos by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1805. It was the author's first original poetic romance, and it established his reputation. Scott based The Lay of the Last Minstrel on the old Scottish Border legend of the goblin Gilpin Horner. Novelist and poet Walter Scott penned his classic. The Lady of the Lake on the banks of Loch Katrine.(1810) -
Jane Austen
The novel was originally published anonymously, as were all of Austen's novels. However, whereas her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility was presented as being written "by a Lady," Pride and Prejudice was attributed to "the Author of Sense and Sensibility". Pride and Prejudice, based on a youthful work of 1797 called First Impressions, is the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published -
Mary Shelley (1979-1851)
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a hideous sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. -
Lord Byron
Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womaniser but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire" Byron claimed that he had no ideas in his mind as to what would happen in subsequent cantos as he wrote his work. -
Thomas de Quincey
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum addiction and its effect on his life. The Confessions was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one which won him fame almost overnight..." -
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Oliver Twist. The novel was originally published in monthly instalments in the magazine Bentley's Miscellany, from February 1837 to April 1839. It was originally intended to form part of Dickens's serial, The Mudfog Papers. -
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Although playwright and poet Robert Browning was slow to receive acclaim for his work, his later work earned him renown and respect in his career, and the techniques he developed through his dramatic monologues—especially his use of diction, rhythm, and symbol—are regarded as his most important contribution to poetry, influencing such major poets of the twentieth century as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost. -
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
The Condition of the Working Class in England (German: Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England) is an 1845 book by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels, a study of the industrial working class in Victorian England. -
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
Edward Lear, he was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, now known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. -
Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869)
Peter Mark Roget, was a British physician, natural theologian and lexicographer. He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, a classified collection of related words. -
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Charles Darwin argued that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process he called natural selection. He first put forward this theory in his book 'On the Origin of Species' (1859). ... Darwin's book implied that humans were not created by God, but had evolved from other animals. -
East Lynne
East Lynne is an English sensation novel of 1861 by Ellen Wood. A Victorian best-seller, it is remembered chiefly for its elaborate and implausible plot, centring on infidelity and double identities. There have been numerous stage and film adaptations. -
Charles Kingsley
The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a children's novel by Charles Kingsley. Written in 1862–63 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, it was first published in its entirety in 1863. -
Charles Lutwidge (1832-1898)
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of world-famous children's fiction, notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He was noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy. The poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. He was also a mathematician, photographer, and Anglican deacon. -
George Eliot
Eliot contrasts Casaubon with his young, idealistic cousin, Will Ladislaw, who is in love with Dorothea and whom she eventually marries after Casaubon's death. -
Henry James
Daisy Miller is a novella by Henry James that first appeared in Cornhill Magazine in June–July 1878, and in book form the following year.It portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a sophisticated compatriot of hers. His pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates when they meet in Switzerland and Italy. -
James Frazer (1854-1941)
The Scottish social anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) first published The Golden Bough in 1890. A seminal two-volume work (reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), it revolutionised the study of ancient religion through comparative analysis of mythology, rituals and superstitions around the world. -
Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900. An early and primary event in the story is the abandonment of a passenger ship in distress by its crew, including a young British seaman named Jim. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with himself and his past. -
Angela Carter (1940-1992)
English author Angela Carter wins recognition with her quirky second novel, The Magic Toyshop -
John Fowles (1926-2005)
The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. It was his third published novel, after The Collector (1963) and The Magus (1965). -
Ernsts Friedrich Schumacher (1911-1977)
British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher publishes an influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful -
The Sea, the Sea; The Pleasure Steamers; The Cement Garden
Iris Murdoch publishes The Sea, the Sea, and wins the 1978 Booker Prize. English author Andrew Motion publishes his first collection of poems, The Pleasure Steamers. British author Ian McEwan publishes his first novel, The Cement Garden -
War Music, Midnight's Children, A Start in Life
War Music is the first instalment of Christopher Logue's version of the Iliad. Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children uses the moment of India's independence to launch an adventure in magic realism. English author Anita Brookner publishes her first novel, A Start in Life -
Nicholas Kaldor (1908-1986)
Nicholas Kaldor, he developed the "compensation" criteria called Kaldor–Hicks efficiency for welfare comparisons (1939), derived the cobweb model, and argued for certain regularities observable in economic growth, which are called Kaldor's growth laws.Kaldor also coined the term "convenience yield" related to commodity markets and the so-called theory of storage, which was initially developed by Holbrook Working. -
Partingtime Hall
This collection of light verse comprises a poetic comment on life and its absurdities. Fuller has published nine collections including "Illusionists" and "Beautiful Inventions." His novel "Flying to Nowhere" won the 1983 Whitbread Prize. Fenton is the recipient of several poetry awards. -
Stephen William Hawking (1942-2018)
Stephen William Hawking was an English theoretical physicist and mathematician. He was born in Oxford. In 1950, he moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the Universe). He talks about the search for a unifying theory that describes everything in the Universe in a coherent manner. -
Thom Gunn (1929-2004)
Hom Gunn's poem “The Missing” is taken from his 1992 book, The Man with Night Sweats, a series of poems responding to the AIDS crisis. -
Sebastian Faulks (1953-)
Birdsong is a 1993 war novel and family saga by the English author Sebastian Faulks. Faulks developed the novel to bring more public awareness to the experience of war remembered by WWI veterans. Because of its genre, themes and writing style, the novel has been favourably compared to a number of other war novels, like Ian McEwan's Atonement and those in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy. -
Louis de Bernières 1954
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, released simultaneously in the United States as Corelli's Mandolin, is a 1994 novel by the British writer Louis de Bernières, set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the Italian and German occupation of the Second World War. -
Joanne Rowling 1965
She is best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has won multiple awards and sold more than 500 million copies,becoming the best-selling book series in history. The books are the basis of a popular film series, over which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts[5] and was a producer on the final films. She also writes crime fiction under the name Robert Galbraith. -
Philip Pullman 1946
His Dark Materials is an epic trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights (1995) (published as The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). ... New Line Cinema released a film adaptation of Northern Lights, The Golden Compass, in 2007.
