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The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people.
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Beowulf, 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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The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy
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Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce.
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Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy.
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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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William Tyndale studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English.
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The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588.
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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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Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I.
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Shakespeare's sonnets, written ten years previously, are published
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William Shakespeare dies at New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and is buried in Holy Trinity Church.
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The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar
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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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Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language. James Boswell meets Samuel Johnson for the first time, in the London bookshop of Thomas Davies and Samuel Johnson and James Boswell undertake a journey together to the western islands of Scotland.
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James Woodforde, an English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins a detailed diary of everyday life.
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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.
William Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'
William Blake includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton.
(https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-blake-39/blakes-songs-innocence-experience) -
English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
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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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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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12-year-old Charles Dickens works in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory.
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24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837)
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Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838)
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Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research
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George Eliot publishes The Mill on the Floss, her novel about the childhood of Maggie and Tom Tulliver.
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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.
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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.
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English author Bram Stoker publishes Dracula, his gothic tale of vampirism in Transylvania.
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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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D.H. Lawrence's career as a writer is launched with the publication of his first novel, The White Peacock.
D.H. Lawrence publishes a semi-autobiographical novel about the Morel family, Sons and Lovers.
D.H. Lawrence's novel about the Brangwen family, The Rainbow, is seized by the police as an obscene work.
D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love, a continuation of the family story in The Rainbow, is published first in the USA. -
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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James Bond, agent 007, has a licence to kill in Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale.
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Roald Dahl publishes a fantasy treat for a starving child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
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A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
