History of English literature

OLD ENGLISH

450

The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people.
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons.
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy.
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191737053.timeline.0001#

Beowulf

800

The first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons. The greatest achievement of ancient English literature and the first European vernacular epic. These are events of the early sixth century.

Eddas

950

The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy.
It is the name of the first and the best known poem of the poetic Edda. It tells the story of the creation of the world and its imminent end, narrated by a völva or seer and directed to Odin. It is one of the main primary sources for the study of Norse mythology.

MIDDLE ENGLISH

1066

Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce.
William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor.
A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman.
One of four new yeomen of the chamber in Edward III's household is Geoffrey Chaucer.

Duns Scotus

1300

Known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce.

William of Ockham

1340

Advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor.

Piers Plowman

1367

A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem. One of four new yeomen of the chamber in Edward III's household is Geoffrey Chaucer

Sir Gawain

1375

The courtly poem and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur

Chaucer

1385

Completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy.
Begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death.

Thomas Malory

1469

In gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur.

ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

1500

1510 - Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism.

William Tyndale

1524

Studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English.

Thomas Cranmer

1549

The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text.

Marlowe

1564

Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months.
1587 - Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588.

Edmund Spenser

1590

English poet celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene.

Renaissance

1592

1592 - After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III.
1601 - Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age.
1604 - James I commissions the Authorized version of the Bible, which is completed by forty-seven scholars in seven years.
William Shakespeare's name appears among the actors in a list of the King's Men.

Ben Jonson

1605

Writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masks for the court of James I.
1606 - The satirical voice of the English playwright Ben Jonson is heard with great effect in Volpone.
1609 - Shakespeare's sonnets are published. 1611 - Shakespeare's last work, The Tempest, is performed.
1616 - John Smith publishes A description of New England.

John Donne

1621

England's leading Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's.
1623 - John Heminge and Henry Condell publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio.
1633 - George Herbert's only volume of poems, The Temple, is published posthumously.
1637 - John Milton's Lycidas is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King.

PURITAN

1650

1650 - The poems of Massachusetts author Anne Bradstreet are published in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.
1653 - Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler.
1660 - On the first day of the new year Samuel Pepys gets up late, eats the remains of the turkey and begins his diary.

RESTORATION AGE

1660

1667 - Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton.
1669 - Samuel Pepys ends his diary, after only writing it for nine years.
1678 - Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol.
1688 - Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade.
1690 - John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience.

18th CENTURY

1700

1702 - The age of Augustus begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar.
1709 - The Tatler launches a new style of journalism in the cafes of Great Britain, followed two years later by the Spectator.
1710: George Berkeley, 25, attacks Locke in his Treaty on the principles of human knowledge.
1712 - The violation of the Alexander Pope padlock introduces a delicate vein of heroic mockery in English poetry.

Daniel Defoe

1719

Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel.
1726 - Jonathan Swift sends his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels in Gulliver's Travels.
1739 - David Hume publishes his Treatise of Human Nature, in which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science.
1747 - Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language.

Henry Fielding

1749

Introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones.
1751 English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard.
1755 Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language.
1758 James Woodforde, an English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins a detailed diary of everyday life.

Laurence Sterne

1759

Publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception.
1762 - Fingal, supposedly by the medieval poet Ossian, is a forgery in the spirit of the times by James MacPherson.
1763 - James Boswell meets Samuel Johnson for the first time, in the London bookshop of Thomas Davies.
1764 - English historian Edward Gibbon, sitting among ruins in Rome, conceives the idea of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

18th CENTURY

1768

1768 A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica.
1773 - Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer is produced in London's Covent Garden theatre.
Samuel Johnson and James Boswell undertake a journey together to the western islands of Scotland.

Benjamin Franklin - Edward Gibbon - Richard Brinsley

1774

Encouraged, Thomas Paine emigrates to America and settles in Philadelphia.
1776 English historian Edward Gibbon publishes the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Scottish economist Adam Smith analyzes the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations.
1777 Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre.

William Blake - Jeremy Bentham - Edmund Burke

1789

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.
1790 - Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel.

Robert Burns - Thomas Paine

1791

Scottish poet publishes Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches.
Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man, his reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.
1792 - English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Thomas Paine moves hurriedly to France, to escape a charge of treason in England for opinions expressed in his Rights of Man.

William Blake's - Thomas Paine - Samuel Taylor

1794

Volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'.
1795 - Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity.
1797 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge says that while writing Kubla Khan.

ROMANTICISM

1798

English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is published in Lyrical Ballads

William Blake - Walter Scott - Percy Bysshe Shelley

1804

Includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton.
1805 - Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame.
1810 - Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake brings tourists in unprecedented numbers to Scotland's Loch Katrine.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1811

1811-Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for circulating a booklet with the title The need for atheism.
The English author Jane Austen publishes her first printed work, Sense and Sensibility, at her expense.
1812 The first two songs of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are published, largely autobiographical of Byron's poem.
1813 Pride and prejudice, based on a 1797 youth work called First Impressions, is the second of Jane Austen's novels published.

Jane Austen´s

1818

Two of Jane Austen's novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, are published a year after her death.
Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus, a Gothic tale about giving life to an artificial man.
Byron begins to publish in parts of his longest poem, Don Juan, an epic satirical commentary on contemporary life
Walter Scott publishes Ivanhoe, a love story, tournaments and sieges at the time of the crusades

John Keats - Percy Bysshe - Thomas de Quincey

1820

The English poet John Keats publishes Oda to a nightingale, inspired by the song of the bird in his Hampstead garden
The English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Oda to the West Wind, written primarily in a forest near Florence.
1821 English author Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical Confessions of an English opium dining room.
The English radical William Cobbett begins his travels in England, published in 1830 as Rural Rides

Charles Dickens

1824

1824 12-year-old Charles Dickens works in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory
1832 English author Frances Trollope ruffles transatlantic feathers with her Domestic Manners of the Americans, based on a 3-year stay
1836 24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837)

VICTORIAN

1837

1837 Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838)
1842 English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin
English author Thomas Babington Macaulay publishes a collection of stirring ballads, Lays of Ancient Rome
1843 Ebenezer Scrooge mends his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

Coningsby Benjamin - Friedrich Engels - Edward Lear

1844

In his novel Coningsby Benjamin Disraeli develops the theme of conservatism by uniting "two nations", the rich and the poor.
1845 Friedrich Engels, after running a textile factory in Manchester, publishes the condition of the working class in England
1846 Edward Lear publishes his Book of nonsense, consisting of limericks illustrated with their own cartoons
opiates

William Makepeace Thackeray - Charlotte - Emily Brontë's

1847

1847 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

Branwell - Dickens - Tennyson´s - Roget

1848

1848 Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë die within a period of eight months
1849 Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels
1850 Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility
1852 London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases

Tennyson -

1854

1854 Within six weeks of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea, Tennyson publishes a poem finding heroism in the disaster
1855 Tennyson publishes a long narrative poem, Maud, a section of which ('Come into the garden, Maud') becomes famous as a song
English author Anthony Trollope publishes The Warden, the first in his series of six Barsetshire novels
1857 In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school

Charles Darwins - Samuel Smiles

1859

1859 Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research
In On Liberty John Stuart Mill makes the classic liberal case for the priority of the freedom of the individual
Samuel Smiles provides an inspiring ideal of Victorian enterprise in Self-Help, a manual for ambitious young men
Tennyson publishes the first part of Idylls of the King, a series of linked poems about Britain's mythical king Arthur

Henry Wood - Lewis Carroll - Charles Kingsley

1861

1861 Mrs Henry Wood publishes her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas
1862 Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll tells 10-year-old Alice Liddell, on a boat trip, a story about her own adventures in Wonderland
1863 English author Charles Kingsley publishes an improving fantasy for young children, The Water-Babies

Gerard Manley - Robert Louis Stevenson - Richard Burton

1876

The English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins develops a new form of verse that he calls 'skipped rhythm'
1883The adventure story of Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, features Long John Silver and Ben Gunn
1885 The explorer and orientalist Richard Burton begins publishing his multi-volume translation of The Arabian Nights Arabic

Robert Louis Stevenson

1886

1886 Robert Louis Stevenson introduces a dual personality in his novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Thomas Hardy publishes his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, which begins with the future mayor, Michael Henchard selling his wife and child at a fair.
Joseph Conrad becomes naturalized as a British subject and continues his career at sea in the far East
1887 Sherlock Holmes features in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet.

Irish

1889

1889 23-year-old Irish author William Butler Yeats publishes his first volume of poems, The Wanderings of Oisin.
The Fabian Society publishes Essays in Socialisman influential volume of essays edited by Bernard Shaw.
1890 Scottish anthropologist James Frazer publishes The Golden Bough, a massive compilation of contemporary knowledge about ritual and religious custom.
9-year-old Daisy Ashford imagines an adult romance and high society in The Young Visiters.

Oscar Wilde

1891

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.
1892 Oscar Wilde's comedy Lady Windermere's Fan is a great success with audiences in London's St. James Theatre.

George du Maurier

1894

1894 French-born artist and author George du Maurier publishes his novel Trilby.
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book surrounds the child Mowgli with a collection of vivid animal guardians.
1895 Oscar Wilde's most brilliant comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest is performed in London's St. James Theatre.

Housman

1896

1896 English poet A.E. Housman publishes his first collection, A Shropshire Lad.
1897 Somerset Maugham publishes his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, based on the London life he has observed as a medical student.
English author Bram Stoker publishes Dracula, his gothic tale of vampirism in Transylvania.
1898 Henry James moves from London to Lamb House in Rye, Sussex, which remains his home for the rest of his life.

Nesbit

1899

1899 E. Nesbit publishes The Story of the Treasure Seekers, introducing the Bastable family who feature in several of her books for children
1900 Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Lord Jim about a life of failure and redemption in the far East
1901 Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Rudyard Kipling's experiences of India are put to good use in his novel Kim

MODERN LITERATURE

1901

Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Rudyard Kipling's experiences of India are put to good use in his novel Kim.

Rudyard Kipling

1902

1902 Rudyard Kipling publishes his Just So Stories for Little Children.
The play Cathleen ni Houlihan, by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, fosters Irish nationalism.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit is published commercially, a year after being first printed by Beatrix Potter at her own expense.
John Masefield's poem 'Sea Fever' is published in Salt-Water Ballads.Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles begins publication in serial form.

Erskine Childers

1903

Erskine Childers has a best-seller in The Riddle of the Sands, a thriller about a planned German invasion of Britain
Henry James publishes The Ambassadors, the second of his three last novels written in rapid succession
British philosopher G.E. Moore publishes Principia Ethica, an attempt to apply logic to ethics

Joseph Conrad

1904

Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Nostromo, about a revolution in South America and a fatal horde of silver
Henry James publishes his last completed novel, The Golden Bowl
J.M Barrie's play for children Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has its premiere in London
Under the pseudonym Saki, H.H. Munro publishes Reginald, his first volume of short stories

H.G. Wells

1905

H.G. Wells publishes Kipps: the story of a simple soul, a comic novel about a bumbling draper's assistant
Bernard Shaw has two new plays opening in London in the same year, Major Barbara and Man and Superman
Sir Percy Blakeney rescues aristocrats from the guillotine in Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimperne

Joseph Dent

1906

The first volume of the inexpensive Everyman's Library is issued by Joseph Dent, a London publisher.
E. Nesbit publishes The Railway Children, the most successful of her books featuring the Bastable family.
John Galsworthy publishes The Man of Property, the first of his novels chronicling the family of Soames Forsyte.

James Joyce

1907

James Joyce completes the 15 short stories eventually published in 1914 as Dubliners.
1908 Rat, Mole and Toad, in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, appeal to a wide readership.
The Welsh poet W.H. Davies has a success with The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, his account of life on the road and in dosshous.

John Masefield

1910

In his poem Cargoes, John Masefield compares a "dirty roller coaster" to two romantic ships from the past.
John Buchan publishes Prester John, the first of his adventure stories.
H.G. Wells publishes The History of Mr Polly, a novel about an escape from monotonous everyday existence.
Rudyard Kipling publishes If, which quickly becomes his most popular poem among the British.
E.M. Forster publishes Howard's End, his novel about the Schlegel sisters and the Wilcox family

D.H. Lawrence's

1911

D.H. Lawrence's career as a writer is launched with the publication of his first novel, The White Peacock
Rupert Brooke publishes Poems, the only collection to appear before his early death in World War I
G.K. Chesterton's clerical detective makes his first appearance in The Innocence of Father Brown
In a German Pension is New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield's first collection of stories

Walter de la Mare

1912

1912 Walter De la Mare establishes his reputation with the title poem of his collection The Listeners.
1913 The first issue of the New Statesman is published by Beatrice and Sidney Webb.
Compton Mackenzie publishes the first volume of his autobiographical novel Sinister Street.
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell complete a work of mathematical logic, Principia Mathematica.

Somerset Maugham

1915

Somerset Maugham publishes his semi-autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage.
The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her first novel, The Voyage Out.
D.H. Lawrence's novel about the Brangwen family, The Rainbow, is seized by the police as an obscene work.
Secret agent Richard Hannay makes his first appearance in John Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps.
1916 Robert Graves published his first book of poems, Over the Brazier.

Lytton Strachey

1918

Lytton Strachey fails to show conventional respect to four famous Victorians in his influential volume of short biographies entitled Eminent Victorians.
1921 Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes his influential study of the philosophy of logic, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus.
1922 John Galsworthy publishes his novels about the Forsyte family as a joint collection under the title The Forsyte Saga.

E.M. FORSTER´S

1924

1924 E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India builds on cultural misconceptions between the British and Indian communities.
1925 English writer Ivy Compton-Burnett finds her characteristic voice in her second novel, Pastors and Masters.
1926 Patrick Abercrombie publishes The Preservation of Rural England, calling for rural planning to prevent the encroachment of towns.

Henry Williamson

1927

Henry Williamson wins a wide readership with Tarka the Otter, a realistic story of the life and death of an otter in Devon.
Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen publishes her first novel, The Hotel.
1928 Caribbean-born author Jean Rhys publishes her first novel, Postures, based on her affair with the writer Ford Madox Ford.
1929 Richard Hughes publishes his first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica.
Blind Fireworks is Ulster writer Louis MacNeice's first collection of poems.

Virginia Woolf

1931

1931 Virginia Woolf publishes the most fluid of her novels, The Waves, in which she tells the story through six interior monologues.
1932 US poet Archibald MacLeish publishes a narrative epic, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico.
1933 H.G. Wells publishes The Shape of Things to Come, a novel in which he accurately predicts a renewal of world war.
1934 In I, Claudius the autobiography of the Roman emperor is ghost-written by Robert Graves.

TS Eliot´s

1935

1935 T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral has its first performance in Canterbury cathedral.
1936 John Maynard Keynes defines his economics in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.
1937 C.S. Forester's central character, Horatio Hornblower, features for the first time – in The Happy Return.
1938 British author Evelyn Waugh publishes a classic Fleet Street novel, Scoop, introducing Lord Copper, proprietor of The Beast.

W.H. Auden

1939

W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood emigrate together to the USA, later becoming US citizens.
1940 Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is rejected by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel.

POST MODERNS

1940

1941 British author Rebecca West publishes an account of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
1942 English children's author Enid Blyton introduces the Famous Five in Five on a Treasure Island.
1944 The separate poems forming T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets are brought together for the first time as a single volume, published in New York.
1945 English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love.

Mervyn Peake's

1946

Titus Groan begins British author Mervyn Peake's trilogy of gothic novels.
1947 English author and alcoholic Malcolm Lowry publishes an autobiographical novel, Under the Volcano.
1948 Christopher Fry's verse drama The Lady's Not For Burning engages in high-spirited poetic word play.
1949 Enid Blyton introduces her most successful character, Noddy, a small boy who can't avoid nodding when he speaks.
1950 C.S. Lewis gives the first glimpse of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

John Wyndham

1951

British author John Wyndham creates a dark fantasy in his novel The Day of the Triffids.
1952 Evelyn Waugh publishes Men at Arms, the first novel in the Sword of Honour trilogy based on his wartime experiences
1953 English author L.P. Hartley sets his novel The Go-Between in the summer of 1900.
1954 Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood, is broadcast on BBC radio, with Richard Burton as narrator.
1955 Kingsley Amis and other young writers in Britain become known as Angry Young Men.

Ted Hughes

1956

1956 English poet Ted Hughes marries US poet Sylia Plath.
1957 The Hawk in the Rain is English author Ted Hughes' first volume of poems.
1958 Irish dramatist Brendan Behan's play The Hostage is produced in Dublin.
1959 Keith Waterhouse has a wide success with his second novel, Billy Liar.
1960 English poet John Betjeman publishes his long autobiographical poem Summoned by Bells.
1961 British author Roald Dahl publishes a novel for children, James and the Giant Peach.

Benjamin Britten's

1962

1962 Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, setting poems by Wilfred Owen, is first performed in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral.
1964 Roald Dahl publishes a fantasy treat for a starving child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
1966 English novelist Paul Scott publishes The Jewel in the Crown, the first volume in his 'Raj Quartet'.
1967 English author Angela Carter wins recognition with her quirky second novel, The Magic Toyshop.

Michael Holroyd

1968

English biographer Michael Holroyd completes his two-volume life of Lytton Strachey.
1969 English novelist John Fowles publishes The French Lieutenant's Woman, set in Lyme Regis in the 1860s.
1972English dramatist Caryl Churchill's first play, Owners, is produced in London.
1973British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher publishes an influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful.
1974 German-born British art historian Nikolaus Pevsner completes his monumental 46-volume Buildings of England.

Ruth Prawer

1975

1975 English author Ruth Prawer Jhabwala wins the Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust.
1978Iris Murdoch publishes The Sea, the Sea, and wins the 1978 Booker Prize.
1979Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London.
1981War Music is the first instalment of Christopher Logue's version of the Iliad.
1982Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off opens in London's West end.
1983 British economist Nicholas Kaldor attacks monetarism in The Economic Consequences of Mrs Thatcher.

Julian Barnes

1984

1984 English author Julian Barnes publishes a multi-faceted literary novel, Flaubert's Parrot.
1985 British Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah publishes his second collection as The Dread Affair.
1987 English poets John Fuller and James Fenton collaborate in a volume of satirical poems, Partingtime Hall.
1988 Ayatollah Khomeini declares a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses.
1990 Racing Demon launches a trilogy on the British establishment by English playwright David Hare.

Alan Bennett's

1991

1991 Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III is performed at the National Theatre in London.
1992 English poet Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats deals openly with AIDS.
1993 English novelist Sebastian Faulks publishes Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of World War I.
1994 Louis de Bernières publishes Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian-occupied Cephalonia.
1997 The poems forming Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters describe his relationship with Sylvia Plath.

Michael Frayn's

1998

1998 Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark.
2000 The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials.

CONTEMPORARY

2000

Postmodernity and post-empire. Economic and social changes. New
voices The former colonies. Gender and sexualities; body and identity. Fiction
Contemporary Characteristics of the "postmodern" novel. Postcolonial art and literature;
metafiction; Barnes intertextuality: historical metafiction; text, representation and
Louise Welsh's speech The courtroom. The meaning of the margins: the spaces
geographic, political and social. Photography and the question of representation. The
porn and the body