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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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A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman
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Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism
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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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John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience
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English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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23-year-old Irish author William Butler Yeats publishes his first volume of poems, The Wanderings of Oisin
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Evelyn Waugh publishes Men at Arms, the first novel in the Sword of Honour trilogy based on his wartime experiences
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Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark
