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English literature begins with the old English period, when the Romans withdrew from Britain, leaving the Germanic and Scandinavian settlers.
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Completes his history of the English church and people
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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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Taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgun
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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
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One of four new yeomen of the chamber in Edward III's household
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The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells
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His long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy
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Begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death
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Compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur
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Take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism
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Studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English
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Is published with text by Thomas Cranmer
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Born in the same year
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To be followed by the complete Bible in 1588
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Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon
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Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama
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celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene
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Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III
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Expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age
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Which is completed by forty-seven scholars in seven years
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Writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I
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The satirical voice of the English playwright is heard to powerful effect in Volpone
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Written ten years previously, are published
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The Tempest, is performed
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A Description of New England, an account of his exploration of the region in 1614
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At New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and is buried in Holy Trinity Church
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England's leading Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's
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Publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio
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Only volume of poems, The Temple, is published posthumously
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Is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King
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Are published in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
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Publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler
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Samuel Pepys gets up late, eats the remains of the turkey and begins his diary
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Earning its author John Milton just £10
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After only writing it for nine years
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Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol
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Makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade
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Arguing that all knowledge is based on experience
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Claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar
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Followed two years later by the Spectator
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Attacks Locke in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
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With its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel
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Sends his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels in Gulliver's Travels
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In which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science
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Begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language
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Introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones
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Publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard
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Publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language
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An English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins a detailed diary of everyday life
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Publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception
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Is a forgery in the spirit of the times by James MacPherson
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Meets Samuel Johnson for the first time, in the London bookshop of Thomas Dav
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Sitting among ruins in Rome, conceives the idea of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empir
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Provides an early taste of Gothic thrills in his novel Castle of Otranto
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Begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Later hailed as a significant poet, commits suicide in a London garret
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Is produced in London's Covent Garden theatre
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undertake a journey together to the western islands of Scotland
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Thomas Paine emigrated to America and settles in Philadelphia
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Publishes the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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Analyzes the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations
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The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre
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Publishes Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every p
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Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches
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His reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
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A passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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To escape a charge of treason in England for opinions expressed in his Rights of Man
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Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'
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An attack on conventional Christianity
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Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement
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'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is published in Lyrical Ballads
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Includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton
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The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame
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Lady of the Lake brings tourists in unprecedented numbers to Scotland's Loch Katrine
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University for circulating a pamphlet with the title The Necessity of Atheism
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Her first work in print, Sense and Sensibility, at her own expense
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Largely autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bringing him immediate fame
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Is the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published
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Probably his best-known poem, the sonnet Ozymandias
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Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, are published in the year after her death
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Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, a Gothic tale about giving life to an artificial man
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Brings back to England the bones of Thomas Paine, who died in the USA in 1809
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Don Juan an epic satirical comment on contemporary life
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A tale of love, tournaments and sieges at the time of the crusades
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Inspired by the bird's song in his Hampstead garden
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Written mainly in a wood near Florence
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Published in 1830 asRural Rides
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His autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
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Dies in Rome at the age of twenty-five
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A two-volume collection that includes most of his best-known essays
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Works in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory
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Ruffles transatlantic feathers with her Domestic Manners of the Americans, based on a 3-year stay
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Begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837)
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Begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838)
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A vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge ofThe Pied Piper of Hamelin
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A collection of stirring ballads, Lays of Ancient Rome
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Mends his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
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Develops the theme of Conservatism uniting 'two nations', the rich and the poor
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After running a textile factory in Manchester, publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England
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His Book of Nonsense, consisting of limericks illustrated with his own cartoons
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The English poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett go abroad to live in Florence
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A volume of their poems and sell just two copies
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Of his novel Vanity Fair in monthly parts (book form 1848)
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Becomes the first of the Brontë sisters to have a novel published — Jane Eyre
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Follows just two months after her sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre
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Die within a period of eight months
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In monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels
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In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility
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Publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
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Tennyson publishes a poem finding heroism in the disaster
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Maud, a section of which ('Come into the garden, Maud') becomes famous as a song
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The first in his series of six Barsetshire novels
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Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school
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Puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research
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Makes the classic liberal case for the priority of the freedom of the individual
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Provides an inspiring ideal of Victorian enterprise in Self-Help, a manual for ambitious young men
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The first part of Idylls of the King, a series of linked poems about Britain's mythical king Arthur
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His French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities
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The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, romantic translations of the work of the Persian poet
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Wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bed
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Of his novel "Great Expectations" (in book form 1861)
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Publishes The Mill on the Floss, her novel about the childhood of Maggie and Tom Tulliver
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East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas
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On a boat trip, a story about her own adventures in Wonderland
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An improving fantasy for young children, The Water-Babies
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A development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlie
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Scandalizes Victorian Britain with his first collection, Poems and Ballads
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Is completed by Marx in London and is published in Hamburg
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Culture and Anarchy, an influential collection of essays about contemporary society
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In which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon
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Through the Looking Glass, a second story of Alice's adventures
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Has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd
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Henry James moves there permanently and settles first in Paris
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Is serialized in the Atlantic Monthly and is published in book form in 1876
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Protesting at massacre by the Turks, sells 200,000 copies within a month
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Which remains his home for the next 22 years
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A poem about a voyage in search of an elusive mythical creature
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Goes to sea with the British merchant navy
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About an American girl abroad, brings him a new readership
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Attitudes personified above all by Whistler and Wilde, are widely mocked and satirized in Britain
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Treasure Island, features Long John Silver and Ben Gunn
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The A volume of its New English Dictionary, which will take 37 years to reach Z
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Features in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet
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His first volume of poems, The Wanderings of Oisin
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Essays in Socialisman influential volume of essays edited by Bernard Shaw
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The Golden Bough, a massive compilation of contemporary knowledge about ritual and religious custom
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Imagines an adult romance and high society in The Young Visiters
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The Highland Association, is founded to preserve the indigenous poetry and music of Scotland
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His novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the ever-youthful hero's portrait grows old and ugly
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His novel Tess of the Durbervilles, with a dramatic finale at Stonehenge
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Lady Windermere's Fan is a great success with audiences in London's St. James Theatre
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With Douglas Hyde as its first president
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Deals with the serious social problem of slum landlords
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By George and Weedon Grossmith
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His novel Trilby
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Surrounds the child Mowgli with a collection of vivid animal guardians
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A story about a Time Traveller whose first stop on his journey is the year 802701
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The Importance of Being Earnest is performed in London's St. James Theatre
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Loses a libel case that he has brought against the marquess of Queensberry for describing him as a sodomite
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His first collection, A Shropshire Lad
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The Story of the Treasure Seekers, introducing the Bastable family who feature in several of her books for children
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His novel Lord Jim about a life of failure and redemption in the far East
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At her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit
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His Just So Stories for Little Children
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By W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, fosters Irish nationalism
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Commercially, a year after being first printed by Beatrix Potter at her own expense
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'Sea Fever' is published in Salt-Water Ballads
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A collection of stories including Heart of Darkness, a sinister tale based partly on his own journey up the Congo
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The Hound of the Baskervilles begins publication in serial form
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The first of his three last novels, The Wings of the Dove
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Childers has a best-seller in The Riddle of the Sands, a thriller about a planned German invasion of Britain
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Publishes The Ambassadors, the second of his three last novels written in rapid succession
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Principia Ethica, an attempt to apply logic to ethics
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His novel Nostromo, about a revolution in South America and a fatal horde of silver
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His last completed novel, The Golden Bowl
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Gathers for informal evenings at the family home of Virginia and Vanessa Stephens (later Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell)
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A letter of recrimination written in Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, is published posthumously
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The story of a simple soul, a comic novel about a bumbling draper's assistant
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Major Barbara and Man and Superman
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Library is issued by Joseph Dent, a London publisher
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The most successful of her books featuring the Bastable family
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The first of his novels chronicling the family of Soames Forsyte
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Provokes violent reactions at its Dublin premiere
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The Preservation of Rural England, calling for rural planning to prevent the encroachment of towns
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His autobiographical Seven Pillars of Wisdom, describing his part in the Arab uprising
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A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle in a revived version of the Lallans dialect of the Scottish borders
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His first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica
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Blind Fireworks is Ulster writer Louis MacNeice's first collection of poems
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Has an immediate success with his first novel, The Good Companions
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Of poetry is published with the simple titlePoems
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Lawrence star in the West End in Private Lives, Coward's comedy of marital complications
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His first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds
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Is rejected by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel
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an account of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
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Brideshead Revisited, a novel about a rich Catholic family in England between the wars
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A novel for children, James and the Giant Peach
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His two-volume life of Lytton Strachey
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The French Lieutenant's Woman, set in Lyme Regis in the 1860s
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His first collection, Terminal Moraine
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An influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful
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Completes his monumental 46-volume Buildings of England
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Monetarism in The Economic Consequences of Mrs Thatcher
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A multi-faceted literary novel, Flaubert's Parrot
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Fenton collaborate in a volume of satirical poems,Partingtime Hall
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Establishment by English playwright David Hare
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Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of World War I
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His novel A Suitable Boy, a family saga in post-independence India
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His first novel, Trainspotting
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Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian-occupied Cephalonia
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Letters describe his relationship with Sylvia Plath
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Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
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Play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark
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A fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses
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His Dark Materials