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Period: 450 to 1150
Old English
Old English from 450 to 1150. Perhaps around 85% of Old English words are no longer in use, but those that survived are basic elements of Modern English vocabulary.
731- The Venerable Bede. He was a source vital to the history of the conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxon tribes.
800- Beowulf, it is one of the most important works of Old English literature and the first great work of Germanic literature.
950- The material of the Eddas. The opening poem recounts Norse mythology. -
Period: 479 to 1500
PREMODERN OR MEDIEVAL PERIOD.
Literature of this era was dominated by religious writings, which included poetry, theology and the life of the saints, but there were also secular works and scientific works. -
1300
Duns Scotus
Duns Scotus. He has been one of the most influential Franciscans through the centuries.
Father Charles Balic, O.F.M., the foremost 20th-century authority on Scotus, has written: “The whole of Scotus’s theology is dominated by the notion of love. The characteristic note of this love is its absolute freedom. As love becomes more perfect and intense, freedom becomes more noble and integral both in God and in man” (New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, p. 1105). -
1340
William of Ockham
William of Ockham is, along with Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, among the most prominent figures in the history of philosophy during the High Middle Ages.
Like most medieval accounts of knowledge, Ockham’s is not much concerned with answering skeptical doubts. He takes it for granted that humans not only can but frequently do know things, and focuses his attention instead on the “mechanisms” by which this knowledge comes about. -
1367
William Langland-Geoffrey Chaucer
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. The poem is a mix of theological allegory and social satire. Piers Plowman is considered to be one of the most analytically challenging texts in Middle English textual criticism.
In this year is also the poet Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote the unfinished work, The Canterbury Tales. It is considered one of the greatest poetic works in English. -
1375
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The courtly poem Sir Gawain belongs to a literary genre known as late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. As it refers to medieval literature, the word "romance" does not mean a love story, although that sense of the word is ultimately derived from the medieval romance genre. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. -
1387
Geoffrey Chaucer 1385-1387
Chaucer between 1385 and 1387 completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy, and he began "The Canterbury Tales" . It was one of the first books to be written in the English language. Chaucer planned to write 120 stories, however, only 23 were completed, and one was partially finished. Two of the stories are written in prose. The others are written in verse. They were so popular that he was invited to read his stories to the king and royal court. -
1469
Thomas Malory,
Thomas Malory, in full Sir Thomas Malory was a English writer whose identity remains uncertain but whose name is famous as that of the author of Le Morte Darthur, the first prose account in English of the rise and fall of the legendary king Arthur and the fellowship of the Round Table. Apparently, the writer knew the English dialect of the county of Yorkshire in northern England. He evidently knew French because most of the stories in Arthur's death were translated from French. -
Period: 1501 to
EARLY MODERN LITERATURE: RENAISSANCE
"The English Renaissance" is the term used to describe the artistic and cultural movement that existed in England from the 16th to the middle of the 17th century, and it is known as "The Shakespearean Years". -
1510
Erasmus and Thomas More
Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism. Thomas More’s Utopia is in many respects a typical product of Renaissance humanism. In fact, Utopia bears all the signs of a humanist interest in the classical languages and forms and like Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly was preoccupied with ancient philosophical views on ethical values. Both Erasmus and More were admirers of the Greek satirist Lucian. -
1524
William Tyndale
Tyndale was a theologian and scholar who translated the Bible into an early form of Modern English. Besides translating the Bible, Tyndale also held and published views which were considered heretical, first by the Catholic Church, and later by the Church of England which was established by King Henry VIII. Tyndale's translation was banned by the authorities, and Tyndale himself was burned at the stake in 1536, at the instigation of agents of Henry VIII and the Anglican Church. -
Period: 1549 to 1582
Book of Common Prayer- Marlowe and Shakespeare
In this period several events happened:
1549 - The first version of the Book of Common Prayer. It has influenced or enriched the liturgical language of most English-speaking Protestant churches.
1564- Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months.
1567- Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588.
1582- The 18-year-old William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon. -
Period: 1579 to
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE
The Elizabethan era was characterized by being especially fruitful in the area of the theater, being its maximum expression the genre of urban comedy. -
Christopher Marlowe
Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. The play was written in two parts, each of which has five acts. Marlowe established blank verse as the standard for later Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic writing. Marlowe’s gifts are displayed not only in his supple poetry but also in his ability to view his tragic hero from several angles, revealing both the brutality and the grandeur of the character. -
Edmund Spenser
English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene, whose long allegorical poem is one of the greatest in the English language. It was written in what came to be called the Spenserian stanza. He was entered as a “poor boy” in the Merchant Taylors’ grammar school, where he would have studied mainly Latin, with some Hebrew, Greek, and music. From May 1569 Spenser was a student of the University of Cambridge, where he received the Master of Arts degree in 1576. -
Period: to
Shakespeare
1592- Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England.
1601- Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age. Hamlet is considered among the most powerful and influential works of world literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". -
Period: to
JACOBEAN LITERATURE
Corpus of works written during the reign of Jacobo I of England. After Shakespeare's death, it was the poet and playwright Ben Jonson who led the Jacobean literature. Another popular style of the time was the theater of revenge that became popular with John Webster and Tomas Kyd. -
Period: to
James I- shakespeare-Ben Jonson
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.
1605- Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I.
1606- The satirical voice of the English playwright Ben Jonson is heard to powerful effect in Volpone.
1609- Shakespeare's sonnets, written ten years previously, are published -
Period: to
Shakespeare- John Smith- John Donne- John Heminge and Henry Condell
1611- Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest.
1616- John Smith publishes, A Description of New England, an account of his exploration of the region in 1614.
William Shakespeare dies at New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and is buried in Holy Trinity Church.
1621- John Donne, 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. -
George Herbert
George Herbert, English religious poet, a major metaphysical poet, notable for the purity and effectiveness of his choice of words. Throughout his life he wrote poems, and from his deathbed he sent a manuscript volume to Ferrar, asking him to decide whether to publish or destroy them. Ferrar published them with the title The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations in 1633. -
Period: to
John Milton- Anne Bradstreet- Izaak Walton- Samuel Pepys
11637- John Milton's Lycidas is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King.
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 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.
1667- Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton just £10. -
Period: to
RESTORATION LITERATURE
The reopening of the theaters gave the opportunity to represent satirical works on the new nobility and the growing bourgeoisie. -
Period: to
Samuel Pepys- John Bunyan-Aphra Behn- John Locke
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, is published and is immediately popular.
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. -
Period: to
AUGUSTUS OR NEOCLASSICAL ERA LITERATURE
The works of Alexander Pope show that the poetry of these years was very formal. The English novel was not very popular until the 18th century, although many works were very important, such as Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe. -
The Augustan Age
The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar. Augustan Age, one of the most illustrious periods in Latin literary history. Marked by civil peace and prosperity, the age reached its highest literary expression in poetry, a polished and sophisticated verse generally addressed to a patron or to the emperor Augustus and dealing with themes of patriotism, love, and nature. -
Period: to
The Tatler- George Berkeley- Alexander Pope
1709- The Tatler launches a new style of journalism in Britain's coffee houses, followed two years later by the Spectator.
1710- 25-year-old George Berkeley attacks Locke in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.
1712- Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry. -
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe in 1719 he turned his talents to an extended work of prose fiction and produced Robinson Crusoe, it can be seen as the first English novel. A German critic has called it a “world-book,” a label justified not only by the enormous number of translations, imitations, and adaptations that have appeared but by the almost mythic power with which Defoe creates a hero and a situation with which every reader can in some sense identify. -
Period: to
Jonathan Swift- David hume- Henry Fielding-Samuel Johnson- Laurence Sterne- A Society of Gentlemen
Jonathan Swift sends his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels in Gulliver's Travels.
David Hume publishes his Treatise of Human Nature.
Henry Fielding introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones.
Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language.
Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy.
A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica. -
Period: to
Oliver Goldsmith- Edward Gibbon- Richard Brinsley- Mary Wollstonecraft- Wordsworth and Coleridge
Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer is produced in London's Covent Garden theatre.
Edward Gibbon publishes the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre.
English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work.
English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement. -
Period: to
ROMANTICISM
Romanticism is an artistic, literary and cultural movement. The reaction to industrialization and urbanism pushed poets to explore nature. -
Period: to
William Blake- Walter Scott-Percy Bysshe- Jane Austen-Byron
William Blake with his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton.
Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the poem that first brings him fame.
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford for circulating a pamphlet with the title The Necessity of Atheism.
Jane Austen publishes her first work in print, Sense and Sensibility, at her own expense.
The first two cantos are published of Byron's largely autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bringing him immediate fame. -
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, based on a youthful work of 1797 called First Impressions, is the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published. A classic of English literature, written with incisive wit and superb character delineation, it centres on the turbulent relationship between Elizabeth Bennet, the daughter of a country gentleman, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich aristocratic landowner. -
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, a Gothic tale about giving life to an artificial man. Mary Shelley’s best-known book. A text that is part Gothic novel and part philosophical novel; it is also often considered an early example of science fiction. It narrates the dreadful consequences that arise after a scientist has artificially created a human being. -
Period: to
Byron- Walter Scott-John Keats-Percy Bysshe- Thomas De Quincey- William Hazlitt
Byron publishes in parts his longest poem, Don Juan.
Walter Scott publishes Ivanhoe, a tale of love, tournaments and sieges.
John Keats publishes Ode to a Nightingale, inspired by the bird's song in his Hampstead garden.
Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Ode to the West Wind, written mainly in a wood near Florence.E
Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
William Hazlitt publishes Table Talk, a collection that includes most of his best-known essays. -
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers in monthly installments, a form of serial publication that became a standard method of writing and producing fiction in the Victorian period. After, Dickens began publishing his new novel, Oliver Twist. Oliver Twist expressed Dickens's interest in the life of the slums to the fullest, as it traced the fortunes of an innocent orphan through the London streets. -
Period: to
VICTORIAN LITERATURE
The novel was the most important literary form of Victorian literature. Most of the authors were more focused on knowing the tastes of the middle class they read, than on satisfying the aristocrats. -
Period: to
Robert Browning- Emily Bronte- Charles Dickens-Peter Mark- Thomas Hughes
English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights follows just two months after her sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre.
Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield.
London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms.
In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school. -
Period: to
Charles Darwin- Matthew Arnold- George Eliot- Lewis Carrol- Thomas Hard
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species.
Matthew Arnold publishes Culture and Anarchy, an influential collection of essays about contemporary society.
George Eliot publishes Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon.
Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass, a second story of Alice's adventures.
Thomas Hardy has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd. -
Henry James
Henry James from 1875 to 1879
After spending much time in Europe in recent years, Henry James moves there permanently and settles first in Paris.
The novel Roderick Hudson is serialized in the Atlantic Monthly and is published in book form in 1876.
Henry James moves to London, which remains his home for the next 22 years.
Henry James's story Daisy Miller, about an American girl abroad, brings him a new readership -
Period: to
MODERN LITERATURE
Modern Literature was a literary movement in the field of poetry, which was characterized by an ambiguous creative rebellion, a narcissistic and aristocratic refinement, cosmopolitan culturalism and a profound aesthetic renewal of language and metrics. -
Richard Francis Burton
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, is an English language translation of the Arabian Nights – a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age– by the British explorer and Arabist Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890). Burton's translation was one of two unabridged and unexpurgated English translations done in the 1880s. -
Robert Louis Stevenson 1883-1886
Robert Louis Stevenson's wrote, Treasure Island (1883). It is set in the days of sailing ships and pirates and tells of the adventures of Jim Hawkins and his search for the buried treasure of an evil pirate, Captain Flint.
Stevenson introduces a dual personality in his novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). It is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll and the evil Edward Hyde. -
Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes features in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet. Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by Arthur Conan Doyle between 1887 and 1927 in 62 cases (4 novels and 58 short stories). He is an amateur detective with powerful observation and deduction abilities. -
Oscar Wilde- 1891-1895
Oscar Wilde publishes his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the ever-youthful hero's portrait grows old and ugly.
Oscar Wilde's comedy Lady Windermere's Fan is a great success with audiences 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. -
Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker published Dracula, his gothic tale of vampirism in Transylvania. This novel is a Gothic horror story about a vampire attempting to move to England. It was first published in the UK by Archibald Constable and Company, Westminster. Over the years, there has been a great deal of debate over the exact date of publication of this book. However, in the May 27, 1897 issue of The Daily News, London, there was a review of Dracula with a headline that read: "PUBLISHED TO-DAY." -
H.G. Wells 1895-1898
1895- H.G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, a story about a Time Traveller whose first stop on his journey is the year 802701.
The Time Machine is a science fiction novella and written as a frame narrative.
1898- H.G. Wells publishes his science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds, in which Martians arrive in a rocket to invade earth. -
Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It is a children's book that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother, who puts him to bed after dosing him with tea. The tale was written for five-year-old Noel Moore, son of Potter's former governess Annie Carter Moore, in 1893. -
Period: to
Rudyard Kipling- J.M Barrie- Bernard Shaw- Joseph Dent
1902- Rudyard Kipling publishes his Just So Stories for Little Children.
1904- J.M Barrie's play for children Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has its premiere in London.
1905- Bernard Shaw has two new plays opening in London in the same year, Major Barbara and Man and Superman.
1906- The first volume of the inexpensive Everyman's Library is issued by Joseph Dent, a London publisher -
Henry James 1898-1904
1898- Henry James publishes The Turn of the Screw in a collection of short stories.
1902- Henry James publishes the first of his three last novels, The Wings of the Dove.
1903- Henry James publishes The Ambassadors, the second of his three last novels written in rapid succession.
1904- Henry James publishes his last completed novel, The Golden Bowl -
Period: to
Edmund Gosse- John Buchan- H.G. Wells-- John Buchan- Virginia Woolf
1907- Edmund Gosse publishes Father and Son.
1910- 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 drab everyday existence
1915- Secret agent Richard Hannay makes his first appearance in John Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps.
1925- Virginia Woolf publishes her novel Mrs Dalloway, in which the action is limited to a single day -
A.A. Milne
A.A Milne - Winnie-the-Pooh. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children's verse book When We Were Very Young (1924) and many more in Now We Are Six (1927). All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. -
Period: to
Evelyn Waugh- Richard Hughes- Miss Marple- John Cowper- Flann O´Brien- Enid Blyton
1928-Evelyn Waugh succeeds with a comic first novel, Decline and Fall.
1929- Richard Hughes publishes his first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica.
1930- Agatha Christie's Miss Marple makes her first appearance, in Murder at the Vicarage.
1932- John Cowper Powys's novel A Glastonbury Romance is published first in New York.
1939- Irish author Flann O'Brien publishes his first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds.
1942- English children's author Enid Blyton introduces the Famous Five in Five on a Treasure Island -
Period: to
Nancy Mittford- George Orwell- Evelyn Waugh- john Betjeman
1945- English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love.
1949- George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel set in a terrifying totalitarian state of the future, watched over by Big Brother.
1952- Evelyn Waugh publishes Men at Arms, the first novel in the Sword of Honour trilogy based on his wartime experiences.
1960- English poet John Betjeman publishes his long autobiographical poem Summoned by Bells -
Period: to
POSTMODERN LITERATURE
There are three important variants within postmodernist literature: magical realism, the theater of the absurd and political protest literature. -
C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis gives the first glimpse of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It is a fantasy novel for children, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1950. It is the first published and best known of seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956). Among all the author's books, it is also the most widely held in libraries. Although it was originally the first of The Chronicles of Narnia, it is volume two in recent editions that are sequenced by the stories' chronology. -
Ian Fleming
James Bond, agent 007, has a licence to kill in Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale. Published in 1953, it is the first James Bond book, and it paved the way for a further eleven novels and two short story collections by Fleming, followed by numerous continuation Bond novels by other authors. -
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high-fantasy novel written by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling novels ever written, with over 150 million copies sold. -
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl publishes a fantasy treat for a starving child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is in many ways a modern fairy tale. It begins with Charlie Bucket and his large family, including four grandparents living on the edge of a small town in a state of desperate poverty. Charlie's grandpa Jo tells him stories of the wonderful Mr. Willy Wonka, the legendary chocolate maker. -
Period: to
Angela Carter- Michael Holroyd- John Fowles- Peter shaffer
1967- English author Angela Carter wins recognition with her quirky second novel, The Magic Toyshop
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.
1979- Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London -
Period: to
Christopher Logue- Sebastian Faulks- Louis de Bernieres- Ted Hughes- Phillip Pullman
1981- War Music is the first instalment of Christopher Logue's version of the Iliad.
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.
2000 The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials -
Stephen Hawking
British physicist Stephen Hawking explains the cosmos for the general reader in A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes. Now, in everyday language, Stephen Hawking's Universe reveals step-by-step how we can all share his understanding of the cosmos, and our own place within it. Stargazing has never been the same since cosmologists discovered that galaxies are moving away from each other at an extraordinary speed. -
J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling. The first novel in the Harry Potter series and Rowling's debut novel, it follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday, when he receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
