A narrator, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman. Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy.
Period: 731 BCE to 800 BCE
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, with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons.
Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur.
Period: 1510 to 1524
Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism. William Tyndale studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English.
Period: 1549 to 1549
The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer
Period: 1567 to
The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588.
Period: to
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.
Period: to
Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade. John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience
The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar
Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language.
Period: to
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.
A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Period: to
Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man, his reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
English author Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
Period: to
In his novel Coningsby Benjamin Disraeli develops the theme of Conservatism uniting 'two nations', the rich and the poor. Friedrich Engels, after running a textile factory in Manchester, publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England.
Period: to
London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.
Period: to
In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school. Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research.
Period: to
English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins develops a new verse form that he calls 'sprung rhythm'. Oxford University Press publishes the A volume of its New English Dictionary, which will take 37 years to reach Z.
A Gaelic pressure group, the Highland Association, is founded to preserve the indigenous poetry and music of Scotland
Period: to
Rudyard Kipling publishes If, which rapidly becomes his most popular poem among the British. Evelyn Waugh succeeds with a comic first novel, Decline and Fall.
Kingsley Amis and other young writers in Britain become known as Angry Young Men
Period: to
British author Roald Dahl publishes a novel for children, James and the Giant Peach. British author Doris Lessing publishes an influential feminist novel, The Golden Notebook.
British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher publishes an influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful
War Music is the first instalment of Christopher Logue's version of the Iliad
Period: to
Louis de B. publishes Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian Cephalonia. A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy
