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Period: 450 to 1066
1st Period - Old English 450-1066
731
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people -
Period: 450 to 1066
800
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons -
Period: 450 to 1066
950
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy -
Period: 1066 to 1500
2nd Period- Middle English 1066- 1500
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Period: 1066 to 1500
1300
Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce -
Period: 1066 to 1500
1340
William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor -
Period: 1066 to 1500
1387
Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death -
Period: 1066 to 1500
1367
A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman -
Period: 1066 to 1500
1385
Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy -
Period: 1066 to 1500
1469
Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur -
Period: 1500 to
3rd Period - Eglish Renaissance 1500-1660
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Period: 1500 to
1510
Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism -
Period: 1500 to
1549
The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer -
Period: 1500 to
1567
The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588 -
Period: 1500 to
1590
English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene -
Period: 1500 to
1592
After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III -
Period: 1500 to
1601
Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age -
Period: 1500 to
1609
Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest, is performed -
Period: to
1653
Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler -
Period: to
1660
On the first day of the new year Samuel Pepys gets up late, eats the remains of the turkey and begins his diary -
Period: to
4th Period - The puritan 1653-1660
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Period: to
5th Period- Restoration Age 1660-1700
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Period: to
1669
Samuel Pepys ends his diary, after only writing it for nine years -
Period: to
1690
John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience -
Period: to
6th Period - Restoration Age 1700-1798
Century divided in two
The Augustan: 1700-1750
Age of sensibility: 1750-1798 -
Period: to
1811
English author Jane Austen publishes her first work in print, Sense and Sensibility, at her own expense -
Period: to
7th Period- Romanticism 1798- 1837
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Period: to
1798
English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement -
Period: to
1804
William Blake includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton -
Period: to
1813
Pride and Prejudice, based on a youthful work of 1797 called First Impressions, is the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published -
Period: to
1819
Byron begins publication in parts of his longest poem, Don Juan an epic satirical comment on contemporary life -
Period: to
1821
English poet John Keats dies in Rome at the age of twenty-five -
Period: to
1824
12-year-old Charles Dickens works in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory -
Period: to
1836
24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837) -
Period: to
1837
Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838) -
Period: to
1843
Ebenezer Scrooge mends his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol -
Period: to
8th Period - Victorian 1837-1901
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Period: to
1846
Edward Lear publishes his Book of Nonsense, consisting of limericks illustrated with his own cartoons -
Period: to
1849
Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels -
Period: to
1852
London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases -
Period: to
1859
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research -
Period: to
1862
Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll tells 10-year-old Alice Liddell, on a boat trip, a story about her own adventures in Wonderland -
Period: to
1865
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier -
Period: to
1872
Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass, a second story of Alice's adventures -
Period: to
1874
English author Thomas Hardy has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd -
Period: to
1876
Lewis Carroll publishes The Hunting of the Snark, a poem about a voyage in search of an elusive mythical creature -
Period: to
1884
Oxford University Press publishes the A volume of its New English Dictionary, which will take 37 years to reach Z -
Period: to
1886
Robert Louis Stevenson introduces a dual personality in his novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde -
Period: to
1891
Oscar Wilde publishes his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the ever-youthful hero's portrait grows old and ugly -
Period: to
1895
H.G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, a story about a Time Traveller whose first stop on his journey is the year 802701 -
Period: to
1895
Oscar Wilde's most brilliant comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest is performed in London's St. James Theatre -
Period: to
1898
H.G. Wells publishes his science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds, in which Martians arrive in a rocket to invade earth -
Period: to
1837
Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838) -
Period: to
1852
London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases -
Period: to
1849
Charles Dickens publishes his French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities -
Period: to
1860
Charles Dickens begins serial publication of his novel "Great Expectations" (in book form 1861) -
Period: to
9th Period - 20th Century - Modern Literature 1901- 1940
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Period: to
1901
Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit -
Period: to
1906
E. Nesbit publishes The Railway Children, the most successful of her books featuring the Bastable family -
Period: to
1911
Rupert Brooke publishes Poems, the only collection to appear before his early death in World War I -
Period: to
1912
Ludwig Wittgenstein moves to Cambridge to study philosophy under Bertrand Russell -
Period: to
1915
The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her first novel, The Voyage Out -
Period: to
1921
Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes his influential study of the philosophy of logic, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus -
Period: to
1929
Richard Hughes publishes his first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica -
Period: to
1930
English author W.H. Auden's first collection of poetry is published with the simple title Poems -
Period: to
1939
Irish author Flann O'Brien publishes his first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds -
Period: to
1945
English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love -
Period: to
1904
J.M Barrie's play for children Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has its premiere in London -
Period: to
1940
Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is rejected by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel -
Period: to
10th Period- Post moderns 1940-2000
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Period: to
1945
English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love -
Period: to
1947
English author and alcoholic Malcolm Lowry publishes an autobiographical novel, Under the Volcano -
Period: to
1957
English author John Braine publishes his first novel, Room at the Top -
Period: to
1960
Penguin Books are prosecuted for obscenity for publishing D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and are acquitted -
Period: to
1964
Roald Dahl publishes a fantasy treat for a starving child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -
Period: to
1969
English novelist John Fowles publishes The French Lieutenant's Woman, set in Lyme Regis in the 1860s -
Period: to
1979
Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London -
Period: to
1997
A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone -
Period: to
1998
Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark -
Period: to
2000
The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials -
Period: to
1950
C.S. Lewis gives the first glimpse of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe