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May 6, 750
Epics were written
Around this time, epics were being written. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and Gilgamesh were three great epics from ancient Greece. The most famous tale, perhaps, was Beowulf. -
May 6, 1000
The Medieval Period begins
Famous works of the Medieval Period were: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Morte d' Arthur. Morte d' Arthur was published by William Caxton, who established the first printing press in 1476. -
May 6, 1343
Geoffrey Chaucer is born
We do not know for sure when Chaucer was born but while he was alive he wrote some very memorable works. He is most famous for his story of The Canterbury Tales. -
May 6, 1430
Folk ballads appear
Ballads were told long before Britains could read or write but they were not written down until about the twelfth century. Ballads of this period are: Twa Corbies, Lord Randall, Get Up and Bar the Door, and Barbara Allan. -
Period: Jan 1, 1485 to
The English Renaissance Period
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May 6, 1564
William Shakespeare is born
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William Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet. -
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen is published.
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King James Bible is published
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Period: to
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
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John Donne's Songs and Sonnets are published
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Alexander Pope publishes The Rape of the Lock
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Jonathan Swift publishes Gulliver's Travels
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Thomas Gray publishes "Elegy in a Country Churchyard"
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William Blake is born
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Period: to
The Romantic Period
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William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads
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Robert Browning is born
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Jane Austen publishes Pride and Prejudice
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley publishes Frankenstein
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Percy Bysshe Shelley writes "Ode to the West Wind
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John Keats publishes "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
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Period: to
The Victorian Period
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Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist is published
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Thomas Hardy is born
Hardy wrote Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 1891 -
William Wordsworth becomes poet laureate
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is published
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Charles Dickens' Hard Times is published
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A. E. Housman is born
Housman wrote "To an Athlete Dying Young" and "When I Was One-and-Twenty" -
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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Rudyard Kipling is born
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William Butler Yeats is born
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Period: to
The Modern and Postmodern Periods
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Stevie Smith is born
Smith wrote the poem "Not Waving but Drowning" -
Rupert Brooke writes the antithesis of "Shooting an Elephant" with his poem "The Soldier"
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James Joyce publishes Ulysses
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"The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot is published
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George Orwell writes his famous essay "Shooting an Elephant"
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Winston Churchill becomes prime minister
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George Orwell publishes Animal Farm
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The Exeter Book
The Anglo-Saxons write down stories told by mouth into a book and call it The Exeter Book. Stories included in the book are: The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife's Lament. -
Period: to Dec 31, 1485
The Old English and Medieval Periods
