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British Literature Timeline

By facebooker_507539716
  • 450

    Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britons begins

  • Period: 450 to Jan 1, 1485

    The Middle Ages

  • Jan 1, 1182

    Birth of St. Francis Assisi

  • Jan 1, 1337

    Hundred Years’ War began

  • Jan 1, 1348

    Black Death ravages Europe

  • Jan 1, 1400

    "Canterbury Tales"

  • Jan 1, 1400

    "Pardoner's Prologue and Tale"

  • Jul 1, 1401

    Execution of William Sawtre

  • Jan 1, 1455

    Wars of the roses begins

  • Jan 1, 1476

    William Caxton sets up first printing press in England

  • Jan 1, 1485

    "Morte Darthur"

  • Period: Jan 1, 1485 to

    The Sixteenth Century

  • Jan 1, 1504

    Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa

  • Jan 1, 1508

    Michaelangelo begins to paint the Sistine Chapel

  • Jan 1, 1509

    Death of Henry VII; accession of Henry VIII

  • Jan 1, 1517

    Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Thesis; beginning of the Reformation in Germany

  • Jan 1, 1547

    Death of Henry VIII; accession of Protestant Edward VI

  • Jan 1, 1553

    Death of Edward VI; accession of Catholic Queen Mary

  • Jan 1, 1558

    Mary dies; succeeded by Protestant Elizabeth I

  • Irish rebellion crushed

  • Failed invasion of the Spanish Armada

  • From "Amoretti"

  • Globe theater opens

  • "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"

  • "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

  • Death of Elizabeth I; accession of James I

  • Period: to

    The Early Seventeenth Century

  • Gunpowder Plot

  • Founding of Jamestown colony in Virginia

  • "Sonnets"

  • "Still to Be Neat"

  • Galileo begins observing the heavens with a telescope

  • From "Salve Dues Rex Judaeorum"

  • From "The History of the World

  • Death of Shakespeare

  • From "Epigrams," - "To My Book," "On My First Daughter," "To John Donne," and "On My First Son"

  • Beginning of Thirty Years War

  • Pilgrims land at Plymouth

  • "To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespear, and What He Hath Left Us"

  • "On Shakespear"

  • "The Flea"

  • From "The Temple," - "The Altar," "Redemption," "Easter Wings," "Jordan," "The Collar," "The Pulley," "The Flower," and "Love"

  • First Civil War begins

  • From "Areopagitica"

  • "L'Allegro"

  • "Il Penseroso

  • "How Soon Hath Time"

  • Second Civil War

  • From "Lucasta," - "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars" and "To Althea, from Prison"

  • Anglo-Dutch War

  • Period: to

    The Restoraion and Eighteetn Century

  • Act of Uniformity

  • Great Plague of London begins

  • Fire destroys the City of London

  • From "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy"

  • "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"

  • "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont"

  • "Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint"

  • From "Poems," - "To His Coy Mistress," "The Definition of Love," "The Mower to the Glowworms" and "The Mower's Song"

  • "Mac Flecknoe

  • The Glorious Revolution

  • From "A Discourse Concerning the Original and Prgress of Satire"

  • War of Spanish Succession begins

  • "Tale of a Tub" excerpt

  • Act of Union with Scotland

  • "An Essay on Criticism"

  • Treaty of Utrecht

  • "A Modest Proposal"

  • "Rake's Progress"

  • From "The Dunciad"

  • "Marriage A-la-Mode

  • "Marriage A-la-Mode"

  • "Rambler No. 4"

  • "Rambler No. 60"

  • Beginning of Seven Years’ War

  • American Revolution

  • American War of Indepedence

  • Gordon Riots in London

  • From "Pope"

  • Period: to

    The Romatic Period

  • From "Song of Innocence"

  • "Holy Willie's Prayer"

  • Fall of Bastille

  • Revolution in Santo Domingo

  • September Massacre in Paris

  • From "Songs of Experience"

  • Pitt's Gagging Rights

  • "The Eolian Harp"

  • From "Lyrical Ballads"

  • "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  • Rebellion in Ireland

  • "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"

  • "A slumber did my spirit seal"

  • "Three years she grew"

  • "Michael

  • From "Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems"

  • "I travelled among unknown men"

  • Abolition of the slave trade in Britain

  • "Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos"

  • War between Britain and the United States

  • "She walks in beauty"

  • "Kubla Khan"

  • "Mutability"

  • "To Wordsworth"

  • "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

  • "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles"

  • "Ozymandias"

  • "Ode to a Nightingale"

  • "To a Sky-Lark"

  • "La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad

  • "Ode to Psyche"

  • "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

  • "Ode on Melancholy"

  • "To Autumn"

  • "They say that Hope is happiness

  • Catholic Emancipation

  • Period: to

    The Victorian Age

  • First Reform Bill

  • First train in London

  • "Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art"

  • "Sonnet to Sleep"

  • "A Song: "Men of England"

  • "England in 1819"

  • "Porphyria's Lover"

  • "My Last Duchess"

  • "Lady of Shalott"

  • Copyright Act

  • Potato Famine - mass emigration to North America

  • Ten Hours Factory Act

  • "When I have fears that I may cease to be"

  • "To Homer"

  • "Ode on Indolence"

  • Revolution on the Continent

  • From "Sonnets from the Portuguese"

  • "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

  • Crimean War

  • American Civil War

  • Second Reform Bill

  • Married Women's Proporty Act

  • "Crossing the Bar"

  • "Lake Isle of Innisfree"

  • "Hap"

  • From "Holy Sonnets"

  • Anglo-Boer War

  • Period: to

    The Twentieth Century and After

  • "Science and Religion"

  • "On the Wit of Whistler"

  • "On Lying in Bed"

  • "No Second Troy"

  • "The Convergence of the Twain"

  • World War I

  • "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

  • "God's Grandeur"

  • "The Windhover"

  • "Spring and Fall"

  • "No worst, there is none"

  • "Piano"

  • Treaty of Versailles

  • The Second Coming

  • "The Waste Land"

  • "Journey of the MAgi"

  • Women's voting rights (21 and over)

  • Stock Market Crash

  • Hitler comes to power in Germany

  • Spanish Civil War

  • World War II

  • "Learning in War-time"

  • "Musee des Beaux Arts"

  • "The Unknown Citizen"

  • Holocaust

  • "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"

  • Apollo moon landing

  • Collapse of Soviet Union

  • The Dream of the Rood

  • First Viking raids on England

  • Reign of King Alfred

  • Conversion of Anglo-Saxons to Christianity