-
Period: 731 to 200
History of English Literature
-
Period: 731 to 731
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow
completes his history of the English church and people. -
Period: 800 to 800
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature
mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons. -
Period: 950 to 950
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland
derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy. -
Period: 1300 to 1300
Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times
later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce. -
Period: 1340 to 1340
William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials
an approach later known as Ockham's Razor. -
Period: 1367 to 1367
A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland
begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman. -
Period: 1375 to 1375
The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells
of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur. -
Period: 1385 to 1385
Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy
his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy. -
Period: 1387 to 1387
Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales
of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death. -
Period: 1469 to 1469
Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur –
an English account of the French tales of King Arthur. -
Period: 1510 to 1510
Erasmus and Thomas More take
the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism -
Period: 1524 to 1524
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: 1564 to 1564
Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year
with Marlowe the older by two months. -
Period: 1567 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: 1582 to 1582
The 18-year-old William Shakespeare marries
Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon -
Period: to
Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces
the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. -
Period: to
English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates
the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene -
Period: to
Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III
After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI. -
Period: to
Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses
both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age. -
Period: to
James I commissions the Authorized version of the Bible
which is completed by forty-seven scholars in seven years. -
Period: to
Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness
the first of his many masques for the court of James I -
Period: to
The satirical voice of the English playwright Ben Jonson
is heard to powerful effect in Volpone. -
Period: to
Shakespeare's sonnets
written ten years previously, are published -
Period: to
Shakespeare's last completed play
The Tempest, is performed. -
Period: to
William Shakespeare dies at New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon
and is buried in Holy Trinity Church -
Period: to
John Smith publishes
A Description of New England, an account of his exploration of the region in 1614. -
Period: to
John Donne, England's leading Metaphysical poet
becomes dean of St Paul's. -
Period: to
John Heminge and Henry Condell publish
thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First . -
Period: to
George Herbert's only volume of poems, The Temple
is published posthumously. -
Period: to
John Milton's Lycidas is published
in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King -
Period: to
The poems of Massachusetts author Anne Bradstreet are published
in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America -
Period: to
Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes
the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler. -
Period: to
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
Paradise Lost is published
earning its author John Milton just £10 -
Period: to
Samuel Pepys ends his diary
after only writing it for nine years -
Period: to
Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol
is published and is immediately popular -
Period: to
Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes
an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade -
Period: to
John Locke publishes
his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience -
Period: to
The Augustan Age begins in English literature
claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar. -
Period: to
The Tatler launches a new style of journalism in Britain's coffee houses
followed two years later by the Spectator. -
Period: to
25-year-old George Berkeley attacks Locke
in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. -
Period: to
Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces
a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry -
Period: to
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism
can be seen as the first English novel -
Period: to
Jonathan Swift sends
his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels in Gulliver's Travels -
Period: to
David Hume publishes
his Treatise of Human Nature, in which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science -
Period: to
Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins
the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language -
Period: to
Henry Fielding introduces
a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones. -
Period: to
English poet Thomas Gray publishes
his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard -
Period: to
Samuel Johnson publishes
his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language -
Period: to
James Woodforde, an English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins
a detailed diary of everyday life. -
Period: to
Laurence Sterne publishes
the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception. -
Period: to
Fingal, supposedly by the medieval poet Ossian is
a forgery in the spirit of the times by James MacPherson. -
Period: to
James Boswell meets
Samuel Johnson for the first time, in the London bookshop of Thomas Davies. -
Period: to
English historian Edward Gibbon, sitting among ruins in Rome
conceives the idea of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. -
Period: to
A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of
the immensely successful Encyclopedia Britannica -
Period: to
17-year-old Thomas Chatterton, later hailed as a significant poet
commits suicide in a London garret. -
Period: to
Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer
is produced in London's Covent Garden theatre -
Period: to
Encouraged by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine emigrates
to America and settles in Philadelphia -
Period: to
English historian Edward Gibbon publishes
the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire -
Period: to
Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play
The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre -
Period: to
Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play
The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre -
Period: to
William Blake publishes
Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself. -
Period: to
Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes
Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel -
Period: to
Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes
Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches -
Period: to
English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes
a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman -
Period: to
William Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes
his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright' -
Period: to
Thomas Paine publishes
his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity -
Period: to
Samuel Taylor Coleridge says
that while writing Kubla Khan he is interrupted by 'a person on business from Porlock' -
Period: to
English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish
Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement -
Period: to
William Blake includes
his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton -
Period: to
Walter Scott publishes
The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame -
Period: to
Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake brings
tourists in unprecedented numbers to Scotland's Loch Katrine -
Period: to
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled
from Oxford university for circulating a pamphlet with the title The Necessity of Atheism -
Period: to
The first two cantos are published of Byron's largely autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
bringing him immediate fame -
Period: to
the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published
Is Pride and Prejudice, based on a youthful work of 1797 called First Impressions -
Period: to
Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes
probably his best-known poem, the sonnet Ozymandias -
Period: to
William Cobbett brings back to England the bones of Thomas Paine
who died in the USA in 1809 -
Period: to
English poet John Keats publishes
Ode to a Nightingale, inspired by the bird's song in his Hampstead garden -
Period: to
English author Thomas De Quincey publishes
his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater -
Period: to
12-year-old Charles Dickens works
in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory -
Period: to
English author Frances Trollope ruffles transatlantic feathers with her Domestic Manners of the Americans
based on a 3-year stay -
Period: to
24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers
published in book form in 1837 -
Period: to
Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication
in book form, 1838 -
Period: to
English poet Robert Browning publishes
a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin -
Period: to
Ebenezer Scrooge mends
his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol -
Period: to
In his novel Conings by Benjamin Disraeli develops
the theme of Conservatism uniting 'two nations', the rich and the poor -
Period: to
Friedrich Engels, after running a textile factory in Manchester, publishes
The Condition of the Working Class in England -
Period: to
Edward Lear publishes
his Book of Nonsense, consisting of limericks illustrated with his own cartoons -
Period: to
English author William Makepeace Thackeray begins
publication of his novel Vanity Fair in monthly parts (book form 1848) -
Period: to
within a period of eight months
Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë die. -
Period: to
Charles Dickens begins
the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels -
Period: to
Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam,
captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility -
Period: to
London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes
his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases -
Period: to
Tennyson publishes
a poem finding heroism in the disaster,Within six weeks of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea. -
Period: to
Tennyson publishes
a long narrative poem, Maud, a section of which ('Come into the garden, Maud') becomes famous as a song -
Period: to
In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts
the often brutal aspects of an English public school -
Period: to
English author George Eliot wins
fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede -
Period: to
Charles Darwin puts forward
the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research -
Period: to
Charles Dickens begins serial publication of his novel
"Great Expectations" (in book form 1861) -
Period: to
Mrs Henry Wood publishes
her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas -
Period: to
Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll tells
10-year-old Alice Liddell, on a boat trip, a story about her own adventures in Wonderland -
Period: to
English author Charles Kingsley publishes
an improving fantasy for young children, The Water-Babies -
Period: to
Lewis Carroll publishes
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier -
Period: to
Algernon Swinburne scandalizes
Victorian Britain with his first collection, Poems and Ballads -
Period: to
The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx
in London and is published in Hamburg -
Period: to
English author Matthew Arnold publishes
Culture and Anarchy, an influential collection of essays about contemporary society -
Period: to
George Eliot publishes
Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon -
Period: to
Lewis Carroll publishes
Through the Looking Glass, a second story of Alice's adventures -
Period: to
English author Thomas Hardy has
his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd -
Period: to
Henry James's early novel Roderick Hudson is serialized
in the Atlantic Monthly and is published in book form in 1876 -
Period: to
Lewis Carroll publishes
The Hunting of the Snark, a poem about a voyage in search of an elusive mythical creature -
Period: to
Goes to sea with the British merchant navy
21-year-old Joseph Conrad, a Polish subject. -
Period: to
Brings him a new readership to
Henry James's story Daisy Miller, about an American girl abroad -
Period: to
The Aesthetic Movement and 'art for art's sake', attitudes personified above all by Whistler and Wilde
are widely mocked and satirized in Britain -
Period: to
Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure story, Treasure Island, features
Long John Silver and Ben Gunn -
Period: to
Oxford University Press publishes
the A volume of its New English Dictionary, which will take 37 years to reach Z -
Period: to
Explorer and orientalist Richard Burton begins publication
of his multi-volume translation from the Arabic of The Arabian Nights -
Period: to
Thomas Hardy publishes
his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, which begins with the future mayor, Michael Henchard selling his wife and child at a fair -
Period: to
Sherlock Holmes features
in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet -
Period: to
The Fabian Society publishes
Essays in Socialisman influential volume of essays edited by Bernard Shaw -
Period: to
Scottish anthropologist James Frazer publishes
The Golden Bough, a massive compilation of contemporary knowledge about ritual and religious custom -
Period: to
Oscar Wilde publishes
his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the ever-youthful hero's portrait grows old and ugly -
Period: to
W.B. Yeats founds
the National Literary Society in Dublin, with Douglas Hyde as its first president -
Period: to
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book
surrounds the child Mowgli with a collection of vivid animal guardians -
Period: to
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
English poet A.E. Housman publishes
his first collection, A Shropshire Lad -
Period: to
Somerset Maugham publishes
his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, based on the London life he has observed as a medical student -
Period: to
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
E. Nesbit publishes
The Story of the Treasure Seekers, introducing the Bastable family who feature in several of her books for children -
Period: to
Joseph Conrad publishes
his novel Lord Jim about a life of failure and redemption in the far East -
Period: to
Beatrix Potter publishes
at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit -
Period: to
Rudyard Kipling publishes
his Just So Stories for Little Children -
Period: to
Henry James publishes
The Ambassadors, the second of his three last novels written in rapid succession -
Period: to
Joseph Conrad publishes
Joseph Conrad publishes -
Period: to
H.G. Wells publishes
Kipps: the story of a simple soul, a comic novel about a bumbling draper's assistant -
Period: to
E. Nesbit publishes
The Railway Children, the most successful of her books featuring the Bastable family -
Period: to
Edmund Gosse publishes
Father and Son, an account of his difficult relationship with his fundamentalist father, Philip Gosse -
Period: to
The Welsh poet W.H. Davies has
a success with The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, his account of life on the road and in dosshouses -
Period: to
The heroine of H.G. Wells' novel Ann Veronica is
a determined example of the New Woman -
Period: to
John Buchan publishes
Prester John, the first of his adventure stories -
Period: to
Rupert Brooke publishes Poems
the only collection to appear before his early death in World War I -
Period: to
Walter De la Mare establishes
his reputation with the title poem of his collection The Listeners -
Period: to
Compton Mackenzie publishes
the first volume of his autobiographical novel Sinister Street -
Period: to
Robert Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is published
posthumously in an abbreviated version -
Period: to
Somerset Maugham publishes
his semi-autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage -
Period: to
Robert Graves publishes
his first book of poems, Over the Brazier -
Period: to
Jeeves and Bertie Wooster make
their first appearance in P.G. Wodehouse's The Man with Two Left Feet -
Period: to
Rebecca West publishes
her first novel, The Return of the Soldier -
Period: to
In The Economic Consequences of the Peace Maynard Keynes publishes
a strong attack on the reparations demanded from Germany -
Period: to
Sapper's patriotic hero makes
his first appearance, taking on the villainous Carl Peterson in Bull-dog Drummond -
Period: to
Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes
his influential study of the philosophy of logic, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus -
Period: to
John Galsworthy publishes
his novels about the Forsyte family as a joint collection under the title The Forsyte Saga -
Period: to
The gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey makes
his first appearance in Dorothy Sayers' Whose Body? -
Period: to
The sepaChristopher Robin features
for the first time in A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young -
Period: to
English writer Ivy Compton-Burnett finds
her characteristic voice in her second novel, Pastors and Masters -
Period: to
Patrick Abercrombie publishes
The Preservation of Rural England, calling for rural planning to prevent the encroachment of towns -
Period: to
Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen publishes
her first novel, The Hotel -
Period: to
Siegfried Sassoon publishes
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, the first volume of a semi-autobiographical trilogy -
Period: to
English author J.B. Priestley has
an immediate success with his first novel, The Good Companions -
Period: to
Agatha Christie's Miss Marple makes
her first appearance, in Murder at the Vicarage -
Period: to
Virginia Woolf publishes
the most fluid of her novels, The Waves, in which she tells the story through six interior monologues -
Period: to
US poet Archibald MacLeish publishes
a narrative epic, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico -
Period: to
English author Antonia White publishes
an autobiographical first novel, Frost in May -
Period: to
In A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh sends
his hero Tony Last to a disastrous fate, far away in the Amazon rain forest -
Period: to
T.S. Eliot's play
Murder in the Cathedral has its first performance in Canterbury cathedral -
Period: to
John Maynard Keynes defines
his economics in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money -
Period: to
George Orwell reveals
the harsh realities of contemporary British life in The Road to Wigan Pier -
Period: to
British author Evelyn Waugh publishes
a classic Fleet Street novel, Scoop, introducing Lord Copper, proprietor of The Beast -
Period: to
W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood emigrates
to the USA, later becoming US citizens -
Period: to
Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is rejected
by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel -
Period: to
British author Rebecca West publishes
an account of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon -
Period: to
The separate poems forming T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets are brought together
the Famous Five in Five on a Treasure Island -
Period: to
The separate poems forming T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets are brought together
for the first time as a single volume, published in New York -
Period: to
English author Nancy Mitford has
her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love -
Period: to
Titus Groan begins
British author Mervyn Peake's trilogy of gothic novels -
Period: to
J.B. Priestley challenges audiences with An Inspector Calls,
a play in which moral guilt spreads like an infection -
Period: to
Christopher Fry's verse drama The Lady's Not For Burning
engages in high-spirited poetic word play -
Period: to
Enid Blyton introduces
her most successful character, Noddy, a small boy who can't avoid nodding when he speaks -
Period: to
C.S. Lewis gives
the first glimpse of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe -
Period: to
British author John Wyndham creates
a dark fantasy in his novel The Day of the Triffids -
Period: to
Evelyn Waugh publishes
Men at Arms, the first novel in the Sword of Honour trilogy based on his wartime experiences -
Period: to
English author L.P. Hartley sets
his novel The Go-Between in the summer of 1900 -
Period: to
Politician and author Winston Churchill completes
his six-volume history The Second World War -
Period: to
English poet Ted Hughes marries
US poet Sylia Plath -
Period: to
The publication of the novel Justine launches
Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet -
Period: to
Irish dramatist Brendan Behan's play
The Hostage is produced in Dublin -
Period: to
British author Laurie Lee remembers
a Cotswold boyhood in Cider with Rosie -
Period: to
Paul Scofield plays
Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons -
Period: to
British author Roald Dahl publishes a novel for children
James and the Giant Peach -
Period: to
Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, setting poems by Wilfred Owen,
is first performed in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral -
Period: to
US poet Sylvia Plath commits suicide in London
English author John Le Carré publishes a Cold-War thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold -
Period: to
Roald Dahl publishes
a fantasy treat for a starving child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -
Period: to
English novelist Paul Scott publishes
The Jewel in the Crown, the first volume in his 'Raj Quartet' -
Period: to
English author Angela Carter wins
recognition with her quirky second novel, The Magic Toyshop -
Period: to
English biographer Michael Holroyd completes
his two-volume life of Lytton Strachey -
Period: to
English novelist John Fowles publishes
The French Lieutenant's Woman, set in Lyme Regis in the 1860s -
Period: to
English dramatist Caryl Churchill's first play
Owners, is produced in London -
Period: to
British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher publishes
an influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful -
Period: to
German-born British art historian Nikolaus Pevsner completes
his monumental 46-volume Buildings of England -
Period: to
English author Ruth Prawer Jhabwala wins
the Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust -
Period: to
Iris Murdoch publishes
The Sea, the Sea, and wins the 1978 Booker Prize -
Period: to
Peter Shaffer's play
about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London -
Period: to
War Music is the first instalment of Christopher Logue's version of the Iliad
Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children uses the moment of India's independence to launch an adventure in magic realism -
Period: to
Michael Frayn's farce
Noises Off opens in London's West end -
Period: to
British economist Nicholas Kaldor
attacks monetarism in The Economic Consequences of Mrs Thatcher -
Period: to
English author Julian Barnes
publishes a multi-faceted literary novel, Flaubert's Parrot -
Period: to
British Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah
publishes his second collection as The Dread Affair -
Period: to
English poets John Fuller and James Fenton collaborate
in a volume of satirical poems, Partingtime Hall -
Period: to
Ayatollah Khomeini declares
a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses -
Period: to
Racing Demon launches
a trilogy on the British establishment by English playwright David Hare -
Period: to
Alan Bennett's play
The Madness of George III is performed at the National Theatre in London -
Period: to
Thom Gunn publishes
The Man with Night Sweats deals openly with AIDS -
Period: to
English novelist Sebastian Faulks
publishes Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of World War I -
Period: to
Louis de Bernières publishes
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian-occupied Cephalonia -
Period: to
The poems forming Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters describe his relationship with Sylvia Plath
A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone -
Period: to
His Dark Materials
The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy