-
Period: 450 to 1066
OLD ENGLISH
Mostly poetry insists on the sadness and defenselessness of the human.
Important events by year:
731: The Venerable Bede, It was a religious work with his complete history of the English church and people.
C. 800: Beowulf, it was the first great work of Germanic literature about the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons.
C. 950: The material of the eddas, shaped in Iceland, derived from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy. -
Period: 1066 to 1500
MIDDLE ENGLISH
Literature was diversified by the Italian and French influence.
Important events by year:
C. 1300: Duns Scotus provides humanists as "Dunsman"
C. 1340: William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to the essentials
C. 1367: The epic poem of piers plowman
C. 1375: The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
1385: Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde
C. 1387: Chaucer plan to do 100 Canterbury Tales but completed 24 due to his death
1469: Thomas Malory in gaol compiles Morte d'Arthur -
Period: 1500 to
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
Divided in three stages Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Carolina.
Important events by year
1549: First version of English prayer book
1567: Book of Common Prayer, New Testament and Bible are published.
1587: Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great
1592: Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece with Richard III
1605: Ben J writes The Masque of Blackness.
1616: Shakespeare dies at New Place
1621: John D becomes dean of St Paul's
1650: The poems of Massachusetts by Anne B are published in London -
Period: to
PURITAN
Important events by year:
1653: Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler -
Period: to
RESTORATION AGE
Important events by year:
1660: Samuel Pepys ends his diary
1667: Paradise Lost by John Milton is published
1669: Samuel Pepys ends his diary
1678: Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress is published, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol
1688: Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade. She was the first professional novelist and dramatist woman
1690: John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding -
Period: to
18th CENTURY
Divided in two stages Agustan and Age on Sensibility
Importan events by year
1719: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel
1755: Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language
1764: Horace Walpole provides an early taste of Gothic thrills in his novel Castle of Otranto
1791. Thomas Paine publishes the first part of The Rights of Man
1792: Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work -
Period: to
ROMANTICISM
Important events by year:
1798: Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads.
1811: Jane Austen publishes her first work in print, Sense and Sensibility
1812: The first two cantos are published of Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
1818: Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes the sonnet Ozymandias. Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein
1819: Byron begins publication in parts of his poem Don Juan
1836: Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers -
Period: to
VICTORIAN
Important events by year
1837: Charles Dickens' begins montly publication of Oliver Twist
1852: Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
1859: Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution on the Origin of Species.
1884. Oxford University Press publishes the A volume of its New English Dictionary
1887: Sherlock Holmes features in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet -
Period: to
MODERN LITERATURE
Importants events by year
1906: The first volume of the inexpensive Everyman's Library is issued by Joseph Dent
1911: Lawrence's career as a writer is launched with the publication of his first novel, The White Peacock
1927: Henry Williamson wins a wide readership with Tarka the Otter
1932: John Cowper's novel A Glastonbury Romance is published first in New York
1939: T.S. Eliot gives cats a poetic character in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats -
Period: to
POST MODERNS
Important events by year
1945: N. Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love
1954: D. Thomas's 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood, is broadcast on BBC radio
1974: N. Pevsner completes his monumental 46-volumeBuildings of England
1975: R. Prawer wins the Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust
1978: I. Murdoch publishes The Sea, and wins the 1978 Booker Prize
1997: A schoolboy wizard performs first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone -
Period: to
CONTEMPORARY
Important events by year
2000: The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials