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731 BCE
ENGLISH UNAD
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people -
800
Event
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons -
950
Event
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy -
1300
Event
Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce -
1340
Event
William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor -
1367
Event
A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman -
1375
Event
The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur -
1385
Event
Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy -
1387
Event
Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death -
1469
Event
Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur -
1510
Event
Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism -
1524
Event
William Tyndale studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English -
1549
Event
The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer -
1564
Event
Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months -
1567
Event
The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588 -
1582
Event
The 18-year-old William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon -
Event
Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama -
Event
English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene -
Event
After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III -
Event
Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age -
Event
James I commissions the Authorized version of the Bible, which is completed by forty-seven scholars in seven years -
Event
Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I -
Event
The satirical voice of the English playwright Ben Jonson is heard to powerful effect in Volpone -
Event
Shakespeare's sonnets, written ten years previously, are published -
Event
Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest, is performed -
Event
John Smith publishes A Description of New England, an account of his exploration of the region in 1614 -
Event
John Donne, England's leading Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's -
Event
John Heminge and Henry Condell publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio -
Event
George Herbert's only volume of poems, The Temple, is published posthumously -
Event
John Milton's Lycidas is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King -
Event
The poems of Massachusetts author Anne Bradstreet are published in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America -
Event
Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler -
Event
On the first day of the new year Samuel Pepys gets up late, eats the remains of the turkey and begins his diary -
Event
Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton just £10 -
Event
Samuel Pepys ends his diary, after only writing it for nine years -
Event
Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol, is published and is immediately popular -
Event
Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade -
Event
John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience -
Event
The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar -
Event
The Tatler launches a new style of journalism in Britain's coffee houses, followed two years later by the Spectator -
Event
25-year-old George Berkeley attacks Locke in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge -
Event
Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry -
Event
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel -
Event
Jonathan Swift sends his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels in Gulliver's Travels -
Event
David Hume publishes his Treatise of Human Nature, in which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science -
Event
Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language -
Event
Henry Fielding introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones -
Event
English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard -
Event
Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language -
Event
James Woodforde, an English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins a detailed diary of everyday life -
Event
Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception -
Event
Fingal, supposedly by the medieval poet Ossian, is a forgery in the spirit of the times by James MacPherson -
Event
James Boswell meets Samuel Johnson for the first time, in the London bookshop of Thomas Davies -
Event
English historian Edward Gibbon, sitting among ruins in Rome, conceives the idea of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire -
Event
A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica -
Event
17-year-old Thomas Chatterton, later hailed as a significant poet, commits suicide in a London garret -
Event
Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer is produced in London's Covent Garden theatre -
Event
Encouraged by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine emigrates to America and settles in Philadelphia -
Event
English historian Edward Gibbon publishes the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire -
Event
Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre -
Event
William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself -
Event
Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel -
Event
Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches -
Event
English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman -
Event
William Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright' -
Event
Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity -
Event
Samuel Taylor Coleridge says that while writing Kubla Khan he is interrupted by 'a person on business from Porlock' -
Event
English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement -
Event
William Blake includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton -
Event
Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame -
Event
Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake brings tourists in unprecedented numbers to Scotland's Loch Katrine -
Event
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford university for circulating a pamphlet with the title The Necessity of Atheism -
Event
The first two cantos are published of Byron's largely autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bringing him immediate fame -
Event
Pride and Prejudice, based on a youthful work of 1797 called First Impressions, is the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published -
Event
Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes probably his best-known poem, the sonnet Ozymandias.
Two of Jane Austen's novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, are published in the year after her death.
Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, a Gothic tale about giving life to an artificial man -
Event
William Cobbett brings back to England the bones of Thomas Paine, who died in the USA in 1809.
Walter Scott publishes Ivanhoe, a tale of love, tournaments and sieges at the time of the crusades.
Byron begins publication in parts of his longest poem, Don Juan an epic satirical comment on contemporary life -
Event
English poet John Keats publishes Ode to a Nightingale, inspired by the bird's song in his Hampstead garden.
English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Ode to the West Wind, written mainly in a wood near Florence -
Event
English author Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
English radical William Cobbett begins his journeys round England, published in 1830 as Rural Rides.
English poet John Keats dies in Rome at the age of twenty-five.
English author William Hazlitt publishes Table Talk, a two-volume collection that includes most of his best-known essays -
Event
12-year-old Charles Dickens works in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory -
Event
English author Frances Trollope ruffles transatlantic feathers with her Domestic Manners of the Americans, based on a 3-year stay -
Event
24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837) -
Event
Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838) -
Event
English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
English author Thomas Babington Macaulay publishes a collection of stirring ballads, Lays of Ancient Rome -
Event
Ebenezer Scrooge mends his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol -
Event
In his novel Coningsby Benjamin Disraeli develops the theme of Conservatism uniting 'two nations', the rich and the poor -
Event
Friedrich Engels, after running a textile factory in Manchester, publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England -
Event
Edward Lear publishes his Book of Nonsense, consisting of limericks illustrated with his own cartoons.
The three Brontë sisters jointly publish a volume of their poems and sell just two copies.
After marrying secretly, the English poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett go abroad to live in Florence -
Event
English author William Makepeace Thackeray begins publication of his novel Vanity Fair in monthly parts (book form 1848).
Charlotte becomes the first of the Brontë sisters to have a novel published — Jane Eyre.
Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights follows just two months after her sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre. -
Event
Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë die within a period of eight months -
Event
Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels -
Event
Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility -
Event
London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases -
Event
Within six weeks of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea, Tennyson publishes a poem finding heroism in the disaster -
Event
Tennyson publishes a long narrative poem, Maud, a section of which ('Come into the garden, Maud') becomes famous as a song.
English author Anthony Trollope publishes The Warden, the first in his series of six Barsetshire novels -
Event
In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school -
Event
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research In On Liberty John Stuart Mill makes the classic liberal case for the priority of the freedom of the individual Tennyson publishes the first part of Idylls of the King. Charles Dickens publishes his French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities Edward FitzGerald publishes The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, romantic translations of the work of the Persian poet -
Event
English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede -
Event
Charles Dickens begins serial publication of his novel "Great Expectations" (in book form 1861).
George Eliot publishes The Mill on the Floss, her novel about the childhood of Maggie and Tom Tulliver -
Event
Mrs Henry Wood publishes her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas -
Event
Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll tells 10-year-old Alice Liddell, on a boat trip, a story about her own adventures in Wonderland -
Event
English author Charles Kingsley publishes an improving fantasy for young children, The Water-Babies -
Event
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier -
Event
Algernon Swinburne scandalizes Victorian Britain with his first collection, Poems and Ballads -
Event
The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx in London and is published in Hamburg -
Event
English author Matthew Arnold publishes Culture and Anarchy, an influential collection of essays about contemporary society -
Event
George Eliot publishes Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon -
Event
Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass, a second story of Alice's adventures -
Event
English author Thomas Hardy has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd -
Event
After spending much time in Europe in recent years, Henry James moves there permanently and settles first in Paris
Henry James's early novel Roderick Hudson is serialized in the Atlantic Monthly and is published in book form in 1876 -
Event
William Gladstone's pamphlet Bulgarian Horrors, protesting at massacre by the Turks, sells 200,000 copies within a month.
Lewis Carroll publishes The Hunting of the Snark, a poem about a voyage in search of an elusive mythical creature.
English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins develops a new verse form that he calls 'sprung rhythm'.
Henry James moves to London, which remains his home for the next 22 years. -
Event
21-year-old Joseph Conrad, a Polish subject, goes to sea with the British merchant navy -
Event
Henry James's story Daisy Miller, about an American girl abroad, brings him a new readership -
Event
The Aesthetic Movement and 'art for art's sake', attitudes personified above all by Whistler and Wilde, are widely mocked and satirized in Britain -
Event
Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure story, Treasure Island, features Long John Silver and Ben Gunn -
Event
Oxford University Press publishes the A volume of its New English Dictionary, which will take 37 years to reach Z -
Event
Explorer and orientalist Richard Burton begins publication of his multi-volume translation from the Arabic of The Arabian Nights -
Event
Robert Louis Stevenson introduces a dual personality in his novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Joseph Conrad becomes naturalized as a British subject and continues his career at sea in the far East.
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. -
Event
Sherlock Holmes features in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet -
Event
23-year-old Irish author William Butler Yeats publishes his first volume of poems, The Wanderings of Oisin -
Event
Scottish anthropologist James Frazer publishes The Golden Bough, a massive compilation of contemporary knowledge about ritual and religious custom.
9-year-old Daisy Ashford imagines an adult romance and high society in The Young Visiters. -
Event
A Gaelic pressure group, the Highland Association, is founded to preserve the indigenous poetry and music of Scotland.
Oscar Wilde publishes his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the ever-youthful hero's portrait grows old and ugly
Thomas Hardy publishes his novel Tess of the Durbervilles, with a dramatic finale at Stonehenge. -
Event
Oscar Wilde's comedy Lady Windermere's Fan is a great success with audiences in London's St. James Theatre W.B. Yeats founds the National Literary Society in Dublin, with Douglas Hyde as its first president. The Countess Cathleen, his first contribution to Irish poetic drama Bernard Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses, deals with the serious social problem of slum landlords Mr Pooter is the suburban anti-hero of the The Diary of a Nobody, by George and Weedon Grossmith -
Event
French-born artist and author George du Maurier publishes his novel Trilby.
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book surrounds the child Mowgli with a collection of vivid animal guardians -
Event
Oscar Wilde's most brilliant comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest is performed in London's St. James Theatre Oscar Wilde loses a libel case that he has brought against the marquess of Queensberry for describing him as a sodomite Oscar Wilde is sent to Reading Gaol to serve a two-year sentence with hard labour after being convicted of homosexuality H.G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, a story about a Time Traveller whose first stop on his journey is the year 802701 -
Event
English poet A.E. Housman publishes his first collection, A Shropshire Lad -
Event
Somerset Maugham publishes his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, based on the London life he has observed as a medical student English author Bram Stoker publishes Dracula, his gothic tale of vampirism in Transylvania -
Event
Henry James moves from London to Lamb House in Rye, Sussex, which remains his home for the rest of his life. H.G. Wells publishes his science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds, in which Martians arrive in a rocket to invade earth. Henry James publishes The Turn of the Screw in a collection of short stories. -
Event
E. Nesbit publishes The Story of the Treasure Seekers, introducing the Bastable family who feature in several of her books for children -
Event
Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Lord Jim about a life of failure and redemption in the far East -
Event
Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Rudyard Kipling's experiences of India are put to good use in his novel Kim -
Event
Rudyard Kipling publishes his Just So Stories for Little Children
The play Cathleen ni Houlihan, by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, fosters Irish nationalism.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit is published commercially, a year after being first printed by Beatrix Potter at her own expense.
Henry James publishes the first of his three last novels, The Wings of the Dove.
Joseph Conrad publishes a collection of stories including Heart of Darkness, a sinister tale based partly. -
Event
Erskine Childers has a best-seller in The Riddle of the Sands, a thriller about a planned German invasion of Britain Henry James publishes The Ambassadors, the second of his three last novels written in rapid succession British philosopher G.E. Moore publishes Principia Ethica, an attempt to apply logic to ethics -
Event
Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Nostromo, about a revolution in South America and a fatal horde of silver Henry James publishes his last completed novel, The Golden Bowl J.M Barrie's play for children Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has its premiere in London Under the pseudonym Saki, H.H. Munro publishes Reginald, his first volume of short stories -
Event
The Bloomsbury Group gathers for informal evenings at the family home of Virginia and Vanessa Stephens (later Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell) Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, a letter of recrimination written in Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, is published posthumously Bernard Shaw has two new plays opening in London in the same year, Major Barbara and Man and Superman Sir Percy Blakeney rescues aristocrats from the guillotine in Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel -
Event
The first volume of the inexpensive Everyman's Library is issued by Joseph Dent, a London publisher E. Nesbit publishes The Railway Children, the most successful of her books featuring the Bastable family John Galsworthy publishes The Man of Property, the first of his novels chronicling the family of Soames Forsyte -
Event
J.M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World provokes violent reactions at its Dublin premiere Edmund Gosse publishes Father and Son, an account of his difficult relationship with his fundamentalist father, Philip Gosse James Joyce completes the 15 short stories eventually published in 1914 as Dubliners -
Event
Rat, Mole and Toad, in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, appeal to a wide readership
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 -
Event
The heroine of H.G. Wells' novel Ann Veronica is a determined example of the New Woman -
Event
In his poem Cargoes John Masefield compares a 'dirty British coaster' with two romantic boats from the past John Buchan publishes Prester John, the first of his adventure stories H.G. Wells publishes The History of Mr Polly, a novel about an escape from drab everyday existence Rudyard Kipling publishes If, which rapidly becomes his most popular poem among the British E.M. Forster publishes Howard's End, his novel about the Schlegel sisters and the Wilcox family -
Event
D.H. Lawrence's career as a writer is launched with the publication of his first novel, The White Peacock Rupert Brooke publishes Poems, the only collection to appear before his early death in World War I G.K. Chesterton's clerical detective makes his first appearance in The Innocence of Father Brown Max Beerbohm publishes his novel Zuleika Dobson, in which the beauty of his heroine causes havoc among the students at Oxford -
Event
Ludwig Wittgenstein moves to Cambridge to study philosophy under Bertrand Russell Walter De la Mare establishes his reputation with the title poem of his collection The Listeners -
Event
The first issue of the New Statesman is published by Beatrice and Sidney Webb Compton Mackenzie publishes the first volume of his autobiographical novel Sinister Street Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell complete a work of mathematical logic, Principia Mathematica D.H. Lawrence publishes a semi-autobiographical novel about the Morel family, Sons and Lovers -
Event
James Joyce's novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins serial publication in a London journal, The Egoist After years of delay James Joyce's Dubliners, a collection of short stories, is published American-born poet Thomas Stearns Eliot crosses the Atlantic to England, making it his home for the rest of his life. Robert Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is published posthumously in an abbreviated version -
Event
Somerset Maugham publishes his semi-autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage The English writer Virginia Woolf publishes her first novel, The Voyage Out D.H. Lawrence's novel about the Brangwen family, The Rainbow, is seized by the police as an obscene work Secret agent Richard Hannay makes his first appearance in John Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps Rupert Brooke's 1914 and Other Poems is published a few months after his death in Greece -
Event
Robert Graves publishes his first book of poems, Over the Brazier The author H.H. Munro ('Saki') is killed by a sniper's bullet on a battlefield in France -
Event
Jeeves and Bertie Wooster make their first appearance in P.G. Wodehouse's The Man with Two Left Feet -
Event
Lytton Strachey fails to show conventional respect to four famous Victorians in his influential volume of short biographies entitled Eminent Victorians Rebecca West publishes her first novel, The Return of the Soldier -
Event
In The Economic Consequences of the Peace Maynard Keynes publishes a strong attack on the reparations demanded from Germany -
Event
Sapper's patriotic hero makes his first appearance, taking on the villainous Carl Peterson in Bull-dog Drummond D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love, a continuation of the family story in The Rainbow, is published first in the USA The Belgian detective Hercule Poirot features in Agatha Christie's first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles -
Event
Somerset Maugham's short story 'Rain' (in his collection The Trembling of a Leaf) introduces the lively American prostitute Sadie Thompson Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes his influential study of the philosophy of logic, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus -
Event
John Galsworthy publishes his novels about the Forsyte family as a joint collection under the title The Forsyte Saga American-born poet T.S. Eliot publishes The Waste Land, an extremely influential poem in five fragmented sections -
Event
The gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey makes his first appearance in Dorothy Sayers' Whose Body? Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan has its world premiere in New York -
Event
E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India builds on cultural misconceptions between the British and Indian communities Christopher Robin features for the first time in A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young -
Event
English writer Ivy Compton-Burnett finds her characteristic voice in her second novel, Pastors and Masters Virginia Woolf publishes her novel Mrs Dalloway, in which the action is limited to a single day -
Event
Patrick Abercrombie publishes The Preservation of Rural England, calling for rural planning to prevent the encroachment of towns T.E. Lawrence publishes privately his autobiographical Seven Pillars of Wisdom, describing his part in the Arab uprising Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and the others make their first appearance in A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh Hugh MacDiarmid writes his long poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle in a revived version of the Lallans dialect of the Scottish borders -
Event
Henry Williamson wins a wide readership with Tarka the Otter, a realistic story of the life and death of an otter in Devon Anglo-Irish author Elizabeth Bowen publishes her first novel, The Hotel Virginia Woolf uses a Hebridean holiday as the setting for her narrative in To The Lighthouse -
Event
Caribbean-born author Jean Rhys publishes her first novel, Postures, based on her affair with the writer Ford Madox Ford Siegfried Sassoon publishes Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, the first volume of a semi-autobiographical trilogy. D.H. Lawrence's new novel, in which Lady Chatterley is in love with her husband's gamekeeper, is privately printed in Florence Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness is the first to deal openly with a lesbian subject. -
Event
Richard Hughes publishes his first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica Blind Fireworks is Ulster writer Louis MacNeice's first collection of poems English author J.B. Priestley has an immediate success with his first novel, The Good Companions English poet Robert Graves puts behind him an England he dislikes in his autobiography, Goodbye to All That -
Event
English author W.H. Auden's first collection of poetry is published with the simple title Poems Swallows and Amazons is the first of Arthur Ransome's adventure stories for children Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence star in the West End in Private Lives, Coward's comedy of marital complications Agatha Christie's Miss Marple makes her first appearance. A spoof history text book, 1066 and all that, is justifiably described by its authors, Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman. -
Event
Virginia Woolf publishes the most fluid of her novels, The Waves, in which she tells the story through six interior monologues -
Event
US poet Archibald MacLeish publishes a narrative epic, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico British author C.S. Lewis publishes a moral parable, The Screwtape Letters, about the problems confronting a trainee devil British author Aldous Huxley gives a bleak view of a science-based future in his novel Brave New World John Cowper Powys's novel A Glastonbury Romance is published first in New York -
Event
H.G. Wells publishes The Shape of Things to Come, a novel in which he accurately predicts a renewal of world war The Pylon group of British poets get their name from Stephen Spender's poem 'The Pylons' English author Antonia White publishes an autobiographical first novel, Frost in May In Down and Out in Paris and London English author George Orwell writes a sympathetic account of the people he meets on hard times -
Event
In I, Claudius the autobiography of the Roman emperor is ghost-written by Robert Graves In A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh sends his hero Tony Last to a disastrous fate, far away in the Amazon rain forest -
Event
T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral has its first performance in Canterbury cathedral British publisher Allen Lane launches a paperback series to which he gives the name Penguin Books -
Event
John Maynard Keynes defines his economics in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money In Language, Truth and Logic 26-year-old A.J. Ayer produces a classic exposition of Logical Positivism Terence Rattigan's first play, French without Tears, is performed in London -
Event
C.S. Forester's central character, Horatio Hornblower, features for the first time – in The Happy Return George Orwell reveals the harsh realities of contemporary British life in The Road to Wigan Pier -
Event
British author Evelyn Waugh publishes a classic Fleet Street novel, Scoop, introducing Lord Copper, proprietor of The Beast In Homage to Catalonia George Orwell describes his experiences fighting for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War British author Graham Greene publishes Brighton Rock, a novel following 17-year-old Pinkie in the criminal underworld of the seaside town Maxim de Winter's house, Manderley, holds dark secrets in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca -
Event
W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood emigrate together to the USA, later becoming US citizens Irish author Flann O'Brien publishes his first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds British author Christopher Isherwood publishes his novel Goodbye to Berlin, based on his own experiences in the city T.S. Eliot gives cats a poetic character in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats -
Event
Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is rejected by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel -
Event
British author Rebecca West publishes an account of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon -
Event
English children's author Enid Blyton introduces the Famous Five in Five on a Treasure Island -
Event
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 -
Event
English author Nancy Mitford has her first success with the novel The Pursuit of Love Evelyn Waugh publishes Brideshead Revisited, a novel about a rich Catholic family in England between the wars In George Orwell's fable Animal Farm a ruthless pig, Napoleon, controls the farmyard using the techniques of Stalin -
Event
Titus Groan begins British author Mervyn Peake's trilogy of gothic novels -
Event
English author and alcoholic Malcolm Lowry publishes an autobiographical novel, Under the Volcano J.B. Priestley challenges audiences with An Inspector Calls, a play in which moral guilt spreads like an infection -
Event
Christopher Fry's verse drama The Lady's Not For Burning engages in high-spirited poetic word play -
Event
Enid Blyton introduces her most successful character, Noddy, a small boy who can't avoid nodding when he speaks George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel set in a terrifying totalitarian state of the future, watched over by Big Brother -
Event
C.S. Lewis gives the first glimpse of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
British author Doris Lessing publishes her first novel, The Grass is Singing -
Event
British author John Wyndham creates a dark fantasy in his novel The Day of the Triffids A Question of Upbringing begins Anthony Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time' British art historian Nikolaus Pevsner undertakes a massive task, a county-by-county description of The Buildings of England -
Event
Evelyn Waugh publishes Men at Arms, the first novel in the Sword of Honour trilogy based on his wartime experiences -
Event
English author L.P. Hartley sets his novel The Go-Between in the summer of 1900 James Bond, agent 007, has a licence to kill in Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale -
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Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood, is broadcast on BBC radio, with Richard Burton as narrator Politician and author Winston Churchill completes his six-volume history The Second World War Anglo-Irish novelist Iris Murdoch publishes her first novel, Under the Net English author Kingsley Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim, strikes an anti-establishment chord William Golding gives a chilling account of schoolboy savagery in his first novel, Lord of the Flies -
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Kingsley Amis and other young writers in Britain become known as Angry Young Men Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American is set in contemporary Vietnam and foresees troubles ahead English poet Philip Larkin finds his distinctive voice in his collection The Less Deceived British philologist J.R.R. Tolkien publishes the third and final volume of his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings -
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English poet Ted Hughes marries US poet Sylia Plath John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger features in the first season of London's new English Stage Company -
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The Hawk in the Rain is English author Ted Hughes' first volume of poems The publication of the novel Justine launches Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet English author John Braine publishes his first novel, Room at the Top English author Stevie Smith publishes her collection of poems Not Waving but Drowning Laurence Olivier brings the music-hall artist Archie Rice vibrantly to life in John Osborne's The Entertainer -
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Irish dramatist Brendan Behan's play The Hostage is produced in Dublin Chicken Soup with Barley begins a trilogy by English playwright Arnold Wesker English author Alan Sillitoe publishes his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Harold Pinter's first play in London's West End, The Birthday Party, closes in less than a week -
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Keith Waterhouse has a wide success with his second novel, Billy Liar Harold Pinter's second play in London's West End, The Caretaker, immediately brings him an international reputation British author Laurie Lee remembers a Cotswold boyhood in Cider with Rosie -
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English poet John Betjeman publishes his long autobiographical poem Summoned by Bells Paul Scofield plays Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons Penguin Books are prosecuted for obscenity for publishing D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and are acquitted -
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British author Roald Dahl publishes a novel for children, James and the Giant Peach British novelist Muriel Spark publishes The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, set in an Edinburgh school in the 1930s -
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Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, setting poems by Wilfred Owen, is first performed in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral British author Doris Lessing publishes an influential feminist novel, The Golden Notebook British author P.D. James's first novel, Cover Her Face, introduces her poet detective Adam Dalgleish Anthony Burgess publishes A Clockwork Orange, a novel depicting a disturbing and violent near-future -
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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 English author Margaret Drabble publishes her first novel, A Summer Birdcage Sexual intercourse begins in this year, according to Philip Larkin's 1974 poem Annus Mirabilis -
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Roald Dahl publishes a fantasy treat for a starving child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory English author A.S. Byatt publishes her first novel, Shadow of a Sun -
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English novelist Paul Scott publishes The Jewel in the Crown, the first volume in his 'Raj Quartet' Irish poet Seamus Heaney wins critical acclaim for Death of a Naturalist, his first volume containing more than a few poems After a long period of obscurity, Wide Sargasso Sea brings novelist Jean Rhys back into the literary limelight Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard, is produced at the Edinburgh Festival -
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English author Angela Carter wins recognition with her quirky second novel, The Magic Toyshop English playwright Alan Ayckbourn has his first success with Relatively Speaking Three young Liverpool poets publish a shared anthology under the title The Mersey Sound A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, by English dramatist Peter Nichols, has its premiere in London -
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English biographer Michael Holroyd completes his two-volume life of Lytton Strachey -
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English novelist John Fowles publishes The French Lieutenant's Woman, set in Lyme Regis in the 1860s -
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English dramatist Caryl Churchill's first play, Owners, is produced in London.
English poet James Fenton publishes his first collection, Terminal Moraine -
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British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher publishes an influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful Martin Amis, son of Kingsley Amis, publishes his first novel, The Rachel Papers -
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German-born British art historian Nikolaus Pevsner completes his monumental 46-volume Buildings of England -
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English author Ruth Prawer Jhabwala wins the Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust -
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Iris Murdoch publishes The Sea, the Sea, and wins the 1978 Booker Prize English author Andrew Motion publishes his first collection of poems, The Pleasure Steamers British author Ian McEwan publishes his first novel, The Cement Garden -
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Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London -
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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 English author Anita Brookner publishes her first novel, A Start in Life -
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Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off opens in London's West end -
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British economist Nicholas Kaldor attacks monetarism in The Economic Consequences of Mrs Thatcher Ronald Harwood's play The Dresser is partly inspired by the British actor Donald Wolfit -
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English author Julian Barnes publishes a multi-faceted literary novel, Flaubert's Parrot -
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British Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah publishes his second collection as The Dread Affair -
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English poets John Fuller and James Fenton collaborate in a volume of satirical poems, Partingtime Hall Talking Heads, a series of dramatic monologues by English author Alan Bennett, is broadcast on British TV -
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Ayatollah Khomeini declares a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses British physicist Stephen Hawking explains the cosmos for the general reader in A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes -
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Racing Demon launches a trilogy on the British establishment by English playwright David Hare -
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Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III is performed at the National Theatre in London Regeneration is the first volume of English author Pat Barker's trilogy of novels set during World War I -
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English poet Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats deals openly with AIDS -
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English novelist Sebastian Faulks publishes Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of World War.
Vikram Seth publishes his novel A Suitable Boy, a family saga in post-independence India
Scottish author Irvine Welsh publishes his first novel, Trainspotting -
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Louis de Bernières publishes Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian-occupied Cephalonia -
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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 -
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Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark -
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The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials
