History of English Literature

Old English( 1st period)

450

731
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people
800

Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons 950

The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy

Middle English (2nd period)

1066

1300

Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce . 1385

Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy 1387

Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death 1469

Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur

English Renaissance period

1500

The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588.
1590

English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene.
1609 John Heminge and Henry Condell publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio.
1650

The poems of Massachusetts author Anne Bradstreet are published in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America

Puritian Period(4th period)

1660

1650

The poems of Massachusetts author Anne Bradstreet are published in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America 1653

Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler 1660

On the first day of the new year Samuel Pepys gets up late, eats the remains of the turkey and begins his diary.

Resturation Age (5th period)

1700

1667

Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton just £10.1678

Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol, is published and is immediately popular. 1690

John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience
1702

The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar.

18th Century (6th period)

1750

Augustian literature (1700 -1750) 1712

Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry 1719

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel 1739

David Hume publishes his Treatise of Human Nature, in which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science 1747

Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the E.L.

18th Century (6th period)

1798

Age of Sensibility (1750-1798) 1755

Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language
1759

Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception.
1795

Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity.
1798

English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement.

Romanticism (7th period)

1837

1805

Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame. 1811 English author Jane Austen publishes her first work in print, Sense and Sensibility, at her own expense 1836

24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837) 1837

Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838)

Victorian (8th period)

1901

1842

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. 1850

Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility. 1898 H.G. Wells publishes his science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds, in which Martians arrive in a rocket to invade earth.

20th Century(Modern literature)

1940

1901

Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
1904

Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Nostromo, about a revolution in South America and a fatal horde of silver
918
Lytton Strachey fails to show conventional respect to four famous Victorians in his influential volume of short biographies entitled Eminen.
1926
Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and the others make their first appearance in A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh.

Post Moderns period

1940

1940

Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is rejected by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel.
1955

British philologist J.R.R. Tolkien publishes the third and final volume of his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings
1964

Roald Dahl publishes a fantasy treat for a starving child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
1997
A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Contemporany (11th era or period)

2000

2000

The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials.
2001
Peter Jackson directs the first of his trilogy of films The Lord of the Rings, based on the cult novel by English academic J.R.R. Tolkien.