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Period: 450 to 1066
Old English (Anglo-Saxon
''The term Anglo-Saxon comes from two Germanic tribes: the Angles and the Saxons. This period of literature dates back to their invasion (along with the Jutes) of Celtic England circa 450. The era ends in 1066 when Norman France, under William, conquered England'' (Burgess,2020).
The most important literary genres were: bible translations, epic poetry, chronicles, hagiography, sermons, legal works, and riddles.
One of the most important Old English epic poem was Beowulf. -
Period: 1066 to 1500
Middle English Period (1066–1500)
The translations of Wycliffe's Bible, made possible to establish English as a literary language.
In the 13th century, it appeared one of the most important genres of literature: Romances.
And in the 14th century, appeared important English writers: William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the so-called Pearl Poet, who was the writer of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -
Period: 1500 to
The Renaissance (1500–1660)
Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), was an English poet, who made important works such as Astrophel and Stella, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) he was an important poet and playwright who wrote plays in a variety of genres, including histories (such as Richard III and Henry IV), tragedies (such as Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, comedies (such as Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night) and the late romances, or tragicomedies. -
Period: to
The Neoclassical Period (1600–1785)
The Age of Sensibility (sometimes referred to as the Age of Johnson) was the time of Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, Hester Lynch Thrale, James Boswell, and, of course, Samuel Johnson. Ideas such as neoclassicism, a critical and literary mode, and the Enlightenment, a particular worldview shared by many intellectuals. -
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The Romantic Period (1798–1837)
Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a cultural icon in Scotland.
William Blake (1757–1827) was another important of the early Romantic poets. -
Period: to
Romantics- 1770-1859
Others importants Romantics were the Lake Poets, including William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Robert Southey (1774–1843) and journalist Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859) -
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The Victorian Period (1832–1901)
In the Victorian era (1837–1901), the novel became the leading literary genre in English.
The most famous novelist of the history of English Literature was Charles Dickens (1812–1870), who satirised various aspects of society.
Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), she was the author of the important work Middlemarch (1871–72) that was one of the most important works of literary realism. -
Period: to
The Edwardian Period (1901–1914)
The Edwardian Period (1901–1914)
This period includes important classic novelists such as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, and Henry James; notable poets such as Alfred Noyes and William Butler Yeats; and dramatists such as James Barrie, George Bernard Shaw, and John Galsworthy. -
Period: to
The Georgian Period (1910–1936)
The most important Georgian poets, were Ralph Hodgson, John Masefield, W.H. Davies, and Rupert Brooke.
Georgian poetry today is considered to be the works of minor poets anthologized by Edward Marsh. The themes and subject matter tended to be rural or pastoral in nature, treated delicately and traditionally rather than with passion. -
Period: to
The Modern Period (1914)
Some of the most notable writers of this period include the novelists James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, Dorothy Richardson, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster, and Doris Lessing; the poets W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, Wilfred Owens, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Graves; and the dramatists Tom Stoppard, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, Frank McGuinness, Harold Pinter, and Caryl Churchill.