HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE By facebooker_10156314462571993 2000 BCE The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials 1998 BCE Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark 1997 BCE A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 1992 BCE English poet Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats deals openly with AIDS 1991 BCE Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III is performed at the National Theatre in Lond 1979 BCE Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London 1956 BCE English poet Ted Hughes marries US poet Sylia Plath 1953 BCE James Bond, agent 007, has a licence to kill in Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale 1953 BCE US poet Sylvia Plath commits suicide in London 1947 BCE English author and alcoholic Malcolm Lowry publishes an autobiographical novel, Under the Volcano J.B. Pries 1930 BCE English author W.H. Auden's first collection of poetry is published with the simple title Poems 1923 BCE The gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey makes his first appearance in Dorothy Sayers' Whose Body? 1919 BCE In The Economic Consequences of the Peace Maynard Keynes publishes a strong attack on the reparations demanded from Germany 1905 BCE Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, a letter of recrimination written in Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, is published posthumou 1904 BCE J.M Barrie's play for children Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has its premiere in London 1892 BCE Oscar Wilde's comedy Lady Windermere's Fan is a great success with audiences in London's St. James Theatre 1872 BCE Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass, a second story of Alice's adventures 1859 BCE Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research 1849 BCE Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels 1836 BCE 24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837) 1824 BCE 12-year-old Charles Dickens works in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory 1795 BCE Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity 1764 BCE English historian Edward Gibbon, sitting among ruins in Rome, conceives the idea of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1751 BCE English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard 1702 BCE The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar 1667 BCE Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton just £10 1637 BCE John Milton's Lycidas is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King 1621 BCE John Donne, England's leading Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's 1605 BCE Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I 1590 BCE English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene 1582 BCE The 18-year-William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon 1524 BCE William Tyndale studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English 1510 BCE Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism 1469 BCE Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur 1387 BCE Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death 1385 BCE Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy 1367 BCE A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman 1340 BCE William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor 1300 BCE Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce 950 BCE The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy 800 BCE Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons May 25, 731 The Venerable Bed, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people
