-
Period: 450 to 1066
OLD ENGLISH
450 - 1066 -
731
731 - C 800
Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people. -
800
C. 800 - C 950
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons. -
950
C 950
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy. -
Period: 1066 to 1500
MIDDLE ENGLISH
1066 - 1500 -
1300
C 1300 - C 1340
Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times. -
1340
C 1340 - C 1367
Ockham's Razor -
1367
C 1367 - C 1375
A narrator who calls himself Will, Poem of Piers Plowman. -
1375
C 1375 - C 1385
The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur -
1385
C 1385 - C 1387
Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy. -
1387
C 1387 - 1469
Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death. -
1469
1469 - 1510
Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur. -
Period: 1500 to
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
1500 - 1660 -
1510
1510 - 1524
Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance. -
1524
1524 - 1549
William Tyndale plans to translate the Bible into English. -
1549
1549 - 1564
The first version of the English prayer book is published with text by Thomas Cranmer. -
1564
1564 - 1567
Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year. -
1567
1567 - 1582
The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588. -
1582
1582 - 1587
The 18-year-old William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway. -
1587 - 1590
Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great. -
1601 - 1604
Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age. -
1611 - 1616
Shakespeare's last completed play, "The Tempest", is performed. -
1616 - 1621
William Shakespeare dies at New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and is buried in Holy Trinity Church. -
1623 - 1633
John Heminge and Henry Condell publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio. -
Period: to
PURITAN
1653 - 1660 -
Period: to
RESTORATION AGE
1660 - 1700 -
1688 - 1690
Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade. -
Period: to
18TH CENTURY
1700 - 1798 -
1719 - 1726
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel. -
1747 - 1749
Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language. -
1755 - 1758
Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language. -
1792 - 1794
English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman". -
Period: to
ROMANTICISM
1798 - 1837 -
1837 - 1842
Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication. -
Period: to
VICTORIAN
1837 - 1901 -
1852 - 1854
London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms. -
1859 - 1860
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species. -
1861 - 1862
Mrs Henry Wood publishes her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas. -
1897 - 1898
English author Bram Stoker publishes Dracula, his gothic tale of vampirism in Transylvania. -
Period: to
MODERN LITERATURE
1901 - 1940 -
1918 - 1919
Lytton Strachey fails to show conventional respect to four famous Victorians in his influential volume of short biographies entitled Eminent Victorians. -
1928 - 1929
Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness is the first to deal openly with a lesbian subject. -
1932 - 1933
US poet Archibald MacLeish publishes a narrative epic, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico. -
Period: to
POST MODERN
1940 - 2000 -
1960 - 1961
Penguin Books are prosecuted for obscenity for publishing D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and are acquitted. -
1972 - 1973
English dramatist Caryl Churchill's first play, Owners, is produced in London. -
1981 - 1982
Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children uses the moment of India's independence to launch an adventure in magic realism. -
1987 - 1988
Talking Heads, a series of dramatic monologues by English author Alan Bennett, is broadcast on British TV. -
1992 - 1993
English poet Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats deals openly with AIDS. -
1997 - 1998
A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. -
2000
The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials. -
Period: to
CONTEMPORARY
PRESENT LITERATURE 2000 - 2020