-
Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American is set in contemporary Vietnam and foresees troubles ahead
-
Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest, is performed
-
Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death
-
A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman. One of four new yeomen of the chamber in Edward III's household is Geoffrey Chaucer
-
William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor
-
Duns Scotus, known as the Subtle Doctor in medieval times, later provides humanists with the name Dunsman or dunce
-
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy
-
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons
-
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people
-
The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur
-
Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy
-
Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur
-
Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism
-
William Tyndale studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English
-
The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer
-
Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months
-
The Book of Common Prayer and the New Testament are published in Welsh, to be followed by the complete Bible in 1588
-
The 18-year-old William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon
-
Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama
-
English poet Edmund Spenser celebrates the Protestant Elizabeth I as The Faerie Queene
-
After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III
-
Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age
-
James I commissions the Authorized version of the Bible, which is completed by forty-seven scholars in seven years
-
Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I
-
The satirical voice of the English playwright Ben Jonson is heard to powerful effect in Volpone
-
Shakespeare's sonnets, written ten years previously, are published
-
John Smith publishes A Description of New England, an account of his exploration of the region in 1614 William Shakespeare dies at New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and is buried in Holy Trinity Church
-
John Donne, England's leading Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's
-
John Heminge and Henry Condell publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio
-
George Herbert's only volume of poems, The Temple, is published posthumously
-
John Milton's Lycidas is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King
-
The poems of Massachusetts author Anne Bradstreet are published in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
-
Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler
-
On the first day of the new year Samuel Pepys gets up late, eats the remains of the turkey and begins his diary
-
Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton just £10
-
Samuel Pepys ends his diary, after only writing it for nine years
-
Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol, is published and is immediately popular
-
Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade
-
John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience
-
The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar
-
The Tatler launches a new style of journalism in Britain's coffee houses, followed two years later by the Spectator
-
25-year-old George Berkeley attacks Locke in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
-
Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry
-
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel
-
Jonathan Swift sends his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels in Gulliver's Travels
-
David Hume publishes his Treatise of Human Nature, in which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science
-
Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language
-
Henry Fielding introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones
-
English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard
-
Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language
-
James Woodforde, an English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins a detailed diary of everyday life
-
Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception
-
Fingal, supposedly by the medieval poet Ossian, is a forgery in the spirit of the times by James MacPherson
-
James Boswell meets Samuel Johnson for the first time, in the London bookshop of Thomas Davies
-
English historian Edward Gibbon, sitting among ruins in Rome, conceives the idea of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
-
A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica
-
17-year-old Thomas Chatterton, later hailed as a significant poet, commits suicide in a London garret
-
Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer is produced in London's Covent Garden theatre
-
Encouraged by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine emigrates to America and settles in Philadelphia
-
English historian Edward Gibbon publishes the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
-
Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre
-
William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself
-
Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel
-
Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches
-
English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
-
William Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'
-
Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity
-
Samuel Taylor Coleridge says that while writing Kubla Khan he is interrupted by 'a person on business from Porlock'
-
English poets Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly publish Lyrical Ballads, a milestone in the Romantic movement
-
William Blake includes his poem 'Jerusalem' in the Preface to his book Milton
-
Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame
-
Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake brings tourists in unprecedented numbers to Scotland's Loch Katrine
-
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from Oxford university for circulating a pamphlet with the title The Necessity of Atheism
-
The first two cantos are published of Byron's largely autobiographical poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bringing him immediate fame
-
Pride and Prejudice, based on a youthful work of 1797 called First Impressions, is the second of Jane Austen's novels to be published
-
Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes probably his best-known poem, the sonnet Ozymandias
-
William Cobbett brings back to England the bones of Thomas Paine, who died in the USA in 1809
-
English poet John Keats publishes Ode to a Nightingale, inspired by the bird's song in his Hampstead garden
-
English author Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
-
12-year-old Charles Dickens works in London in Warren's boot-blacking factory
-
English author Frances Trollope ruffles transatlantic feathers with her Domestic Manners of the Americans, based on a 3-year stay
-
24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837)
-
Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838)
-
English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin
-
Ebenezer Scrooge mends his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
-
In his novel Coningsby Benjamin Disraeli develops the theme of Conservatism uniting 'two nations', the rich and the poor
-
Friedrich Engels, after running a textile factory in Manchester, publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England
-
Edward Lear publishes his Book of Nonsense, consisting of limericks illustrated with his own cartoons
-
English author William Makepeace Thackeray begins publication of his novel Vanity Fair in monthly parts (book form 1848)
-
Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë die within a period of eight months
-
Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favourite among his novels
-
Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility
-
London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
-
Within six weeks of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea, Tennyson publishes a poem finding heroism in the disaster
-
Tennyson publishes a long narrative poem, Maud, a section of which ('Come into the garden, Maud') becomes famous as a song
-
In Tom Brown's Schooldays Thomas Hughes depicts the often brutal aspects of an English public school
-
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research
-
English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede
-
Charles Dickens begins serial publication of his novel "Great Expectations" (in book form 1861)
-
Mrs Henry Wood publishes her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas
-
Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll tells 10-year-old Alice Liddell, on a boat trip, a story about her own adventures in Wonderland
-
English author Charles Kingsley publishes an improving fantasy for young children, The Water-Babies
-
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier
-
Algernon Swinburne scandalizes Victorian Britain with his first collection, Poems and Ballads
-
George Eliot publishes Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon
-
English author Thomas Hardy has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd
-
William Gladstone's pamphlet Bulgarian Horrors, protesting at massacre by the Turks, sells 200,000 copies within a month
-
Henry James's story Daisy Miller, about an American girl abroad, brings him a new readership
-
Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure story, Treasure Island, features Long John Silver and Ben Gunn
-
Explorer and orientalist Richard Burton begins publication of his multi-volume translation from the Arabic of The Arabian Nights
-
Sherlock Holmes features in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet
-
Scottish anthropologist James Frazer publishes The Golden Bough, a massive compilation of contemporary knowledge about ritual and religious custom
-
Oscar Wilde's comedy Lady Windermere's Fan is a great success with audiences in London's St. James Theatre
-
H.G. Wells publishes The Time Machine, a story about a Time Traveller whose first stop on his journey is the year 802701
-
English author Bram Stoker publishes Dracula, his gothic tale of vampirism in Transylvania
-
E. Nesbit publishes The Story of the Treasure Seekers, introducing the Bastable family who feature in several of her books for children
-
Beatrix Potter publishes at her own expense The Tale of Peter Rabbit
-
Henry James publishes his last completed novel, The Golden Bowl
-
The first volume of the inexpensive Everyman's Library is issued by Joseph Dent, a London publisher
-
The heroine of H.G. Wells' novel Ann Veronica is a determined example of the New Woman
-
D.H. Lawrence's career as a writer is launched with the publication of his first novel, The White Peacock
-
Compton Mackenzie publishes the first volume of his autobiographical novel Sinister Street
-
Somerset Maugham publishes his semi-autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage
-
Jeeves and Bertie Wooster make their first appearance in P.G. Wodehouse's The Man with Two Left Feet
-
In The Economic Consequences of the Peace Maynard Keynes publishes a strong attack on the reparations demanded from Germany
-
Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes his influential study of the philosophy of logic, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
-
The gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey makes his first appearance in Dorothy Sayers' Whose Body?
-
English writer Ivy Compton-Burnett finds her characteristic voice in her second novel, Pastors and Masters
-
Henry Williamson wins a wide readership with Tarka the Otter, a realistic story of the life and death of an otter in Devon
-
Richard Hughes publishes his first novel, A High Wind in Jamaica
-
Virginia Woolf publishes the most fluid of her novels, The Waves, in which she tells the story through six interior monologues
-
H.G. Wells publishes The Shape of Things to Come, a novel in which he accurately predicts a renewal of world war
-
British publisher Allen Lane launches a paperback series to which he gives the name Penguin Books
-
George Orwell reveals the harsh realities of contemporary British life in The Road to Wigan Pier
-
British author Christopher Isherwood publishes his novel Goodbye to Berlin, based on his own experiences in the city
-
British author Rebecca West publishes an account of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
-
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
-
Titus Groan begins British author Mervyn Peake's trilogy of gothic novels
-
Christopher Fry's verse drama The Lady's Not For Burning engages in high-spirited poetic word play
-
British author Doris Lessing publishes her first novel, The Grass is Singing
-
Evelyn Waugh publishes Men at Arms, the first novel in the Sword of Honour trilogy based on his wartime experiences
-
Politician and author Winston Churchill completes his six-volume history The Second World War
-
The publication of the novel Justine launches Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet
-
English poet John Betjeman publishes his long autobiographical poem Summoned by Bells
-
British author Doris Lessing publishes an influential feminist novel, The Golden Notebook
-
English author A.S. Byatt publishes her first novel, Shadow of a Sun
-
Three young Liverpool poets publish a shared anthology under the title The Mersey Sound
-
English novelist John Fowles publishes The French Lieutenant's Woman, set in Lyme Regis in the 1860s
-
British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher publishes an influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful
-
English author Ruth Prawer Jhabwala wins the Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust
-
Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London
-
British economist Nicholas Kaldor attacks monetarism in The Economic Consequences of Mrs Thatcher
-
British Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah publishes his second collection as The Dread Affair
-
British physicist Stephen Hawking explains the cosmos for the general reader in A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes
-
Racing Demon launches a trilogy on the British establishment by English playwright David Hare
-
Regeneration is the first volume of English author Pat Barker's trilogy of novels set during World War I
-
English novelist Sebastian Faulks publishes Birdsong, set partly in the trenches of World War I
-
Louis de Bernières publishes Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a love story set in Italian-occupied Cephalonia
-
A schoolboy wizard performs his first tricks in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
-
Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark
-
The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials
