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Period: 800 BCE to
history of literature in the 700s C. and 2000.
Important events in the history of literature -
Jan 1, 700
History of the English church and people
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people -
Jan 2, 800
Beowulf
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons -
Jan 1, 950
The material of the Eddas
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy -
Jan 6, 1340
William of Ockham
William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor -
Jan 1, 1564
Shakespeare
Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months -
James
James I commissions the Authorized version of the Bible, which is completed by forty-seven scholars in seven years -
The Pilgrim's Progress
Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol, is published and is immediately popular -
Tristram Shandy
Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception -
The Highland Association
A Gaelic pressure group, the Highland Association, is founded to preserve the indigenous poetry and music of Scotland -
Cargoes John Masefield
In his poem Cargoes John Masefield compares a 'dirty British coaster' with two romantic boats from the past -
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf publishes the most fluid of her novels, The Waves, in which she tells the story through six interior monologues -
Friedrich Schumache
British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher publishes an influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful
