-
Period: 450 to 1066
Old English period
In that period-Saxon texts, included many beautiful poems, telling tales of wild battles and heroic journeys. The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is “Cædmon's Hymn”, which was composed between 658 and 680, and the longest was the ongoing “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”. But by far the best known is the long epic poem “Beowulf”. Recovered to https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/history_old.html -
731
History of the English church and people (Book)
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people. -
800
Beowulf writes
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons. -
960
The material of the Eddas, taking shape in Iceland, derives from earlier sources in Norway, Britain and Burgundy
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Period: 1066 to 1500
Middle English
And it is during the Middle English period that we see the eventual disappearance of most of the earlier old English period inflections, and the increasing reliance on alternative means of expression, using word order and prepositional constructions rather than word endings to express meaning relationships. Recovered from https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/middle-english -
1340
William of Ockham advocates paring down arguments to their essentials, an approach later known as Ockham's Razor
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1367
A narrator who calls himself Will, and whose name may be Langland, begins the epic poem of Piers Plowman
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1375
The courtly poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of a mysterious visitor to the round table of King Arthur
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1385
Chaucer completes Troilus and Criseyde, his long poem about a legendary love affair in ancient Troy
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1469
Thomas Malory, in gaol somewhere in England, compiles Morte d'Arthur – an English account of the French tales of King Arthur
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1487
Chaucer begins an ambitious scheme for 100 Canterbury Tales, of which he completes only 24 by the time of his death
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Period: 1500 to
English Renaissance
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. Like most of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later. Recovered from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-britlit1/chapter/english-renaissance/ -
1510
Erasmus and Thomas More
Erasmus and Thomas More take the northern Renaissance in the direction of Christian humanism -
1524
William Tyndale
William Tyndale studies in the university at Wittenberg and plans to translate the Bible into English -
1549
Thomas Cranmer
The first version of the English prayer book, or Book of Common Prayer, is published with text by Thomas Cranmer -
Period: 1558 to
Elizabethan period
Its period is probably the most splendid age in the history of English literature, during which such writers as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Roger Ascham, Richard Hooker, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare flourished. The epithet Elizabethan is merely a chronological reference and does not describe any special characteristic of the writing. Recovered from https://www.britannica.com/art/Elizabethan-literature -
1564
Shakespeare was born
Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months -
Marlowe
Tamburlaine the Great -
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene -
Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece
After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III -
Hamlet-Shakespeare
Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age -
Period: to
Jacobean period
Jacobean literature was often dark in mood, questioning the stability of the social order; some of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies may date from the beginning of the period, and other dramatists, including John Webster, were often preoccupied with the problem of evil. The era’s comedy included the acid satire of Ben Jonson and the varied works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Recovered from https://www.britannica.com/art/Jacobean-literature -
James I commissions / King's Men
James I commissions / William Shakespeare's name appears among the actors in a list of the King's Men -
Ben Jonson
The Masque of Blackness -
Shakespeare's sonnets
The Masque of Blackness -
Shakespeare
The Tempest -
William Shakespeare dies / John Smith
William Shakespeare dies at New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and is buried in Holy Trinity Church / A Description of New England -
John Donne
John Donne Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's -
John Heminge and Henry Condell
They publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio -
Period: to
Caroline period
The Caroline period saw the flourishing of the cavalier poets (including Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace, and John Suckling) and the metaphysical poets (including George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Katherine Philips ), movements that produced figures like John Donne, Robert Herrick and John Milton. Recovered from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_era -
George Herbert
The Temple -
John Milton
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
The poems of Massachusetts author Anne Bradstreet are published in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America -
Izaak Walton
The Compleat Angler -
Period: to
Puritan period
The foundation of the literary culture of puritan was the English Bible -
Period: to
Restoration Age
The Restoration period was, above all, a great age of drama. Heroic plays, influenced by principles of French Neoclassicism, enjoyed a vogue, but the age is chiefly remembered for its glittering, critical comedies of manners by such playwrights as George Etherege, William Wycherley, Sir John Vanbrugh, and William Congreve. Recovered from: https://www.britannica.com/art/Restoration-literature -
John Milton
Paradise Lost -
Samuel Pepys's diary
Samuel Pepys ends his diary, after only writing it for nine years -
Part I of 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 -
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade -
Period: to
18th century period
First: Augustan (1700-1750)
Second: Age of sensibility (1750-1797) -
The Augustan Age
The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar -
The Tatler
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
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Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry
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Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel
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Jonathan Swift sends his hero on a series of bitterly satirical travels in Gulliver's Travels
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David Hume publishes his Treatise of Human Nature, in which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science
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Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence that grows into the longest novel in the English language
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Henry Fielding introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones
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English poet Thomas Gray publishes his Elegy written in a Country Church Yard
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Samuel Johnson publishes his magisterial Dictionary of the English Language
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James Woodforde, an English country parson with a love of food and wine, begins a detailed diary of everyday life
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Laurence Sterne publishes the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, beginning with the scene at the hero's conception
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English literature first enters the university in Scotland
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Fingal, supposedly by the medieval poet Ossian, is a forgery in the spirit of the times by James MacPherson
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James Boswell meets Samuel Johnson for the first time, in the London bookshop of Thomas Davies
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English author Horace Walpole provides an early taste of Gothic thrills in his novel Castle of Otranto
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A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland begins publication of the immensely successful Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Scottish economist Adam Smith analyzes the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations
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Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre
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William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence, a volume of his poems with every page etched and illustrated by himself
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Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, a blistering attack on recent events across the Channel
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Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes Tam o' Shanter, in which a drunken farmer has an alarming encounter with witches
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English author Mary Wollstonecraft publishes a passionately feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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William Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and Experience includes his poem 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'
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Thomas Paine publishes his completed Age of Reason, an attack on conventional Christianity
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Wordsworth and Coleridge / Robert Burns / Samuel Taylor
Lyrical Ballads / Tam o' Shanter / 'The Rime of the Ancient Ma -
Period: to
Romanticism
The most notable feature of the poetry of the time is the new role of individual thought and personal feeling. Where the main trend of 18th-century poetics had been to praise the general, to see the poet as a spokesman of society addressing a cultivated and homogeneous audience and having as his end the conveyance of “truth,” the Romantics found the source of poetry in the particular, unique experience. Recovered f: https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Romantic-period -
Period: to
English Literature in the nineteenth- century
English Literature in the nineteenth- century universities became instead a way of connecting yourself to the past. It allowed students to understand themselves as the inheritors of an English national identity that was embodied in the nation’s literature -
Walter Scott publishes The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the long romantic poem that first brings him fame
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English author Jane Austen publishes her first work in print, Sense and Sensibility, at her own expense
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Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes probably his best-known poem, the sonnet Ozymandias
Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, a Gothic tale about giving life to an artificial man -
Walter Scott publishes Ivanhoe, a tale of love, tournaments and sieges at the time of the crusades
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English author Thomas De Quincey publishes his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
English poet John Keats dies in Rome at the age of twenty-five English radical William Cobbett begins his journeys round England, published in 1830 as Rural Rides English author William Hazlitt publishes Table Talk, a two-volume collection that includes most of his best-known essays -
University College London began teaching in 1828 and included on its staff Britain’s first ‘Professor of English Language and Literature
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Period: to
Ireland and Wales, and these usually had a professor of English Literature as well
As the nineteenth century continued, more new universities were founded in other cities across England, Ireland and Wales, and these usually had a professor of English Literature as well. -
24-year-old Charles Dickens begins monthly publication of his first work of fiction, Pickwick Papers (published in book form in 1837)
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Charles Dickens' first novel, Oliver Twist, begins monthly publication (in book form, 1838)
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Period: to
Vuctorian perdiod
Though the Victorian Age produced two great poets Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning, the age is also remarkable for the excellence of its prose.
Victorian novels tend to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love, and luck win out in the end. They were usually inclined towards being of improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart.Recovered http://victorian-era.org/victorian-era-literature-characteristics.html#Influence_of_Victorian_Literature -
English poet Robert Browning publishes a vivid narrative poem about the terrible revenge of The Pied Piper of Hamelin
English author Thomas Babington Macaulay publishes a collection of stirring ballads, Lays of Ancient Rome -
Ebenezer Scrooge mends his ways just in time in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
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In his novel Coningsby Benjamin Disraeli develops the theme of Conservatism uniting 'two nations', the rich and the poor
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Friedrich Engels, after running a textile factory in Manchester, publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England
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Edward Lear publishes his Book of Nonsense, consisting of limericks illustrated with his own cartoons
The three Brontë sisters jointly publish a volume of their poems and sell just two copies -
English author William Makepeace Thackeray begins publication of his novel Vanity Fair in monthly parts (book form 1848)
Charlotte becomes the first of the Brontë sisters to have a novel published — Jane Eyre Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights follows just two months after her sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre -
Charles Dickens begins the publication in monthly numbers of David Copperfield, his own favorite among his novels
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Alfred Tennyson's elegy for a friend, In Memoriam, captures perfectly the Victorian mood of heightened sensibility
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London physician Peter Mark Roget publishes his dictionary of synonyms, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
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Within six weeks of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea, Tennyson publishes a poem finding heroism in the disaster
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Tennyson publishes a long narrative poem, Maud, a section of which ('Come into the garden, Maud') becomes famous as a song
English author Anthony Trollope publishes The Warden, the first in his series of six Barsetshire novels -
Charles Darwin puts forward the theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, the result of 20 years' research
Samuel Smiles provides an inspiring ideal of Victorian enterprise in Self-Help, a manual for ambitious young men Tennyson publishes the first part of Idylls of the King, a series of linked poems about Britain's mythical king Arthur Charles Dickens publishes his French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities Edward FitzGerald publishes The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, romantic translations of the work of the Persian poet -
English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede
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Charles Dickens begins serial publication of his novel "Great Expectations" (in book form 1861)
George Eliot publishes The Mill on the Floss, her novel about the childhood of Maggie and Tom Tulliver -
Mrs Henry Wood publishes her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas
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Glasgow University
Glasgow University has its first professor of English literature. -
English author Charles Kingsley publishes an improving fantasy for young children, The Water-Babies
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Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a development of the story he had told Alice Liddell three years earlier
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Algernon Swinburne scandalizes Victorian Britain with his first collection, Poems and Ballads
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Trinity College Dublin / Marx
Trinity College Dublin has its first professor of English literature / The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx in London and is published in Hamburg -
English author Matthew Arnold publishes Culture and Anarchy, an influential collection of essays about contemporary society
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George Eliot publishes Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon
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Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass, a second story of Alice's adventures
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English author Thomas Hardy has his first success with his novel Far from the Madding Crowd
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Henry James's early novel Roderick Hudson is serialized in the Atlantic Monthly and is published in book form in
William Gladstone's pamphlet Bulgarian Horrors, protesting at massacre by the Turks, sells 200,000 copies within a month Henry James moves to London, which remains his home for the next 22 years English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins develops a new verse form that he calls 'sprung rhythm'
Lewis Carroll publishes The Hunting of the Snark, a poem about a voyage in search of an elusive mythical creature -
Cambridge University
Cambridge University established an examination board in ‘Medieval and Modern Languages’ which included English as one of its topics -
Henry James's story Daisy Miller, about an American girl abroad, brings him a new readership
-
The Aesthetic Movement and 'art for art's sake', attitudes personified above all by Whistler and Wilde, are widely mocked and satirized in Britain
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Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure story, Treasure Island, features Long John Silver and Ben Gunn
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Oxford University Press publishes the A volume of its New English Dictionary, which will take 37 years to reach Z
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Oxford / Richard Burton
Oxford established a Professorship in English Language and Literature / The Arabian Nights -
Robert Louis Stevenson introduces a dual personality in his novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Thomas Hardy publishes his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, which begins with the future mayor, Michael Henchard selling his wife and child at a fair -
Sherlock Holmes features in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet
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23-year-old Irish author William Butler Yeats publishes his first volume of poems, The Wanderings of Oisin
The Fabian Society publishes Essays in Socialism influential volume of essays edited by Bernard Shaw -
Scottish anthropologist James Frazer publishes The Golden Bough, a massive compilation of contemporary knowledge about ritual and religious custom
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A Gaelic pressure group, the Highland Association, is founded to preserve the indigenous poetry and music of Scotland
Oscar Wilde publishes his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the ever-youthful hero's portrait grows old and ugly Thomas Hardy publishes his novel Tess of the Durbervilles, with a dramatic finale at Stonehenge -
Oscar Wilde / W.B. Yeats and Douglas Hyde / W.B. Yeats / Bernard Shaw / George and Weedon Grossmith
Lady Windermere's Fan is a great success with audiences in London's St. James Theatre / National Literary Society / The Countess Cathlee / Widowers' Houses / The Diary of a Nobody -
George du Maurier / Rudyard Kipling
Trilby / The Jungle Book -
Oscar Wilde's most brilliant comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest is performed 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
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English poet A.E. Housman publishes his first collection, A Shropshire Lad
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Somerset Maugham publishes his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, based on the London life he has observed as a medical student
-
H.G. Wells publishes his science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds, in which Martians arrive in a rocket to invade earth Henry James publishes The Turn of the Screw in a collection of short stories
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E. Nesbit publishes The Story of the Treasure Seekers, introducing the Bastable family who feature in several of her books for children
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Joseph Conrad publishes his novel Lord Jim about a life of failure and redemption in the far East
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Beatrix Potter / Rudyard Kipling
The Tale of Peter Rabbit / Kim -
Period: to
Modern Literature
The period saw an abrupt break away from the old ways of interacting with the world. In all the previous periodes experimentation and individualism were highly discouraged but With the onset of the modern period, both these things became virtues. There were many cultural shocks with the beginning of modernism. The blow of the modern age was the World War 1 and 2. Recovered from: https://www.allassignmenthelp.com/blog/modern-period-in-english-literature/ -
Rudyard Kipling / W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory / Beatrix Potter / John Masefield
Just So Stories for Little Children / Cathleen ni Houlihan / The Tale of Peter Rabbit is published commercially, a year after being first printed by Beatrix Potter at her own expense / Salt-Water Ballads -
Conan Doyle / Henry James / Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles / The Wings of the Dove / Heart of Darkness -
Erskine Childers / Henry James / G.E. Moore
The Riddle of the Sands / The Ambassadors / Principia Ethica -
Joseph Conrad / Henry James / J.M Barrie / H.H. Munro
Nostromo / The Golden Bowl / J.M Barrie's play for children Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has its premiere in London / Reginald -
The Bloomsbury Group gathers for informal evenings at the family home of Virginia and Vanessa Stephens (later Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell)
Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, a letter of recrimination written in Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, is published posthumously H.G. Wells publishes Kipps: the story of a simple soul, a comic novel about a bumbling draper's assistant Bernard Shaw has two new plays opening in London in the same year, Major Barbara and Man and Superman Sir Percy Blakeney rescues aristocrats from the guillotine in Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel -
The first volume of the inexpensive Everyman's Library is issued by Joseph Dent, a London publisher
E. Nesbit publishes The Railway Children, the most successful of her books featuring the Bastable family John Galsworthy publishes The Man of Property, the first of his novels chronicling the family of Soames Forsyte -
Edmund Gosse publishes Father and Son, an account of his difficult relationship with his fundamentalist father, Philip Gosse
James Joyce completes the 15 short stories eventually published in 1914 as Dubliners -
The Welsh poet W.H. Davies has a success with The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, his account of life on the road and in dosshouses
-
John Buchan publishes Prester John, the first of his adventure stories
H.G. Wells publishes The History of Mr Polly, a novel about an escape from drab everyday existence Rudyard Kipling publishes If, which rapidly becomes his most popular poem among the British E.M. Forster publishes Howard's End, his novel about the Schlegel sisters and the Wilcox family -
Cambridge / D.H. Lawrence / Rupert Brooke / G.K. Chesterton / Katherine Mansfield / Max Beerbohm
Cambridge creates a separate chair in English literature / The White Peacock / Poems / The Innocence of Father Brown / In a German Pension / Zuleika Dobson -
Walter De la Mare establishes his reputation with the title poem of his collection The Listeners
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The first issue of the New Statesman is published by Beatrice and Sidney Webb
Compton Mackenzie publishes the first volume of his autobiographical novel Sinister Street Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell complete a work of mathematical logic, Principia Mathematica
D.H. Lawrence publishes a semi-autobiographical novel about the Morel family, Sons and Lovers -
James Joyce's novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins serial publication in a London journal, The Egoist
After years of delay James Joyce's Dubliners, a collection of short stories, is published The Times Literary Supplement is published in London as an independent paper, separate from The Times Robert Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is published posthumously in an abbreviated version -
Somerset Maugham / Virginia Woolf / D.H. Lawrence
Of Human Bondage / The Voyage Out / The Rainbow, is seized by the police as an obscene work -
Robert Graves publishes his first book of poems, Over the Brazier
-
Jeeves and Bertie Wooster make their first appearance in P.G. Wodehouse's The Man with Two Left Feet
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Lytton Strachey fails to show conventional respect to four famous Victorians in his influential volume of short biographies entitled Eminent Victorians
Rebecca West publishes her first novel, The Return of the Soldier -
In The Economic Consequences of the Peace Maynard Keynes publishes a strong attack on the reparations demanded from Germany
-
Carl Peterson / D.H. Lawrence / Agatha Christie
Bull-dog Drummond / Women in Love / The Mysterious Affair at Styles -
Period: to
Social changes and literature
Some university teachers, of whom I. A. Richards and F. R. and Q. D. Leavis at Cambridge were the most influential in the literature of those years, saw the rise of ‘mass civilization’ as a threat to what they called ‘culture’ -
Somerset Maugham's / Wittgenstein
Rain short story / study of the philosophy of logic, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus -
John Galsworthy / Eliot
The Forsyte saga is published and / The Waste Land -
Dorothy Sayers / Bernard Shaw
Whose Body / Saint Joan its world premiere in New York -
E.M / A.A. Milne
Forster A Passage to India / When We Were Very Young -
Ivy Compton-Burnett / Virginia Woolf
Pastors and Masters / Mrs Dalloway -
Patrick Abercrombie / T.E. Lawrence / A.A. Milne / Hugh MacDiarmid
The Preservation of Rural England / Seven Pillars of Wisdom / Winnie-the-Pooh / Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle -
Henry Williamson / Elizabeth Bowen /
Tarka the Otter / The Hotel / To The Lighthouse -
Jean Rhys / Siegfried Sassoon / R.C. Sherriff / Evelyn Waugh / Radclyffe Hall's
Postures / Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man / Journey's End / Decline and Fall / The Well of Loneliness -
Richard Hughes / Louis / J.B. Priestley / Robert Graves
A High Wind in Jamaica / Blind / Good Companions / Robert Graves -
W.H.Auden / Arthur Ransome / Coward / Agatha Christie / Walter Sellar y Robert Yeatman
Poems / Swallows and Amazons / Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence star in the West End in Private Lives, Coward's comedy of marital complications / Murder at the Vicarage / A spoof history text book, 1066 -
Virginia Woolf
The Waves -
Archibald MacLeish / C.S. Lewis / Aldous Huxley / John Cowper Powys
Conquistador / The Screwtape Letters / Brave New World / A Glastonbury Romance -
H.G. Wells / Antonia White / George Orwell
The Shape of Things to Come / Frost in May / George Orwell writes a sympathetic account of the people he meets on hard times -
Robert Graves / Evelyn Waugh
Claudius the autobiography of the Roman emperor / A Handful of Dust -
T.S. Eliot / Allen Lane
Murder in the Cathedral has its first performance in Canterbury cathedral / Penguin Books -
John Maynard Keynes / A.J. Ayer / Terence Rattigan
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money / Language, Truth and Logic / Terence Rattigan -
C.S. Forester / George Orwell
The Happy Return / British life in The Road to Wigan Pier -
Evelyn Waugh / George Orwell / Graham Greene / Brighton Rock
The Beast / In Homage to Catalonia George Orwell describes his experiences fighting for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War / Brighton Rock / Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca -
Flann O'Brien / Christopher Isherwood / T.S. Eliot
At Swim-Two-Birds /Christopher Isherwood / Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats -
Flann O'Brien's/
The Third Policeman is rejected by numerous publishers before becoming, decades later, his best-known novel -
Period: to
Post moderne
Elizabeth Jane Howard, Light Years, (The Cazalet Chronicles) / Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time -
Rebecca West
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon -
Enid Blyton
Five on a Treasure Island -
T.S. Eliot
Four Quartets -
Nancy Mitford / Evelyn Waugh / George Orwell
The Pursuit of Love / Brideshead Revisited / Farm -
Mervyn Peake
Titus Groan -
Malcolm Lowry / J.B. Priestley
Under the Volcano / An Inspector Calls -
Christopher Fry
The Lady's Not For Burning -
Enid Blyton / George Orwell
Noddy / Nineteen Eighty-Four -
Nineteen Eighty-Four / Doris Lessing
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe / The Grass is Singing -
John Wyndham / Anthony Powell's / Nikolaus Pevsner
The Day of the Triffids / A Dance to the Music of Time' / The Buildings of England -
Evelyn Waugh
Men at Arms -
L.P. Hartley / Ian Fleming
The Go-Between / Casino Royale -
Dylan Thomas / Winston Churchill / Iris Murdoch / Kingsley Amis /Lucky Jim
Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood, is broadcast on BBC radio, with Richard Burton as narrator / The Second World War / Under the Net / Lucky Jim / Lord of the Flies -
Kingsley Amis / Graham Greene / Philip Larkin / J.R.R. Tolkien
Kingsley Amis / The Quiet / The Less Deceived / The Lord of the Rings -
John Osborne /
John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger features in the first season of London's new English Stage Company -
Ted Hughes / Lawrence Durrell / John Braine / Stevie Smith / Laurence Olivier
The Hawk in the / Justine / Room at the Top / Waving but Drowning / Laurence Olivier brings the music-hall artist Archie Rice vibrantly to life in John Osborne's The Entertainer -
Brendan Behan / Arnold Wesker / Alan Sillitoe / Harold Pinter
Irish dramatist Brendan Behan's play The Hostage is produced in Dublin / Chicken Soup with Barley / Saturday Night and Sunday Morning / Harold Pinter's first play in London's West End, The Birthday Party, closes in less than a week -
Keith Waterhouse / Harold / Laurie Lee
Keith Waterhouse / Harold Pinter's second play in London's West End, The Caretaker, immediately brings him an international reputation / Cider -
John Betjeman
Summoned by Bells -
Roald Dahl / Muriel Spark
James and the Giant Peach / The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie -
Benjamin Britten / Doris Lessing / P.D James / Anthony Burgess
Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, setting poems by Wilfred Owen, is first performed in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral / The Golden Notebook / Cover Her Face / A Clockwork Orange -
John Le Carré / Margaret Drabble
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold / A Summer Birdcage -
Roald Dahl / A.S. Byatt
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory / Shadow of a Sun -
Paul Scott / Seamus Heaney / Jean Rhys / Tom Stoppard
The Jewel / Irish poet Seamus Heaney wins critical acclaim for Death of a Naturalist, his first volume containing more than a few poems / Wide Sargasso Sea / Rosencrantz y Guildenstern están muertos, de Tom Stoppard, se produce en el Festival de Edimburgo -
Angela Carter / Alan Ayckbourn / Adrian Henri, Brian Patten y Roger McGough / Peter Nichols
English author Angela Carter wins recognition with her quirky second novel, The Magic Toyshop / Relatively Speaking / The Mersey Sound / A Day in the Death of Joe Egg -
Michael Holroyd
Lytton Strachey -
John Fowles
The French Lieutenant's Woman -
Caryl Churchill's / James Fenton
English dramatist Caryl Churchill's first play, Owners, is produced in London / Terminal Moraine -
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher / Martin Amis / Nikolaus Pevsner
Small is Beautiful / The Rachel Papers / Buildings of England (46-volume) -
Ruth Prawer Jhabwala
English author Ruth Prawer Jhabwala wins the Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust / -
Iris Murdoch / Andrew Motion / Ian McEwan
The Sea / The Pleasure Steamers / The Cement Garden -
Peter Shaffer / Christopher Logue / Salman Rushdie / Anita Brookner
Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London / War Music is the first instalment of Christopher Logue's version of the Iliad / Midnight's Children / A Start in Life -
Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off opens in London's West end -
Nicholas Kaldor / Ronald Harwood
The Economic Consequences of Mrs Thatcher / The Dresser -
Julian Barnes
Flaubert's Parrot -
Benjamin Zephaniah
The Dread Affair -
John Fuller and James Fenton / Alan Bennett
Partingtime Hall / Talking Heads, a series of dramatic monologues by English author Alan Bennett, is broadcast on British TV -
Stephen Hawking
Big Bang to Black Holes -
Racing Demon
David Hare -
Alan Bennett / Pat Barker
Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III is performed at the National Theatre in London / Regeneration -
Thom Gunn
The Man with Night Sweats -
Sebastian Faulks / Vikram Seth / Irvine Welsh
Birdsong / A Suitable Boy / Trainspotting -
Louis de Bernières
Captain Corelli's -
Ted Hughes / J.K. Rowling
Hughes's Birthday Letters / Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone -
Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark -
Philip Pullman
Dark Materials -
Period: to
Contemporary
Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex / Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk / Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
