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Period: 450 to 1066
Old English literature
The known period after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England. -
1000
Beowulf
Beowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest. It tells the breathtaking story of a struggle between the hero, Beowulf, and a bloodthirsty monster called Grendel. -
Period: 1006 to 1500
Middle English Literature
After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society -
1031
Book of life
The purpose of a 'Book of Life' (or Liber Vitae), was to record the names of members and friends of monasteries or convents: the belief was that these names would also appear in the heavenly book opened on the Day of Judgement. -
1060
Norman psalter
Probably made at Winchester, although it is not certain by or for which religious house there, the Arundel Psalter seems to have been a personal prayerbook. Use of the psalter in the middle ages could be for church services or personal prayer. The first letter of Psalm 1 ('Beatus vir', 'Blessed the man') usually receives the most elaborate decoration of all the Psalms, as it does here -
1100
Scribe
This illumination shows a seated scribe writing with his quill, surrounded by monstrous creatures. Illuminated manuscripts are a precious source for learning about medieval visual culture, especially since they tend to be much better preserved than, for example, paintings on panels or walls -
1190
The Owl and the Nightingale
‘The Owl and the Nightingale’ is a poem in which two competing characters trade insults with each other. It is the earliest example in English of a popular literary form known as a verse contest. The narrator overhears an owl and a nightingale haranguing each other in a lengthy and comical debate about whose song is the more beautiful. -
1210
Magna Carta
Magna Carta – Latin for 'Great Charter' – is one of the most celebrated documents in western history. It was the first written material to set limits on the power of an English monarch, and was intended to prevent King John from exploiting his people. The charter established that, despite his royal status, John was obliged to abide by the law. -
1290
Expulsion of Jews from England
The first significant migration of Jews to England came after the Norman Invasion in 1066. By the late 1200s, England had a small Jewish population of around 3000 people. Throughout this period, the Jews suffered from anti-Semitic prejudice, often scapegoated or wrongly accused of crimes. Finally, in 1290, they were banished from England altogether. Jews were not allowed to return to England until 1656 -
1308
DANTE BEGINS DIVINE COMEDY
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1348
Chronicle of the Black Death
The catastrophic plague known as the Black Death hit Europe in 1348 and swept through the continent rapidly. It would eventually kill between a third and half of the population. This chronicle, written at the cathedral priory of Rochester between 1314 and 1350, includes a firsthand account of the Black Death, describing the changes in the everyday lives of people across the social scale. -
1400
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is one of the best loved works in the history of English literature. Written in Middle English, the story follows a group of pilgrims who are travelling the long journey from London to Canterbury Cathedral. Setting off from a London inn, the innkeeper suggests that during the journey each pilgrim should tell two tales to help pass the time. The best storyteller, he says, will be rewarded with a free supper on his return. -
1450
Gutenberg Bible
Johan Gutenberg's amazing invention - the printing press and the use of moveable metal type - would revolutionise the way books were created in the West. Before Gutenberg, every book produced in Europe had to be copied by hand. Now it was possible to speed up the production process, and still make works of high quality. This is probably the most famous Bible in the world, and is the earliest full-scale work printed in Europe using Gutenberg's technology. -
1469
The Legend of King Arthur
This manuscript tells the famous legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, centring around their quest for the mystical Holy Grail. It was written by Thomas Malory in 1469 while he was imprisoned for a series of violent crimes. -
Period: 1500 to
English Renaissance
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. -
1526
First printed Bible in English
William Tyndale's Bible was the first English language Bible to appear in print. During the 1500s, the very idea of an English language Bible was shocking and subversive. This is because, for centuries, the English Church had been governed from Rome, and church services were by law conducted in Latin. -
Hamlet (Shakespeare)
Written between 1599 and 1601, Hamlet is widely recognised as one of the most powerful plays in the history of English theatre. It is a revenge tragedy that revolves around the agonised interior mind of a young Danish prince. -
Period: to
Restoration Age
Scholars use the term "Restoration" to denote the literature that began and flourished under Charles II, whether that literature was the laudatory ode that gained a new life with restored aristocracy, the eschatological literature that showed an increasing despair among Puritans, or the literature of rapid communication and trade that followed in the wake of England's mercantile empire. -
Coffee houses
While today, tea is the drink most associated with the English, from the mid 1600s until the late 1700s hot chocolate and coffee were the more popular drinks. Newly imported from Africa and South America, the drinks became fashionable novelties in the 1660s. Coffee houses were hubs of social activity, particularly popular with businessmen, politicians, stock market traders and intellectuals. -
Period: to
Augustan literature
It is an age of exuberance and scandal, of enormous energy and inventiveness and outrage, that reflected an era when English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish people found themselves in the midst of an expanding economy, lowering barriers to education, and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. -
Period: to
18th Century
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Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
Often hailed as the first English novel, Robinson Crusoe has a story that will be familiar to many: that of the sailor Crusoe, who finds himself shipwrecked on a remote island and must carve an existence for himself out of the few resources that are available to him. Its author, Daniel Defoe, based his tale on the experiences of the traveller Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years marooned on the Pacific island of Juan Fernandez in the early eighteenth century. -
Period: to
Age of Sensibility
This period is known as the Age of Sensibility, but it is also sometimes described as the "Age of Johnson".[67] Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. -
Period: to
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century.[85] Romanticism arrived later in other parts of the English-speaking world. -
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
For many, the name ‘Frankenstein’ conjures up ghoulish images of a green-skinned, square-headed monster. Yet the novel that gave rise to this enduring cultural image is much more complex, and much more striking, than this. First published in 1818. Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley were guests of the poet Lord Byron: one rainy night, Byron suggested that the company should amuse themselves by making up ghost stories. Frankenstein was the result. -
Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
Oliver Twist is Charles Dickens's second novel, about an orphan boy whose good heart and healthy appetite help him escape the terrible underworld of crime and poverty in 19th century London. It has proven to be one of the best loved novels in the history of literature. -
Period: to
Victorian literature
It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English.[114] Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers,[115] and monthly serialising of fiction also encouraged this surge in popularity. -
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (pen-name Mark Twain) has been called the ‘father of American literature’. His novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) is set in Missouri along the Mississippi River. Twain captures the essence of everyday midwest American English on almost every page, largely because the story is narrated by Huck Finn himself. -
Period: to
20th century
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Period: to
Modernism I
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction -
Sherlock Holmes manuscript
Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most popular detective in literary history. The creation of Scotsman Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes is famous around the world for his brilliant analytical skills and his ability to sort carefully through the subtleties of complex clues. -
Period: to
Modernism II
An important development, beginning in the 1930s and 1940s was a tradition of working-class novels actually written by working-class background writers. -
Period: to
Post–modernism
Postmodern literature is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is difficult to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature. -
Paul Robeson's Othello
African-American actor Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was the first black actor since 1860 to perform the role of Othello in a major production. Robeson was a remarkably talented man; a student sports star who played in the precursor to the NFL, an accomplished bass-baritone, and a fine actor on film and stage. As the son of an escaped slave, he also knew racism and prejudice, and his outspoken left-wing politics saw him victimised by the US's anti-Communist authorities and media of the 1950s. -
Empire of the Sun (J.G. Ballard)
Empire of the Sun is J. G. Ballard’s most acclaimed novel and was, according to the author, the emotional centre of his work. The novel tells the story of Jim, a young boy living in Shanghai in the 1930s and ‘40s. Jim’s life, and that of the rest of the international expatriate community which he is part of, is changed forever by the arrival of the Japanese army in 1943. -
Period: to
21st Century
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Atonement
In the epilogue, McEwan paints Briony as an aging and dying novelist who is revisiting her past in fact and fiction; in fact, the reader shockingly learns (which outrages some) that Briony is actually the author of the book, sections of which are untrue and fictionalized. This novel, in the end, is not only about love, trust, and war but about the pleasures, pains, and challenges of writing, the burden of guilt, and, above all, the danger of interpretation.