Periods of English literature

Old English: sixth through eleventh centuries

c. 410
449
477
495
537
547
565
597
664
eighth century
802
866
871
878
tenth century
c. 990
1016
1042
1066

1086
1095

Withdrawal of Roman legions

Jutes arrive in Kent under Hengest
First Saxon invasion (Sussex)
Second Saxon invasion (Wessex)
Death of King Arthur (resistance of Britons at an end)
Norwegian (Viking) colony in Northumbria
St. Columba: Irish mission
St. Augustine at Canterbury (Roman mission)
Synod of Whitby
Mercia (Midlands) predominant among seven kingdoms (Northumbria,
East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Wessex)
Egbert of Wessex rules over Essex, Kent, Sussex
Danish "Great Army" (Vikings) lands in East Anglia and occupies
Northumbria and Mercia as well
Alfred the Great King of Wessex (d. 899)
boundary to Danelaw between London and Chester
English forces re-occupy Danelaw
another Danish invasion in the south (Sweyn)
Canute, son of Sweyn, king of England
Death of Canutes son; Edward the Confessor
Death of Edward the Confessor; Harold (queens brother) defeats the
Norwegian invaders at Battle of Stamford Bridge (near York), but is
defeated himself in the Battle of Hastings by William the Conqueror
(Normandy)
Domesday Book
Crusades

Middle English: twelfth century to fifteenth century

1154
1210
1215
1265
1282
1314
1339-1453
1377
1380
1381
1399
1400
1415
1423-1424
c. 1440

Henry II (married to Eleanor of Aquitaine)

English colonisation of Ireland
Magna Carta (King John)
Simon de Montforts rebellion
Subjection of Wales (King Edward I.)
Battle of Bannockburn: Scotland re-asserts its independence
100 Years War
Richard II (sons of Edward III, John of Gaunt of Lancaster and Edmund
of York/uncles of Richard II (son of Black Prince) regents)
Wyclifs bible
Peasants Revolt under Wat Tyler
Richard II deposed by Henry "Bolingbroke" (son of John Gaunt)
Death of Chaucer
Battle of Agincourt, "Hal" (Henry V)
King James I of Scotland imprisoned by the English, Kingis Quair
Invention of printing in Europe
1

1453-1485
1456
1476
1485

War of the Roses (Lancaster/red rose vs. York/white rose)

Gutenberg Bible, first printed book
William Caxton establishes the first printing press in England
Sir Thomas Malorys Le Morte d`Arthur
Battle of Bosworth Fields: Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond

Renaissance/Early Modern Period: c. 1500-1616/1649/1660

Elizabethan/Jacobean Literature
?1477-1535
1549
1557
1558-1603
1564-1616
1581
1603-1625
1611
1625-42

Sir Thomas More (Utopia1516)

First Book of Common Prayer
Tottles Miscellany (Songs and Sonnets)
Queen Elizabeth I
William Shakespeare
Sir Philip Sidney, Old Arcadia
King James I (Stuarts)
King James Bible ("Authorized Version")
King Charles I (executed 1649)

Restoration: 1660- 1700/1707

1608-1674
1628-1688
1660-1685
1667
1678
1685-1688
1700
1707

John Milton
John Bunyan
Charles II
John Milton, Paradise Lost
John Bunyan, Pilgrims Progress
brother James II (Catholic)
death of John Dryden
death of John Farquhar

The Eighteenth Century

1712
1719
1726
1740
1742
1748
1749

Rape of the Lock (Alexander Pope)

Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Crusoe)
Gullivers Travels (Jonathan Swift)
Pamela (Samuel Richardson)
Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding)
Clarissa (Samuel Richardson)
Tom Jones (Henry Fielding)

Romanticism: 1798-1830
1789-1804
1798
1799/1805/1850
1817
1812-1818

French Revolution
Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge)
The Prelude
Biographia Literaria
Childe Harolds Pilgrimage (George Gordon Byron)
2

1815
1795-1821
1792-1822
1834
1850

Vienna Congress: end of the Napoleonic era

John Keats
Percy Bysshe Shelley
death of Coleridge
death of William Wordsworth

The Victorian Period: 1830-1900

1809-1892
1811-1863
1812-1870

1815-82
1832
1837-1901
1840-1928
1843-1916
1859

Alfred Lord Tennyson

William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair 1847; The Newcomes
1853-55)
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist 1837; Dombey and Son 1848; David
Copperfield 1849-50; Bleak House 1852-53; Hard Times 1854; Little
Dorrit 1855-57; Great Expectations 1860-61)
Anthony Trollope (Barchester Towers 1857; TheDukes Children 1880)
First Reform Bill
Queen Victoria
Thomas Hardy (Tess of the DUrbervilles 1891; Jude the Obscure
1895, last novel)
Henry James (Daisy Miller 1879; Portrait of a Lady 1881; What
Maisier Knew 1897; The Golden Bowl 1904)
John Stuart Mill, Liberty; Chales Darwin, Origin of Species

Modernist Literature
1856-1950
1857-1924
1864-1941
1865-1939
1882-1941
1885-1972
1888-1965

George Bernard Shaw (Widowers Houses 1893)

Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim 1900)
James Joyce (Dubliners 1916; Ulysses 1922; Finnegans Wake 1939)
W.B. Yeats
Virginia Woolf (Jacobs Room 1922; Mrs Dalloway 1925; To the
Lighthouse 1927; The Waves 1931; Between the Acts 1941)
Ezra Pound (Cantos 1970)
T.S. Eliot (Prufrock 1917; The Waste Land 1922; Four Quartets 193542; Murder in the Cathedral 1935)

Post-War British Literature

1906-1989
1952
1956
1957

Samuel Beckett (1953: Watt; 1951: Molloy; 1955: Waiting for Godot)
Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems 1934-1952
Look Back in Anger (John Osborne)
The Room (Pinter)