A Timeline of British Literature

 

Periods (Dates)  Cultural Contexts Dates Literary Contexts 
Anglo-Saxon or Old English Period (c.476-1066 CE) Traditional date for the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon Conquest.  C. 476 CE   
  St. Augustine of Canterbury arrives in Kent.  597 CE  
     C. 800 CE  Composition of Beowulf (?)
   

 C. 900 CE

  Composition of The Dream of the Rood
     C. 970 CE Composition of The Wanderer
Anglo-Norman Period (1066-c. 1200 CE) Norman Conquest.  1066 CE  
  Reign of King Henry II.  1154-89 CE Marie de France probably composed Lanval for Henry II or his wife, Eleanor of Aquitane
Middle English English Period (c.1200-1485 or 1500 CE)    C. 1200 Composition of Layamon's Brut
  Parliament opened in English for the first time; The Statute of Pleading makes English the official language of
legal proceedings.		 1362 CE   
    C.1350-1400 Composition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
    1385-1400 CE Composition of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
  Printing introduced to England by William Caxton.  1476 CE  
 Early Modern English Period (1485 or 1500-1800 CE); Early Tudor Literary Period (1485-1558 CE) The Battle of Bosworth Field (usually considered the end of the Medieval Period in England).  1485 CE  
    1542 CE Death of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder
    1547 CE Death of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
    1557 CE Publication of Tottel's Miscellany, which contained poems by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 
 Elizabethan Literary Period (1558-1603 CE) Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England 1558 CE   
  Elizabeth excommunicated by the Pope 1570 CE  
  First company of professional actors in England established. 1574 CE  
    1586 CE Death of Sir Phillip Sidney
    1590 CE First publication of Spenser's Faerie Queene
    1591 CE Publication of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella
    1595 CE Sir Edmund Spenser publishes Amoretti and Epithalamion 
     1598 CE Composition of The First Part of King Henry the Fourth by William Shakespeare.
    1599 CE Death of Sir Edmund Spenser
Jacobean Literary Period (1603-49 CE) James I becomes King of England 1603 CE
  Founding of Jamestown, Virginia 1607 CE  
    1609 CE Publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets
    1611 CE Publication of Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
    1616 CE Death of Shakespeare
  Pilgrims land at Plymouth, Massachusetts 1620 CE  
  Donne appointed Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral 1621 CE  
    1623 CE Publication of Shakespeare's First Folio--the first edition of his collected works.
    1631 CE Death of Donne
    1633 CE Publication of Donne's Poems
    1645 CE Death of Aemilia Lanyer
Commonwealth Period (1649-1660 CE) Beheading of Charles I; beginning of the Commonwealth. 1649 CE  
Enlightenment Period (1660-1800 CE); Restoration Literary Period (1660-1700 CE) Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II. 1660 CE  
    1667 CE  Publication of Paradise Lost by John Milton
    1674 CE Death of Milton
    1678 CE Death of Andrew Marvell
    1681 CE Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel
    1688 CE Publication of Oronooko by Aphra Behn.
Augustan Literary Period (1700-1745 CE) 1700 CE Death of John Dryden
    1714 CE Publication of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock.
    1726 CE Publication of Swift's Gulliver's Travels
    1729 CE Publication of Swift's "A Modest Proposal"
Johnsonian Literary Period (1745-1785 CE)   1745 CE Deaths of Swift and Pope
  Publication of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (first well-accepted, comprehensive dictionary of the English language).  1755 CE  
    1765 CE Samuel Johnson publishes his edition of Shakespeare
Pre-Romatic Literary Period (1785-1798 CE) The American War of Independence. 1776-83 CE Adam Smith publishes Wealth of Nations (1776 CE)
    1779 CE Johnson publishes Lives of the Poets
    1784 CE Death of Samuel Johnson
   The Beginning of the French Revolution. 1789 CE   
Romantic Period (1798-1830 CE)     1798 CE Wordsworth and Coleridge publish The Lyrical Ballads.
Modern English Language Period (beginning of American and British dialects--1800 CE-present) 1800 CE "Michael" By William Wordsworth Published.
  British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar establishes British naval superiority worldwide.  1805 CE  
1816 CE Publication of "Christabel" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
     1818 CE Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein.  Percy Bysshe Shelley composes Prometheus Unbound.
1819 CE "The Eve of St. Agnes" & "La Belle Dame sans Merci" by John Keats published.
    1821 CE Death of John Keats.
    1822 CE Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Victorian Literary Period (1830-1900 CE); Early Victorian Literary Period (1830-48 CE) 1830 CE
    1834 CE Death of Coleridge
  Victoria becomes Queen of England. 1837 CE   
1842 CE Alfred Lord Tennyson publishes "Ulyssess."
  Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning 1846 CE  
Middle Victorian Literary Period (1848-70 CE)   1850 CE Death of Wordsworth; posthumous publication of The Prelude
    1852 CE Publication of Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
    1859 CE  Publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
  Great Britain annexes Lagos (capital of Nigeria). 1861 CE  
1864 CE Publication of "Caliban Upon Setebos" by Robert Browning.
Late Victorian Literary Period (1870-1901 CE) Universal Compulsory Education enacted in England. 1870 CE
    1888 CE Tennyson completes The Idylls of the King, which he began in 1833 CE.
    1889 CE Death of Browning
    1890 CE Publication of Yeats's "Lake Isle of Innsifree" (one of his Pre-Raphaelite influenced poems).
    1892 CE Death of Tennyson
Modern Literary Period (1901-45 CE)  First broadcast of a human voice via radio. Death of Queen Victoria. 1901 CE  
     1902 CE Publication of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
    1903 CE  Publication of In the Seven Woods by Yeats (beginning of his more characteristically modernist period).
  First World War 1914-18 CE  
  British Broadasting Corporation (BBC) established.  Founding of the modern Republic of Ireland. 1921 CE  
    1922 CE  James Joyce's Ulysses and T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland published.
  Women achieve equal voting rights with men in Great Britain 1928 CE  
    1929 CE Virginia Woolf publishes "A Room of One's Own"
  Second World War begins 1939 CE Death of Yeats
    1940 CE Publication of "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" by W. H. Auden.
Post-Modern Literary Period (1945 CE-) First (and only) use of nuclear weapons. 1945 CE Publication of George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Partition of English colony of India into separate states of India (Hindu majority) and Pakistan (Muslim majority). 1948 CE
  Nigeria attains independence from British colonial rule. 1960 CE  
    1965 CE Death of Eliot
     1972 CE Publication of North by Seamus Haney.
    1973 CE Death of Auden
    1975 CE Initial publication of Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman.
    1981 CE Salman Rushdie publishes "The Prophet's Hair."
  Iranian Mullahs pronounce fatwa (death sentence) upon Salman Rushdie for blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses. 1988 CE  
    1991 CE Publication of "The Moment Before the Gun Went Off;" Nadine Gordimer awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
  End of Apartheid in South Africa with the election of Nelson Mandela as President 1994 CE  
  Fatwa on Rushdie lifted. 1998 CE  
    2000 CE Seamus Haney Publishes his "new verse translation" of Beowulf.

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