Major Periods in English Literature –
Timeline
43 Roman empire
Invasion of Britain
303 Emperor Constantine declares Christianity
as official religion
304 Martyrdom of St.
Alban
500s Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain
597 St. Augustine’s mission from Rome to
Britain
658 Cædmon's Hymn (oldest recorded English
poem)
Old English Period (600 – 1066)
§ 1000 Beowulf (said to be one of the earliest and
longest epics in English literature)
§ 1020 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (compiled by King
Alfred the Great)
§ 1066 Norman Conquest of England (under the command
of William the Conqueror)
Medieval Period (1066 – 1485)
§ 1190 The Owl and Nightingale another(example of early English poetry)
§ 1215 Magna Carta
§ 1348 Chronicles of Black Death (gives accounts of
the devastating plague in that period)
§ 1367 Langland, Piers Plowman (an early example of
an allegorical narrative poem )
§ 1370 Sir Gawain and
The Green Knight (popular Medieval romance that also refers to King Arthur and
round table)
§ 1382 Peasant’s Revolt
§ 1400 Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (highlight of
medieval literature)
§ 1473 First book printed in English (printing in
England pioneered by William Caxton)
§ 1485 Malory, Morte d’ Arthur
English Renaissance (1485 – 1660)
§ 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field (beginning of Tudor
dynasty and end of Medieval period)
§ 1492 Columbus’s first voyage to New World
§ 1516 More, Utopia
§ 1535 Reformation – Act of Supremacy (initiated by Henry
VIII)
Elizabethan Era (1558
-1603)
§ 1564
-1616 William Shakespeare
§ 1588 Spanish Armada attacks
§ 1590 Spenser, The Faerie Queen (tribute to
Elizabeth I)
§ 1592 Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
§ 1595 - 1596 Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
§ 1599 Globe Theatre is built
Jacobean Era (1567–1625)
§ 1601 Shakespeare, Hamlet
§ 1603 Shakespeare, Othello
§ 1603 Elizabeth I dies
§ 1605 Gunpowder Plot (Guy Fawkes)
§ 1607 American Settlements (begin in Jamestown)
§ 1611 King James Bible (the first bible written in
English)
§ 1616 Shakespeare dies
§ 1616 Johnson, To Penshurst
§ 1623 Shakespeare’s work compiled and published
Caroline Era (1625 – 1642)
§ 1633 John Donne’s metaphysical poetry published
after his death
English Civil War (1642
-1651)
§ 1642 English Civil War (which results in republic)
§ 1649 Charles I beheaded
§ 1653 Beginning of Protectorate
Restoration Period (1660 -1700)
§ 1660 Restoration of
monarchy (with Charles II on the throne)
§ 1666 Great fire of London
§ 1667 Milton, Paradise Lost
§ 1688 The Glorious Revolution
The
Augustan Age: Neoclassicism and Age of Enlightenment (1700 – 1740s)
§ 1702 – 1714 Queen Anne
§ 1707 Act of Union
§ 1709 Swift, A Description of the Morning
§ 1714 Pope, Rape of the Lock
§ 1719 Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
§ 1726 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
§ 1775 - 1783 American War of Independence
Romanticism (1789 – 1830)
§ 1789 French Revolution
§ 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads
With A Few Other Poems
§ 1789
– 1821 John Keats
§ 1802 – 1804 Wordsworth, Imitations of Immortality
§ 1807 Abolition of Slave trade in British Empire
§ 1813 Austen, Pride and Prejudice
§ 1815 Battle of Waterloo (marks end of Napoleon’s
reign)
§ 1818 Shelley, Frankenstein
§ 1819 – 1820 Keats, Bright Star
§ 1820 Keats, Ode in a Grecian Urn
Victorian Period (1837 – 1901)
§ 1831
– 1832 Reform Act
§ 1834 Abolition of slavery in British Empire
§ 1837 – 1839 Dickens, Oliver Twist
§ 1841 Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
§ 1842 Tennyson, Ulysses
§ 1847 Bronte, Wuthering Heights
§ 1850 Browning, Hiram’s Greek Slave
§ 1851 The Great Exhibition of London at Crystal
Palace, Hyde Park
§ 1854 Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade
§ 1859 Darwin, On the Origin of Species
§ 1865 Abolition of slavery in America
§ 1867 Arnold, Dover Beach
§ 1870 Elementary Education Act
§ 1877 Queen Victoria named Empress of India
§ 1890s
New Women movement
§ 1892 Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
§ 1901 Death of Queen Victoria
By B. Pascal Zwane
