Timeline of English Literature

A Timeline of English Literature & History
Prepared by Skylar H. Burris

Occasionally, you will see a blank line ___ instead of a date. This means that either the exact date is not known or I simply haven't filled it in yet. The placement of these works and events, however, will give you a general idea of where they fall on the historical timeline.

You may also wish to see an overview of the Kings and Queens of England and Britain and separate timelines for American and World literature and history.

When you're finsihed, try taking the literary timeline quiz I contributed to FunTrivia.

[ Website Table of Contents | Literary Resources | GRE Help ]
Last Revised: Sunday January 09, 2005 06:47 AM -0500

BEFORE CHRIST

1900 Construction of Stonehenge begins around this time

12-1300 Invasion of England by Celtic-speaking peoples

55-54 Julius Caesar's expeditions reach England

THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD

5-40 Reign of Cunobelinus (Cymbeline)

43 Roman conquest of England

122 Romans begin construction of Hadrian's Wall to defend Britain against invasions from the north

313 Christianity introduced in England

350 Invasion of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes begins

429 Withdrawal of Roman legions from England is complete by this date or earlier

5?? Arthur defeated and killed in Civil War

597 St. Augustine re-establishes the Roman Church in England

663 Roman Christianity is endorsed by the Synod of Whitby (instead of Celtic Christianity)

731 Bede, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People ["Caedmon's Hymn"]

757 Offa, King of Mercia, begins his reign

802 Egbert, King of Wessex

856-75 Viking raids at their peak

871-99 King Alfred the Great of Wessex (defeater of the Danes)

900-950 An English state is established

978 Ethelred the Unready reigns; Danish invasions resume

____         The Dream of the Rood
                 Beowulf
                 The Battle of Maldon
                 The Wanderer

1016 Canut of Denmark rules England, Denmark, and Norway

1042 King Edward the Confessor (Wessex line)

1066 William the Conqueror (NORMANDY) defeats Harold II in The Battle of Hastings

1086 The Doomsday Book

1087 William II (third son of William) King

1100 William II shot in ambush. Henry I (youngest son of William) King

1135 Stephen (BLOIS--grandson of William I by daughter) competes with Empress Matilda for throne ("The Anarchy")

1154 Henry II (PLANTAGENT-- grandson of Henry I by daughter)

1170 Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered in the cathedral
Oxford University founded at about this time

1169 Conquest of Ireland is begun

1189 Richard I, Coeur de Lion (son of Henry II) King

1190 Richard goes on Crusade, to return in 1194

1199 John Lackland (son of Henry II, brother of Richard) King

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THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD

1210 Cambridge University founded at about this time

1215 Magna Carta

1216 Henry III (son of John) King (builder of Westminster Abbey)

1272 Edward I, Longshanks, Prince of Wales King (son of Henry III)

1284 Conquest of Wales

1290 Jews Expelled from England

1307 Edward II (son of Edward I) King; deposed and murdered in 1327 by Queen Isabella and Mortimer

1327 Edward III of Windsor (son of Edward II, grandson of John) King

1337 100 Years War Begins (Edward III's claim to crown of France)

1346 Battle of Crecy, England defeats France's feudal armies

1348 The Black Death Strikes England

1362 William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman
English officially replaces French as the language of the court

1375 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

1377 Richard II (grandson of Edward III) King

1381 Peasant's Revolt

1386 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

1393 Julian of Norwich, Book of Showings, contains her visions from God

____ The Second Shepherds' Play

1399 Henry IV (LANCASTER--grandson of Edward III) King

1400 Welsh revolt under Owen Glendower

1403 Henry Percy (Shakespeare's Hotspur) defeated at Shrewsbury

1413 Henry V, Prince Hal (son of Henry IV) King

1415 Battle of Agincourt; five years later, Henry recognised as heir to French crown

1422 Henry VI (Son of Henry V)

1431 Joan of Arc is burned

1432 Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

1453 Hundred Years War ends with conquest of of Guienne by the French

1455 The War of The Roses Begins--Lancaster vs. York

1461 Edward IV (YORK--Great-great-grandson Edward III) King, temporarily deposes Henry VI

1469 Sir Thomas Malory (Morte D'arthur)

1471 Henry VI murdered

1483 Edward V (son of Edward IV) King and murdered
Richard III, Crookback King

1485 Richard III dies in battle at Bosworth--The War of the Roses ends
Henry VII King (TUDOR-- married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV)

____ Everyman

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THE 16th CENTURY

1509 Henry VIII (son of Henry VII) King

1516 Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia
(also wrote History of King Richard III; he was killed for his Catholic faith)

1517 Reformation Begins

1533 Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterburry, validates Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn

1534-5 Papal authority abolished in England; Moore executed; Act of Supremacy

____ John Skelton, "Colin Clout"

1534 Henry VIII acknowledged "supreme Head on Earth" by Anglican Church

1537 Howard, Earl of Surrey ("My Friend, the Things That Do Attain") imprisoned

1538 Great English Bible

1541 Wyatt ("Whoso List to Hunt") imprisoned

1547 Edward VI King

1553 Mary I, "Bloody Mary" Queen (daughter of Henry VIII)
Attempts to restore Catholicism, repeals anti-papal legislation

1554 Lady Jane Grey executed

1558 Mary I dies childless. Elizabeth I (daughter Henry VIII) Queen

1559 Act of Supremacy restores Anglican Church

1560 Anglo-Scottish Alliance in Treaty of Edninburgh

1561 Mary Queen of Scotts (Catholic) begins rule in Scotland
Sir Thomas Hoby, translation of The Courtier

1563 The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church

1564 Shakespeare is born

1567 Mary Queen of Scots imprisoned in England (driven from throne by Calvinists)

1578 John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit

1587 Elizabeth beheads Mary Queen of Scots for Catholic plots

1588 Defeat of the Spanish Armada

1590 Edmund Spencer, The Faerie Queen

1591 Sir Philip Sidney, "Astrophil and Stella"

1592 Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus and Hero and Leander
Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil

1593 Richard Hooker defends existing practices in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

1598 Revolt in Ireland

1601   Essex executed for rebellion
           Thomas Campion ("My Sweetest Lesbia." "Rose-Cheeked Laura," "Fain Would I Wed")
           Shakespeare begins Hamlet about this time

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EARLY 17th CENTURY

1603 Elizabeth dies. James I (STUART), James VI of Scotland King

1605 The Gunpowder Plot
Francis Bacon writes The Advancement of Learning (In 1620 Novum Organum)

1606 Ben Jonson's play Volpone published

1611 King James Bible Published

1615 John Donne ("The Ecstasy", "The Canonization", etc.) becomes Anglican priest

1616 Shakespeare dies

1618 30 Years War begins in Europe

1620 Pilgrims depart for New England

1600's John Webster publishes his play The Duchess of Malf

1625 Charles I (son of James I) King

1629 Charles I dissolves parliament

1633 George Herbert, The Temple ("Jordan", "The Pulley", "Love", etc.)

1638 Scottish revolt over imposition of Laudian liturgy

1640     Charles I, in need of tax money for war, convenes "The Long Parliament"
             Izaak Walton, The Life of Donne
             Thomas Carew, "A Rapture"

1641 Irish revolt

1642    English Civil War
            Theaters closed
            Sir John Denham, "Cooper's Hill"

1645 Edmund Waller, "Go, Lovely Rose!"

1646 Richard Crashaw, "Steps to the Temple", "The Flaming Heart"
Sir John Suckling, "Loving and Beloved"

1648 30 Years War Ends
Robert Herrick, Hesperides ("The Vine") and Noble Numbers (sacred)

1649 Charles I beheaded. Council of State rules (Commonwealth/Protectorate)
Richard Lovelace "To Althea, from Prison" and "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars"

1650 Henry Vaughn, "Silex Scintillans"

1651 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

1653 Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector

____ First appearance of women on stage
___ First performance of an English opera

1656 Abraham Cowley, "Ode: Of Wit"

1658 Richard Cromwell, "Tumble-down Dick" (son of Oliver), Lord Protector

____ Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
Samuel Pepys (diary later published in 1825)

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THE RESTORATION AND 18th CENTURY

1660 The Restoration (Charles II)

1662 Royal Society of London incorporated to promote arts and sciences

1663 Samuel Butler, "Hudibras"
John Milton, Paradise Lost

1665 The Plague breaks out

1666 The Great Fire of London

1673 Test Act requires office holders to accept rites of the Anglican Church

1675 John Bunyan writes Pilgrim's Progress during second imprisonment
Christopher Wren is chosen to design St. Paul's

1676 Sir George Etherege, The Man of Mode

1677 John Dryden, All For Love

1678 Titus Oates exposes the details of a fictious Popish Plot to kill the King

1680 Exclusion Bill Crisis

1681 John Dryden, "Absalom and Achitophel"

1682 Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv'd

1685 James II King

1687 Isaac Newton, Principles of Mathematics

1688 The Glorious Revolution

1689 Bill of Rights passed

1690 John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding

1696 Sir John Vanbrugh, The Relapse

1700 William Congreve, The Way of the World

1701 Act of Settlement stipulates that Anne, Protestant daughter of James II, is to succeed William

1702 Anne (second daughter of James II) Queen

1704 The Duke of Marlborough's victory at Blenheim against the French

1707 George Farquhar, The Beaux' Stragem
Act of Union (Scotland + England = "Great Britain")

1709-11 Addison (paper Tattler)

1711 Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" (later wrote "An Essay on Man")

1711-2 Steele's paper Spectator

1713 Treaty of Utrecht ends the war with Louis XIV

1714 George I (HANOVER--son of granddaughter of James I) King
Alexander Pope, "Rape of the Lock"

1715 First Jacobite Rebellion:
"The Old Pretender" (son of James II) attempts to restore Stuart rule

1719 Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is published

1726 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

1727 George II

1728 John Gay, The Beggar's Opera

1729 John Wesley founds Methodist Society

1730 James Thomson, "The Seasons"

1731 Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb

1739 War of Jenkin's Ear (with Spain) begins (to 1741)

1746         Second Jacobite rebellion crushed at Culloden
                 (Bonnie Prince Charles--grandson of James II--tried to regain the throne)
                 William Collins ("Ode on the Poetical Character")

1751 Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
Henry Fielding, Amelia

1755 Samuel Johnson finishes his Dictionary (James Boswell later writes his biography)

1756 The Seven Years' War (French and Indian Wars) begins

1759 Wolfe captures Quebec

1760 George III (grandson of George II) King

1761 William Pitt resigns as Prime Minister when his colleagues refuse to fight Spain

1763 Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years War

1768 Cook's voyage to Australia

1770 Oliver Goldsmith, "The Deserted Village"

1771 Richard Cumberland, The West Indian

1773 Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

1775 War for American Independence Begins
Jane Austen is born

1776 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (first volume)

1777 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal

1783 William Pitt (younger) prime minister

1785 William Cowper, "The Task"

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THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

1786 Robert Burns: Poems, Chiefly in the Scotish Dialect

1789 *The French Revolution begins*

1790 Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

1792 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

1793 Bastille stormed. Louis XVI executed. Reign of Terror under Robespierre.
England wars with France; the Napoleonic Wars begin

1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads

1801 Great Britain and Ireland Unite as the "United Kingdom"

1804 Napoleon crowned emperor

1805 Battle of Trafalgar

1811 The Regency
Prince of Wales acts as regent for George III, who has been declared incurably insane

1812 War with the United States

1813 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo

1817 William Hazlitt, critic, On Gusto
Jane Austen dies

1818 Lord Byron begins "Don Juan"
Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelly, Frankenstein

1819     John Keats "Ode to a Nightingale"
             Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
             Peterloo Massacre

1820     George IV (son of George III) King
             Thomas Love Peackock, critic The Four Ages of Poetry
             Percy Shelley "To a Skylark" and "Adonais"

1821 Thomas De Quincey Confessions of an English Opium Eater

1823 Charles Lamb, Christ Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago

1829 Catholic Emancipation Act

1830 William IV (3rd son of George III) King
Thomas Moore Life of Byron

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THE VICTORIAN AGE / 19th CENTURY

1832 First Reform Bill

1834 Poor Law Reform Act

1837 Victoria (daughter of 4th son of George III) Queen
Thomas Carlyle publishes The French Revolution

1841 Peel Prime Minister

1845 Great Potato Famine

1846 Corn Laws repealed (i.e the tariff on grains)

1847     Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
             Anne Bronte, Agnes Gray
             William Thackery, Vanity Fair

1848 Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
Macaulay, History of England

1850 Tennyson publishes "In Memoriam" and succeeds Wordsworth as poet laureate

1851 Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"
Charles Dickens, Bleak House

1854 Crimean War

1855 Robert Browning, "Men and Women"

1856 John Ruskin ,"On the Pathetic Fallacy"

1857     Elizabeth Barret Browning, "Aurora Leigh"
             Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
             Indian Mutiny

1858 William Morris "The Defense of Guenevere"

1859     Charles Darwin, Origin of Species
             Edward Fitzgerald "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"
            George Eliot, Adam Bede

1861 John Stuart Mill, Representative Government

1865 Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

1866 Algernon Swinburne, "The Triumph of Time" ("Poems and Ballads")

1867 Second Reform Act

1868 Walter Pater, Aesthetic Poetry
Gladstone Prime Minister

1870-1 Franco Prussian War

1871 George Eliot, Middlemarch
Religious tests at Universities Abolished

1872 Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market"

____ Thomas Henry Huxley gives his "Science and Culture" lectures
Dante Gabriel Rosetti, "The House of Life"

1874 Disraeli Prime Minsiter
Thomas Harding, Far From the Madding Crowd

1875     William Ernest Henley, "In Hospital--Waiting"
             Gilbert and Sullivan, Trial by Jury
             Britain acquires Suez Canal

1877 Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur"
Victoria declared Empress of India

1879 George Meredith, The Egoist

1884 Third Reform Act

1886 Salsibury Prime Minister

1888 Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

1891 Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbevilles

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TWENTIETH CENTURY

1894 Rudyard Kipling, Jungle Books

1895 Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

1899 Boer War

1900 Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

1901     Edward VII (son of Victoria--SAXE-COBURG AND GOTHA)

1902     William Butler Yeats "Adam's Curse"
             Balfour Prime Minister

1903 Henry James, The Ambassadors

1905 H.G. Wells, Kipps

1908 E.M. Forster, A Room With A View

1910 George V (2nd son of Ed VII--WINDSOR)

1913 D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
Vachel Lindsay, General William Booth Enters Into Heaven

1914 World War I
Ezra Pound organizes the Imagists

1916 Lloyd George Prime Minister

1918     Gerard Manley Hopkins's poetry published after death
             Siegfried Sassoon "Glory of Women"; Wilfred Owen "Dulce Et Decorum Est"
            Women (age 30 or over) get right to vote; universal male suffrage

1920 Partition established in Government of Ireland Act

1922 T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
James Joyce, Ulyssess

1923 George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan

1924 First Labour Government

1925 Virignia Wolf, Mrs. Dalloway

1930 Evelyn Waugh publishes Vile Bodies

1932 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

1933 A.E. Housman, The Name and Nature of Poetry

1934 Robert Graves, I, Claudius

1936     Edward VIII (son of Geroge V) King then abdicates
             George VI (2nd son of George V) King
             Spanish Civil War Begins
             Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

1937     W.H. Auden, "Spain, 1937"
             Louis Macneice, "Carrickfergus"
            Chamberlain Prime Minister

1938 Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
C.S. Lewis, Out of The Silent Planet

1939 World War II

1940 Churchill Prime Minister

1945 George Orwell, Animal Farm
Henry Reed, "Naming of Parts"

1947 Independence granted to India and Pakistan

1952 Elizabeth II (daughter of George VI)
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

1954 William Golding, The Lord of the Flies

1955 Philip Larkin, "Church Going"

1956 Suez Crisis

1957 Stevie Smith, "Not Waving But Drowning"
Ghana obtains independence

1960 Ted Hughes, "Relic"

1979 Thatcher Prime Minsiter

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