English Literature Timeline
450-1066 Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period
Beowulf-anonymous
Caedmon’s Hymn-Bede
The Wife’s Lament-an elegy
The Wanderer-an elegy
Caedmon’s Hymn-Bede
The Wife’s Lament-an elegy
The Wanderer-an elegy
1066-1500 Middle English Period
Canterbury Tales-Geoffrey Chaucer
Le Morte d’Arthur-Malory
Everyman-mortality play
The Cuckoo Song-lyric poetry
Le Morte d’Arthur-Malory
Everyman-mortality play
The Cuckoo Song-lyric poetry
1500-1660 The Renaissance: 1558-1603 Elizabethan Age
Shakespeare: Twelfth Night, Much Ado about Nothing, Richard III
Christopher Marlowe: Tamburlaine the Great, Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II
Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene
Christopher Marlowe: Tamburlaine the Great, Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II
Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene
1500-1660 The Renaissance: 1603-1625 Jacobean Age
Shakespeare: The Tempest, Othello, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Sonnets
John Donne: his songs, sonnets, and elegies
Francis Bacon: Reports
Ben Johnson: Volpone (or The Fox)
Thomas Middleton
John Donne: his songs, sonnets, and elegies
Francis Bacon: Reports
Ben Johnson: Volpone (or The Fox)
Thomas Middleton
1500-1660 The Renaissance: 1625-1649 Caroline Age
John Milton: Paradise Lost
George Herbert: The Temple
Robert Herrick: Hesperides
Thomas Carew: An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul’s, Dr. John Donne
George Herbert: The Temple
Robert Herrick: Hesperides
Thomas Carew: An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul’s, Dr. John Donne
1500-1660 The Renaissance: 1649-1660 Commonwealth Period
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
John Milton: The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
Lucy Hutchinson: Memoirs of the Life of Colonel John Hutchinson
John Milton: The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
Lucy Hutchinson: Memoirs of the Life of Colonel John Hutchinson
1660-1785 The Restoration and the 18th Century
John Dryden: The Conquest of Granada, “Alexander’s Feast”
Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock
John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress
John Locke: Two Treatises of Government
Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock
John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress
John Locke: Two Treatises of Government
1785-1832 The Romantic Period
John Keats: poems…
Robert Burns
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Prometheus Unbound
Lord Byron: Don Juan/poems..
Jane Austen: ride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey
William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner/ Kubla Khan
John Keats: poetry>”When I have fears I may cease to be,” “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
Robert Burns
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Prometheus Unbound
Lord Byron: Don Juan/poems..
Jane Austen: ride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey
William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner/ Kubla Khan
John Keats: poetry>”When I have fears I may cease to be,” “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
1830-1901 The Victorian Age
Alfred Tennyson: Poems
Charles Dickens:
Robert Browning
Elizabeth Barret Browning
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
George Eliot: Middlemarch
Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Robert Louis Stevenson: Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Rudyard Kipling: Plain Tales from the Hills
Thomas Hardy
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest/The Picture of Dorian Gray
Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim
George Bernard Shaw: Mrs. Warren’s Profession
Charles Dickens:
Robert Browning
Elizabeth Barret Browning
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
George Eliot: Middlemarch
Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Robert Louis Stevenson: Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Rudyard Kipling: Plain Tales from the Hills
Thomas Hardy
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest/The Picture of Dorian Gray
Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim
George Bernard Shaw: Mrs. Warren’s Profession
1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites
Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s The House of LIfe
Christina Rosetti’s The Goblin Market
Christina Rosetti’s The Goblin Market
1900-present (20th century and after)
Thomas Hardy
George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion
T.S. Eliot: The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock
D.H. Lawrence
William Butler Yeats: “Lapis Lazuli,” “Byzantium,”
Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
George Orwell: 1984
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale
George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion
T.S. Eliot: The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock
D.H. Lawrence
William Butler Yeats: “Lapis Lazuli,” “Byzantium,”
Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
George Orwell: 1984
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale