Timeline of British Literature

This is a brief (and by no means comprehensive) overview of literature from the

major time periods of British literary history. This is just to give students an overall
context.
Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066)
Most of the storytelling in this time period was of the oral tradition. There are few written
manuscripts that still survive. The major themes of this time were praise of heroes who triumph
in battle and religious / moral instruction. The predominant genre in this time period was epic
poetry.
Author: The Venerable Bede
Work: Beowulf
Medieval Period (1066-1485)
This was the time of knights and their ladies fair. The chivalric code of honor was very important
to literature of this time, and romances became popular. Religion was still a major reason for
literature, as well, and plays that instructed the illiterate masses in moral codes, called morality
plays, were produced. One of the major genres of this period was the folk ballad.
Author: Geoffery Chaucer
Work: L'Morte de Arthur (The Death of Arthur)
The Renaissance (1485-1660) [The Elizabethan Age, The Jacobean Age, and The Puritan Age]
This time period marks a shift in literature from a focus on religion and the afterlife to human life
on earth. Two of the most popular themes of the time were love and human potential. Genres in
use at this time included metaphysical poetry, sonnets, and drama written in verse.
Authors: William Shakespeare, Edmund Spencer, Ben Johnson, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter
Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughn, Robert
Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and Sir John Suckling. (The Metaphysical Poets.)
The Restoration (1660-1798)

[The Age of Pope and The Age of Johnson]

The Restoration was a time where the emphasis was on rules, reason and logic. This is the time
period of the grammarians, the men who created many of the grammar rules that are still in use
today. During this time some of the predominant genres were: satire, essays and novels.
Authors: John Dryden, Samuel Pepys, Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Joseph
Addison, Richard Steele, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Gray, Robert Burns, and William Blake.

Romanticism (1798-1832)

[The Romantic Age]

The major theme of the Romantic period was nature. The Romantics saw patterns and meaning
in the natural world around them. This was a time of the lyrical ballad. Also, the Romantic
period brought to popularity the gothic horror novel.
Authors: William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Lord
Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen.

The Victorian Period (1832-1900) [20th and 21st Centuries]

It was in this time period that the novel began its rise in popularity. The availability of cheap
paper made mass publication possible. Serialized novels and magazines were popular with the
masses. Contrived plot twists such as strained coincidences and romantic triangles were often
utilized. This time period also saw a heightened conflict between the rich and the poor. In poetry
elegies were extremely popular.
Authors: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins,
A.E. Housman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Robert
Louis Stevenson, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard
Kipling, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and The Bronte Sisters.

The Modern/Post Modern Period of Literature (1900-current)

This era heralded the loss of the hero in literature. One of the major themes was technologies
destruction of society. Poetry began to be written in a style called free verse. Many novelists
began writing in a style call stream of consciousness. Many works from this time period contain
"epiphanies."
Authors: Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, Saki, Somerset Maugham, E.M. Forester, Virginia Woolf,
James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, Frank OConnor, George Orwell,
Graham Greene, Samuel Beckett, Doris Lessing, William Butler Yeats, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried
Sassoon, Edwin Muir, T.S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin,
Denise Levertov, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, George Bernard Shaw, and Harold
Pinter.

* Taken from Internet Source