English Renaissance Period (1500-1660)

Poetry: main authors

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
first English sonnet writer;
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517-1547)
Studied Italian sonnets, but his own were predominantly in the English form
(abab cdcd efef gg)
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86)
Arcadia (1590 and 1593) pastoral poetry
Edmund Spenser (1552-99)
Invented the Spenserian stanza
The Faerie Queene , Spenser's major work with a lasting influence
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Collection of 154 sonnets
Venus and Adonis (1593), narrative poem
The Rape of Lucrece (1594), narrative poem
John Donne (1572-1631)
founder of the school of "metaphysical poets"
Songs and Sonnets (contains 50 of his love poems but no actual sonnets)
George Herbert (1593-1633)
The Temple, published posthumously, contains 160 of his poems
John Milton (1608-1674)
Areopagitica (1643), pamphlet defending the liberty of the press

Plays, playwrights, and theatres

Thomas Kyd (1558-94)
The Spanish Tragedy (1592)
Christopher Marlowe (1564-93)
Edward II. (publ. 1594)
Dr. Faustus (publ. 1604)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
First Folio Edition of his Plays: 1623

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

his first Folio The Works of Ben Jonson appeared in 1616;
Every Man in His Humour (1598)
John Webster (c. 1580-1625)
The Duchess of Malfi (1613-14, revenge tragedy)

Prose and Fiction

Thomas More (c. 1477-1535)
Utopia (1516) Latin novel
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86)
The Arcadia (begun in 1580, published 1592) complex romance for an aristocratic
audience

The Long 18th Century: 1660-1780 (Restoration, Age of Reason, Age of Sensibility)

Poetry: main authors

John Milton
Paradise Lost (1667), religious epic
Paradise Regained, (1671), religious epic
John Dryden (1631-1700)
Fables, Ancient and Modern (1699)
Alexander Pope (1685-1744)
the most influential author of the period
The Rape of the Lock (1714) a playful mock-heroic poem
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1711)
A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed 1734)
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
poetry of sensibility
Elegy written in a Country Church-Yard (1751)

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)

poetry of sensibility
The Deserted Village (1770)
Edward Young (1683-1765)
poetry of sensibility
Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1749)

Drama: main authors

Aphra Behn (1640-1689)
first professional woman writer in English Literature
The Rover (1677-81) her most popular play; in two parts
William Wycherley (1640-1716)
The Country Wife (1674), a play of intrigues
Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) ;
The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger (1696) immensely successful comedy
William Congreve (1670-1729)
master of Restoration comedy
The Way of the World (1700)

Fiction: main authors

Aphra Behn (1640-1689, one of the Mothers of the English Novel)
Oroonoko, or The History of the Royal Slave (1678); her most popular novel
Eliza Heywood (1693-1756) writer and publisher; wrote more than 30 novels
Love in Excess or The Fatal Enquiry (1719-1720) touches on themes of education
and marriage (in several parts)
Daniel Defoe (c. 1660-1731)
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner
(1719) the work for which he is best known
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Gullivers Travels (1726) a satire in four parts

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) the first of Richardson's novels consisting
entirely of letters and journals;
Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
Is generally regarded as the inventor of Gothic fiction
The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story (1765), prototype of the Gothic novel

The Romantic period (1780-1832)

Poetry: main authors

First generation of Romantic poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge; three "Lake Poets":

William Blake (1757-1827)

Songs of Innocence (1789), Songs of Experience (1794);
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Lyrical Ballads: 1798 (the preface contains the principles of Romantic poetry
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Composed upon Westminster Bridge (1807), sonnet
IWandered Lonely as a Cloud (1807)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, the second of the Lake Poets)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)

Second generation of Romantic poets; born after the French revolution, they reacted
against the older generation with liberal and radical ideas

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1778-1824)

Don Juan (1819-1824), a comic epic romance
Created and developed the alienated Byronic hero
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Ode to the West Wind;

John Keats (1795-1821)

Ode to a Nightingale

Drama: main authors

George Gordon Lord Byron

Manfred (1817)

The Novel: main authors

Clara Reeve (1729-1807)
The Old English Baron (1777)
Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Matthew Gregory [Monk] Lewis (1775-1818)
The Monk (1796)
Charlotte Dacre (1782-1841) created a new type of heroine for her Gothic novels
Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer (1805)
Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley (1797-1851)
Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (1818, revised 1831)
Jane Austen (1775-1817) most influential author of novels of manners;
invented free indirect speech
Northanger Abbey (1798, published in 1818)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849)
Castle Rackrent (1800)
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
established the form of the historical novel;
Waverley, or, Tis Sixty Years Since (1814), a romantic historical novel

The Victorian Age, 1832-1901

Poetry: main authors

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Ulysses (1842), dramatic monologue
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Dramatic monologue
My Last Duchess (1842)

Drama: main authors

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Fiction: main authors

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Oliver Twist (1838)
Hard Times (1854)
Charlotte Bront (1816-55)
Jane Eyre (1847)
Emily Bront (1818-48)
Wuthering Heights (1847) (her only novel)

George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (1819-1880)

The Mill on the Floss (1860), a novel about gender roles
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Tess of the dUrbervilles
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1994)
Treasure Island (1883)
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), important science-fiction author.
The Time Machine (1895)
Henry James (1843-1910)
Psychological realism
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
The Ambassadors (1902)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891-1892), short stories

Modernism (1901-1945)
Poetry: main authors
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939), Irish poet and dramatist
Easter 1916
T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965)
The Waste Land (1922)

Drama: main authors

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Widowers Houses (1893) a critique of slum landlordism
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939),
The Land of Heart's Desire (1894)
JOHNMILLINGTON SYNGE (1871-1909)
Riders to the Sea (1903) an elegiac tragedy

Sean OCasey (1880-1964)

The Shadow of a Gunman (1923)

Novel: main authors

JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)
Heart of Darkness (1902)
HERBERTGEORGEWELLS (1866-1946), important science-fiction
The Time Machine (1895)
Tono-Bungay (1909)
E. M. FORSTER (1879-1970)
A Room With a View (1908)
JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941)
Ulysses (1922)
VIRGINIAWOOLF (1882-1941)
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
ALDOUS HUXLEY (1894-1963)
Brave New World (1932)

Contemporary Period and Postmodernism (1945-)

Drama: main authors
JOHNOSBORNE (*1929)
Look Back in Anger (1956)
SAMUEL BECKETT (1906-1989)
Waiting For Godot (1955)
Endgame (1958)
HAROLD PINTER (*1930)
The Caretaker (1960)
Film script for The French Lieutenants Woman (1981)

Novel: main authors

DAVID LODGE (*1935) (author of campus novels)

Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975)
Nice Work (1988)
DORIS LESSING (*1919)
Children of Violence (1952-1969), Cycle of novels
The Fifth Child (1988)
MURIEL SPARK (*1918)
Memento Mori (1959)
EMMA TENNANT (*1937)
Tess (1993)
JOHN FOWLES (*1926)
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969)
ROBERTHARRIS
Fatherland (1993)
IANMCEWAN (*1948) one of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Enduring Love (1997)