Introduction and History of English

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by Elif Notes
 
 August 26, 2021
 
in Literature
 
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Introduction to English Literature

Literature is the reflection of life. It mirrors the society in which it is generated. The word literature comes from
the Latin word ‘litaritura’ meaning “writing organized with letters”. We classify literature according to
language, origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter.
Initially, literature was a form of entertainment for the people. Over time, it attained the purpose of reform as
well. The writers stated highlighting the social issues in their writing. Thus, it became a medium to draw the
audience’s attention to certain matters and urge them to think about the reform. From ancient civilizations to the
modern era, indeed, all the works of literature have given us insight into the issues and trends prevailing at that
time. Literature also provides escape from the ‘grim realities’ of life, while many people read to escape the
boredom of their life. Moreover, the higher type of literature helps the reader to escape from trivial reality into
significant reality.
English literature, however, emerged with the beginning of the history of English people. It refers to all the
literary works (novels, short stories, poems, fiction, nonfiction, and plays) composed in English. The earliest
works of English literature mirror the life lived by the people of that region at that specific period. For instance,
all the changes undergone by English society from the earliest to the modern time have left their imprints on
English literature. 
Being the literature of a nation characterized by the spirit of determination, adventure, and diligence, English
literature is rich in vitality, diversity, and essence. 
 A Brief History of English Literature
The introduction and history of English literature go side by side. You can’t get the complete introduction of
English literature without going deep down in its history.
The history of English literature initiated with the history of the English race and kept on developing with the
social development of the nation. When we analyze the history of English literature, we discover that it consists
of eight (8) major periods and several ages. Each period or age of English literature is named after the central
literary figure, or the important rulers of England, or certain literary movements. Moreover each period or phase
of English literature has its distinct characteristics.

Let us briefly overview and analyze the history of English literature from the earliest times up to the present
age. 

What are the ‘Eight (8) Major Periods’ in the history

of English Literature?
The major eight (8) periods in the history of English literature are:
1. The Anglo-Saxon or Old English Period (450–1066)
2. The Anglo-Norman or Middle English period (1066–1500)
3. The Renaissance Period (1500–1660)
4. The Neoclassical Period (1660–1798)
5. The Romantic Period (1798–1837)
6. The Victorian Period (1837–1901)
7. The Modern Period (1901-1945)
8. The Contemporary Period (1945–Today)
Timeline of English literature history including all periods and sub-ages in a depicted as a Transit map
A Brief Overview & Timeline of British Literary Periods
Literary Periods Major literary Trends, Movements and Highlights
Anglo-Saxon or Old English Heroic Tradition: poetry focused on hero’s bravery
Period Elegiac Tradition: writers mourned the passing of earlier, better times. 
(450–1066)
Anglo-Norman or Middle Popular forms of Writing: Chronicles, Poetry, Drama, Religious and Didactic writing.
English Period
(1066–1500)
Renaissance Period or Age of Trends: Revival of learning, Rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art, focus on
Shakespeare ‘Humanism’ and ‘Puritanism’.
(1500–1660) Major Forms of literature: poetry and drama. 
Neoclassical Period or the Trends: Revival of classical art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome, focus on order,
Enlightenment Age accuracy, and structure. 
(1660–1798) Poetic Trends: Use of allusions, heroic couplet and strict meter and rhyme. 
Chief Contribution: The Modern Novel.
Romantic Period Trends: The Romantic Movement in Poetry, Gothicism in literature. 
(1798–1837) Chief Contribution: Romantic Poetry and The Gothic Novel. 
Victorian Period Literary Trends & Movements: Symbolism, Utilitarianism, Oxford Movement, Romantic
(1837–1901) Protestantism. Age of Prose & Novel. 
Main Focus: individually, morality note, conflict between religion and science, human beings
than nature.
Modern Period Literary Trends: psychological and realistic novel, use of stream of consciousness technique,
(1901-1945) futurism, cubism, Dadaism, Symbolism, Expressionism and Imagism.
Contemporary Period Literary Trends: structuralism, deconstruction, poststructuralism, postmodernism,
(1945-Today) postcolonialism, and magic realism. 
Main Focus: horrors of war, genocide, life experiences, real-life themes, alienation,
transformation, consumption & relativity of truth.
1. The Anglo-Saxon or Old English Period (450-1066 AD)
Angles and Saxons were the ancestors of the English race. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the
early 5th Century, three Germanic tribes—the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—saw an opportunity to fill in the
power gap and started migrating to Britain. The Anglo-Saxons were fearless, adventurous, and brave people. By
670 A.D. they had occupied the major part of the country, and the land of Anglos or Angloland—present day
England—became their permanent abode.

Infographic Map created by Louis Henwood for The History of English Podcast.

The language brought by these Anglo-Saxon settlers together with some Latin and Celtic words became Old
English. Anglo-Saxon literature was the earliest phase of English literature. This period consists of literature
written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England from the 5th Century AD to the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The Old English spoken by Anglo-Saxon people looks incomprehensible to today’s English-speakers. However,
there are a good number of words that have survived in modern day English such as “day” , “year”, “kiss” ,
“love” , “arm” etc.

1.1 Anglo-Saxon Poetry

The Anglo-Saxons were fond of singing about battles, gods and their ancestral heroes. It is, however, these
songs of religion, wars, and agriculture that marked the beginning of English poetry in ancient England. 
The Anglo-Saxon poetry was mostly sung instead of written. That’s why there are very few remnants left of it.
Among them, the most famous one is Beowulf. It is the first English epic poem. Beowulf narrates a tale of the
adventures of Beowulf, a brave hero. This poem, in fact, abounds in all sorts of references and allusions to great
events and the fortunes of kings and nations.
Key Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Heroic poetry elements, Christian ideals, Synecdoche, Metonymy. and Irony.

After embracing Christianity, the Anglo-Saxon poets began to write religious poetry. Therefore, the major
portion of Anglo-Saxon poetry encompasses religion. The most famous religious poets of the Anglo-Saxon
period were Caedmon and Cynewulf. Caedmon is famous for his Hymn in which praises in honor of God.
Cynewulf’s famous religious poems were Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, Crist, and Elene. Among
them , ‘Crist’ is the most popular one telling the event that occurred in the life of Jesus Christ.
Who was the first English writer? Cædmon was the first English writer. He wrote his poetry in the Old English language. His
only surviving work is ‘Cædmon’s Hymn.’

1.2. The Anglo-Saxon Prose

The Anglo-Saxons replaced Latin prose with English which observed all the rules of ordinary speech in its
construction. The famous Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great, translated most of the famous Latin Chronicles
in English. However, the second famous prose writer of the Anglo-Saxon period was, no doubt, Aelfric. He was
actually a priest. Among his famous writings were Lives of the Saints, Homilies, and Grammar. Moreover,
compared to other contemporary prose writers of the period, Aelfric’s prose was easy and alliterative.
What was the first work in English literature? Beowulf was the earliest most popular epic poem of English literature.

1.3. The Decline of Anglo-Saxons

The Anglo-Saxon period flourished until the Norman Conquest of 1066. After the defeat of Harold, the last of
Saxon kings, by William who was the Conqueror of Normandy, France, the Anglo-Saxon period finally came to
an end. In history, their ruling period extends roughly from 450 A.D. to 1066 A.D. 
There is no doubt that the Anglo-Saxons lived a life rich in courage, splendor, savagery, and sentiment. Their
literature, thus, remarkably contains all these traits. It reflects all the main principles of their life, for instance,
the love of personal freedom, religion, appreciation for womanhood, responsiveness to nature, and the struggle
for glory.
2. The Anglo-Norman or Middle English Period (1066-1500 AD)

With the Norman conquest began a new era in the history of England literature. The Normans brought with
them their rich French culture and language. The literature of this period comes under the category of Norman-
French Literature or Anglo-French Literature. Since the Anglo-Norman period belonged to the Middle Ages or
Medieval times in Britain History, we also call it the Middle English period in the history of English literature.
The Norman Conquest brought a radical change in English culture, law, language, and character. English
became the language spoken only by the poor and powerless. While Norman-French became the language of
the rich. It also became the symbol of social status and prestige. The Anglo-Normans wrote mainly to cater to
the taste of Norman rulers. Moreover, only the monarchs and courtiers of that time had a right to encourage the
literary writings.
We can’t deny the fact that the Norman Conquest stimulated the awakening of the people, who extremely
needed an outside stimulus at that time. Soon the people got influenced by a new vision and ultimately united in
a common hope. As a result, the Anglo-Saxons’ hostility towards the Normans also turned into national unity. 
The Normans brought with them their soldiers, artisans, traders, chroniclers, minstrels, and scholars. With their
help, they wanted to revive knowledge, record memorable events, celebrate victories, and sing of love and
adventure. In addition, the most popular forms of writing for the Anglo-Normans were chronicles, religious and
didactic writing, poetry, romances and drama.  

2.1. The Romances of Anglo-Norman Period

In contrast to the courage, seriousness, and savagery of the Anglo-Saxon literature, the Normans introduced
romantic tales of love and adventure in literature. This made the Anglo-Norman period to be chivalric rather
than a heroic one. Romance became the most popular form of literature during the Anglo-Norman or Middle
English period. These romances were famous for their stories rather than poetry. Most of them, in fact, had their
origin in Latin and French sources. They told the stories of King Arthur, The War of Troy, the mythical doings
of Charlemagne, and Alexander the Great.

2.2. Chronicles in the Anglo-Norman Period 

In the Anglo-Norman period of English literature, chronicles became a well-established form of writing. These
chronicles basically recorded the history of kings. Though written in the Anglo-Norman language, these
chronicles, however, became the major source of historical knowledge for medieval people. Additionally, they
contained historical events, and legendary material without any interpretation or comment by the author.

2.3. The Mystery and Miracle Plays

Another remarkable achievement of the Middle English Period, however, was religious or didactic writings.
Under this category came the Mystery and Miracle plays. The Mystery plays were based on subjects taken from
the Bible while the Miracle plays depicted the lives of saints. Since only the clergymen of the church had the
authority to write and perform these plays, they chose Latin as the medium of writing and performing these
plays.

2.4. The Morality Plays

In the Middle English period, Morality plays also became very popular. Allegory was, in fact, the main streak of
these plays. In the Morality plays characters were personified abstractions presenting the conflict in the human
soul. The sole purpose of these plays was to instruct the people through the Bible, lives of saints, and the
conflict between good and evil. Hence, these plays also came under the category of religious and didactic
writing of that period.

2.5. The Anglo-Norman Poets

Some of the famous poets of the Middle English period and their notable works are briefly discussed below:

2.5.1. Philippe de Thaun 

Philipe de Thaun was one of the earliest Anglo-Norman poets of the period. He was mainly famous for his two
significant poems. The first one was ‘Livre de Createur’’. It was a treatise on astronomy written around 1119.
His second famous work was the allegorical poem ‘Bestiaire’ written around 1121 in the Anglo-Norman
dialect.

2.5.2. Reginald of Canterbury 

Another famous Anglo-Norman poet is Reginald of Canterbury. He was a monk as well. His most famous poem
is ‘The Legend of St Malchus’ which was written around 1112.

2.5.3. Hilarius 
Hilarius was another Anglo-Norman poet of the 12th century. He was an Englishman but wrote his poems in
Latin. In his poems, he has mainly addressed to English persons.

2.5.4. Benoit de Sainte Maur 

Benoit de Sainte-Maure was a famous French poet in the 12th century. His most famous work was ‘Roman de
Troie’ (The Romance of Troy).

2.5.5. William Langland

One of the notable poets of the Middle Ages, William Langland emerged in the 14th century. He held a
significant place in the history of English literature and wrote many important poems. His most famous poem is
‘A Vision of Piers the Plowman’. As a satire on the corrupt religious practices, Langland’s poem clearly
discusses the ethical problems of that time. Most of his poems are satirical in nature and bring about moral,
political and social questions.

2.5.6. John Gower

John Gower also occupied a significant place in the development of English poetry of the Medieval period. He
wrote around the 14th or 15th century bringing about the poems that represented the English culmination of
courtly medieval poetry. His poems, indeed, proved that English can compete with the other languages that had
distinguished themselves in poetry. Gower was mainly a narrative poet and a moralist. His most famous poem
is Confession Amantis, written in the form of conversation between the divine interpreter and the poet. Like
Chaucer, John Gower also played a significant role in developing English language as a thoroughly equipped
medium of literature. 

Who is the father of English literature? Geoffrey Chaucer is known as the ‘Father of English literature’.

2.6. The Age of Chaucer

Towards the end of the Middle English period came ‘The Age of Chaucer’, covering the period from 1343 to
1450. It is the most significant time period in the literary history of English literature. Chaucer made a fresh and
distinct beginning in English literature and became the ‘Father of English literature’ as well as the ‘Father of
English poetry’. Chaucer’s poetry has been widely read from his own day to the present time. He was not
merely a bookman or the visionary, rather, he was a man of the world and its affairs.
Chaucer’s most significant work is Canterbury Tales. It is a collection of stories related by the pilgrims of
different sections of society who are on their way to Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury. A landmark in the
history of English poetry, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales enriched the English language and meter to an extent
that could be conveniently used for any purpose. Furthermore, his introduction of a variety of characters into a
single action and their engagement in animated dialogues fulfilled every requirement of the dramatists who
were short of bringing their plays on the stage. Chaucer’s works also showed to the novelists the way to portray
their characters.

2.6.1. Decline in English Poetry

Chaucer’s significance in the development of English literature is remarkable as he shifted poetry from the
region of Theology and Metaphysics to the old classical principle of the direct imitation of nature. After
Chaucer there came a decline in English poetry for about 100 years. The period from 1400 to the Renaissance
was bereft of quality literature. The poets of that time period produced little work and merely imitated Chaucer
and his contemporaries. 
Although the beginning of the Anglo-Norman Period is obvious, historians differ on when this period ended.
Some historians say that it ended in 1144 or 1066, while for others it lasted up to 1450 or 1500. The Norman
Conquest of England had, in fact, a profound effect in introducing various changes in the history of English
 literature. ‘The Age of Chaucer was followed by The Renaissance Period also known as the Elizabethan
Period or the Age of Shakespeare in the history of English literature.

3. The Renaissance Period (1500–1660)

The Renaissance Period in the history of English literature is also known as the Elizabethan Period or the  Age
of Shakespeare. It is, in fact, the ‘golden age’ in the history of English literature. After the Middle Ages in
Europe came the Renaissance, meaning revival or rebirth. As a result, the darkness of the middle ages was
replaced by the enlightenment of the human mind with the ‘Revival of Learning’, which the Renaissance
prompted. 
The major characteristic of the Renaissance was its focus on Humanism i.e. man’s concern with himself as an
object of observation. The Renaissance actually started Italy by Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch. However, it
became popular in Europe during the Elizabethan Period. Beside focusing on the ‘study of mankind’,
Renaissance had numerous subordinate trends which were actually the significant aspects of Humanism. These
include:
 The rediscovery of classical antiquity, particularly of ancient Greece.
 The rediscovery of the external universe, and its importance for man.
 The problems of human personality.
 The enhanced sensitivity to formal beauty, and the cultivation of the aesthetic sense. 
 The belief that men are responsible for their own actions. 
Instead of looking up to some higher authority for guidance, as was done in The Middle Ages, the writers of the
Renaissance Period found guidance from within. 

3.1. Elizabethan Drama

During the Renaissance Period the most important achievement in English literature was in the field of drama.
The dramatists of this golden period include William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Lyly,
George Peele, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene and others. All these writers produced prolific works. However, the
greatest among all Elizabethan dramatists was Shakespeare in whose hands the Elizabethan drama reached its
climax. He took English drama to the level which could not be surpassed till today. 
Who is the Father of English Drama? William Shakespeare is called the ‘Father of English Drama.’
The main characteristics of the Elizabethan drama include–revenge themes, internal conflicts, good versus evil,
melodramatic scenes, hero-villain protagonists, tragic-comedy, presence of supernatural beings such as ghosts
and witches and the use of blank verse. Here are some famous dramatists of the Elizabethan Period:

3.1.1. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

There was a famous group of dramatists in the Elizabethan Period known as ‘University Wits’. It was actually a
professional set of literary men. Of all the members of this group Marlowe was the greatest, while other
dramatists such as Lyly, Peele, Greene, Lodge, and Nash were minor artists.
Nevertheless, Marlowe’s contributions to the Elizabethan drama were remarkable. Although his plays were
different from Shakespeare’s in content and style, yet he raised the subject-matter of drama to a higher level. It
was Marlowe who gave beauty, dignity, and poetic glow to the drama. There is no doubt that he did the
groundwork on which Shakespeare built the grand edifice. Therefore, Marlowe has been rightly called “the
Father of English Dramatic Poetry.”

Christopher Marlowe is also known as the ‘Child of Renaissance’

Marlowe’s first play Tamburlaine appeared in 1587 and took the public on a storm due to its impetuous force,
sensitivity to beauty, and splendid command of blank verse. His other famous work, however, include The
Tragical History of Doctor Faustus which tells the story of a scholar who sells his soul to the devil for
unlimited power and worldly enjoyment. The third famous tragic play of Marlowe is The Jew of Malta. Though
it has a glorious opening, it is not as fine as Doctor Faustus. Marlowe’s last play is Edward II which is best
from technical point of view but lacks the rhythmic beauty as well as grandeur of his earlier plays.

3.1.2. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

It was Shakespeare, the greatest of all Elizabethan dramatists, who took English drama to the highest peak of
fame. He was, indeed, a gifted man. His brilliant imagination, keen insight, and a creative mind gave new life to
the old familiar stories and made them glow with tenderest feelings and deepest thoughts. His style and
versification were extremely remarkable. He was not only the greatest dramatist of his time, but also a famous
poet as well. His sonnets, replete with passion and aesthetic sense, also possess a significant place in the history
of English literature. Although Shakespeare belonged to the Elizabethan Age, due to his universality he belongs
to all times. 
Shakespeare’s works include non-dramatic poetry consisting of two narrative poems, Venice and
Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, 154 sonnets, and 37 plays. His work as a dramatist extends over some 24
years (1588-1612), and is divided into four periods. Let’s briefly overview this period:
West Side Story (1961): One of the most famous musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, ever.

1577-1593: First Period

This period includes Shakespeare’s early experimental work. The famous works of this period are: the revision
of old plays as the three parts of Henry VI and Titus Andronicus; his first comedies—The Two Gentlemen of
Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Comedy of Errors ; his first chronicle
play—Richard III; and his most famous youthful tragedy—Romeo and Juliet.

1594-1600: Second Period

This period reveals Shakespeare’s development as a great thinker and artist. The works of this period includes
Shakespeare’s great comedies and chronicle plays such as: The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Henry IV, King
John, Henry V, Part I and II, Much Ado About Nothing, The Training of the Shrew, As You Like It, The Merry
Wives of Windsor, and Twelfth Night. 

1601-1608: Third Period

This period includes Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies and somber comedies. His main concern there is to reveal
the darker side of human personality and its destructive passions. The major works of this period are: Macbeth,
Hamlet, Othello, Julius Caesar, King Lear, All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus,
Anthony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, and Timon of Athens.

1608-1612: Fourth Period

This period includes Shakespeare’s later dramatic romances and comedies. Here we see a decline in his power
of thought and expression. Still his plays are tender and gracious. The famous works of this period are: The
Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Cymbeline. He wrote all these plays in collaboration with other dramatists. 

3.1.3. Ben Johnson (1573-1637)

Ben Johnson was Shakespeare’s contemporary as well as a prominent dramatist of his times. But he was just the
opposite of Shakespeare. A moralist, reformer, and a classist, Johnson in his works presented a true picture of
contemporary society. He wrote his plays in a realistic manner and introduced his theory of ‘humour’. His
famous comedies are: The Alchemist, Bartholomew, Fair, Volpone, Every Man in His Humour, Every Man Out
of His Humour,  and The Silent Woman.

3.1.4. Other Major Figures

There were many other playwrights who were part of the Golden Age of English Drama. For instance, Lyly
wrote Euphues, Sapho and Phao, Midas, Endymion and Compaspe. Thomas Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy.
Robert Greene wrote Orlando Furioso. Compared to the works of the greatest dramatists of this period, their
works are of little importance.

William Tyndale is known as ‘The Father of English Prose’

3.1.5. The Puritan Age (1600-1660)

In the 17th century came the decline of the Renaissance spirit. The writers of that time either imitated the
Elizabethan masters or paved new paths. The 17th century’s literature is divided into two periods—The Puritan
Age or the Age of Milton (1600-1660) and the Restoration Period or the Age of Dryden (1660-1700). Up to
1660, Puritanism dominated the 17th Century. John Milton was the greatest representative of the Puritan spirit.
The Puritan movement in literature is also called the second Renaissance because of the revival of man’s
moral nature. It stood for people’s liberty from the shackles of the despotic ruler and introduced morality and
high ideals in politics. 

John Milton(1608-1674) was the most significant poet of the Puritan Age. He was a great scholar of classical
as well as Hebrew literature. A child of the Renaissance, Milton was also a great humanist. As an artist we may
call him the last Elizabethan. Milton’s greatest poetical works are Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained,
and Samson Agonistes. Besides Milton, the poetry of The School of Spencer, The Metaphysical Poets, and The
Cavalier Poets also earned great fame. But no one of them was as noblest and indomitable representative of the
Puritan spirit as John Milton.
Moreover, this period was rich in prose as well. Among the great prose writers of the Puritan Age include
Francis Bacon, Milton, Robert Burton, Jeremy Tayler, Sir Thomas Brown and Clarendon. During this period we
find English prose developing into a magniloquent and rich instrument capable of expressing all types of ideas,
such as scientific, philosophical, poetic, religious and personal.

4. The Neoclassical Period (1660-1798)

The period between 1660 and 1798 is roughly marked as the Neoclassical Period in the history of English
literature. Moreover, this time period is divided into two parts: the Restoration Period or the Age of
Dryden (1660-1700), and the  Classical Age or the Augustan Age (18 Century). The Classical Age is further
divided into two distinct periods–the Age of Pope (1700-1744) and the Age of Johnson (1744-1784). 

4.1. The Restoration Period (1660-1700)

The period from 1660 to 1700 is called the Restoration Period because monarchy was restored in England, and
Charles II came back to England from his exile in France and became the King. It is also known as the Age of
Dryden because Dryden was the most significant literary figure of the age. The Puritans who were previously
controlling the country were finally defeated. As a result, a reaction was launched against whatever they held
sacred. All restraints and discipline were casted away, and a tide of indecency and frivolity swept the country.
Since Charles II and his followers had enjoyed a gay life during their exile in France, they introduced same
foppery and looseness in England as well. 
As a result, the people were deprived of the old Elizabethan spirit with its patriotism, creative vigor and the love
of adventure and romance. Moreover, the Puritan spirit with its moral discipline and love of liberty also became
a thing of the past. The writers of this period made two important contributions to English literature. The first
was in the form of realism and the second was a tendency to preciseness. 

4.1.1 The Restoration Poetry

The Restoration Poetry was mostly realistic and satirical. It was mostly written in the heroic couplet, of which
Dryden was the greatest master. He was the most important figure of the Restoration Period and made great
achievements in the fields of poetry, drama and prose.  In fact, he was the only poet of his age worth
mentioning. He wrote in a lucid and forceful style that laid the foundation of the classical school of poetry in
England.
Furthermore, Dryden’s poetry is divided into three groups: Doctrinal Poems, Political Satires, and The Fables.
His famous political satires include Absalom and Achitophel  and The Medal. Dryden’s famous doctrinal poems
are Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther. His fables, written in narrative form, entitle him to rank among
the best story-tellers in verse in England. Palamon and Arcite can be examined in this regard. Dryden’s poetry
displays all the characteristics of the Restoration Period and is, therefore, thoroughly representative of that age.

4.1.1 The Restoration Drama and Prose

Restoration drama showed entirely new trends due to the long break with the past. It was extremely influenced
by the new age that was deficient in poetic feeling, imagination, and emotional approach to life. Rather, it
focused on prose as the medium of expression, and had a realistic, intellectual and critical approach to human
life and its problems. 
The Comedy of Manners was the most famous form of drama during the Restoration Period. It portrayed the
sophistical life of society’s dominant class—its insolence, gaiety, intrigue and foppery. The most popular
Restoration dramatist was William Congreve. He wrote the best comedies, for instance, Love for Love and The
Way of the World. The chief writer of heroic tragedy was Dryden. His famous tragic plays include Tyrannic
Love, All for Love, and The Conquest of Granada.
In the field of prose, the Restoration Period held its head higher than poetry and drama. A unique prose style
evolved for the first time. This style could be used for plain narrative, practical business, and argumentative
exposition of intricate topics. Dryden was the dominant leader and practitioner of that new prose style. Other
famous prose writers of the period were John Bunyan, John Tillotson, William Temple, Thomas Sprat, and
Viscount Halifax. Besides Dryden, John Bunyan was the greatest prose writer of the age. His most famous work
is The Pilgrim’s Progress.

4.2. The Classical or Augustan Age (18th Century)

The 18th century in English literature is called the Classical Age or the Augustan Age. We also call it the Age of
Reason or the Age of Good Sense. The writers of the age produced works of great significance and merit. The
major characteristics of the Restoration period—precision and realism—were carried to further perfection. It
was during the 18th century that for the first time in the history of English literature prose occupied the front
position. 
The most important feature of the 18th Century was the origin and development of the novel. This new literary
form, which at present holds a prominent place, was fed and nourished by the great masters such as Defoe,
Richardson, Smollet, Fielding, and others. All these writers laid the secure foundation of this new form.

Who is the Mother of English Literature? Francis Burney is known as the ‘Mother of English Literature.’

4.2.1 The Age of Pope (1700-1744)

The earlier part of the 18th Century is called the Age of Pope, since Alexander Pope was the dominating figure
in that period. The poetry of the Age of Pope is not of a high order. Still, it has some distinct merits such as the
creation of a technically beautiful verse, the clarity of its expression and the finished art of satire.
The famous poets of this age include Alexander Pope (the greatest of all poets of this age), Matthew Prior, John
Gay, Edward Young and others. However, the greatest prose writers of this age were Daniel Defoe, Jonathan
Swift, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. The prose of this age exhibits the classical qualities—for instance,
vigor, clarity, and direct statement. 

4.2.2 The Age of Johnson (1744-1784)

The later half of the Augustan Age was dominated by Dr. Samuel Johnson and is, therefore, called the Age of
Johnson. During this age, cracks had begun to appear in the edifice of classicism and there were clear signs of
revolt in favor of the Romantic spirit. It was especially noticeable in the field of poetry. The poets who showed
romantic leanings in their poetry are the precursors of the Romantic Revival. These poets include James
Thomson, William Blake, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, William Collins, and George Crabbe. Due to its
Romantic inclinations, we also call the Age of Johnson as the Age of Transition in English Literature.
The dominating prose writers of this age were Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Edward Gibbon. They
were, indeed, the pillars of the Age of Johnson and represented in themselves the highest achievements of
English prose. After the Age of Johnson came the Romantic Period. The Neoclassical period officially ended in
1798 when William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge published the ‘Lyrical Ballads’.
5. The Romantic Period (1798–1837)

Pride & Prejudice (2005) : Pride and Prejudice is a romantic novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813
The most flourished period in the history of English literature is the Romantic Period. It was a revolt against the
Classical school of the 18th Century. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Shelley, Keats, and Byron  belonged to
this period. The Romantic Age was basically the age of poetry. With the publication of Lyrical Ballads,
Wordsworth and Coleridge introduced a new form of poetry in opposition to the poetry of the Classical school.
The Romantic poets focused on the simplicity of language and chose the language of the common people. They
looked back to the Elizabethan masters—Shakespeare, Spenser and others—in order to take inspiration from
them. Their poems usually dealt with the events of everyday life. The Romantic poets proved that if the trivial
aspects of nature and the common things of life are treated in the right way, they could be as interesting and
significant as the grand aspects of nature and life. 
The prose writers of the Romantic period also rejected the Augustan style of writing. They reverted to the
ponderous, poetical and flowery prose of the Renaissance. Since the Romantic Age was characterized by the
excess of emotions, it produced a new type of novel—the Gothic Novel—which soon became popular among
the multitude of readers with its Gothic elements such as supernatural, gloomy settings and bizarre situations. 
  SEPTEMBER 4, 2021
5.1 Difference Between Classicism and Romanticism
Romanticism was explicitly opposed to Classicism. While the Classical Age was the age of prose, the Romantic
Age was the age of poetry. During the Romantic Period, poetry became the proper medium of the expression of
thoughts, emotions, and imaginative process of the artist. Classicism laid stress upon the impersonal aspects of
life, whereas Romantic literature openly shifted the center of art to the personal aspects of individuals. 
Moreover, the heroic couplet was the only form of writing poetry in the Classical Age. While in the Romantic
Period, the poets focused on simple and natural diction. The liberty of the poet from the shackles of the literary
rules was the watchword of the Romantic movement. Thus, Romantic literature is a genuinely creative literature
focusing on the highest creative faculty of man.

6. The Victorian Period (1837–1901)

Art Nouveau, an ornamental style of art that evolved in late Victorian Era – Image credits: HomeAdvisor
Beginning in the second quarter of the 19th Century, the Victorian Period is so long as well as complicated.
Moreover, there are numerous great writers who flourished during that period. That’s why, for the sake of
 convenience, the Victorian Period is divided into two further periods—Early Victorian Period (1837-
1870) and Later Victorian Period (1870-1901). 

6.1. Early Victorian Period

The Earlier Victorian Period was, in fact, dominated by middle class supremacy, the age of ‘laissez-fair’ or
free trade, and of unrestricted competition. The great writers of this period were Robert Browning, Alfred
Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Carlyle, Thackeray and Ruskin. All these poets, novelists, and
prose writers, in spite of their individual differences, exhibited the same approach to contemporary issues. Due
to this, they form a certain homogenous group possessing the same social, literary, and moral values.

6.2. Later Victorian Period

The Later Victorian Period began after 1870. The most prominent writers of that period were Christiana
Rossetti, Charles Swinburne, George Eliot, William Morris, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Pater and others. In
poetry, Morris, Swinburne and Rossetti were the protagonists of a new literary movement—the Pre-Raphaelite
Movement. Later on, this movement was followed by the Aesthetic Movement. Its protagonists were Oscar
Wilde, Earnest Dowson, Arthur Symons and Lionel Pigot Johnson. In the field of novels, however, George
Eliot laid the foundation of the ‘Modern Psychological Novel’, followed by Thomas Hardy and Meredith. 
The Victorian Period exhibits a unique and complex amalgamation of two opposites—Romanticism and
Classicism. Basically, its inclination towards Classicism was due its rational approach to the problems of life,
deeply moral attitude, and a search for stability and balance. On the other hand, it exhibited close proximity to
the Romantic spirit which had not completely exhausted itself but suddenly ended due to the following reasons:
 the premature deaths of Keats, Byron, and Shelley. 
 the disillusionment resulted from industrialization and material prosperity.
 the social and economic unrest.

7. The Modern Period (1901-1945)

From the beginning of the 20th Century started the Modern Period in English literature. The most significant
feature of Modern literature was that it opposed the general attitude of Victorian writers and people to life and
its problems. During the first decade of the 20th Century, the young people regarded the Victorian age as
hypocritical, and the Victorian ideals as superficial, mean and stupid. This rebellion hugely affected modern
literature which was directed by moral values, spiritual ideals as well as mental attitudes that were dramatically
opposed to those of the Victorians. 
Moreover, the Modernists no longer believed in the sanctity of home life as Victorians did. They also reacted
against the Victorians’ attitude of self complacency and self perfection. Since the modern writers could no
longer write in the old manner, they devised their own. If they wrote about the contempt of money, natural
beauty, divine love, and the sentiments of home and life , they were considered running the risk of striking a
false note. Even if they treated the same themes, they had to do it tactfully to evoke unique thoughts and
emotions. The modern writers, therefore, had to cultivate a fresh point of view employing fresh techniques. 
The main cause of this attitude of interrogations and disintegration of old values was the impact of scientific
thought on the people. Many writers of the 20th Century began to study and contemplate seriously over the
writings of Karl Marx, Engles, Ruskin, Morris etc. and  discuss practical suggestions for the reconstruction of
society. The 20th Century literature is full of experimentation and adventures peculiar to the modern age—an
age of transition and discovery.
Presentation on Modernism in British Literature:
7.1. Modern Poetry
Modern poetry followed an entirely different tradition from the Romantic and Victorian tradition of poetry. The
modern poets believed that the poet’s business was to be uniquely himself, and to project his personality
through the medium of his art. Poetry to them was a method of discovering one’s self, and then a means of
projecting this discovery.
T. S. Eliot is the chief representative of modern poetry. A greatest poet as well as a critic, he reinforced his
political theories by his own poetry, and thus exerted a tremendous influence on modern poetry. His most
famous poems include The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Dry Salvages, East
Coker, and Little Gidding. Other famous modern poets are Robert Bridges, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A. E.
Houseman, Wilfred Owen, W. B. Yeats and others.

7.2. Modern Drama

Drama in England suffered a decline for about two centuries after the death of Shakespeare and his
contemporaries. It was revived, however, in the last decade of the 19th Century. The two important dramatists
who took a significant part in the revival of drama were the Irish men—George Bernard Shaw and Oscar
Wilde. Shaw practiced the Comedy of Idea, whereas Wilde practiced the new Comedy of Manners. Shaw, a
great thinker, represented the Puritan side of the Anglo-Irish tradition. Wilde, on the other hand, was fond of a
luxurious life. He was not a deep thinker as Shaw was and his attitude to life was essentially a playful and
entertaining one. 
Besides the comedy of manners and ideas, another type of drama evolved in England under the influence of
the Irish Dramatic Movement. Its originators were Lady Gregory  and W. B. Yeats. The two important
dramatists of this movement were J. M. Synge and Sean O’ Casey. Other famous modern dramatists include
Harold Pinter, John Galsworthy, John Masefield, J. M. Berrie, and Harley Granville-Barker.
 
Who is the Father of Modern Drama?  Henrik Ibsen is well-known as the ‘Father of Modern Drama’.

7.3. Modern Novel

The modern novel is realistic as well as psychological. The Modern novelists had introduced into the novel
subtle points of view, reserved and refined characters, and intangible delicacies of motive. All these had never
been attempted before by any English novelist. The modern novelist in their works employed the ‘stream of
consciousness’ technique. This technique not only helped them to reveal the character completely and present
development in character. Besides being realistic and psychological, the modern novelists were quite frank with
sexual matters. 
The modern novelists who dominated the earlier part of the 20th Century were H. G. Bells, Arnold Bennett,
Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, John Galsworthy and E. M. Foster. From the beginning of
World War I new experiments were made in the field of literature on account of the new forces which resulted
from war and broke the old tradition. The writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Adlous Huxley, D. H.
Laurence, and Somerset Maugham made the greatest contribution to this century. 

8. The Contemporary Period (1945–Today)

After World War II, new trends appeared in English literature. Although poetry was the most memorable form
to come out of World War I, the novel was the form which told the stories of World War II. This was because
mass media, cinema, newspapers, and radio had changed the way of information and entertainment. There were
 many writers who wrote about war. For instance, Henry Greene’s novels— Nothing (1950), The End of Affair
(1951),  and  A Burnt-out Case (1961) deal with war. These novels explore regions of human unhappiness  in
many different areas of the world.
Then came Samuel Beckett, best known for his plays, who described interior feelings of lonely souls in his
works. In this regard came his novels Murphy (1938) and How It Is (1961). Similarly, the novels of George
Orwell also possess political intention. As a socialist, Orwell believed in equality. His famous works are Animal
Farm (1945), and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). 

8.1. The Novel from 1950s and 1960s

Certainly, each decade in the history of English literature introduced different ways of writing. In the 1950s, a
new generation of writers appeared, with new subjects and issues. These writers include Colin Wilson, John
Wain, Alan Sillitoe, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, William Golding and others. The most successful comic
novel of the 1950s was Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (1954). It was, in fact, one of the first novels to have a
university setting.  
William Golding was one of the great story-tellers of his time. He always explored in his novels the things
which form human behavior. His famous novels are Lord of the Flies (1954) and The Inheritors (1955). From
the 1970s, the novel took several directions. The four main directions were:
 the focus on foreign and local regional voices.
 the focus on more female voices. 
 the academic or campus novel.
 the coming of the kind of fantasy known as Magic Realism.
Thus, British literature of the contemporary period mainly includes reality-based stories having strong
characters and realistic themes. The Settings of contemporary novels are usually the current or modern era. In
their novels and poetry, the contemporary writers deal with such themes as war, racism, identity, family, home,
and a search for goodness in humanity.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

Middle Ages

Alliterative verse

Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain

Chaucer at court

Troilus and Criseyde

The Canterbury Tales

16th century

Shakespeare

17th century

18th century

Early 19th century

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Timeline

Alliterative verse: 8th - 14th century

The story of English literature begins with the Germanic tradition of the Anglo-Saxon settlers. Beowulf stands
at its head.

This epic poem of the 8th century is in Anglo-Saxon, now more usually described as Old English. It is
incomprehensible to a reader familiar only with modern English. Even so, there is a continuous linguistic
development between the two. The most significant turning point, from about 1100, is the development of
Middle English - differing from Old English in the addition of a French vocabulary after the Norman conquest.
French and Germanic influences subsequently compete for the mainstream role in English literature.

The French poetic tradition inclines to lines of a regular metrical length, usually linked by rhyme into couplets
or stanzas. German poetry depends more on rhythm and stress, with repeated consonants (alliteration) to bind
the phrases. Elegant or subtle rhymes have a courtly flavour. The hammer blows of alliteration are a type of
verbal athleticism more likely to draw applause in a hall full of warriors.

Both traditions achieve a magnificent flowering in England in the late 14th century, towards the end of the
Middle English period. Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain are masterpieces which look back to Old English. By
contrast Chaucer, a poet of the court, ushers in a new era of English literature.

Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain: 14th century

Of these two great English alliterative poems, the second is entirely anonymous and the first virtually so. The
narrator of Piers Plowman calls himself Will; occasional references in the text suggest that his name may be
Langland. Nothing else, apart from this poem, is known of him.

Piers Plowman exists in three versions, the longest amounting to more than 7000 lines. It is considered probable
that all three are by the same author. If so he spends some twenty years, from about 1367, adjusting and refining
his epic creation.

Piers the ploughman is one of a group of characters searching for Christian truth in the complex setting of a
dream. Though mainly a spiritual quest, the work also has a political element. It contains sharply observed
details of a corrupt and materialistic age (Wycliffe is among Langland's English contemporaries).

Where Piers Plowman is tough and gritty, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (dating from the same period) is
more polished in its manner and more courtly in its content. The characters derive partly from Arthurian legend.

A mysterious green knight arrives one Christmas at the court of King Arthur. He invites any knight to strike
him with an axe and to receive the blow back a year later. Gawain accepts the challenge. He cuts off the head of
the green knight, who rides away with it.

The rest of the poem concerns Gawain, a year later, at the green knight's castle. In a tale of love (for the green
knight's wife) and subsequent deceit, Gawain emerges with little honour. The green knight spares his life but
sends him home to Arthur's court wearing the wife's girdle as a badge of shame.

Geoffrey Chaucer at court: 1367-1400

In 1367 one of four new 'yeomen of the chamber' in the household of Edward III is Geoffrey Chaucer, then aged
about twenty-seven. The young man's wife, Philippa, is already a lady-in-waiting to the queen.
A few years later Chaucer becomes one of the king's esquires, with duties which include entertaining the court
with stories and music. There can rarely have been a more inspired appointment. Chaucer's poems are designed
to be read aloud, in the first instance by himself. Their range, from high romance to bawdy comedy, is well
calculated to hold the listeners spellbound. Courtly circles in England are his first audience.

Chaucer's public career is one of almost unbroken success in two consecutive reigns. He undertakes diplomatic
missions abroad on behalf of the king; he is given administrative posts, such as controlling the customs, which
bring lodgings and handsome stipends. Even occasional disasters (such as being robbed twice in four days in
1390 and losing £20 of Richard II's money) do him no lasting harm.

A measure of Chaucer's skill as a courtier is that during the 1390s, when he is in the employment of Richard II,
he also receives gifts at Christmas from Richard's rival, Bolingbroke.

When Bolingbroke unseats Richard II in 1399, taking his place on the throne as Henry IV, Chaucer combines
diplomacy and wit to secure his position. Having lost his royal appointments, he reminds the new king of his
predicament in a poem entitled 'The Complaint of Chaucer to his Empty Purse'. The last line of each verse begs
the purse to 'be heavy again, or else must I die'. Henry IV hears the message. The court poet is given a new
annuity.

Henry is certainly aware that he is keeping in his royal circle a poet of great distinction. Chaucer's reputation is
such that, when he dies in the following year, he is granted the very unusual honour - for a commoner - of being
buried in Westminster abbey.

Troilus and Criseyde: 1385

Chaucer's first masterpiece is his subtle account of the wooing of Criseyde by Troilus, with the active
encouragement of Criseyde's uncle Pandarus. The tender joys of their love affair are followed by Criseyde's
betrayal and Troilus's death in battle.

Chaucer adapts to his own purposes the more conventionally dramatic account of this legendary affair written
some fifty years earlier by Boccaccio (probably read by Chaucer when on a mission to Florence in 1373). His
own very long poem (8239 lines) is written in the early 1380s and is complete by 1385.

Chaucer's tone is delicate, subtle, oblique - though this does not prevent him from introducing and gently
satirising many vivid details of life at court, as he guides the reader through the long psychological intrigue by
which Pandarus eventually delivers Troilus into Criseyde's bed.

The charm and detail of the poem, giving an intimate glimpse of a courtly world, is akin to the delightful
miniatures which illustrate books of hours of this period in the style known as International Gothic. Yet this
delicacy is only one side of Chaucer's abundant talent - as he soon proves in The Canterbury Tales.

The Canterbury Tales: 1387-1400

Collections of tales are a favourite literary convention of the 14th century. Boccaccio's Decameron is the best-
known example before Chaucer's time, but Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales outshines his predecessors. He
does so in the range and vitality of the stories in his collection, from the courtly tone of 'The Knight's Tale' to
the rough and often obscene humour of those known technically as fabliaux.

He does so also in the detail and humour of the framework holding the stories together. His account of the
pilgrims as they ride from London to Canterbury, with their constant bickering and rivalry, amounts to a comic
masterpiece in its own right.
The pilgrims, thirty of them including Chaucer himself, gather one spring day at the Tabard in Southwark. The
host of the inn, Harry Bailly, is a real contemporary of Chaucer's (his name features in historical records). He
will act as their guide on the route to Canterbury and he proposes that they pass the time on their journey by
telling stories. Each pilgrim is to tell two on the way out and two on the way back. Whoever is judged to have
told the best tale will have a free supper at the Tabard on their return.

Of this ambitious total of 120 stories, Chaucer completes only 24 by the time of his death. Even so the
collection amounts to some 17,000 lines - mainly of rhyming verse, but with some passages of prose.

The pilgrims represent all sections of society from gentry to humble craftsmen (the only absentees are the
labouring poor, unable to afford a pilgrimage of this kind). There are respectable people from the various
classes - such as the knight, the parson and the yeoman - but the emphasis falls mainly on characters who are
pretentious, scurrilous, mendacious, avaricious or lecherous.

The pilgrims are vividly described, one by one, in Chaucer's Prologue. The relationships between them evolve
in the linking passages between the tales, as Harry Bailly arranges who shall speak next.

The pilgrims for the most part tell tales closely related to their station in life or to their personal character.
Sometimes the anecdotes even reflect mutual animosities. The miller gives a scurrilously comic account of a
carpenter being cuckolded. Everyone laughs heartily except the reeve, who began his career as a carpenter. The
reeve gets his own back with an equally outrageous tale of the seduction of a miller's wife and daughter.

But the pilgrim who has most delighted six centuries of readers is the five-times-married Wife of Bath, taking a
lusty pleasure in her own appetites and richly scorning the ideals of celibacy.

Edmund Spenser: 1579-1596

Edmund Spenser, who has the greatest lyric gift of any English poet in the two centuries since Chaucer, is a
graduate of Cambridge and by inclination a humanist pedant. His inspiration comes largely from a desire to
rival his classical and Renaissance predecessors.

His first important work, The Shepheardes Calendar (1579), consists of twelve eclogues - a form deriving from
Virgil but imitated by many subsequent writers. With one for each month of the calendar, Spenser's eclogues
cover a wide range of subjects in many metres and styles of poetry. But they are skilfully held together to form
a convincing single poem within the pastoral framework.

Just as Virgil moved on from the pastoral themes of the Eclogues and Georgics to the patriotic epic of the
Aeneid, so Spenser progresses to The Faerie Queene. In undertaking this ambitious project (he states in a letter
to Walter Raleigh in 1590), his models have been ancient and modern poets alike - Homer and Virgil, Ariosto
and Tasso.

The framework of the poem is an allegory in praise of the Faerie Queene or Gloriana (Elizabeth I), in whose
interests the Red Cross knight (the Anglican church) fights to protect the virgin Una (the true religion) against
the wiles of many hostile characters including the deceitful Duessa (variously the Roman Catholic church or
Mary Queen of Scots).

It is evident from these details that the poem is deeply rooted in national politics of the late 16th century, and
many of its allusions must have been of far greater interest to contemporary readers than to any generation
since. Spenser himself is a close witness of the struggles of the time. From 1580 he is employed in the English
government of Ireland. In 1588 he becomes an 'undertaker' in the first Elizabethan plantation, receiving the
forfeited Irish estate of Kilcolman Castle.

Here he is visited in 1589 by Walter Raleigh, who is so impressed by Spenser's readings from The Faerie
Queene that he persuades the poet to accompany him to London in the hope of interesting the real queen in it.

Publication of the first three books in 1590 is followed by Elizabeth's awarding the poet, in 1591, a pension of
£50 a year. Spenser's original scheme is for twelve books, each consisting of an adventure on behalf of Gloriana
by one of her knights. In the event he completes only six, the second group of three being published in 1596.

Spenser, spinning his elaborate allegory in rural Ireland, stands at the end of a long and retrospective poetic
tradition - though others will soon develop less archaic versions of the epic (as in Paradise Lost). Meanwhile
something much newer and more popular is taking place in London. When Spenser is there in 1590,
Christopher Marlowe is the new excitement in the city's theatres.

London's theatres:1576-1599

The theatres built in London in the quarter century from 1576 are a notable example of a contribution made by
architecture to literature. In previous decades there have been performances of primitive and rumbustious
English plays in the courtyards of various London inns, with the audience standing in the yard itself or on the
open galleries around the yard giving on to the upper rooms. These are ramshackle settings for what are no
doubt fairly ramshackle performances.

In 1576 an actor, James Burbage, builds a permanent playhouse in Shoreditch - just outside the city of London
to the north, so as not to require the permission of the puritanical city magistrates.

Burbage gives his building the obvious name, so long as it is the only one of its kind. He calls it the Theatre. It
follows the architectural form of an inn yard, with galleries enclosing a yard open to the sky. At one end a stage
projects beneath a pavilion-like roof.

In such a setting, custom-built, writers, actors and audience can begin to concentrate on dramatic pleasures. A
second playhouse, the Curtain, rises close to the Theatre in 1577. A third, the Rose, opens in 1587 on the south
bank of the Thames in the area known as Bankside. In that year one of these three theatres puts on a play which
reveals how far English playwrights have progressed in a very short while - Tamburlaine, by Christopher
Marlowe.

In about 1594 a fourth theatre, the Swan, is built close to the Hope. There are now two theatres to the north of
the city and two south of the river. But soon the balance shifts decisively to Bankside.

James Burbage, builder of the original Theatre, dies in 1597. Two years later his two sons dismantle the
building and carry the timber over the river to Bankside, where they use it as the basis for a theatre with a new
name - the Globe. This name resounds in English theatrical history for two good reasons. It is where Richard,
one of the Burbage brothers, develops into one of the first great actors of the English stage. And it is where
many of Shakespeare's plays are first presented.

The structure of the Globe and the other London theatres has a significant influence on English drama at its
greatest period, because of the audiences which these buildings accomodate. Ordinary Londoners, the
groundlings, stand in the open pit to watch plays for a penny. Others pay a second penny to climb to a hard seat
in the upper gallery. A third penny gives access to the two lower galleries and a seat with a cushion. A few
places in the first gallery, to left and right of the stage, are reserved for gentlemen who can afford a shilling, or
twelve pennies.

This is a cross-section of nearly all the people of London, and the audience is vast - with four theatres giving
regular performances in a small city.

It has been calculated that during Shakespeare's time one Londoner in eight goes to the theatre each week. A
city of 160,000 people is providing a weekly audience of about 21,000. There is only one comparable example
of such a high level of attendance at places of entertainment - in cinemas in the 1930s.

The range of Shakespeare's audience is reflected in the plays, which can accomodate vulgar comedy and the
heights of tragic poetry. The occasional performances in the Athenian drama festivals must have had something
of this efffect, involving much of the community in a shared artistic experience. In Elizabethan and Jacobean
London it happens almost every night.

Marlowe: 1587-1593

The year 1564 sees the birth of two poets, Marlowe and Shakespeare, who between them launch the English
theatre into the three decades of its greatest glory. Marlowe makes his mark first, in a meteoric six years (from
1587) in which his life and his writings are equally dramatic.

From his time as a student at Cambridge Marlowe seems to have been involved in the Elizabethan secret
service. This dangerous work, combined with a fiery disposition, brings him into frequent clashes with the
authorities. He is in prison in 1589 after a street fight. He is deported from the Netherlands in 1592 for the
possession of forged gold coins. He is arrested for some unknown reason in London in 1593. And twelve days
later he is murdered.

Marlowe is killed in a Deptford tavern by one of a group of colleagues with whom he has spent the day. The
official explanation is a row over the tavern bill, but it is possible that the event relates to his secret service
activities. What is certain is that when he dies, short of his thirtieth birthday, he is already an extremely popular
playwright with the London audience.

Marlowe's first play, acted with great success in 1587, is an event of profound significance in the story of
English theatre. Tamburlaine the Great introduces the supple and swaggering strain of blank verse which
becomes the medium for all the glories of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

Marlowe's Tamburlaine is a character who revels in the power which his conquests bring him, and the verse
conveys brilliantly his sense of excitement. Rich words trip off his tongue, relished for their own sakes, in a
manner which becomes characteristic of much English poetry. When Tamburlaine defeats the emperor of
Persia, and imagines his moment of triumph, even the strange names of his three colleagues are pressed into
service to add to the rich brew:

'Is it not passing brave to be a king, Techelles?

Usumcasane and Theridamas,

Is it not passing brave to be a king,

And ride in triumph through Persepolis?'

Tamburlaine is so popular that Marlowe adds a second part, staged in 1588. In the remaining five years of his
life his plays include The Jew of Malta (a melodrama of revenge, in which the Jew indulges in an orgy of killing
after his money has been confiscated), Doctor Faustus (inspired by a recent biography of Faust, and setting the
pattern for later treatments of the subject) and Edward II (the first play to dramatise English history as a conflict
between real characters, and the predecessor of Shakespeare's great achievements in this genre).

In the first three of these plays the title role is taken by Edward Alleyn, Marlowe's leading actor and the great
rival of Shakespeare's Burbage.

The dates of the plays after Tamburlaine are uncertain, and the texts of Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta
have reached us in very corrupted versions because they are first printed years after Marlowe's death.

What is certain is that when Shakespeare arrives in London, in about 1590, the London stage belongs above all
to Marlowe. By the time of Marlowe's death three years later only one of Shakespeare's undeniable
masterpieces, Richard III, has been produced (with Burbage as the villainous hero). It would be hard to predict
at this stage which of the two talented 29-year-olds is the greater genius.

The life of Shakespeare: 1564-1616

The mysterious death of Marlowe, the Cambridge graduate, and the brilliant subsequent career of Shakespeare,
the grammar-school boy from Stratford, have caused some to speculate that his secret service activities make it
prudent for Marlowe to vanish from the scene - and that he uses the name of a lesser man, Shakespeare, to
continue his stage career. Others, similarly inclined to conspiracy theories, have convinced themselves that
Shakespeare's plays are the work of the statesman and essayist Francis Bacon.

Snobbery rather than scholarship seems to underpin such arguments. Their proponents find it hard to accept that
the unknown boy from Stratford should have created the crowning achievement of English literature.

The truth is that William Shakespeare is not such an unknown figure, and the education provided in England's
grammar schools of the time is among the best available. Shakespeare's baptism is recorded in Stratford-upon-
Avon on 26 April 1564 (this is only three days after St George's Day, making possible the tradition that
England's national poet is born, most fortunately, on England's national saint's day).

Shakespeare's father, John, is a leading citizen of the town and for a while a justice of the peace. It is a safe
assumption (though there is no evidence) that Shakespeare is educated at Stratford's grammar school.

In 1582, at the age of eighteen, Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway. Their first child, Susanna, is baptized in
1583, followed by twins, Hamnet and Judith, in 1585.

There is then a gap of several years in the documentary record of Shakespeare's life, but he is involved in the
London theatre - as an actor trying his hand also as a playwright - by at least 1592, when he is attacked as an
'upstart crow' in a polemical pamphlet by Robert Greeene. In 1593 he publishes a poem, Venus and Adonis,
following it in 1594 with The Rape of Lucrece. Meanwhile he has had performed the three parts of Henry VI
and, probably in the winter of 1592, Richard III.

The London theatres are closed for fear of the plague during 1592 and 1593 apart from brief midwinter
seasons, but in 1594 things return to normal and Shakespeare's career accelerates. He is now a leading member
of London's most successful company, run by the Burbage family at the Theatre. Patronage at court gives them
at first the title of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. On the accession of James I in 1603 they are granted direct
royal favour, after which they are known as the King's Men.
Shakespeare's share in the profits of this company, operating from the Globe on Bankside from 1599, makes
him a wealthy man. Most of the subsequent documentary references relate to purchases in his home town of
Stratford.

In 1597 Shakespeare pays £60 for a large house and garden, New Place in Chapel Street. By 1602 he has
enough money to purchase an estate of 107 acres just outside Stratford, and he continues over the next few
years to make investments in and around the town. In about 1610 he begins to spend less time in London and
more in New Place, where he dies in 1616. He is buried in the chancel of the Stratford parish church.

Shakespeare has shown little interest in publishing his plays, for like others of his time he probably regards
them as scripts for performance rather than literature. After his death two of his colleagues, John Heminge and
Henry Condell, gather the texts of thirty-six plays which they publish in 1623 in the edition known now as the
First Folio.

The plays before1601

By 1600 Shakespeare has conclusively demonstrated his genius in every kind of play except tragedy. In
dramatizing English history he has progressed from the fumbling beginnings of the three parts of Henry VI
(1590-92) to the magnificent melodrama of Richard III (1592), the subtle character study of Richard II (1595),
the jingoistic glories of Henry V (1600) and, most successful of all, the superb pair of plays about Henry IV and
his wayward son Prince Hal.

Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 (1597-8) present a rich panorama of English life, from court and battlefield to tavern
and rustic retreat. They also introduce, in Falstaff, the most rounded and unforgettable comic character in
English literature.

Meanwhile Shakespeare has developed a sweet and delicate strain of romantic poetry, seen first in the tragic
romance of Romeo and Juliet (1595) and then in the comic romances A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596) and
As You Like It (1599). And he has shown his skill in a more knock-about vein of comedy, with The Taming of
the Shrew (1593) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600).

All these dates are approximate, to within a year or two, because there is in most cases no firm evidence of the
date of first production.

After 1600 there is one more play which combines broad comedy (in the antics of Toby Belch and Andrew
Aguecheek) and enchantingly romantic poetry (as in the very first line, 'If music be the food of love, play on').
This is Twelfth Night, and its first production possibly occurs less than a week into 1601. There is evidence that
Shakespeare probably writes it as part of the festivities for Twelfth Night (or January 6) at Elizabeth's court in
this particular year.

In general, though, Shakespeare's palette darkens with the new century. The next few years see some much less
sunny comedies and his four great tragedies.

Tragedies and dark comedies: 1601-1608

Shakespeare's first attempt at full-scale tragedy, in 1601, brings to the stage a character, Hamlet, whose nature
and weaknesses have prompted more discussion than any other Shakespearean creation. His prevailing
characteristics of self-doubt and self-dramatization hardly seem promising material for a tragic hero, but
Shakespeare uses them to create an intensely personal drama. Each opportunity for action prompts the young
prince to indulge in another soul-searching soliloquy, each missed opportunity makes disaster more inevitable.

Othello is the next of the major tragedies, in about 1603, with the 'green-eyed monster' jealousy now the driving
force on the path to destruction.

King Lear, in about 1605, is the most elemental of the tragedies, with the old king's sanity buffeted by storms
upon an open heath as much as by his treatment at the hands of his unfeeling daughters. Macbeth, a year or so
later, makes guilt itself the stuff of tragedy after ruthless ambition has set events upon their course.

These plays are tragic in that each has a central character whose actions drive the events and whose flaws make
the conclusion unavoidable. Others written during these years may not be tragedies in this fullest sense, but they
have a bitter flavour far removed from comedy. An example is Troilus and Cressida (1602), with its caustic
view of the world enunciated by Thersites.

Even the plays of this period which are literally comedies, in the simple sense that they end happily, are in
mood closer to tragedy. Examples are All's Well that Ends Well (1603) and Measure for Measure (1604).

In the years after Macbeth Shakespeare tackles two Roman themes. In Antony and Cleopatra (1607) the facts of
history carry his two famous lovers to their tragic fates. In Coriolanus (1608) it is the arrogance of the central
character which creates the drama - resolved only when his duty as a son, in response to the pleading of his aged
mother, results in his own death.

The last plays: 1608-1611

Shakespeare's last four plays, beginning with Pericles, Prince of Tyre in about 1608, share a pattern of rupture,
retirement, renewal and reconciliation. Rather like the natural rhythm of winter, followed by hibernation and
emergence into spring, the plots begin with violently evil deeds. The good characters somehow escape to safety
and a new life, often with a new identity. Years pass and children grow up, until eventually all is resolved.

In Pericles the events supposedly occur in ancient Tyre. In Cymbeline (1609) the tormented family is that of the
historic Cunobelin, king of a Celtic British tribe. The Winter's Tale (1611), set in undefined classical times,
takes place in the kingdoms of Sicily and Bohemia.

The Tempest (also 1611) is set in a much more suitable context for any story of this kind, half real and half
magic: 'The scene, an uninhabited island'. For the past twelve years the island has been home to a victim of
political skulduggery - Prospero, duke of Milan, accompanied by his young daughter Miranda. They share the
place with a subhuman inhabitant, Caliban, and a spirit who has been trapped here, Ariel.

Since this is an island, and Prospero has magic powers, shipwreck provides an easy way of delivering the evil
characters who were responsible for Prospero's exile.

With their arrival, the ingredients are in place for a fantasy playing on many of life's most significant contrasts.
The ways of the world, both good and bad, are seen in a fresh light through the innocent eyes of Miranda, to
whom everything is new. The benevolent wisdom of Prospero outwits the scheming wiles of his opponents.
Drunken crew members have a natural affinity with the discontented Caliban. And the island, as a magical
place, can spring its own surprises.

At the end of the play, when Prospero has brought the main characters together in reconciliation, he renounces
his magic powers in a farewell epilogue.
Prospero's final speech has often been seen as Shakespeare's own farewell to his theatrical career, relinquishing
the magic with which he has conjured so many stories and characters into life on the stage.

It may be so. But he is part author of one more play, Henry VIII (1613), and an event during one of its
performances certainly puts the seal on his retirement. A spark from a stage cannon sets fire to the thatched roof
of the Globe, which burns to the ground. The theatre is rebuilt, reopening in 1614 with a tiled roof. But the
event is likely to confirm Shakespeare in his full-time withdrawal to his properties in Stratford, where he dies in
1616.

The sonnets: 1595-1598

If Shakespeare had written not a single play, he would still rank among England's leading poets because of the
154 sonnets which he writes during the 1590s (they are not published until 1609). The beauty of the individual
sonnets, many of them among the best loved poems in the English language, is enhanced by the mysterious
personal relationships of which they give tantalizing hints.

The volume of 1609 is dedicated 'to the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets Mr W.H.' Many of the sonnets
are addressed to a young man, and the assumption that the loved one is himself W.H. has prompted endless
speculation as to who he might be. William Herbert (earl of Pembroke) and Henry Wriothesley (earl of
Southampton) have been leading contenders.

In the early poems (1-17) the poet urges the young man to achieve immortality by marrying and having
children, but nos 18-25 suggest that he will be immortal anyway through these sonnets addressed to him (as
indeed, in his anonymous way, he has proved). The poems up to 126 dwell on the relationship with the young
man, sometimes offering pained hints that he is being unfaithful with a woman.

If she is the woman to whom the final sequence of sonnets is addressed, then her identify has stimulated as
much fruitless research as that of W.H. Famous only as the dark lady of the sonnets, she is dark physically, dark
in the turmoil she creates for her lover, and dark now in escaping the limelight.

Ben Jonson: 1606-1616

Ben Jonson, almost as prolific in his works for the stage as Shakespeare, achieves his most distinctive
voice in two satirical comedies based on an interplay of characters seen as types. In the earlier of the
two, Volpone (1606), the characters are even given the Italian names of animals to point up their
supposed natures.
Volpone (the fox) pretends to be dying so as to extract gifts from people expecting an inheritance. Mosca (the fly) acts as
his accomplice. A lawyer, Voltore (the vulture), hovers around the supposed death bed. A feeble old man, Corbaccio (the
crow), is willing to disinherit his son for his own benefit. And a self-righteous Corvino (the raven) offers his wife to satisfy
Volpone's lust.
 Tricks played on the gullible also provide the comedy in The Alchemist (1610). Subtle, a confidence trickster pretending
to be an alchemist, promises his victims whatever they most desire.
A grossly self-indulgent hedonist, Sir Epicure Mammon, and two fanatical puritans, Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome,
turn out to share the same longing - to possess the philosopher's stone, with which they will turn base metal into gold.
By contrast a simple tobacconist, Drugger, wants nothing more than a design for his shop that will bring in customers.
Kastril, an oaf up from the country, is mainly interested in discovering the fashionable way of being quarrelsome.
These two plays succeed partly because of the farcical opportunities available as the tricksters struggle to keep their
various victims separate and happy. But they also benefit from the vividly realistic detail which gives life to Jonson's
verse.
His sharp eye for the everyday scene, and for the amusing quirks of people's behaviour, even enables him to make a
viable play out of Bartholomew Fair (1614). It has little to hold it together except the context of the famous fair itself.
The plot consists only of the adventures and mishaps which befall different groups of visitors.
 
While writing his comedies for the public theatres, Jonson also provides masques for amateur performance at the court of
James I. His first, The Masque of Blackness in 1605, is specifically written to accomodate the longing of James's queen,
Anne of Denmark, to appear in the role of a black African.
A quarrelsome and touchy man, frequently in trouble with the authorities, Jonson is unusual for his time in insisting on
the dignity of the craft of playwright. Whereas Shakespeare shows little interest in the survival of the text of his plays,
Jonson arranges for his own works to be published in a splendid folio edition of 1616. Three years later, as if taking the
point, Oxford university honours him with a degree as master of arts.
 England's Metaphysical poets: 17th century
The term Metaphysical has been applied, with no very good reason, to a group of English poets of the early 17th century
who share a love of intellectual ingenuity, literary allusion and paradox, and who use language,
images and rhythms of a kind not conventionally 'poetic' to startle the reader into thought.
In the 17th and 18th century the term usually implies hostility to what is perceived as these poets'
perverse complexity. In the 20th century, after their merits are championed by T.S. Eliot and others, it
becomes one of approval.

The earliest of the group (by a generation and more) is John Donne, whose wide range of themes stretches from erotic
delights (Love's Progress, or To his Mistress Going to Bed) to the power of a holy sonnet such as the one on death
(beginning 'Death be not proud' and ending 'Death, thou shalt die').

Donne becomes dean of St Paul's in 1621. An unscrupulous collector of pluralist church appointments, he is nevertheless
a most persuasive preacher. A passage written during a serious illness uses a powerful and frequently quoted sequence
of images to involve all humanity: 'No man is an island, entire of itself; ... and therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.'
George Herbert, an aristocrat whose mother is a friend and patron of Donne, chooses a quieter life than his somewhat
worldly predecessor and settles eventually for an insignificant country parish. He writes only devotional poems.
Published just after his death in a single volume, The Temple (1633), they convey a mood of simple piety transcending
subtle torments of spiritual conflict.
Several other poets of the period write within a roughly similar idiom, which can be said to share Metaphysical
characteristics. One in particular stands out - Andrew Marvell, a generation younger again than Herbert.
  In his own lifetime Marvell is known as a minor public figure, linked with prominent leaders during
the Commonwealth. He acts as tutor in the families of both Fairfax and Cromwell, and from 1657 serves
with Milton in Cromwell's department for foreign affairs.

Marvell's poems are published in 1681, three years after his death. Not until the 20th century are they appreciated, for
their subtle and often provocative blending of different levels of perception. In To His Coy Mistress Marvell gives the
conventional argument of the seducer (to gather rosebuds while we may) a very much darker complexion: 'The grave's a
fine and private place, But none I think do there embrace.'
 
Milton the young poet: 1632-1638

When the collected plays of Shakespeare are reissued in 1632, in the edition known as the Second
Folio, the volume contains an Epitaph on Shakespeare. It is not known how the poem has been
chosen for this honour, but it is the first published work of John Milton - famous as yet only in the
limited circle of Cambridge, where he is a brilliant student.

Milton's other poems from his student days, not published until 1645, include On the Morning of Christ's Nativity and a
linked pair, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, contrasting the active and the contemplative life.
Two years after his departure from Cambridge, Milton's masque Comus is performed, in 1634, at a grand ceremonial
occasion in Ludlow castle. And in 1637 a personal tragedy, linked with Cambridge, prompts the writing and publication
of his first major poem.
A fellow student from his college days, Edward King, dies in a shipwreck in the Irish Sea. A volume of elegies is planned in
his memory and Milton is asked to contribute. The result is Lycidas, published with the other elegies in 1638. Though
written within a formal pastoral convention, the poem is an intensely felt and very personal meditation on mortality
(Milton's perhaps as much as Edward King's, who was an acquaintance rather than a close friend).
Milton the polemicist: 1641-1660

To an observer in the 1640s and 1650s these few but distinguished poems would seem to comprise the full and
completed career of Milton the poet, for during this period of crisis in English history he devotes himself to issues of
more immediate and practical concern.
In the developing conflict between the Anglican monarchy and puritan parliament, Milton's sympathies are on the side of
parliament - in whose endeavours he sees the best hope for his own central concern, that of liberty for the individual
citizen. From 1641, the date of his first polemical tract, Milton consciously and with regret sets aside poetry in order to
'embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes'.
 He is by no means slavishly on parliament's side. Indeed the best known of his pamphlets, Areopagitica (an impassioned
plea for freedom of the press, published in 1644), is prompted by parliament's decision to continue censorship laws
inherited from the days of the Star Chamber.
Nevertheless Milton's political allegiance is clear, and when the Civil War has been won by parliament he himself enters
government. In March 1649 he is appointed Latin secretary to Cromwell's council of state. Latin is the international
language, so his post means that he is responsible for the administration of foreign affairs.
 Milton is also what would nowadays be called the government's spin doctor, a role in which he is presented at once
with a difficult task. The royalists publish, on the day of the executed king's burial in 1649, a powerful propaganda
volume called Eikon Basilike ('image of a king'). It is a collection of meditations and prayers, supposedly written by the
martyred Charles I when held in captivity by parliament. Milton responds with Eikonoklastes ('image breaker'), but he can
do little to dent the power and immediacy of the opposing volume.
Milton keeps his job until the end of the Commonwealth, in 1660. He has been blind since 1652, but talented assistants
(including Marvell) are at his side.
Paradise Lost: 1667

Milton's lack of personal skill in politics is evident from the timing of his last polemical pamphlet. In 1660, the year of
the Restoration and just two months before the return of Charles II to London, he publishes The Ready and Easy Way to
Establish a Free Commonwealth.
From his close association with the leading regicides, Milton is in real danger in the early months of the restored
monarchy. He goes into hiding when a warrant is posted for his arrest. In the event he is allowed both his life and his
liberty - perhaps because his blindness makes him harmless. The change proves immensely beneficial, in the fourteen
years of life left to him. He now devotes himself fully to a task which is already under way.
 There is evidence that from early in his life Milton has had in mind a grand project on a biblical theme. Since 1658 he
has been dictating an epic poem which states in its opening lines that its subject is 'man's first
disobedience', and its purpose 'to justify the ways of God to man'.
Paradise Lost (or, in its early draft title, Adam Unparadized) uses the first three chapters of Genesis as
the springboard on which Milton builds mighty edifices describing the fall of Satan and his rebel
angels, the struggle between them and the archangels, the promise of redemption through Christ, the innocence and
temptation of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from paradise.
The writing of this great work by the blind poet provides one of the most evocative scenes of English literary history.
Milton usually composes his soaring lines during the night and keeps them in his head until the next day. When he is
ready 'to be milked', he dictates (often with a leg sprawled over the arm of his chair) to various scribes, including two
nephews and one of his daughters.
The poem is published in 1667 (earning its author £10), and is followed in 1671 by Paradise Regained (a briefer work,
centred on Christ resisting Satan in the desert to undo the harm of Adam and Eve succumbing to him) and Samson
Agonistes (a poetic drama, treating the final days of Samson with the intensity of Greek tragedy).
Pepys: 1660-1669

At some time during the last weeks of 1659 a 26-year-old Londoner buys himself a handsome leather-bound volume
with all its pages blank. He senses that the new decade will be an interesting one in politics (and, he hopes, in his own
career). He intends to record it in a diary.

On 1 January 1660 he begins his first entry: 'Lords day. This morning (we lying lately in the garret) I rose, put on my suit
with great skirts, having not lately worn any other clothes but them.' He goes on to describe the sermon which he hears
in church and his midday meal at home: 'My wife dressed the remains of a turkey, and in the doing of it she burned her
hand.'
Samuel Pepys has launched into the great adventure of recording the minutiae of his daily life. The experiment lasts nine
years (until trouble with his eyes brings it to an end), and it bequeaths to the world perhaps the greatest of all diaries.
The word 'diary', in the sense of a personal record, only comes into use in the 17th century. Almost immediately there
are two outstanding examples in the journals of Pepys and of John Evelyn. They are very different. Evelyn keeps a
spasmodic account of events, mainly of a public kind, over a span of seven decades. Pepys, in a greater number of
words, records everything which takes his fancy during just nine years.
 Pepys is fortunate that the 1660s in London are so eventful. In starting the diary he anticipates interesting
developments as the country adjusts to the ending of the Commonwealth and, as it turns out, to the restoration of the
monarchy. But no one can anticipate two of the most newsworthy events in London's history, the Great Plague and the
Great Fire, which Pepys is able to record in fascinating detail (see Plague and Fire).
The description on 4 September 1666 of himself and Sir William Penn, together digging a hole in the garden to preserve
their wine and parmesan cheese from the advancing flames, makes an extraordinarily vivid historical vignette. The fire
stops short of their treasure.
 Pepys's genius as a diarist is that he records everything which interests him. The diary is for himself and about himself (it
is not published, even in abbreviated form, until 1825). His concerns, to the delight of modern readers, frequently centre
on his sexual exploits. We even share with him the anticipation. He records on 19 December 1664 that he feels a little
guilty, lying in bed with his wife, because his mind keeps running on what he hopes to do tomorrow with the wife of a
certain Bagwell. The next day we learn that he has succeeded.
Pepys even lapses into foreign doggerel in case his wife reads the diary. 'Et ego did baiser her bouche.' But can Mrs
Pepys really not work out that her husband has kissed someone on the mouth?
 The Pilgrim's Progress: 1678

The persecution of Nonconformists causes one of England's best loved works of literature to be written. In many
households in the 18th century there is only one book other than the Bible. It is The Pilgrim's Progress, much of it
probably written when its author John Bunyan is in Bedford gaol.

His offence, in the harsh Anglican reaction of the 1660s, is merely to preach without a licence - meaning outside the
authorized confines of the Church of England. Bunyan is a leading member of a community of Baptists in Bedford.
Committed to the county gaol in 1661, he remains there for eleven years until released in 1672 as a result of Charles
II's Declaration of Indulgence.
 Bunyan's spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, is published during his years in gaol (in 1666).
It gives him an added literary reputation when he returns to his preaching during the 1670s. This
perhaps encourages him to undertake (or maybe just to complete) a more popular work when he
finds himself back in Bedford gaol for another spell of six months in 1677.
The Pilgrim's Progress from this world, to that which is to come is published in 1678, followed by a
second part in 1684. In a sense it covers the same territory as his autobiography, telling of a guilt-ridden quest for
salvation. But the material is now given fictional form.
The immediate popularity of The Pilgrim's Progress in solemn English households is easy to understand. While
unmistakably an improving religious work, it has the excitement of a folk tale and the rich characters of a novel.
In Part 1 the pilgrim, Christian, sets off with his burden of sins upon his back to make his way to the Celestial City. His
path takes him through the Slough of Despond, past the tempting delights of Vanity Fair, and into temporary
imprisonment by Giant Despair in Doubting Castle. In Part 2 Christian is followed on the journey by his wife, Christiana,
with their children. Every virtuous family in England can identify with these characters and their adventures.

A new Augustan Age: 1702-1714

Literary life in England flourishes so impressively in the early years of the 18th century that contemporaries draw
parallels with the heyday of Virgil, Horace and Ovid at the time of the emperor Augustus. The new Augustan Age becomes
identified with the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14), though the spirit of the age extends well beyond her death.
The oldest of the Augustan authors, Jonathan Swift, first makes his mark in 1704 with The Battle of
the Books and A Tale of a Tub. These two tracts, respectively about literary theory and religious
discord, reveal that there is a new prose writer on the scene with lethal satirical powers.
 The tone of oblique irony which Swift makes his own is evident even in the title of his 1708 attack
on fashionable trends in religious circles - An Argument to prove that the Abolishing of Christianity in
England, may as Things now stand, be attended with some Inconveniences.
In the following year, 1709, a new periodical brings a gentler brand of humour and irony hot off the presses, three times
a week, straight into London's fashionable coffee houses. The Tatler, founded by Richard Steele with frequent
contributions from his friend Joseph Addison, turns the relaxed and informal essay into a new journalistic art form. In
1711 Steele and Addison replace the Tatler with the daily Spectator.

The same year sees the debut of the youngest and most brilliant of this set of writers. Unlike the others, Alexander Pope
devotes himself almost exclusively to poetry, becoming a master in the use of rhymed heroic couplets for the purposes
of wit. In 1711 he shows his paces with the brilliant Essay on Criticism (the source of many frequently quoted phrases,
such as 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread'). He follows this in 1712 with a miniature masterpiece of mock
heroic, The Rape of the Lock.
In Windsor Forest (1713) Pope seals the Augustan theme, using the poem to praise Queen Anne's reign just
as Virgil celebrated that of Augustus.
 
Pope is so much in tune with the spirit of his age that he is able, in his mid-twenties, to persuade the
British aristocracy to subscribe in large numbers to his proposed translation of Homer's Iliad into
heroic couplets.
The work appears in six volumes between 1715 and 1720, to be followed by the Odyssey (1725-6). The two projects
bring Pope some £10,000, enabling him to move into a grand riverside villa in Twickenham. This is just half a century
after Milton receives £10 for Paradise Lost.
 The weapon of these authors is wit, waspish in tone - as is seen in The Dunciad (1728), Pope's attack on his many
literary enemies. The most savage in his use of wit is undoubtedly Swift. His Modest Proposal, in 1729, highlights poverty
in Ireland by suggesting that it would be far better for everybody if, instead of being allowed to starve, these
unfortunate Irish babies were fattened up and eaten.
Yet, astonishingly, a book of 1726 by Swift, almost equally savage in its satirical intentions, becomes one of the world's
best loved stories - by virtue simply of its imaginative brilliance. It tells the story of a ship's surgeon, Lemuel Gulliver.
Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels: 1719-1726

Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, has a genius for journalism in an age before newspapers exist which can
accomodate his kind of material. He travels widely as a semi-secret political agent, gathering material of use to those
who pay him. In 1712 he founds, and writes almost single-handed, a thrice-weekly periodical, the Review, which lasts
only a year. But it is his instinct for what would now be called feature articles which mark him out as the archetypal
journalist.
A good example is the blend of investigative and imaginative skills which lead him to research surviving documents of
the Great Plague and then to blend them in a convincing fictional Journal of the Plague Year (1722).
 Another work which could run week after week in a modern newspaper is his immensely informative Tour through the
Whole Island of Great Britain, published in three volumes in 1724-7. But his instinctive nose for a
good story is best seen in his response to the predicament of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who
survives for five years as a castaway on a Pacific island before being discovered in 1709.
Just as the plague documents stimulated a fictional journal, this real-life drama now prompts Defoe to
undertake the imagined autobiography of another such castaway, Robinson Crusoe (1719).
Defoe imagines in extraordinary detail the practical difficulties involved in building a house and a boat, in domesticating
the local animals, and in coping with unwelcome neighbours. This is a cannibal island. The native whom Crusoe rescues
from their clutches on a Friday becomes his faithful servant, Man Friday.
Defoe's interests seem to lie mainly in the theme of man's creation of society from primitive conditions, but meanwhile
he almost unwittingly writes a gripping adventure story of survival. Robinson Crusoe is avidly read as such by all
succeeding generations - and has a good claim to be considered the first English novel.
 Seven years later another book appears which immediately becomes one of the world's most popular stories, and again
seems to do so for reasons not quite intended by its author. Jonathan Swift, a man inspired by savage indignation at the
ways of the world, writes Gulliver's Travels (1726) as a satire in which human behaviour is viewed from four revealing
angles.
When Gulliver arrives in Liliput, he observes with patronising condescension the habits of its tiny inhabitants. But in
Brobdingnag, a land of giants, he is the midget. When he proudly tells the king about European manners, he is surprised
at the royal reaction. The king says that humans sound like 'little odious Vermin'.
 Gulliver's next stop, the flying island of Laputa, is run by philosophers and scientists (as Plato might
have wished); predictably they make a mess of things. Finally Gulliver visits a land ruled by intelligent
horses (the Houyhnhnms, Swift's version of whinnying). The hooligans here are brutal and oafish
beasts in human shape, the Yahoos.
Once again the sheer vitality of the author's imagination transcends his immediate purpose. Of the millions who enjoy
Gulliver's fantastic adventures, few are primarily aware of Swift's harshly satirical intentions.
 The English novel: 1740-1749
During a quarter of a century, from 1740, the novel makes great advances in England, with notable achievements in
several different styles.
Defoe has laid a foundation with Robinson Crusoe, and has followed this up with The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the
Famous Moll Flanders in 1722. Moll's story is more like a conventional novel than that of Robinson Crusoe, being set in
the real world of low-life London and the plantations of Virginia. It is full of vitality and incident, but it is basically - as the
title states - a sequence of fortunes and misfortunes for the heroine. Crusoe had his isolation to give focus to the story.
Moll has only her vivacious character. Of plot, in the normal sense, there is little.
 
This lack of focus is fully answered by Samuel Richardson, a novelist of much greater influence in his own time than
today. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) tells the story of Pamela Andrews trying to ward off the sexual advances of
the young man of the house in which she is a maid. The narrative develops in the form of letters - most of them written
by Pamela herself.
The ability to unfold a plot through correspondence, spinning out the detail and viewing events from several different
angles, is the pioneering discovery of Richardson. He takes it to much greater length in Clarissa (7 vols, 1747-8), a novel
of more than a million words and the longest in the English language.
Pamela has a somewhat unconvincing happy ending. Clarissa, an altogether darker account of a relationship between
two upper-class characters, ends in disaster for both. This account of pyschological warfare between the sexes is much
read throughout Europe. The brilliantly savage erotic novel by Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), can be seen as a
direct descendant.
A more cheerful offshoot of Richardson's efforts is the first novel by Henry Fielding, a magistrate in London's Bow Street
court with an intimate knowledge of the city's low life. Offended by the sentimental unreality of Pamela, he
writes Joseph Andrews (1742) - the story of Pamela's brother, who is a minor character in Richardson's book.
 
 Fielding finds virtue not in respectability (the ultimate yardstick in Pamela) but in the warm-hearted
honesty of a group of ordinary and often unfortunate characters, in particular the absent-minded
Parson Adams. His plot, loose and picaresque though it is in many respects, has its own logic and
consistency.
The ingredients pioneered in Joseph Andrews are deployed by Fielding with even greater success in Tom Jones (1749).
The adventures in a vividly wicked world of the lusty but honest Tom, and the survival against all the odds of his love for
Sophia Western, provide a novel of romance and adventure which has kept its power ever since - as is evident in its
several incarnations on film.
 
The English novel: 1759-1766

The most original novel of the 18th century, and one of the most chaotically endearing books of any
age, is published from 1759 by a clergyman on the staff of the cathedral in York. It is Laurence
Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

Told as Tristram's autogiography, the book begins - logically but unconventionally - with the scene at
his conception. Thereafter, in a series of looping digressions interrupted with sudden surprises (such as a page of solid
black in mourning for poor Yorick), Sterne dwells upon a small number of quite ordinary characters who come vividly
alive thanks to their minor obsessions and eccentricities. We are well into Vol. 3 before the author is born. Slightly
before that event he at last has a moment to write his Preface.

Sterne's blend of fantasy and mock-learning owes much to Rabelais, but he adds an easy playfulness, a
friendly teasing of the reader, which his contemporaries find immediately attractive. The success of
the first two volumes in 1759 is so great that Sterne is able to retire to a quiet curacy in north
Yorkshire. Tristram Shandy could go on for ever, but the story ends in the middle of nowhere after
Vol. 7 (1767), merely because that is where its author stops writing.
Tristram Shandy - with its amused interest in the relationship between writer and reader, and in the nature of narrative -
seems two centuries ahead of its time, resembling a modern demolition of the very idea of the novel.
 

The next English novel to retain a devoted readership through the centuries is, by contrast, firmly in the mainstream of
fiction. Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) tells the story of a simple and good-hearted vicar who puts up
stoically with a series of disasters, mainly brought upon him by the vagaries of his children, until he eventually emerges
unscathed.
The events are more melodramatic than those which drive the plots of Jane Austen, but Goldsmith's unaffected prose
and gentle irony prefigure later advances in the English novel. Between them, the experiments in English fiction in the
mid-18th century make almost anything possible.
 
Johnson and Boswell: 1755-1791

'Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the
signification of words.'

That definition appears in the Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson, published in 1755. Its heavyweight
solemnity, enlivened by the joke at its centre, is the quality which has made Dr Johnson England's best-loved literary
character. His cast of mind is known now not from his own voluminous writings but from the devoted account written by
his young friend James Boswell and published in 1791 as The Life of Samuel Johnson.

Boswell meets Johnson in London in 1763 and keeps in touch on his annual visit from Edinburgh, where he is employed
as a lawyer. Boswell is a man fascinated by conversation (as is revealed in his own extremely vivid journals), and in
Johnson he has met the heavyweight champion of this particular art. From early in their friendship he conceives the plan
of writing the great man's life, and begins to note down his views and remarks.
It is evident from Boswell's pages that Johnson, like Falstaff, is alarming as well as witty. As Goldsmith observes in
Boswell's pages: 'There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end
of it.'
Boswell's literary efforts on behalf of his friend mean that more of Johnson's curmudgeonly opinions are remembered
and affectionately quoted than those of any other Englishman.
A frequent butt is Boswell's own country. 'Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the
high road that leads him to England'. As it happens this prejudice is particularly inappropriate in Johnson's lifetime when
Edinburgh, in particular, is enjoying a period of creativity known subsequently as the Scottish Enlightenment. But
vigorous opinions of Johnson's kind transcend small local realities.
 
Johnson, the devoted Londoner, has little interest in travelling. Asked by Boswell whether the famous
Giant's Causeway would not be worth seeing, he replies: 'Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to
see.'
Even so, Boswell does somehow persuade the reluctant tourist to accompany him on a journey north in 1773 - recorded
by Johnson in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), and by Boswell in Journal of a Tour to the
Hebrides (1785). This is a region of particular topical interest, for the Celtic fringe of Britain has suddenly become famous
as the home of the poet Ossian. His newly discovered epic work excites all Europe - except, almost alone on the issue,
Samuel Johnson.
 Everywhere in the islands there is talk of Fingal, a supposed poem by Ossian discovered and translated by
James Macpherson and published in 1762. Johnson tells Boswell that he considers it 'as great an imposition as ever the
world was troubled with'. When Johnson's views become public, in his book of 1775, Macpherson demands a retraction
and gets the reply: 'What shall I retract? I thought your book an imposture from the beginning, I think
it upon yet surer reasons an imposture still.'
Johnson's critical sense makes his Lives of the Poets (1779-81) a valuable work even today. And on the
Ossian issue he is ahead of the best minds in Scotland. Even Hume and Adam Smith are at first taken
in by the poem.
 The Scottish Enlightenment: 1748-1785

During the second half of the 18th century Scotland is in the forefront of intellectual and scientific developments. The
movement known now as the Scottish Enlightenment has much in common with the broader Enlightenment, in its
emphasis on rational processes and the potential of scientific research. This Scottish version is mainly of interest for the
concentration of achievement within a small region. The people involved are in the university departments and
laboratories of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The founding figure can be said to be the philosopher David Hume. He publishes his most significant work, A Treatise on
Human Nature, early in his life, in 1739-40, but it receives little attention at the time.
 Hume travels during much of the 1740s, becoming better known only after he settles in Edinburgh in 1751. His treatise
is now published again in three more accessible parts (An Essay concerning Human Understanding 1748, An Enquiry
concerning the Principles of Morals 1751, A Dissertation on the Passions 1757). His Political Discourses of 1752 give him a
wider reputation, being translated into French.
At this time he becomes a close friend of Adam Smith, who as yet is a primarily a moral philosopher - making his name in
1759 with The Theory of Moral Sentiments. His great work of political economy, The Wealth of Nations, is still nearly two
decades in the future.
 Hume and Smith are the intellectual leaders of this Scottish movement, but they have distinguished colleagues in
scientific research. In 1756 Joseph Black, a lecturer in chemistry in Glasgow, publishes a paper which demonstrates the
existence of carbon dioxide. Five years later Black discovers the principle of latent heat. By that time he has befriended a
Glasgow laboratory technician, James Watt, who also has an enquiring mind and an interest in heat.
Meanwhile in Edinburgh a 'Society of Gentleman in Scotland' has been formed to emulate the great publishing
achievement of the continental Enlightenment, Diderot's Encyclopédie which has been appearing in parts since 1751.
The gentlemen in Scotland produce between 1768 and 1771 the first edition of a dictionary of the arts and sciences
under the title Encyclopaedia Britannica. Unlike its French predecessor, it has been revised and reissued ever since.
While the Encyclopaedia Britannica is coming off the presses, a retired doctor in Edinburgh has been studying the local
rock strata. In 1785 James Hutton reads a paper on this unusual topic to the newly founded Royal Society of Edinburgh. His
approach breaks new ground. Hutton is the pioneer of scientific geology, one of the main contributions of the Scottish
Enlightenment to the field of human enquiry.
 

Macpherson and Chatterton: 1760-1777

In the late 1750s James Macpherson, a Scottish schoolmaster, begins travelling in the Highlands and
islands to collect Gaelic manuscripts and oral accounts of traditional Celtic literature. The result is a
collection of supposed translations of ancient texts, published in 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry
Collected in the Highlands of Scotland and Translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language.
Macpherson follows this in 1762 with a much more ambitious publication, an entire epic poem by the semi-legendary
Irish poet Oisin, supposed son of the Celtic warrior hero Finn McCool.
Transferred by Macpherson to Scotland, the pair become Ossian and Fingal - and the poem itself is published as Fingal,
an Ancient Epic Poem composed by Ossian. This is rapturously received as a romantic relic from the Middle Ages, with
only a few dissenting voices such as Dr Johnson's.
It is later proved to be almost entirely Macpherson's own book, with a few scraps of ancient ballads inserted here and
there, but its success has another significance. The Celtic twilight imagined in Ossian's name chimes perfectly with a new
longing for something more mysterious than the rationalism of the Enlightenment.
 This developing mood of romantic medievalism (less frivolous than Horace Walpole's self-indulgence at Strawberry Hill) is
given another boost in 1765 with the publication of Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. This contains
genuine medieval ballads, mainly taken from a single surviving manuscript. In many cases they are somewhat over-
restored by Percy, as an editor, but this is a trivial detail in the developing mood of the time.
Both Ossian and Percy are read with avid interest by a brilliant and lonely boy in Bristol, now in his early teens. Thomas
Chatterton lives his own imaginative life in the late Middle Ages.
 
Chatterton invents a 15th-century poet, Thomas Rowley, and sets him among historical Bristol characters of the period.
He writes Rowley's poems for him, and forges documents and correspondence relating to his life. These are sufficiently
convincing to deceive various local antiquaries. Horace Walpole at first accepts as authentic a treatise by Rowley on
painting which Chatterton sends him (The Ryse of Peyncteynge yn Englande).
In March 1769 Chatterton has a supposed early medieval work (Ethelgar. A Saxon poem) accepted by the Town and
Country Magazine. Two months later the same periodical publishes one of his Rowley poems.
 In April 1770 Chatterton moves to London to seek his fortune. But no one in the capital city pays much attention. In
August, in a garret, the 17-year-old boy takes arsenic and dies.
Seven years later a volume of the Rowley poems is published in London, assumed by the publisher to be by the 16th-
century author. For many years, argument rages as to whether these poems are by Rowley or Chatterton. Unlike
Macpherson's forgeries, those believing them to be Chatterton's see in them a fresh and original talent. Called by
Wordsworth 'the marvelous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride', Chatterton becomes a powerful influence
in early romanticism.

Decline and Fall: 1764-1788

The most famous work of history by an English author has a precisely pinpointed moment of inspiration. Edward Gibbon
later describes the day: 'It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol,
while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the
city first started to my mind.'
The eventual offspring of that moment is The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between
1776 and 1778. The six volumes cover a vast sweep of European history from the 2nd centuryto the fall of
Constantinople in 1453.
 Decline and Fall is an act of enquiring nostalgia by a classicist of the rational 18th century who looks back to the Roman
world, a society which he finds in so many ways admirable, and wonders why, where and when everything went wrong.
He discovers, as he must have suspected he would on that day in 1764, that the barefoot friars and their superstitious
colleagues during the medieval centuries are to blame for the long process which he describes in a typically challenging
phrase as 'the triumph of barbarism and religion'.
Paradoxically, Gibbon writes a great work on the Middle Ages at the very time when the period's merits are most
undervalued by scholars such as himself.
 His book is an immediate success when the first volume is published in 1776 - partly because some of his comments on
Christianity provoke controversy, but above all due to the elegant irony of his prose and his ability to rise to the grand
historic moment.
The full orchestra plays in long rolling cadences when Gibbon describes an event such as the crusaders in 1204 sacking
Constantinople. But a new character (in this case Rienzo) may be introduced with a simple and challenging sentence; 'In a
quarter of the city which was inhabited only by mechanics and Jews, the marriage of an innkeeper and a washerwoman
produced the future deliverer of Rome.' Gibbon's readers have found this blend irresistible.
At the end Gibbon brings his work full circle. His story ends with two events of the 15th century, the fall
of Constantinople to the Turks and the return of the papacy to Rome. Renaissance Rome, with papal encouragement,
rediscovers and takes pains to restore the glories of classical Rome. By the time of Gibbon's visit the city is the
destination of every Grand Tourist.
Gibbon states with some satisfaction in his conclusion: 'The monuments of ancient Rome have been
elucidated by the diligence of the antiquarian; and the footsteps of heroes, the relics not of
superstition but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of pilgrims from the remote, and once
savage, countries of the north.'
This History is as yet incomplete.