📚 English Literature: Writers and their important works
1. Old English / Anglo-Saxon Period (450–1066)
| Writer | Important Works / Texts | Important Exam Point |
|---|---|---|
| Caedmon | Caedmon's Hymn | First known English poet |
| Cynewulf | Elene, Juliana, Christ II, The Fates of the Apostles | Religious poetry |
| King Alfred | Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; translations of Pastoral Care, Consolation of Philosophy | Promoted learning |
| Anonymous | Beowulf | Greatest Old English epic |
Must remember:
Beowulf → Old English → Epic → Anonymous
2. Middle English Period (1066–1500)
| Writer | Important Works | Exam Point |
|---|---|---|
| Geoffrey Chaucer | The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame | Father of English Poetry |
| William Langland | Piers Plowman | Allegorical poem |
| John Gower | Confessio Amantis | Contemporary of Chaucer |
| Thomas Malory | Le Morte d'Arthur | Arthurian legends |
| Julian of Norwich | Revelations of Divine Love | Religious prose |
| John Wycliffe | Bible translation associated with his followers | Religious reformer |
⭐ Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Know:
General Prologue
The Knight
The Wife of Bath
The Pardoner
The Miller
The Nun's Priest
3. Renaissance Period (1500–1660)
This is extremely important for PGT/TGT.
A. Tudor / Early Renaissance
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| Thomas More | Utopia |
| Thomas Wyatt | Sonnets; translations of Petrarch |
| Henry Howard (Surrey) | Sonnets; translation of Aeneid |
| Tyndale | English Bible translation |
⭐ Important fact
Wyatt and Surrey → introduced/adapted the sonnet into English literature.
4. Elizabethan Age (1558–1603)
Major Poets & Dramatists
| Writer | Major Works |
|---|---|
| Edmund Spenser | The Faerie Queene, The Shepheardes Calender, Amoretti, Epithalamion |
| Christopher Marlowe | Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Edward II |
| William Shakespeare | Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Sonnets |
| Ben Jonson | Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair |
| Sir Philip Sidney | Astrophel and Stella, Arcadia, The Defence of Poesy |
| Francis Bacon | Essays, The Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum |
| Thomas Kyd | The Spanish Tragedy |
| John Lyly | Euphues, Euphues and His England |
| Robert Greene | Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, The Tragical History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay |
⭐ University Wits
Remember:
Marlowe – Greene – Kyd – Lyly – Peele – Lodge – Nashe
5. Jacobean Age (1603–1625)
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| Shakespeare | Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, The Tempest |
| John Donne | Songs and Sonnets, Holy Sonnets, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions |
| Ben Jonson | Volpone, The Alchemist |
| John Webster | The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil |
| Thomas Middleton | The Changeling, Women Beware Women |
| George Chapman | Translation of Homer |
| Beaumont & Fletcher | The Knight of the Burning Pestle |
⭐ Metaphysical Poets
John Donne → George Herbert → Andrew Marvell → Henry Vaughan → Richard Crashaw
For exams, John Donne is the most important.
6. Caroline Age / Puritan Age (1625–1660)
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| John Milton | Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Areopagitica |
| George Herbert | The Temple |
| Robert Herrick | Hesperides, Noble Numbers |
| Andrew Marvell | To His Coy Mistress, The Garden |
| Richard Lovelace | Lucasta |
| John Bunyan | The Pilgrim's Progress, The Holy War |
⭐ Milton — extremely important
Know:
Paradise Lost
Paradise Regained
Samson Agonistes
Areopagitica
L'Allegro
Il Penseroso
Lycidas
7. Restoration Age (1660–1700)
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| John Dryden | Absalom and Achitophel, Mac Flecknoe, All for Love, An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
| William Congreve | The Way of the World, The Mourning Bride |
| William Wycherley | The Country Wife |
| George Etherege | The Man of Mode |
| Aphra Behn | Oroonoko, The Rover |
| Samuel Butler | Hudibras |
⭐ Important
Dryden → Father of English Criticism
8. Augustan Age (1700–1745)
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| Alexander Pope | The Rape of the Lock, An Essay on Criticism, An Essay on Man, The Dunciad |
| Jonathan Swift | Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, The Battle of the Books |
| Joseph Addison | The Spectator, Cato |
| Richard Steele | The Tatler, The Spectator |
| Daniel Defoe | Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders |
| Samuel Richardson | Pamela, Clarissa |
| Henry Fielding | Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews |
⭐ Exam connections
Pope → Heroic Couplet
Swift → Satire
Defoe → Robinson Crusoe
Richardson → Pamela
Fielding → Tom Jones
9. Age of Johnson (1745–1798)
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| Samuel Johnson | Dictionary of the English Language, Lives of the Poets, Rasselas, The Vanity of Human Wishes |
| Thomas Gray | Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard |
| Oliver Goldsmith | The Vicar of Wakefield, She Stoops to Conquer, The Deserted Village |
| Richard Sheridan | The School for Scandal, The Rivals |
| William Cowper | The Task |
| James Boswell | The Life of Samuel Johnson |
| Edmund Burke | A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful |
10. Romantic Period (1798–1837)
⭐ The Big Six Romantic Poets
| Poet | Important Works |
|---|---|
| William Wordsworth | The Prelude, Lyrical Ballads, Tintern Abbey, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud |
| S. T. Coleridge | The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Biographia Literaria |
| Lord Byron | Don Juan, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Manfred |
| P. B. Shelley | Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Prometheus Unbound, Adonais |
| John Keats | Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, Endymion |
| William Blake | Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell |
Other important Romantic writers
| Writer | Works |
|---|---|
| Jane Austen | Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park |
| Walter Scott | Ivanhoe, Waverley |
| Charles Lamb | Essays of Elia, Tales from Shakespeare |
| William Hazlitt | The Spirit of the Age |
| Mary Shelley | Frankenstein |
| Thomas De Quincey | Confessions of an English Opium-Eater |
⭐ Most important exam fact
1798 → Lyrical Ballads → Wordsworth & Coleridge → Beginning of Romantic Age
11. Victorian Age (1837–1901)
Victorian Poetry
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| Alfred Tennyson | In Memoriam, Ulysses, The Lady of Shalott, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Idylls of the King |
| Robert Browning | My Last Duchess, The Ring and the Book, Andrea del Sarto, Rabbi Ben Ezra |
| Matthew Arnold | Dover Beach, The Scholar-Gipsy, Thyrsis, Culture and Anarchy |
| Christina Rossetti | Goblin Market, Remember |
| Gerard Manley Hopkins | The Windhover, God's Grandeur, Pied Beauty |
Victorian Novelists
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| Charles Dickens | Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times |
| George Eliot | Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Adam Bede |
| Thomas Hardy | Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge |
| Charlotte Brontë | Jane Eyre |
| Emily Brontë | Wuthering Heights |
| Anne Brontë | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
| Thackeray | Vanity Fair |
| Anthony Trollope | The Warden, Barchester Towers |
| R. L. Stevenson | Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
| Oscar Wilde | The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest |
12. Modern Age (1901–1945)
Modern Poetry
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| W. B. Yeats | The Second Coming, Sailing to Byzantium, The Tower |
| T. S. Eliot | The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Four Quartets, Ash-Wednesday |
| Ezra Pound | The Cantos, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley |
| Wilfred Owen | Dulce et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youth |
| Siegfried Sassoon | Counter-Attack, The Old Huntsman |
Modern Novel
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| James Joyce | Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake |
| Virginia Woolf | Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, A Room of One's Own |
| D. H. Lawrence | Sons and Lovers, Women in Love |
| E. M. Forster | A Passage to India, Howards End, A Room with a View |
| Joseph Conrad | Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim |
| Aldous Huxley | Brave New World |
Modern Drama
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| G. B. Shaw | Pygmalion, Arms and the Man, Man and Superman, Saint Joan |
| J. M. Synge | The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea |
| T. S. Eliot | Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion |
13. Post-War / Contemporary Literature
| Writer | Important Works |
|---|---|
| George Orwell | Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four |
| Samuel Beckett | Waiting for Godot, Endgame |
| Harold Pinter | The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming |
| Philip Larkin | The Whitsun Weddings, The Less Deceived |
| Ted Hughes | The Hawk in the Rain, Crow |
| Doris Lessing | The Golden Notebook, The Grass Is Singing |
| Salman Rushdie | Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses |
| Kazuo Ishiguro | The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go |
| Ian McEwan | Atonement, Amsterdam |
Highest-Priority Writer–Work Pairs
Old & Middle English
Anonymous → Beowulf
Chaucer → Canterbury Tales
Langland → Piers Plowman
Malory → Le Morte d'Arthur
Renaissance
More → Utopia
Spenser → The Faerie Queene
Marlowe → Doctor Faustus
Shakespeare → Hamlet / Macbeth
Bacon → Essays
Sidney → Astrophel and Stella
Kyd → The Spanish Tragedy
Jonson → Volpone
Jacobean/Puritan
Donne → Songs and Sonnets
Webster → The Duchess of Malfi
Milton → Paradise Lost
Bunyan → The Pilgrim's Progress
Marvell → To His Coy Mistress
Neoclassical
Dryden → Absalom and Achitophel
Pope → The Rape of the Lock
Swift → Gulliver's Travels
Defoe → Robinson Crusoe
Richardson → Pamela
Fielding → Tom Jones
Johnson → Dictionary
Romantic
Wordsworth → The Prelude
Coleridge → The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Byron → Don Juan
Shelley → Ode to the West Wind
Keats → Ode to a Nightingale
Blake → Songs of Innocence and Experience
Jane Austen → Pride and Prejudice
Victorian
Tennyson → In Memoriam
Browning → My Last Duchess
Arnold → Dover Beach
Dickens → Great Expectations
George Eliot → Middlemarch
Hardy → Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Charlotte Brontë → Jane Eyre
Emily Brontë → Wuthering Heights
Oscar Wilde → The Picture of Dorian Gray
Modern
Yeats → The Second Coming
T. S. Eliot → The Waste Land
Joyce → Ulysses
Virginia Woolf → Mrs Dalloway
D. H. Lawrence → Sons and Lovers
E. M. Forster → A Passage to India
G. B. Shaw → Pygmalion
Contemporary
Orwell → Animal Farm / Nineteen Eighty-Four
Beckett → Waiting for Godot
Pinter → The Birthday Party
Rushdie → Midnight's Children
Ishiguro → The Remains of the Day
Don't study this as just a list. Make four things together:
Period → Writer → Work → Literary term/movement
For example:
Romantic Age → Coleridge → The Rime of the Ancient Mariner → Supernaturalism
and
Modern Age → T. S. Eliot → The Waste Land → Modernism / Fragmentation
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