Beowulf stands as the most famous work in Old English, yet its story is set in Scandinavia, far from the shores of England. This epic poem, preserved in the Nowell Codex, dates to between the 8th and early 11th centuries, surviving a millennium of fire and decay to become the national epic of a nation it never describes. The only surviving manuscript of this great work is a single, fragile codex, its precise date debated by scholars but generally placed close to the year 1000. While the poem celebrates Scandinavian heroes, it achieved national epic status in England, proving that the roots of English literature were already deep and complex before the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Anglo-Saxon settlers brought their dialects to Great Britain in the fifth century, creating a literary tradition that would eventually evolve into the language spoken today. Oral tradition was very strong in early English culture, and most literary works were written to be performed, not just read. The poem Cædmon's Hymn, dating from the late 7th century, is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English poetry and one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. It is also one of the three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry, alongside the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions. Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous, with only twelve known by name from medieval sources, and just four known by their vernacular works with any certainty: Cædmon, Bede, Alfred the Great, and Cynewulf. King Alfred's 9th-century translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy stands as the longest adaptation of late classical philosophical texts in Old English. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals from the 9th century, chronicles the history of the Anglo-Saxons, while the poem Battle of Maldon, of uncertain date, celebrates the Battle of Maldon of 991, at which the Anglo-Saxons failed to prevent a Viking invasion. The Wanderer and The Seafarer, two Old English poems from the late 10th century, both have a religious theme, with The Seafarer described as an exhortatory and didactic poem where the miseries of winter seafaring serve as a metaphor for the challenge faced by the committed Christian.
The Norman Shift
After the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common, and French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, the Norman dialects of the ruling classes mingled with that of the natives, creating Anglo-Norman. From then until the 12th century, Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English. Political power was no longer in English hands, so that the West Saxon literary language had no more influence than any other dialect, and Middle English literature was written in many dialects that corresponded to the region, history, culture, and background of individual writers. During the writing of Ormulum, the blending of both Old English and Anglo-Norman elements in English are highlighted for the first time, marking the beginning of the Middle English period. Layamon in Brut adapted the Norman-French of Wace to produce the first English-language work to present the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and it was also the first historiography written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Middle English Bible translations, notably Wycliffe's Bible, helped to establish English as a literary language, appearing between about 1382 and 1395. These Bible translations were the chief inspiration and cause of the Lollard movement, a pre-Reformation movement that rejected many of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. The English dialect of the poems from the Midlands is markedly different from that of the London-based Chaucer, and though influenced by French in the scenes at court in Sir Gawain, there are in the poems also many dialect words, often of Scandinavian origin, that belonged to northwest England. The English dialect of these poems from the Midlands is markedly different from that of the London-based Chaucer, and though influenced by French in the scenes at court in Sir Gawain, there are in the poems also many dialect words, often of Scandinavian origin, that belonged to northwest England. The English dialect of these poems from the Midlands is markedly different from that of the London-based Chaucer, and though influenced by French in the scenes at court in Sir Gawain, there are in the poems also many dialect words, often of Scandinavian origin, that belonged to northwest England.
Middle English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a London-based form of English, became widespread and the printing press started to standardise the language. Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, was a significant figure developing the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English, mostly in verse although some are in prose, that are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from Southwark to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. At this time, literature in England was being written in various languages, including Latin, Norman-French, and English, and the multilingual nature of the audience for literature in the 14th century is illustrated by the example of John Gower. A contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Chaucer, Gower is remembered primarily for three major works: the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in Anglo-Norman, Latin and Middle English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes. Significant religious works were also created in the 14th century, including those of Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle. Julian's Revelations of Divine Love, about 1393, is believed to be the first published book written by a woman in the English language. A major work from the 15th century is Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, which was printed by Caxton in 1485. This is a compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances, and was among the earliest books printed in England. It was popular and influential in the later revival of interest in the Arthurian legends. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 also helped to standardise the language, as did the King James Bible of 1611 and the Great Vowel Shift. The English dialect of these poems from the Midlands is markedly different from that of the London-based Chaucer, and though influenced by French in the scenes at court in Sir Gawain, there are in the poems also many dialect words, often of Scandinavian origin, that belonged to northwest England.
The Elizabethan Stage
William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed, writing plays in a variety of genres, including histories, tragedies, comedies, and the late romances, or tragicomedies. His plays have been translated into every primary living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare's career continues in the Jacobean period, where he wrote the so-called problem plays, as well as a number of his best known tragedies, including Macbeth and King Lear. In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays, including The Tempest. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Other important figures in Elizabethan theatre include Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont. The House of Tudor ruled England between 1485 and 1603, encompassing the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and lastly Elizabeth I. The English Renaissance as a part of the Northern Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the 17th century. Before the Elizabethan era, Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More, written in Latin and published in 1516. The influence of the Italian Renaissance can be found in the poetry of Thomas Wyatt, one of the earliest English Renaissance poets. He was responsible for many innovations in English poetry, and alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey introduced the sonnet from Italy into England in the early 16th century. After William Caxton introduced the printing press in England in 1476, vernacular literature flourished. The Reformation inspired the production of vernacular liturgy which led to the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, a lasting influence on literary language. Edmund Spenser was one of the most important poets of the Elizabethan period, author of The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. Another major figure, Sir Philip Sidney, was an English poet, whose works include Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poetry, and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as those by Thomas Campion, became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households. John Donne was another important figure in Elizabethan poetry. Among the earliest Elizabethan plays are Gorboduc by Sackville and Norton, and Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Gorboduc is notable especially as the first verse drama in English to employ blank verse, and for the way it developed elements, from the earlier morality plays and Senecan tragedy, in the direction which would be followed by later playwrights. The Spanish Tragedy is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592, which was popular and influential in its time, and established a new genre in English literature theatre, the revenge play.
The Restoration Age
John Milton, one of the greatest English poets, is best known for Paradise Lost, an epic poem in blank verse, concerning the biblical story of the fall of man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton soon followed this work with Paradise Regained, again an epic poem in blank verse, which shares similar theological themes with the previous work, with Milton this time dealing primarily with the temptation of Christ as recounted in the Gospel of Luke. John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. He established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry. Dryden's greatest achievements were in satiric verse in works like the mock-heroic MacFlecknoe. Alexander Pope was heavily influenced by Dryden, and often borrowed from him; other writers in the 18th century were equally influenced by both Dryden and Pope. Prose in the Restoration period is dominated by Christian religious writing, but the Restoration also saw the beginnings of two genres that would dominate later periods, fiction and journalism. Religious writing often strayed into political and economic writing, just as political and economic writing implied or directly addressed religion. The Restoration moderated most of the more strident sectarian writing, but radicalism persisted after the Restoration. Puritan authors such as John Milton were forced to retire from public life or adapt, and those authors who had preached against monarchy and who had participated directly in the regicide of Charles I were partially suppressed. Consequently, violent writings were forced underground, and many of those who had served in the Interregnum attenuated their positions in the Restoration. John Bunyan stands out beyond other religious authors of the period. Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of personal salvation and a guide to the Christian life. During the Restoration period, the most common manner of getting news would have been a broadsheet publication. A single, large sheet of paper might have a written, usually partisan, account of an event. It is impossible to satisfactorily date the beginning of the novel in English. However, long fiction and fictional biographies began to distinguish themselves from other forms in England during the Restoration period. An existing tradition of Romance fiction in France and Spain was popular in England. One of the most significant figures in the rise of the novel in the Restoration period is Aphra Behn, author of Oroonoko, who was not only the first professional female novelist, but she may be among the first professional novelists of either sex in England. As soon as the previous Puritan regime's ban on public stage representations was lifted, drama recreated itself quickly and abundantly. The most famous plays of the early Restoration period are the unsentimental or hard comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege, which reflect the atmosphere at Court, and celebrate an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. After a sharp drop in both quality and quantity in the 1680s, the mid-1690s saw a brief second flowering of the drama, especially comedy. Comedies like William Congreve's The Way of the World, and John Vanbrugh's The Relapse and The Provoked Wife were softer and more middle-class in ethos, very different from the aristocratic extravaganza twenty years earlier, and aimed at a wider audience.
The Romantic Turn
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. The Romantic period was one of major social change in England and Wales, because of the depopulation of the countryside and the rapid development of overcrowded industrial cities, that took place in the period roughly between 1750 and 1850. The movement of so many people in England was the result of two forces: the Agricultural Revolution, that involved the Enclosure of the land, drove workers off the land, and the Industrial Revolution which provided them employment. Romanticism may be seen in part as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, though it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, as well a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. The French Revolution was an especially important influence on the political thinking of many of the Romantic poets. The landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so much so that the Romantics, especially perhaps Wordsworth, are often described as nature poets. However, the longer Romantic nature poems have a wider concern because they are usually meditations on an emotional problem or personal crisis. Robert Burns was a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a cultural icon in Scotland. The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake was another of the early Romantic poets. Though Blake was generally unrecognised during his lifetime, he is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. Among his most important works are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience and profound and difficult prophecies, such as Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion. After Blake, among the earliest Romantics were the Lake Poets, including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and journalist Thomas de Quincey. However, at the time Walter Scott was the most famous poet. In 1784, with Elegiac Sonnets, Charlotte Smith reintroduced the sonnet to English literature. The early Romantic Poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is marked by the first romantic manifesto in English literature, the Preface to Lyrical Ballads of 1798. The poems in Lyrical Ballads were mostly by Wordsworth, though Coleridge contributed Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Among Wordsworth's most important poems are Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, Resolution and Independence, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood and the autobiographical epic The Prelude. Robert Southey was another of the so-called Lake Poets, and Poet Laureate for 30 years, although his fame has been long eclipsed by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Thomas De Quincey is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater of 1821. Essayist William Hazlitt, friend of both Coleridge and Wordsworth, is best known today for his literary criticism, especially Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. The second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Felicia Hemans and John Keats. Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps the least romantic of the three, preferring the brilliant wit of Pope to what he called the wrong poetical system of his Romantic contemporaries. Byron achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe and Goethe called Byron undoubtedly the greatest genius of our century. Shelley is perhaps best known for Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and Adonais, an elegy written on the death of Keats. His close circle of admirers included the most progressive thinkers of the day. A work like Queen Mab reveals Shelley as the direct heir to the French and British revolutionary intellectuals of the 1790s. Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as later W. B. Yeats. Though John Keats shared Byron and Shelley's radical politics, his best poetry is not political, but is especially noted for its sensuous music and imagery, along with a concern with material beauty and the transience of life. Among his most famous poems are Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and To Autumn. Keats has always been regarded as a major Romantic, and his stature as a poet has grown steadily through all changes of fashion. Although sticking to its forms, Felicia Hemans began a process of undermining the Romantic tradition, a deconstruction that was continued by Letitia Elizabeth Landon, as an urban poet deeply attentive to themes of decay and decomposition. Landon's novel forms of metrical romance and dramatic monologue were much copied and contributed to her long-lasting influence on Victorian poetry. Other poets in this period include John Clare, the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation for the changes taking place in rural England. His poetry has undergone a major re-evaluation and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. George Crabbe was an English poet who, during the Romantic period, wrote closely observed, realistic portraits of rural life in the heroic couplets of the Augustan age. One of the most popular novelists of the era was Sir Walter Scott, whose historical romances inspired a generation of painters, composers, and writers throughout Europe. Scott's novel-writing career was launched in 1814 with Waverley, often called the first historical novel. The works of Jane Austen critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Her plots in novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Romanticism in America reached the continent in the early 19th century. American Romanticism was just as multifaceted and individualistic as it was in Europe. Like the Europeans, the American Romantics demonstrated a high level of moral enthusiasm, commitment to individualism and the unfolding of the self, an emphasis on intuitive perception, and the assumption that the natural world was inherently good, while human society was corrupt. Romantic Gothic literature made an early appearance with Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. There are picturesque local color elements in Washington Irving's essays and especially his travel books. From 1823 the prolific and popular novelist James Fenimore Cooper began publishing his historical romances of frontier and Indian life. However, Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre that first appeared in the early 1830s, and his poetry were more influential in France than at home.
The Victorian Novel
It was in the Victorian era, from 1837 to 1901, that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers, and monthly serialising of fiction also encouraged this surge in popularity, further upheavals which followed the Reform Act 1832. This was in many ways a reaction to rapid industrialization, and the social, political, and economic issues associated with it, and was a means of commenting on abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic prosperity. Significant early examples of this genre include Sybil, or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke. Charles Dickens emerged on the literary scene in the late 1830s and soon became probably the most famous novelist in the history of English literature. Dickens fiercely satirised various aspects of society, including the workhouse in Oliver Twist, and the failures of the legal system in Bleak House. An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray, who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair. The Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë's most famous work, was the first of the sisters' novels to achieve success. Emily Brontë's novel was Wuthering Heights, and according to Juliet Gardiner, the vivid sexual passion and power of its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers, and led the Victorian public and many early reviewers to think that it had been written by a man. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë is now considered to be one of the first feminist novels. Elizabeth Gaskell was also a successful writer and her North and South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south. Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Trollope's novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England. George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially Middlemarch, are important examples of literary realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict. George Meredith is best remembered for his novels The Ordeal of Richard Feverel and The Egoist. His reputation stood very high well into the 20th century but then seriously declined. An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy, including The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Hardy is a Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, and like Charles Dickens he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society. Another significant late-19th-century novelist is George Gissing, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best known novel is New Grub Street. Although pre-dated by John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author of The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes. William Morris wrote a series of romances in the 1880s and 1890s which are regarded as the first works of high fantasy. Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Moonstone is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. Robert Louis Stevenson was an important Scottish writer at the end of the nineteenth century, author of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the historical novel Kidnapped. Rudyard Kipling was a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems who gained popularity at the end of the nineteenth century for his stories and poems about life in British India, published in collections such as Plain Tales from the Hills, The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Tales, Soldiers Three, and Barrack-Room Ballads. H. G. Wells's writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians, and Wells is seen, along with Frenchman Jules Verne, as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre. He also wrote realistic fiction about the lower middle class in novels like Kipps. By the mid-19th century, the pre-eminence of literature from the British Isles began to be challenged by writers from the United States, resulting in the development of a new American literature that sought to distinguish itself as part of the formation of a new American social and cultural identity. This was the first English-language literature to develop outside of the British Isles. The successful War of Independence led by colonists in British North America from 1775 to 1783, resulted in the formation of the United States. This consequently led to the divergence of English letters in what became the United States from the mainstream of English literature. The late colonial period already saw the publication of important prose tracts reflecting the political debates that culminated in the American revolution, written by important luminaries such as Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, John Dickinson, and Joseph Galloway, the last being a loyalist to the crown. Two key figures were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin are esteemed works with their wit and influence toward the formation of a budding American identity. Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and The American Crisis writings are seen as playing a key role in influencing the political tone of the time. During the Revolutionary War, poems and songs such as Nathan Hale were popular. Major satirists included John Trumbull and Francis Hopkinson. Philip Morin Freneau also wrote poems about the War. In the post-war period, Thomas Jefferson established his place in American literature through his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, his influence on the U.S. Constitution, his autobiography, his Notes on the State of Virginia, and his many letters. The Federalist essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay presented a significant historical discussion of American government organization and republican values. Fisher Ames, James Otis, and Patrick Henry are also valued for their political writings and orations. Early American literature struggled to find a unique voice in existing literary genre, and this tendency was reflected in novels. European styles were frequently imitated, but critics usually considered the imitations inferior. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the first American novels were published. These fictions were too lengthy to be printed for public reading. Publishers took a chance on these works in hopes they would become steady sellers and need to be reprinted. This scheme was ultimately successful because male and female literacy rates were increasing at the time. Among the first American novels are Thomas Attwood Digges's Adventures of Alonso, published in London in 1775 and William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1789. Brown's novel depicts a tragic love story between siblings who fell in love without knowing they were related. Also of note were important women writers such as Susanna Rowson who wrote Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, later re-issued as Charlotte Temple. Charlotte Temple is a seduction tale influenced by the novels of English writer Samuel Richardson, written in the third person, which warns against listening to the voice of love and counsels resistance. She also wrote nine novels, six theatrical works, two collections of poetry, six textbooks, and countless songs. Reaching more than a million and a half readers over a century and a half, Charlotte Temple was the biggest seller of the 19th century before Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Another important writer was Hannah Webster Foster, who wrote the popular The Coquette: Or, the History of Eliza Wharton, published in 1797. The story about a woman who is seduced and later abandoned, The Coquette has been praised for its demonstration of the era's contradictory ideas of womanhood, even as it has been criticized for delegitimizing protest against women's subordination. Other important early American writers include Charles Brockden Brown, William Gilmore Simms, Lydia Maria Child, and John Neal.