English literature
English literature has been written in the English language for more than 1,400 years, beginning with a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects that Anglo-Saxon settlers carried to Great Britain in the fifth century. The earliest of these forms is called Old English, and its most famous work is Beowulf, a poem set in Scandinavia that nonetheless became England's national epic. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, and the language travelled with it across the world. From 1907 to the present, writers working in English have received the Nobel Prize in Literature more often than writers in any other language. How does a tongue spoken on one island become the medium of so many literary traditions? What turns French and Latin from the languages of courts into rivals that English would eventually overtake? And who were the figures who decided that stories worth telling could be told in the vernacular?
About 400 manuscripts survive from Anglo-Saxon England, the period after Germanic tribes settled around the year 450 and ending soon after the Norman Conquest in 1066. Nearly all their authors are anonymous. Twelve are known by name from medieval sources, but only four are known by their vernacular works with any certainty: Caedmon, Bede, Alfred the Great, and Cynewulf. Caedmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known. His only surviving work, Caedmon's Hymn, probably dates from the late 7th century. It stands as one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry, alongside the inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross and the Franks Casket. The Ruthwell Cross itself bears lines from the poem The Dream of the Rood. Old English writing reached across many genres, including epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, and riddles. Widsith, preserved in the Exeter Book of the late 10th century, lists kings of tribes ranked by their impact, with Attila King of the Huns coming first. Scholar Lotte Hedeager argues the work may date back to the late 6th or early 7th century, while others, such as John Niles, contend it was invented in the 10th century. King Alfred's 9th-century translation of Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy shows that classical antiquity was not forgotten on this island.
After 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common, and French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. The Norman dialects of the ruling classes became Anglo-Norman, and over the following century Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English. Political power was no longer in English hands, so Middle English literature appeared in many dialects shaped by each writer's region and background. The Ormulum, composed between roughly 1150 and 1180, was the first work to highlight the blending of Old English and Anglo-Norman elements, marking the start of the Middle English period. Layamon's 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. Wycliffe's Bible, a group of translations into Middle English made under John Wycliffe between about 1382 and 1395, helped establish English as a literary language. Those translations became the chief cause of the Lollard movement, a pre-Reformation movement that rejected many teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Julian of Norwich wrote her Revelations of Divine Love around 1393, believed to be the first published book written by a woman in the English language.
Geoffrey Chaucer is best known for The Canterbury Tales, a collection of mostly verse stories framed as a contest among pilgrims travelling from Southwark to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. He was a significant figure in establishing the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The multilingual nature of his audience appears in the work of John Gower, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Chaucer. Gower is remembered for three major poems written in three different tongues: the Mirroir de l'Omme in Anglo-Norman, the Vox Clamantis in Latin, and the Confessio Amantis in Middle English. William Langland wrote Piers Plowman around 1360 to 1387, a Middle English allegorical narrative poem in unrhymed alliterative verse. The so-called Pearl Poet produced Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a late 14th-century alliterative romance and one of the better-known Arthurian stories of the beheading game type. Three other poems survive in the same manuscript, including the intricate elegiac poem Pearl, generally accepted as the work of the same author. Their Midlands dialect differs markedly from the London-based English of Chaucer, carrying many dialect words of Scandinavian origin. Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, printed by Caxton in 1485, gathered French and English Arthurian romances and was among the earliest books printed in England.
Mystery plays were presented in the porches of cathedrals or by strolling players on feast days, drawn from enactments of the liturgy. They developed from the 10th to the 16th century and reached the height of their popularity in the 15th century before professional theatre rendered them obsolete. Four complete or nearly complete English biblical collections survive from the late medieval period. The most complete is the York cycle of 48 pageants, performed in the city of York from the middle of the 14th century until 1569. Three plays in Cornish survive as well, known as the Ordinalia. Morality plays grew out of these religious roots and marked a shift toward a more secular base for European theatre. In them, a protagonist meets personifications of moral attributes who urge him to choose a godly life over an evil one. The Summoning of Everyman, usually called simply Everyman and dated around 1509 to 1519, examines Christian salvation through allegorical characters. Another form, the mummers' plays, was early street theatre tied to the Morris dance, retelling old stories of Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood as actors travelled town to town for money and hospitality.
The House of Tudor ruled England between 1485 and 1603, spanning the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Renaissance style and ideas penetrated England slowly, arriving more than a century after Italy, and the Elizabethan era is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. Thomas More wrote Utopia in Latin and published it in 1516, a frame narrative depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social, and political customs. Thomas Wyatt, one of the earliest English Renaissance poets, introduced the sonnet from Italy into England in the early 16th century alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. After William Caxton introduced the printing press in England in 1476, vernacular literature flourished, and the Reformation inspired the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, a lasting influence on literary language. Edmund Spenser produced The Faerie Queene in 1590 and 1596, an epic poem and allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. Sir Philip Sidney wrote Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poetry, and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. On the stage, Gorboduc of 1561 by Sackville and Norton was the first verse drama in English to employ blank verse, while Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, written between 1582 and 1592, established the revenge play as a new genre.
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and one of the world's greatest dramatists. His plays have been translated into every primary living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He wrote across many genres, including histories such as Richard III and Henry IV, tragedies such as Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, and comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. His career carried into the Jacobean period, when he wrote the so-called problem plays and turned to romance or tragicomedy in his final period, completing The Tempest among three more major plays. These late works are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, yet they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Shakespeare also popularised the English sonnet, making significant changes to Petrarch's model. A collection of 154 sonnets dealing with the passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality was first published in a 1609 quarto. After his death, Ben Jonson became the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era, popularising the comedy of humours in works such as Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair.
The War of Independence led by colonists in British North America from 1775 to 1783 created the United States and the first English-language literature to develop outside the British Isles. Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin shaped a budding American identity through their wit and influence. Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and his American Crisis writings helped set the political tone of the time. Thomas Jefferson secured his place through the Declaration of Independence, his Notes on the State of Virginia, and his many letters, while the Federalist essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay discussed American government and republican values. 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 of 1789. Susanna Rowson wrote Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, later reissued as Charlotte Temple, which reached more than a million and a half readers over a century and a half and was the biggest seller of the 19th century before Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. By the mid-19th century, American writers challenged the pre-eminence of literature from the British Isles. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter of 1850 drove a woman from her community for adultery, and his fiction shaped his friend Herman Melville, whose Moby-Dick of 1851 turned a whaling voyage into a study of obsession and the nature of evil. Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was the first major American writer born away from the East Coast, in the border state of Missouri, and his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn of 1884 made his characters speak like real people in local dialects and regional accents.
Common questions
What is English literature and how old is the English language?
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years, beginning with Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the fifth century.
What is the most famous work in Old English literature?
Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. Its only surviving manuscript is the Nowell Codex, with most estimates placing it close to the year 1000.
Why is Geoffrey Chaucer important to English literature?
Geoffrey Chaucer was a significant figure in developing the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. He is best known for The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories framed as a contest among pilgrims travelling to Canterbury Cathedral.
Why is William Shakespeare considered the greatest writer in the English language?
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and one of the world's greatest dramatists. His plays have been translated into every primary living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
How did the Norman Conquest change English literature?
Following 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. The English spoken after the Normans arrived is known as Middle English.
When did American literature begin to develop separately from English literature?
American literature began to diverge after the War of Independence led by colonists in British North America from 1775 to 1783, which formed the United States. It was the first English-language literature to develop outside the British Isles.
Has English-language literature won many Nobel Prizes?
From 1907 to the present, writers from Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and former British colonies have received the Nobel Prize in Literature for works in English more than in any other language.
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