Introduction

Chaucer

William Shakespeare

Trying to list every important work of British literature is equivalent to keeping a cataloged inventory of every grain of sand on the British islands’ shores. The width and depth of topics, styles, materials, and authors is simply staggering. From early epics about heroes and warriors from before 1000 AD to the captivating saga of a young wizard intent on defeating evil in the twenty-first century, British literature has a little something for everyone. With broad categories ranging from the romantic to the satirical, styles ranging from the sonnet to the novel to the play, and authors ranging from illiterate storytellers to Nobel Prize winners, British literature remains one of the cornerstones of literature curriculum around the world.

Essential Facts

1. The English language is split into three large time periods, each represented by a main author or work: Old English (Beowulf), Middle English (Geoffrey Chaucer), and Modern English (William Shakespeare).
2. The oldest surviving English text is Caedmon’s Hymn of Creation.
3. When King Henry VIII had England’s monasteries burned down in 1535, many of the oldest texts written in English also went up in flames.
4. The first novel wasn’t written in English (critics usually give that honor to Cervantes’ Don Quixote), but the first extremely successful novel was: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
5. Works written in English have won twenty-six Nobel Prizes in Literature, more than any other language. Of those twenty-six, nine were won by authors from the United Kingdom.