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.
 

All Resources

Display as: Categories, List
  1. 1984 Study Guide (eNotes) - George Orwell
  2. Aphra Behn
  3. Arthur Conan Doyle
  4. British Ephemeral Literature
  5. British Writers of the Thirties - Book Review
  6. Charles Dickens
  7. Charles Dickens (Censorship: Ready Reference Series)
  8. Charles Dickens (Critical Survey of Short Fiction)
  9. Charles Dickens (Dictionary of World Biography: The 19th Century)
  10. Charlotte Bronte
  11. Christopher Marlowe
  12. Christopher Marlowe (Critical Survey of Drama)
  13. Christopher Marlowe (Cyclopedia of World Authors)
  14. Christopher Marlowe (Dictionary of World Biography: The Renaissance)
  15. Colonialism in Victorian English Literature
  16. Contemporary British Drama
  17. D. H. Lawrence
  18. D. H. Lawrence (Poetry Criticism)
  19. D. H. Lawrence (Short Story Criticism)
  20. D. H. Lawrence (Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism)
  21. Death in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
  22. Devolving English Literature - Book Review
  23. Doctor Faustus Study Guide (eNotes) - Christopher Marlowe
  24. Eighteenth-Century British Periodicals
  25. English Abolitionist Literature of the Nineteenth Century
  26. English Poetry in the Eighteenth Century
  27. English Poetry in the Fifteenth Century
  28. George Eliot
  29. George Eliot (Critical Survey of Short Fiction)
  30. George Eliot (Dictionary of World Biography: The 19th Century)
  31. George Eliot (Magill’s Choice: Notable British Novelists)
  32. George Orwell
  33. H. G. Wells
  34. Hamlet Study Guide (eNotes) - William Shakespeare
  35. Hard Times Study Guide (quickNotes) - Charles Dickens
  36. Jane Eyre Studu Guides (eNotes) - Charlotte Bronte
  37. John Donne (Critical Survey of Poetry)
  38. John Keats
  39. John Milton
  40. Lady Chatterley's Lover Study Guide (quickNotes) - D. H. Lawrence
  41. Literature of the English Revolution
  42. Literature of the English Revolution
  43. Macbeth Study Guide (eNotes) - William Shakespeare
  44. Mary Shelley
  45. Othello Study Guide (eNotes) - William Shakespeare
  46. Robert Browning
  47. Rudyard Kipling
  48. Silas Marner Study Guide (eNotes) - George Eliot
  49. The English Realist Novel
  50. The Hound of the Baskervilles Study Guide (quickNotes) - Arthur Conan Doyle
  51. The Jew of Malta Study Guide (eNotes) - Christopher Marlowe
  52. The Mill on the Floss Study Guide (eNotes) - George Eliot
  53. The Oxford Companion to English Literature
  54. The Oxford Companion to English Literature Article on Black British Literature
  55. The Portrayal of Jews in Nineteenth-Century English Literature
  56. The Rocking-Horse Winner Study Guide (eNotes) - D. H. Lawrence
  57. The Sea in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism)
  58. The Slave Trade in British and American Literature
  59. Thomas Hardy
  60. Virginia Woolf
  61. William Blake
  62. William Golding
  63. William Hazlitt (Cyclopedia of World Authors)
  64. William Shakespeare