Literature Timeline
Date Literary Period Authors/Works
This period was dominated
by Homer and other Greek
tragedians The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
Oedipus the King by
Sophocles
800-400 BC
Medea by Euripedes
Famous authors from this period: Virgil,
Horace, and Ovid
250 BC - AD Writers of the Roman
Empire are most noted in
150 this time period
Beowulf
450-1066 Old English (Anglo-
Saxon) Period
The rise of haiku poetry
Tale of Genji by Japanese writer Murasaki
Shibiku (written around the year 1000)
Persian poet Rumi (1207-73)
Petrarch, Italian writer, inventor of the sonnet
(1304 -74)
Middle English Period
1066-1500
The Divine Comedy by Dante, Italian writer
(1307-1321)
The Decameron by Italian writer Boccacio
(1313-75)
The Canterbury
Tales (1387-1400) by
Geoffrey Chaucer, British
writer (1343-1400)
1450- Invention of the
printing press
Francois Rabelais, French writer (1490-1553)
The Renaissance
Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, British
558-1603 Elizabethan Age
writer (1564-93)
1603- 1625 Jacobean Age
William Shakespeare, British poet and
playwright (1564-1616)
1625 - 1649 Caroline Age
1649 - 1669 Commonwealth
1500-1660 Period
Ben Johnson, British author (1572-1637)
John Donne, British poet (1572-1631)
The Faerie Queen (1589) by Edmund Spenser,
British poet
1599 The Globe Theatre built
Don Quixote (1605-1615) by Miguel de
Cervantes, Spanish writer
Andrew Marvel, British poet (1621-78)
Henry Vaughan, British poet (1621-95)
Paradise Lost (1667) by John
Milton, British author (1608-
74)
Tartuffe (1664) by French writer Moliere
(1622-73)
The Neoclassical Period
Alexander Pope (1688-1744), British poet
1660-1700 The Restoration
Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll
1700-1745 The Augustan Age
Flanders (1722) by Daniel Defoe, English
(Age of Pope)
writer (1660-1731)
1660-1785
1650-1750 Puritan/Colonial
Literature (America)
Gulliver's Travels (1726) by
Jonathan Swift, English
writer (1667-1745)
Candide (1759) by French
writer Voltaire (1694-1778)
Samuel Johnson, English writer (1709-84)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French writer and
philosopher (1712-78)
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)
by American Jonathan Edwards
The Castle of Otranto (1764) by
Horace Walpole (first gothic
novel)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832),
German writer
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas
Paine, and Patrick Henry,
American Revolution
authors
Poems on Various Subjects (1773) by Phyllis
Wheatley, African-American poet(1753-1784)
The Age of Reason
1750-1800 (America)
Common Sense (1776) by Thomas
Paine
William Blake, English
poet (1757-1827)
William Wordsworth, English poet (1770-
1850)
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, English poet (1772-1834)
The Romantic Period
Jane Austen, English author (1775-
--The Gothic Period (approx. 1817)
1785-1830 1785-1820, though it lasted
longer in America)
Lord Byron, English poet (1788-1824)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (1792-
1822)
John Keats, English poet (1795-1821)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet, (1809-
92)
Frankenstein (1818) by Mary
Shelley, British
writer (1797-1851)
The Last of the
Mohicans (1826) by James
Fenimore Cooper, American novelist (1789-
1851)
Edgar Allan Poe, American
writer influenced by Gothic
movement (1809-49)
Robert Browning, English
poet (1812-89)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet
The Victorian Period (1806-61)
1848-1860 The Pre-
Raphaelites
Charles Dickens, British author
1840-1860 (1812-1870)
Transcendentalism
(America)
1865-1900 Age of Realism Emily Dickinson, American writer (1830-1886)
(America)
1832-1901
Henry James, American writer (1843-1916)
Transcendentalist writers Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson
Alcott, Margaret Fuller
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave (1845) by Frederick Douglass
(1818-1895)
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte
Bronte, British writer (1816-55)
Wuthering Heights (1848) by Emily Bronte,
British writer (1818-48)
The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel
Hawthorne, American writer
Moby Dick (1851) by Herman
Melville, American writer
Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau,
American essayist
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by
Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
Les Miserables (1862) by Victor Hugo, French
writer
Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace
Thackeray, English novelist
Madame Bovary (1857) by
Gustave Flaubert, French writer
Little Women (1868) by Louisa
May Alcott, American author
Middlemarch (1872) by George Eliot (a.k.a.
Marian Evans), British writer
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, American poet (1872-
1906)
A Doll's House (1879) by Henrik Ibsen,
Norwegian dramatist (1828-1906)
Huckleberry Finn (1885) by American writer
Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens, 1835-
1910)
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) by Stephen
Crane, American author (1871-1900)
The Awakening (1899) by Kate
Chopin, American writer
The Yellow Wallpaper (1899) by Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, American writer
Leaves of Grass (1900) by Walt Whitman,
American poet
Heart of Darkness (1902) by
The Edwardian Period Joseph Conrad, Polish/British
(Europe)
1901-1914 author (1857-1924)
Naturalism (America)
The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
by W.E.B. Dubois, American writer
The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London,
American writer, (1876-1916)
Ethan Frome (1911) by Edith Wharton,
American writer (1862-1937)
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915)
by T.S. Eliot, American writer
Robert Frost, American poet
(1874-1963)
The Modern Period
Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet (1892-
1914-1945 1950)
My Antonia (1918) by Willa Cather, American
writer (1873-1947)
Winesburg, Ohio (1919) by Sherwood
Anderson, American writer
The Great Gatsby (1925) by F.
Scott Fitzgerald, American
writer (1896-1940)
The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest
Hemingway, American writer (1899-1961)
As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner,
American writer (1897-1962)
Of Mice and Men (1937) by
John Steinbeck, American
writer (1902-1968)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora
Neale Hurston, American writer (1891-1960)
Langston Hughes, American poet (1906-67)
The Glass Menagerie (1945) by Tennessee
Williams, American playwright (1911-1983)
Animal Farm (1945) by George
Orwell, British writer (1903-1950)
The Stranger (1946) by Albert Camus, French
writer (1913-1960)
Post Modernism The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by
1950 - J.D.Salinger, American writer
(1919-)
Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison,
American writer (1914-1994)
The Crucible (1953) by Arthur Miller,
American playwright (1915-)
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury,
American author (1920-)
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding,
British author (1911-1993)
Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956) by
Eugene O'Neill, American playwright (1888-
1953)
On the Road (1957) by Jack
Kerouac, American writer (1922-
69)
Night (1958) by Elie Wiesel, Romanian-
American (1928-)
Catch 22 (1961) by Joseph Heller,
American writer (1923-)
A Separate Peace (1962) by John Knowles,
American writer (1926-)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) by
Ken Kesey, American author (1935-2001)
The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia
Plath, American poet and author
(1932-63)
The Chosen (1967) by Chaim Potok, American
writer (1929-2002)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) by
Maya Angelou, American author (1928-)
The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni
Morrison, American author (1931-)
Bless Me, Ultima (1972) by Rudolfo Anaya,
Mexican-American Author (1927-)
The Woman Warrior (1976) by Maxine Hong
Kingston, Asian-American writer (1940-)
The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
(1944-)
The House on Mango Street (1983) by Sandra
Cisneros (1954-)
Love Medicine (1984) by Louise Erdrich,
Native American author (1954-)
The Joy Luck Club (1989) by Amy
Tan, American writer (1952-
