English literature

This article is focused on English-language literature rather than being limited merely to the literature of England, so that it includes writers from Scotland, the whole of Ireland, and Wales, as well as literature in English from former British colonies, including the US. However, until the early 19th century, it deals with the literature written in English in Britain and Ireland.

English literature is generally seen as beginning with the epic poem Beowulf, the most famous work in Old English, which was written in England some time between the 8th and the early 11th century. Despite being set in Scandinavia, Beowulf has become a national epic of England. The next landmark was the work of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400), especially The Canterbury Tales. During the Renaissance, especially the late 16th and early 17th centuries, major drama and poetry was written by Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne and others. Another great poet, from later in the 17th century, was John Milton (1608–74), author of the epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). The late 17th and the early 18th centuries are particularly associated with satire, especially in the poetry of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, and the prose works of Jonathan Swift. The 18th century also saw the first British novels in the works of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding, while the late 18th and early 19th centuries were the period of the Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron, Shelley and Keats.