History of literature

The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry which attempt to provide entertainment, enlightenment, or instruction to the reader/hearer/observer, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of these pieces. Not all writings constitute literature. Some recorded materials, such as compilations of data (e.g., a check register) are not considered literature, and this article relates only to the evolution of the works defined in the first sentence above.

The Beginnings of Literature

A stone tablet containing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Literature and writing, though obviously connected, are not synonymous. The first writings from ancient Sumeria by any reasonable definition do not constitute literature—the same is true of some of the early Egyptian hieroglyphics or the thousands of logs from ancient Chinese regimes. Scholars always have and always will disagree concerning when the earliest records-keeping in writing becomes more like "literature" than anything else: the definition is largely subjective.

Moreover, it must be borne in mind that, given the significance of distance as a cultural isolator in earlier centuries, the historical development of literature did not occur at an even pace across the world. The problems of creating a uniform global history of literature are compounded by the fact that many texts have been lost over the millennia, either deliberately, by accident, or by the total disappearance of the originating culture. Much has been written, for example, about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC, and the innumerable key texts which are believed to have been lost forever to the flames. The deliberate suppression of texts (and often their authors) by organisations of either a spiritual or a temporal nature further shrouds the subject.

Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a qualifying role as literature's first stirrings. Early orally transmitted tales such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (8th century BC) or the Eve story of Lilith (16th century BC) were eventually written down. The stories in The Bible most certainly qualify as early literature, as do some other orally transmitted and subsequently transcribed epics such as the stories usually attributed to Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Indian Mahabharata and other works considered in Indian literature to be "Shruti" are among the oldest known writings. Another example is the so called Egyptian Book of the Dead which was eventually written down in the Papyrus of Ani in approximately 250 BC but probably dates from about the 18th century BC. Egyptian literature was not included in early studies because the writings of Ancient Egypt were not translated into European languages until the 19th century when the Rosetta stone was deciphered. In China, a mystical collection of poems attributed to Lao Tze, the Tao te Ching was assembled. The myths and legends of the Norsemen again were an orally transmitted tradition, in a culture in which poetry was highly prized: some of this vibrant oral culture survives having been written down many centuries later (in the Elder Edda, for example).

There are various different possible answers to the question "Which was the first novel ever written?" (See Candidates for the first novel).

Indian literature

Indian epics such as Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagavad Gita have influenced countless other works, including Balinese Kecak and other performances such as shadow puppetry (wayang), and many European influenced works.

See main articles: Indian literature, Sanskrit literature, Tamil literature, Hindi literature, Urdu literature, Indian writing in English

Chinese literature

File:Lipoliangkai.jpg

Li Po Chanting a Poem, by Liang K'ai (13th century)

The first great author on military tactics and strategy was Sun Tzu, whose The Art of War remains on the shelves of many modern military officers (and its advice has been applied to the corporate world as well). Philosophy developed far differently in China than in Greece—rather than presenting extended dialogues, the Analects of Confucius and Lao Zi's Tao Te Ching presented sayings and proverbs more directly and didactically. Some authors feel that China originated the novel form with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, although others feel that this epic is distinct from the novel in key ways. Lyric poetry advanced far more in China than in Europe prior to 1000, as multiple new forms developed in the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties: perhaps the greatest poets of this era in Chinese literature were Li Bai and Li Po.

See main article: Chinese literature

The Greeks and the Romans

The Greeks

Ancient Greek society placed considerable emphasis upon literature. Many authors consider the western literary tradition to have begun with the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, which remain giants in the literary canon for their skillful and vivid depictions of war and peace, honor and disgrace, love and hatred. Notable among later Greek poets was Sappho, who defined, in many ways, lyric poetry as a genre.

A playwright named Aeschylus changed Western literature forever when he introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting. In doing so, he essentially invented "drama": his Oresteia trilogy of plays is seen as his crowning achievement. Other refiners of playwriting were Sophocles and Euripides. Sophocles is credited with skillfully developing irony as a literary technique, most famously in his play Oedipus Rex. Euripedes, conversely, used plays to challenge societal norms and mores—a hallmark of much of Western literature for the next 2,300 years and beyond—and his works such as The Bacchae and The Trojan Women are still notable for their ability to challenge our perceptions of propriety, gender, and war. Aristophanes, a comic playwright, defines and shapes the idea of comedy almost as Aeschylus had shaped tragedy as an art form—Aristophanes' most famous plays include the Lysistrata and The Frogs.

Philosophy entered literature in the dialogues of Plato, who converted the give and take of Socratic questioning into written form. Aristotle, Plato's student, wrote dozens of works on many scientific disciplines, but his greatest contribution to literature was likely his Poetics, which lays out his understanding of drama, and thereby establishes the first criteria for literary criticism.

See main article: Greek Literature

The Romans

In many respects, the writers of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire chose to avoid innovation in favor of imitating the great Greek authors. Virgil's Aeneid, in many respects, emulated Homer's Iliad; Plautus, a comic playwright, followed in the footsteps of Aristophanes; Tacitus' Annals and Germania follow essentially the same historical approaches that Thucydides devised (the Christian historian Eusebius does also, although far more influenced by his religion than either Tacitus or Thucydides had been by Greek and Roman polytheism); Ovid and his Metamorphoses explore the same Greek myths again in new ways. It can be argued, and has been, that the Roman authors, far from being mindless copycats, improved on the genres already established by their Greek predecessors. What is undeniable is that the Romans, in comparison with the Greeks, innovate relatively few literary styles of their own.

Satire is one of the few Roman additions to literature—Horace was the first to use satire extensively as a tool for argument, and Juvenal made it into a weapon. The New Testament is an unusual collection of texts--Paul's epistles are the first collection of personal letters to be treated as literature, the Gospels arguably present the first realistic biographies in Western literature, and John's Revelation, though not the first of its kind, essentially defines apocalypse as a literary genre. Augustine and his City of God do for religious literature essentially what Plato had done for philosophy, but Augustine's approach was far less conversational and more didactive. His Confessions is perhaps the first true autobiography, and certainly it gives rise to the genre of confessional literature which is now more popular than ever.

See main article: Latin literature

Arabic literature

After Rome's fall, Islam's spread across Asia and Africa brought with it a desire to preserve and build upon the work of the Greeks, especially in literature. Although much had been lost to the ravages of time (and to catastrophe, as in the burning of the Library of Alexandria), many Greek works remained extant: they were preserved and copied carefully by Muslim scribes.

Among the innovations of Arabic literature was Ibn Khaldun's perspective on chronicling past events—by fully rejecting supernatural explanations, Khaldun essentially invented the scientific or sociological approach to history.

From Arabic culture the book which would, eventually, become the most famous in the west is the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The Rubáiyát is a collection of poems by the Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám (1048-1122). "Rubaiyat" means "quatrains": verses of four lines.

See main article: Arabic literature

Medieval European literature

After the fall of Rome (in roughly 476), many of the literary approaches and styles invented by the Greeks and Romans fell out of favor in Europe. In the millennium or so that intervened between Rome's fall and the Florentine Renaissance, medieval literature focused more and more on faith and faith-related matters, in part because the works written by the Greeks had not been preserved in Europe, and therefore there were few models of classical literature to learn from and move beyond. What little there was became changed and distorted, with new forms beginning to develop from the distortions. Some of these distorted beginnings of new styles can be seen in the literature generally described as Matter of Rome, Matter of France and Matter of Britain.

Hagiographies, or "lives of the saints", are frequent among early medieval texts. The writings of Bede—Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum—and others continue the faith-based historical tradition begun by Eusebius in the early 300s. Playwriting essentially ceased, except for the mystery plays and the passion plays that focused heavily on conveying Christian belief to the common people. Around 400 AD the Prudenti Psychomachia began the tradition of allegorical tales. Poetry flourished, however, in the hands of the troubadors, whose courtly romances and chanson de geste amused and entertained the upper classes who were their patrons. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote works which he claimed were histories of Britain. These were highly fanciful and included stories of Merlin the magician and King Arthur. Epic poetry continued to develop with the addition of the mythologies of Northern Europe: Beowulf and the Norse sagas have much in common with Homer and Virgil's approaches to war and honor, while poems such as Dante's Divine Comedy and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales take much different stylistic directions.

Between Augustine and The Bible, religious authors had numerous aspects of Christianity that needed further explication and interpretation. Thomas Aquinas, more than any other single person, was able to turn theology into a kind of science, in part because he was heavily influenced by Aristotle, whose works were returning to Europe in the 1200s.

See main article: Medieval literature

European Renaissance Literature

Had nothing occurred to change literature in the 1400s but the Renaissance, the break with medieval approaches would have been clear enough. The 1400s, however, also brought Johann Gutenberg and his invention of the printing press, an innovation (for Europe, at least) that would change literature forever. Texts were no longer precious and expensive to produce—they could be cheaply and rapidly put into the marketplace. Literacy went from the prized possession of the select few to a much broader section of the population (though by no means universal). As a result, much about literature in Europe was radically altered in the two centuries following Gutenberg's unveiling of the printing press in 1455.

William Caxton was the first English printer and published English language texts including Le Morte d'Arthur (a collection of oral tales of the Arthurian Knights which is a forerunner of the novel) and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

In the Renaissance, the focus on learning for learning's sake causes an outpouring of literature. Petrarch popularized the sonnet as a poetic form; Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron made romance acceptable in prose as well as poetry; François Rabelais rejuvenates satire with Gargantua and Pantagruel; Michel de Montaigne single-handedly invented the essay and used it to catalog his life and ideas. Perhaps the most controversial and important work of the time period was a treatise published by a Polish astronomer entitled De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium: in it, Nicolaus Copernicus removed the Earth from its privileged position in the universe, which had far-reaching effects, not only in science, but in literature and its approach to humanity, hierarchy, and truth.

See main article: European Renaissance Literature

The early modern period

Plays for entertainment (as opposed to religious enlightenment) returned to Europe's stages in the early modern period. William Shakespeare is the most notable of the early modern playwrights, but numerous others made important contributions, including Christopher Marlowe, Molière, and Ben Jonson.

From the 16th to the 18th century, Commedia dell'arte performers improvised in the streets of Italy and France. Some Commedia dell'arte plays were written down. Both the written plays and the improvisation were influential upon literature of the time, particularly upon the work of Moliere.

A new movement in English poetry during the 17th century was the metaphysical movement. The metaphysical poets were John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, Henry Vaughan and others. Metaphysical poetry is characterised by a spirit of intellectual investigation of the spiritual, rather than the mystical reverence of many earlier English poems. The metaphysical poets were clearly trying to understand the world around them and the spirit behind it, instead of accepting dogma on the basis of faith.

This new spirit of science and investigation in Europe was part of a general upheaval in human understanding which began with the discovery of the New world in 1492 and continues through the subsequent centuries, even up to the present day. In the 17th century the king of England was overthrown and a republic declared. In the new regime (which lasted from 1649 to 1653) the the arts suffered.

In England and the rest of the British Isles Oliver Cromwell's rule temporarily banned all theatre, festivals, jesters, mummers plays and frivolities. The ban was lifted when the monarchy was restored with Charles II. Thomas Killigrew and the Drury Lane theatre were favorites of King Charles.

In contrast to the metaphysical poets was John Milton's Paradise Lost, an epic religious poem in blank verse. Milton had been Oliver Cromwell's chief propagandist and suffered when the Restoration came. Paradise Lost is one of the highest developments of the epic form in poetry immediately preceding the era of the modern prose novel. The form of writing now commonplace across the world—the novel—originated from a few years before this period in time and grew in popularity in the next century. The Castle of Otranto (1529) is a Gothic novel which was later found and rewritten (in 1764) by Horace Walpole. The Castle of Otranto is generally held to be the first gothic horror novel.

Miguel Cervantes's Don Quixote has been called "the first novel" by many literary scholars (or the first of the modern European novels). It was published in two parts. The first part was published in 1605 and the second in 1615. It might be viewed as a parody of Le Morte d'Arthur (and other examples of the chivalric romance), in which case the novel form would be the direct result of poking fun at a collection of heroic folk legends. This is fully in keeping with the spirit of the age of enlightenment which began from about this time and delighted in giving a satirical twist to the stories and ideas of the past. It's worth noting that this trend toward satirising previous writings was only made possible by the printing press. Without the invention of mass produced copies of a book it would not be possible to assume the reader will have seen the earlier work and will thus understand the references within the text.

Other early novelists include Daniel Defoe (born 1660) and Jonathan Swift (born 1667).

European Enlightenment Literature, 18th century

The Age of Enlightenment refers mainly to the period beginning towards the end of the 17th century and continuing on throughout the 18th. It could also be called the Age of Revolution, for during this period scientists and mathematicians revolutionised human understanding, the Industrial Revolution got under way and the American and French political revolutions took place. During this period philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Thomas Paine were concerned with the rights of man and with the meaning of rights or right. The arts also shared in the concerns of reason, enlightenment and a new understanding of things. Literature explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, geographical exploration and the comparison between the supposed natural state of man and the supposed civilized state of man.

In 1700 William Congreve's play The Way of the World premiered. [1] Although unsuccessful at the time The Way of the World is a good example of the sophistication of theatrical thinking during this period, with complex subplots and characters intended as ironic parodies of common stereotypes.

In 1703 Nicholas Rowe's domestic drama The Fair Penitent, an adaptation of Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry, was pronounced by Dr Johnson to be one of the most pleasing tragedies in the language. Also in 1703 Sir Richard Steele's play The Tender Husband achieved some success.

In 1704 Jonathan Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books [2] and John Dennis published his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry. The Battle of the Books begins with a reference to the use of a glass (which, in those days, would mean either a mirror or a magnifying glass) as a comparison to the use of satire. Swift is, in this, very much the child of his age, thinking in terms of science and satire at one and the same time. He was one of the first English novelists and also a political campaigner. His satirical writing springs from a body of liberal thought which produced not only books but also political pamphlets for public distribution. Swift's writing represents the new, the different and the modern attempting to change the world by parodying the ancient and incumbent. The Battle of the Books is a short writing which demonstrates his position very neatly.

1707 Henry Fielding was born (22 April) and his sister Sarah Fielding was born 3 years later in 1710 on the 8 November.

In 1711 Alexander Pope began a career in literature with the publishing of his An Essay on Criticism. In 1712 Pope published The Rape of the Lock and in 1713 Windsor Forest.

1712 French philosophical writer Jean Jacques Rousseau born 28 June and his countryman Denis Diderot was born the following year 1713 on the 5th of October. Horace Walpole was born on 24 September 1717.

Daniel Defoe was another political pamphleteer turned novelist like Jonathan Swift and was publishing in the early 18th century. In 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, in 1720, Captain Singleton and, in 1722, Moll Flanders.

Other authors publishing in 1722 included Sir Richard Steele, Penelope Aubin and Eliza Haywood.

From 1726 to 1729 Voltaire lived in exile mainly in England.

In 1728 John Gay wrote The Beggar's Opera which has increased in fame ever since.

In 1729 Jonathan Swift published A Modest Proposal, a satirical suggestion that Irish families should sell their children as food. Swift was, at this time, fully involved in political campaigning for the Irish.

In 1731 George Lillo's play The London Merchant was a success at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane. It was a new kind of play, a domestic tragedy, which approximates to what later came to be called a melodrama.

1749 Henry Fielding published The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.

1751 Thomas Gray wrote Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

1752 a satirical short story by Voltaire, Micromégas featured space travellers visiting earth. It was one of the first stories leaning toward what later became Science fiction. Its publication at this time is indicative of the trend toward scientific thinking prevalent in the age of enlightenment.

1754 Henry Fielding died 8 October.

1759 Voltaire published Candide. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was born 10 November.

1760 - 1767 Laurence Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy.

1762 Rousseau published Émile.

1764 The Castle of Otranto (1529) is rewritten and published by Horace Walpole. Probably the first gothic horror novel.

1766 Oliver Goldsmith published The Vicar of Wakefield.

1767 August Wilhelm von Schlegel was born 8 September.

1768 Sarah Fielding died.

1770 April 7 birth of William Wordsworth.

1772 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel was born 10 March.

1773 Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer, a farce, was performed in London.

1774 Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, a novel which approximately marks the beginning of the Romantic movement in the arts and philosophy. A transition thus began, from the critical, science inspired, enlightenment writing to the romantic yearning for forces beyond the mundane and for foreign times and places to inspire the soul with passion and mystery.

1777 the comedy play The School for Scandal, a comedy of manners, was written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

1778 Death of Voltaire. Death of Jean Jacques Rousseau 2 July.

1783 Washington Irving was born.

1784 Denis Diderot died 31 July. Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot have all passed away within a period of a few short years and French philosophy had thus lost three of its greatest enlightened free thinkers. Rousseau's thinking on the nobility of life in the wilds, facing nature as a naked savage still had great force to influence the next generation as the romantic movement gained momentum. Beaumarchais wrote The Marriage of Figaro. Maria and Harriet Falconar publish Poems on Slavery. The anti-slavery movement was growing in power and many poems and pamphlets were published on the subject.

1786 Robert Burns published Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. The mood of literature was swinging toward more interest in diverse ethnicity. Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) was adapted into a comic opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte.

1789 James Fenimore Cooper was born 15 September in America.

1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley was born (August 4).

1793 Salisbury Plain by William Wordsworth.

1794 Robert Goldsmith was born.

1796 Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born. Denis Diderot's Jacques le fataliste was published posthumously.

1796 Charlotte Smith published her novel Marchmont.

April 16 1796 Coleridge published Poems on Various Subjects.

See main article: European Enlightenment Literature

Modern European Literature, 19th century

1802 Sir Walter Scott published Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Amelia Opie published a volume of Poems. Anne Bannerman published Tales of Superstition and Chivalry. The romantic movement was well under way. Along with the romantic movement developed the splintering of fiction writing into genres and the rise of speculative fiction.

1803 Ralph Waldo Emerson was born (May 25) in Boston, USA.

1804 William Blake, wrote Jerusalem. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born.

1805 Sir Walter Scott published Lay of the Last Minstrel. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller died 9 May.

1806 Amelia Opie published Simple Tales.

1807 Thomas Moore published Irish Melodies. Charles and Mary Lamb published Tales from Shakespeare, a simple retelling of some of Shakespeare's plays in the form of little stories accessible to a child readership. Byron published Hours of Idleness. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in America 27 February.

1808 Goethe published part one of Faust.

1809 Schlegel published On Dramatic Art and Literature. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born (August 6). Edgar Allan Poe born.

1810 Sir Walter Scott published Lady of the Lake. Percy Shelley published a gothic novel: Zastrozzi. The term "Gothic" had, by this time, come to mean a desire for a romantic return to the times before the renaissance.

1811 Percy Shelley published a gothic novella: St. Irvyne.

1812 George Crabbe published Tales in Verse. Byron published Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I and II. Coleridge published Remorse. On February 7th Charles Dickens was born. On May 7 Robert Browning was born in London. On October 4 William Godwin and Percy Shelley met in London.

1813 Jane Austen published (anonymously) Pride and Prejudice. Byron published The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos. January 23 Drury Lane reopened with Coleridge's Remorse. In May Percy Shelley published his poem Queen Mab. In September Sir Walter Scott declined the offer of being made Poet Laureate, Robert Southey accepted the post.

1814 Sir Walter Scott published Waverley. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park was published anonymously. Robert Southey published Roderick, the Last of the Goths. English translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. On July 28 Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin (Mary Shelley) eloped. Phillipe-Ignace Francois Aubert du Gaspe was born.

1816 Thomas Love Peacock published Headlong Hall. Coleridge published Christabel and Kubla Khan. Jane Austen anonymously published Emma. E.T.A. Hoffmann published Undine. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley went to Geneva and met Byron (with his physician John Polidori). At Byron's villa they told ghost stories and invented the basic ideas which led eventually to Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein and Polidori's vampire novel. Their stay at Byron's villa was one of the most famous events in the Gothic/Romantic movement.

1817 John Keats published a volume of Poems. Sir Walter Scott published Harold the Dauntless. Byron published Manfred. Henry David Thoreau was born.

1818 Mary Shelley anonymously published Frankenstein which came to be known, eventually, as the first science fiction novel and the template for the mad scientist subgenre. Byron published Childe Harold Canto IV. John Keats published Endymion. Thomas Love Peacock published Rhododaphne and Nightmare Abbey. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously. Sir Walter Scott published Rob Roy.

1819 John William Polidori published The Vampyre. Herman Melville was born.

1820 Keats published Lamia, Isabella and Hyperion. Percy Shelley published Prometheus Unbound. Elizabeth Barrett published The Battle of Marathon. Sir Walter Scott published Ivanhoe, The Abbott and The Monastery. James Catnach: Street Ballads. A gothic novel, Melmoth the Wanderer was published by Charles Robert Maturin.

1821 February 23: John Keats died. Percy Shelley published Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats and Epipsychidion. Byron published The Prophecy of Dante. Sir Walter Scott published Kenilworth. Fyodor Dostoevsky was born.

1822 Thomas De Quincey published Confessions of an English Opium Eater. P. B. Shelley published Hellas.

1823 Mary Shelley published Valperga. Byron published The Age of Bronze and The Island. Charles Lamb published Essays of Elia. Sir Walter Scott published Quentin Durward. An English translation of Jacob Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales appeared.

1824 Sir Walter Scott published Redgauntlet. Byron died in Greece.

1826 Mary Shelley published The Last Man, a novel set in the 21st century.

1827 Alfred and Charles Tennyson published Poems by Two Brothers. August 12: William Blake died. Octave Crémazie was born. James McIntyre was born.

1828 Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy was born 9 September.

1829 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel died 11 January.

1830 Emily Dickinson was born.

1831 Sir Walter Scott published Castle Dangerous.

1832 Percy Shelley published his poem The Mask of Anarchy, a reaction to the Peterloo massacre. Johann Wolfgang Goethe published part II of Faust. On March 20 Goethe died. Jerrold Douglas published The Factory Girl, The Golden Calf and The Rent-Day.

1833 Caroline Bowles published Tales of the Factories. Charles Lamb published The Last Essays of Elia.

1834 Frederick Marryat published Peter Simple and Jacob Faithful. Balzac published Le Pere Goriot. William Morris was born. On July 25th Samuel Taylor Coleridge died.

1835 Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was born.

1836 William S. Gilbert was born. Charles Dickens published The Pickwick Papers, followed, in the next few years, by Oliver Twist (1837-1839), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), Barnaby Rudge (1841), A Christmas Carol (1843) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844).

1838 Elizabeth Barrett published The Seraphim. Lady Charlotte Guest published Mabinogion.

1839 Louis Fréchette was born.

1840 Birth of Thomas Hardy.

1841 Phillipe-Ignace Francois Aubert du Gaspe died.

1843 Henry James was born.

1844 Alexandre Dumas published a novel The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) and wrote The Count of Monte Cristo which was published in installments over the next two years. William Makepeace Thackeray published Barry Lyndon.

In the mid-nineteenth century magazines publishing short stories and serials began to be popular. Some of them were more respectable, while others were referred to by the derogatory name of penny dreadfuls. In Britain Charles Dickens published several of his books in installments in magazines. In America a version of the penny dreadful became popularly known as a dime novel. In the dime novels the reputations of gunfighters and other wild west heroes or villains were created or exagerated. The western genre came into existence.

1845 August Wilhelm von Schlegel died 12 May.

Charles Dickens published Dombey and Son (1846-1848).

1846 Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte published Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Edward Lear published his Book of Nonsense.

1847 Anne Bronte published Agnes Grey, Emily Bronte published Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre. Rymer published Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood.

1848 William Makepeace Thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair was published. Elizabeth Gaskell published Mary Barton. Anne Bronte published The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Grant Allen was born.

1849 Death of Anne Bronte and Edgar Allen Poe. Dostoyevski published Netochka Nezvanova.

1850 Alfred Lord Tennyson became Poet Laureate. Robert Louis Stevenson born 13 November.

1851 Le Fanu published Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery. Herman Melville published Moby Dick. James Fenimore Cooper died 14 September.

1854 Oscar Wilde was born 16 October.

Charles Dickens published David Copperfield (1849-1850) and then Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855-1857), A Tale of Two Cities (11 July 1859) and Great Expectations (1860-1861).

1859 Washington Irving died. Dostoyevski published The Village of Stepanchikovo (or The Friend of the Family). Arthur Conan Doyle was born 22 May.

1860 Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Анто́н Па́влович Че́хов) was born 29 January.

1861 Robert Goldsmith died. Bliss Carman was born. E. Pauline Johnson was born.

(1862 Victor Hugo published Les Misérables. Henry David Thoreau died. Edith Wharton was born. Dostoyevski published The House of the Dead and A Nasty Story.

1863 Jules Verne published Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon). (Verne's Paris au XXe siècle (Paris in the 20th Century was written, but is not published until 1994). Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth) came out in 1864 and De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon) in 1865. Verne had by then fully established the "scientific romance" as a genre. Charles Dickens published Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865).

1864 Nathaniel Hawthorne died. Dostoyevski published Notes from Underground (or Letters from the Underworld)

In 1865 Lewis Carroll published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Thomas Chandler Haliburton died. Edith Maude Eaton was born.

1866 Dostoyevski published Crime and Punishment. Followed by The Gambler (1867).

Jules Verne published Les enfants du Capitaine Grant (In Search of the Castaways) 1867-1868 and Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers (20,000 Leagues Under the Seas) in 1870.

1868 Dostoyevski published The Idiot.

1870 Charles Dickens died aged 58. Before his death he was working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood (published unfinished). John McCrae was born.

1872 Dostoyevski published The Possessed (or Demons or The Devils). Lewis Carroll published Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There. Samuel Butler published Erewhon, an early science fiction novel. Jules Verne published Le tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours (Around the World in Eighty Days). L'île mystérieuse (Mysterious Island) followed in 1874.

1875 Carmen, French opera by Georges Bizet, with text by Meilhac and Halévy. Dostoyevski published The Raw Youth (or The Adolescent).

1876 Lewis Carroll published The Hunting of the Snark.

1878 Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta HMS Pinafore, or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor was staged.

1879 Octave Crémazie died. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance, or, The Slave of Duty was staged.

1880 Dostoyevski published The Brothers Karamazov.

1881 Dostoyevski died. Oscar Wilde published his first book of poems . Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Patience, or, Bunthorne's Bride was staged.

1882 Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Iolanthe, or, The Peer and the Peri was staged. Ralph Waldo Emerson died. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died. Two of America's finest poets gone in one year.

1883 Franz Kafka was born 3 July.

Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas Princess Ida, or, Castle Adamant (1884) and The Mikado, or, The Town of Titipu (1885) arrive on the London stage.

1885 H. Rider Haggard published King Solomon's Mines.

1886 Emily Dickinson died.

1887 Oscar Wilde published The Canterville Ghost. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Ruddigore, or, The Witch's Curse was staged. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story and the beginning of crime fiction as a genre. H. Rider Haggard published She first serialized in The Graphic from October 1886 to January 1887.

1888 Oscar Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Stories. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Yeomen of the Guard, or, The Merryman and his Maid was staged.

Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas The Gondoliers, or, The King of Barataria (1889), Utopia, Limited, or, The Flowers of Progress (1893) and The Grand Duke, or, The Statutory Duel (1896) were all staged.

Lewis Carroll's last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. In 1889 Oscar Wilde published The Portrait of Mr. W. H..

1890 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Sign of Four. H. Rider Haggard published The Saga of Eric Brighteyes an epic viking novel.

1891 Herman Melville died. Oscar Wilde published Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime and other Stories, Intentions, The Picture of Dorian Gray and House of Pomegranates.

1892 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1893 Oscar Wilde staged two plays: Salomé (French version) and Lady Windermere's Fan. His A Woman of No Importance and the English version of Salomé followed in 1894.

1894 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Robert Louis Stevenson died 3 December.

1896 Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème. Chekov's play The Seagull. H.G. Wells published The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau. William Morris died 3 October.

1897 Bram Stoker published Dracula. H.G. Wells published The Invisible Man.

1898 Henry James published The Turn of the Screw. H.G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds. Oscar Wilde published The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

1899 Chekov's play Uncle Vanya. H.G. Wells published When The Sleeper Wakes. Grant Allen died. Oscar Wilde staged his plays The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband one year before his death in 1900.

When the Nineteenth century ended the genres of horror, ghost stories, westerns, crime fiction, science fiction, historical novels and fantasy had all been established.

See main article: Modern European Literature

Modernism

Modernist poetry

Modernist poetry is a mode of writing characterised by technical innovation in the mode of versification (sometimes referred to as free verse) and by the dislocation of the 'I' of the poet as a means of subverting the notion of an unproblematic poetic 'self' directly addressing an equally unproblematic ideal reader or audience. In English, it is generally considered to have emerged in the early years of the 20th century.

These two facets of modernist poetry are intimately connected with each other. The dislocation of the authorial presence is achieved through the application of such techniques as collage, found poetry, visual poetry, the juxtaposition of apparently unconnected materials, etc. In the best examples of modernist writing, these techniques are used not for their own sake but to open up questions in the mind of the reader.

Modernist poetry in English is often viewed as an American phenomenon in origin, with leading exponents including Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Louis Zukofsky, but there were a number of important British modernist poets, including David Jones, Hugh MacDiarmid, Mina Loy, and Basil Bunting.

The influence of modernism can be seen in such later poetic groups and movements as the Objectivists, the Beat generation, the Black Mountain poets, the deep image group, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets and the British Poetry Revival.

Modernist prose needs to be added

See main article: Modernism See also: western canon