English literature From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Selected English-language writers:Geoffrey Chaucer,William Shakespeare,Jane Austen,Mark Twain,Virginia Woolf,T. S. Eliot,Vladimir Nabokov,Toni Morrison,Salman Rushdie. The focus of this article is on literature in theEnglish languagefrom anywhere, not just the literature ofEngland, so that it includes writers fromScotland, the whole ofIreland,Wales, as well as literature in English from formerBritish colonies, including the US. However, up until the early 19th century, it deals with the literature written in English ofBritainandIreland. English literatureis generally seen as beginning with theepic poemBeowulf, that dates from between the 8th to the 11th centuries, the most famous work inOld English, which has achieved
national epicstatus in England, despite being set inScandinavia. The next important landmark is the works of the poetGeoffrey Chaucer(c. 1343–1400), especiallyThe Canterbury Tales. Then during TheRenaissance, especially the late 16th and early 17th centuries, major drama and poetry was written byWilliam Shakespeare,Ben Jonson,John Donneand many others. Another great poet, from later in the 17th century, wasJohn Milton(1608–74) author of theepic poem Paradise Lost(1667). The late 17th and the early 18th century are particularly associated with satire, especially in the poetry ofJohn DrydenandAlexander Pope, and the prose works of Jonathan Swift. The 18th century also saw the first British novels in the works ofDaniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, andHenry Fielding, while the late 18th and early 19th century was the period of theRomantic poetsWordsworth,Coleridge,ShelleyandKeats.[citation needed] It was in theVictorian era(1837–1901) that the novel became the leadingliterary genrein English,[1] dominated especially byCharles Dickens, but there were many other significant writers, including theBrontësisters, and thenThomas Hardy, in the final decades of the 19th century. Americans began to produce major writers in the 19th century, including novelist Herman Melville, author ofMoby Dick(1851) and the poetsWalt WhitmanandEmily Dickinson. Another American,Henry James, was a major novelist of the late 19th and early twentieth century, while Polish-bornJoseph Conradwas perhaps the most important British novelist of the first two decades of the 20th century.[citation needed] Irish writers were especially important in the 20th century, includingJames Joyce, and later Samuel Beckett, both central figures in theModernistmovement. Americans, like poetsT. S. EliotandEzra Poundand novelistWilliam Faulkner, were other important modernists. In the mid 20th century major writers started to appear in the various countries of the British
Commonwealth, several who have beenNobel-laureates. Many major writers in English in the 20th and 21st centuries have come from outside theUnited Kingdom. The termPostmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature. It is both a
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