Name: A (Very) General Overview of British Literary History
Uploaded: 2026-01-09T10:21:43.000Z
Duration: 7 min 45 s
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Usually, British literary history opens with the Old English period.

It starts halfway through the fifth century when the Anglo Saxons came to the British Isles to find land to farm.

It also covers the super violent Viking invasion at the end of the 8th century, up to the 11th and ends with the invasion of William the Conqueror.

There isn't a lot of literature that survived from this period.

The most important works are Beowulf, a heroic poem about a hero who defeats monsters, and

the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which tells the history of the British Isles.

The Middle English period was a time in which Old English, which was influenced by Germanic tribes and the Vikings, mixed with the French language.

There was a feudal system in place at the time in which the king was the owner of all the land.

In 1215, there was a particularly bad king who was then forced to sign the Magna Carta, a document which started the idea of human rights.

It gave all three men the right to justice and a fair trial.

However, this did not apply to the lower classes in society.

In 1348, the Black Death, a plague, took at least a third of all the lives in the British Isles, which led to a great shortage of workmen.

In 1381, peasants demanded equal rights during what is now known as the Peasants Revolt.

The period ends with the wars of the Roses, in which several battles were fought over control of the English throne.

There are a couple of genres which were important during this period.

Courtly love, romance and morality plays.

The most important works are the Canterbury tales, in which 30 pilgrims undertake a journey together and start a storytelling contest.

The stories are from people with all kinds of backgrounds and the work includes many different genres.

And Arthurian Legend, a bunch of medieval romance stories centering the legendary King Arthur.

The Renaissance period, also known as the Golden Age, was characterized by a cultural revival and poetic evolution on the British Isles.

Under Queen Elizabeth I, literary writing flourished, especially in the form of theatre plays and poems.

In terms of literature, there was a slight shift from focusing on religion towards focusing on the individual and rationality.

The main author that you should definitely know about is William Shakespeare, since a large bulk of his work is still very much relevant today.

Some examples are Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, but also the large amount of sonnets that he wrote.

Shakespeare's contribution to the English language is unsurpassed in he invented many words and phrases that are still in use today.

The neoclassical period, also known as the Restoration period, was characterized by political conflict.

The reign of another bad king led to the Civil War.

In 1642, England was ruled as a republic by Oliver Cromwell.

For a while, but his son after him was a terrible leader, however, and

Important events in this period are the Great Plague of London in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666.

In 1689, Mary and William of Orange took over the throne in a Glorious revolution.

In the remainder of this period, there were a lot of Scottish rebellions.

The literature from the Neoclassical period is characterized by a questioning of accepted norms and the control that the monarchy and other leaders had over society, as well as the Enlightenment, which brought a strong focus on reason.

Some important works that you should know about are Paradise Lost, a poem about the fall of man.

How Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan and had to leave the Garden of Eden.

A Modest Proposal, in which Jonathan Swift proposes that the Irish could sell their children to the rich as food.

A satire criticising British policy towards the Irish Robinson Crusoe, considered by some as the first novel about one man's survival on a deserted island.

The Romantic period is a short but important period in British literary history.

According to many writers at the time, it seemed as though a new age had begun in which individual thought and personal feeling was at the center of literary expressions.

Rather than the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the Romantics desired liberty and cared about the poor.

Characteristics of Romantic poetry are a focus on imagination, nature, emotions and a childlike worldview.

The Gothic novel was also important in this period, a genre that combined mystery, horror, fear and other intense emotions with romance.

The poems from authors like William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Bishop Shelley, Lord Byron and others are among the most important works from this period.

Then there's Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley.

The and the Monk, by Matthew Lewis, two prominent examples of the Gothic novel.

Jane Austen also wrote her famous novels during this period, but

she doesn't really fit in with the period's main characteristics.

Queen Victoria ruled a powerful nation with a rich culture.

During the Victorian period, Victorian society was divided based on class and gender.

Upper classes had a lot of power and wealth.

Lower classes often lived in horrible circumstances.

They frequently worked in the factories that were built during the Industrial Revolution.

Some of the most important works are Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, two novels by two sisters, Charlotte and Emily Bronte.

They wrote relatively dark stories about love and family.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by the Irish Oscar Wilde, a Gothic novel about beauty.

Tess of the Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy, which tells the story of a fallen woman.

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, an extensive novel about class struggles and the human condition.

Alice in Wonderland, a great example of nonsense literature by Lewis Carroll.

The Sherlock Holmes novel is created by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The modern period is characterized by World War I and 2.

Some of the most important literature from this period is World War I poetry, in which poets describe the horrors of fighting in the war.

Modernist writers are characterized by their rebellion against clear cut storytelling.

Modernists rejected Victorian outlooks on life and really tried to break with the past.

Some prominent modernist works the poems by writers like Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brook and Siegfried Sassoon which described the war the Waste Lands by T.S.

eliot, which explores the aftermath of the First World War Ulysses, which is a highly complicated novel by the Irish James Joyce Mrs.

Dalloway, a novel in which Virginia Woolf used the technique of the stream of consciousness and Woolf was also a feminist icon.

A Room of One's Own is an important essay that criticises women's lack of free expression.

The postmodern period witnessed the start of the Troubles, more than 30 years of violence and bombing because of a conflict in Ireland.

It also covers Princess Diana's death in 1997, which left a big mark on the country, and

the UK leaving the European Union in 2020.

Next to that, during this period a lot of literature got adapted into films.

An important literary genre is metafiction, which continuously reminds the reader that they are reading a fictional work.

One example is Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, in which two vagabonds are waiting endlessly for someone who never arrives.

One way in which to characterize literature from this period is through the establishment of prizes, one of the most important being the Booker Prize, awarded every year to the best novel written in the English language.

Some titles and authors that you may recognize from shortlists and wins Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, about human cloning Wolf hall by Hilary Mantel, about the court of King Henry viii the Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, about friendship and Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo, about 12 characters from the United Kingdom and their stories over the course of several decades.

I hope this video was in some way helpful for you.

If you'd like to hang up a poster of my overview in your classroom or you'd like to support this channel, you can download the digital file via the link in the description below.

For more videos like this one, head over to my channel Illustrated and explained.