Poet's Corner

Poetry Timeline

700-1799 | 1800-1899 | 1900-1924 | 1925-1949 | 1950-1974| 1975-

c. 700-800

• Beowulf composed at about this time.
  
• Cynewulf writes and signs 4 Anglo-Saxon poems: Christ II, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles, and Juliana.

1000

The Battle of Maldon, a poem on the fight between the English and the Danes in 991, written.

1265

Dante Alighieri born.

1300 (-1699)

The Renaissance begins in the 14th century and continues for the next 300 years.

c. 1307-1321

Dante's Divina Commedia.

1321

Dante Alighieri dies.

1343

Geoffrey Chaucer born.

c. 1387-1400

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales written.

1400

Geoffrey Chaucer dies.

1456

William Dunbar born.

1474

Caxton prints the first book in England.

1477

Thomas More born.

1513

William Dunbar dies.

1535

Sir Thomas More executed.

1552

Edmund Spenser born.

1558 (-1603)

The Elizabethan Age begins with the coronation in 1558 of Elizabeth I as Queen of England and continues until her death in 1603. Elizabethan literature is recognized as some of the finest in the English language.

1564

• William Shakespeare born.
• Christopher Marlowe born.

1572

John Donne born.

1575 (-1799)

The literary style known as Baroque arises in teh late 16th century and remains influential until the early 18th century.

1590

Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Books I-III.

1593

Christopher Marlowe murdered.

1599

Edmund Spenser dies.

1600

(-1799) The Enlightenment period in European social and cultural history begins in the 17th century and continues into the 18th century.

(-1650) Metaphysical poetry becomes a prominent style of verse in the first half of the 17th century.

1609

Shakespeares' sonnets published.

1616

• William Shakespeare dies.
• Ben Jonson is named Poet Laureate of England.

1644

Matsuo Basho born.

1700 (-1725)

The Scottish Enlightenment, a period of great literary and philosophical activity, occurs in the early part of the 18th century.

1712

Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" is published as The Rape of the Locke. An Heroi-Comical Poem [2 cantos]; the full version, The Rape of the Lock. An Heroi-Comical Poem. In Five Canto's, is published in 1714 and revised in 1718.

1715

Nicholas Rowe is named Poet Laureate of England.

1718

Laurence Eusden is named Poet Laureate of England.

1730

Colley Cibber is named Poet Laureate of England.

1740-1750

The Graveyard School, refering to poetry that focuses on death and grieving, emerges as a significant genre in the middle of the 18th century.

1740s-1780s

Pre-Romanticism, a transitional literary movement between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, takes place in the middle part of the 18th century.

1740

The anonymous ballad "Barbara Allan" is published in the collection Tea Table Miscellany, or a Collection of Choice Songs, Scots and English, edited by Allan Ramsay.

1744

Alexander Pope dies.

1750 (-1899)

The Welsh Literary Renaissance, an effort to revive interest in Welsh language and literature, begins in the middle of the 18th century and continues into the following century.

1754

Phillis Wheatley is born.

1757

• William Blake born.
• William Whitehead is named Poet Laureate of England.

1759

Robert Burns is born.

1765

The anonymous ballad "Sir Patrick Spens" is published in the collection Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, edited by Thomas Percy.

1769

The anonymous ballad "Get Up and Bar the Door" is published in the collection The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc., edited by David Herd.

1770

William Wordsworth born.

1772

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is born.

1775 (-1850)

Romanticism as a literary movement arises in the latter part of the 18th century and continues until the middle of the 19th century.

1776

Phillis Wheatley's "To His Excellency, General Washington" is published in the March 30 edition of the Virginia Gazette and the April issue of Pennsylvania Magazine.

1784

Phillis Wheatley dies.

1785

Thomas Warton is named Poet Laureate of England.

1786

Robert Burns's "To a Mouse, on Turning up her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785" is published in his collection Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

1788

George Gordon, Lord Byron is born.

1789

William Blake's "Introduction to Songs of Innocence" and "The Lamb" are published in his collection Songs of Innocence.

1790

Robert Burns's "John Anderson, My Jo" is published in his collection Scots Musical Museum.

Henry James Pye is named Poet Laureate of England.

1792

Percy Bysshe Shelley is born.

1794

William Blake's "Introduction to Songs of Experience," "A Poison Tree" and "The Tyger" are published in his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Robert Burns's "A Red, Red Rose" is published in the collection A Selection of Scots Songs, edited by Peter Urbani.

William Cullen Bryant is born.

1795

John Keats is born.

1796

Robert Burns dies.

1798

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" are published, as is William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," in the collection Lyrical Ballads.

Source: Exploring Poetry, Gale, 1997.

700-1799 | 1800-1899 | 1900-1924 | 1925-1949 | 1950-1974| 1975-