There are a list of major authors in English Literature

There are a list of major authors in English Literature

1. Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period (450–1066)

• Author: Unknown
  • Major Work: Beowulf
• The Venerable Bede
  • Ecclesiastical History of the English People
• Unknown Authors (composed orally)
  • The Seafarer, The Wanderer
• Cynewulf
  • Religious poetry like The Dream of the Rood

Context: The literature of this period was heavily influenced by Norse mythology and pagan traditions, later blending with Christian elements.

2. Middle English Period (1066–1500)

• Geoffrey Chaucer
  • The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde
• William Langland
  • Piers Plowman
• Sir Thomas Malory
  • Le Morte d’Arthur
• The Pearl Poet (Unknown Author)
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl

Context: This period saw the gradual development of the English language from Old to Middle English. It also marks the emergence of chivalric romances and religious allegories.

3. The Renaissance (1500–1660)

• William Shakespeare
  • Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Othello
• Christopher Marlowe
  • Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta
• Edmund Spenser
  • The Faerie Queene
• John Milton
  • Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
• Sir Philip Sidney
  • Astrophil and Stella, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
• Ben Jonson
  • Volpone, The Alchemist

Context: The Renaissance was a time of rebirth for classical ideals, fostering a flourishing of drama, poetry, and prose. The introduction of the printing press helped spread these works more widely.

4. The Neoclassical Period (1660–1798)

• John Dryden
  • Absalom and Achitophel, Mac Flecknoe
• Alexander Pope
  • The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, Essay on Man
• Jonathan Swift
  • Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal
• Samuel Johnson
  • A Dictionary of the English Language, The Lives of the Poets
• Daniel Defoe
  • Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders
• Henry Fielding
  • Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews

Context: The Neoclassical period emphasized order, logic, and decorum. Writers drew heavily on classical forms, focusing on satire, essays, and heroic couplets.

5. The Romantic Period (1798–1837)

• William Wordsworth
  • Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan
• Lord Byron
  • Don Juan, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Ozymandias, Prometheus Unbound
• John Keats
  • Ode to a Nightingale, To Autumn
• Mary Shelley
  • Frankenstein
• William Blake
  • Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Context: The Romantic period was marked by a focus on emotion, nature, and the individual. It reacted against the industrial revolution and the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason.

6. The Victorian Period (1837–1901)

• Charles Dickens
  • Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist
• George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
  • Middlemarch, Silas Marner
• Thomas Hardy
  • Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd
• Alfred Lord Tennyson
  • In Memoriam A.H.H., The Charge of the Light Brigade
• Robert Browning
  • My Last Duchess, The Ring and the Book
• Emily Brontë
  • Wuthering Heights
• Charlotte Brontë
  • Jane Eyre
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • Sonnets from the Portuguese
• Lewis Carroll
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Context: Victorian literature reflected the complexities of social, political, and technological change during the era, often focusing on social issues, realism, and moral questions.

7. The Modern Period (1901–1945)

• T.S. Eliot
  • The Waste Land, Four Quartets
• Virginia Woolf
  • Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando
• James Joyce
  • Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• D.H. Lawrence
  • Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• W.B. Yeats
  • The Second Coming, Sailing to Byzantium
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Great Gatsby
• Ernest Hemingway
  • The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms
• Katherine Mansfield
  • The Garden Party, Bliss

Context: Modernism brought radical experimentation with narrative techniques, fragmentation, and a focus on the subconscious. The period was shaped by World War I and the interwar years.

8. The Postmodern Period (1945–Present)

• George Orwell
  • 1984, Animal Farm
• Samuel Beckett
  • Waiting for Godot, Endgame
• Salman Rushdie
  • Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses
• Margaret Atwood
  • The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake
• Toni Morrison
  • Beloved, Song of Solomon
• Haruki Murakami
  • Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood
• Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day
• Don DeLillo
  • White Noise, Underworld

Context: Postmodern literature often questions the nature of reality, truth, and identity. It features metafiction, pastiche, and a blending of high and low culture.

This list covers prominent authors across major periods in English Literature.