The history of English literature is very closely related to the history of the English people. It began with the emergence of the English nation and kept on evolving along with the social development of the nation.
Each of the phases, known as Age or Period, has been given a particular name, sometimes after the name of the king or queen, sometimes after the name of a great writer, and sometimes according to the spirit of the time.
The names and time span of the ages of English literature differ from historian to historian the following list derived from M. H. Abrams is dependable:
1. The Old English Period or The Anglo-Saxon Period (450-1066)
2. The Middle English Period (1066-1500)
a) The Anglo-Norman Period (1066-1340)
b) The Age of Chaucer (1340-1400)
3. The Renaissance Period (1500-1660)
a) Elizabethan Age (1558-1603)
b) Jacobean Age (1603-1625)
c) Caroline Age (1625-1649)
d) Commonwealth Period (1649-1660)
4. The Neoclassical Period (1660-1785)
a) The Restoration Period (1660-1700)
b) The Augustan Age or The Age of Pope (1700-1745)
c) The Age of Sensibility or The Age of Johnson (1745-1785)
5. The Romantic Period (1798-1832)
6. The Victorian Period (1832-1901)
a) The Pre-Raphaelites (1848-1860)
b) Aestheticism and Decadence (1880-1901)
7. The Modern Period (1901-1939)
a) The Edwardian Period (1901-1910)
b) The Georgian Period (1910-1936)
8. The Post-modern Period (1939 – Present)
