Key English Texts Across Time

Old English

450 - 1100

Middle English

1100 - 1500

Early Modern English

1500 - 1700

1586

The first grammar of English—William Bullokar's Pamphlet for Grammar is published.

1590-1611

William Shakespeare writes his Sonnets and the majority of his plays.

1604

Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, the first English dictionary is published.

1611

The Authorized Version of the English Bible (the "King James" Bible) is published, greatly influencing the development of the written language.

1622

Weekly News, the first English newspaper, is published in London.

1667

John Milton publishes his epic poem Paradise Lost.

1697

In his Essay Upon Projects, Daniel Defoe calls for the creation of an Academy of 36 "gentlemen" to dictate English usage.

Late Modern English

1702

The Daily Courant, the first regular daily newspaper in English, is published in London.

1709

The first Copyright Act is enacted in England.

1712

Anglo-Irish satirist and cleric Jonathon Swift proposes the creation of an English Academy to regulate English usage and "ascertain" the language.

1715

Elisabeth Elstob publishes the first grammar of Old English.

1755

Samuel Johnson publishes his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language.

1760-1795

This period marks the rise of the English grammarians whose rule books, primarily based on prescriptive notions of grammar, become increasingly popular.

1762

Robert Lowth publishes his Short Introduction to English Grammar.

Mid 19th century

A standard variety of American English develops. English is established in Australia, South Africa, India, and other British colonial outposts.

1150

Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English.

Beowulf- composed by an anonymous poet between the 8th century and the early 11th century.

1387

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is first published

Late Modern English

1900 - Present

1906

Henry and Francis Fowler publish the first edition of The King's English.

1919

H. L. Menken publishes the first edition of The American Language, a pioneer study in the history of a major national version of English.

1925

The New Yorker magazine is founded by Harold Ross and Jane Grant.

1925

George P. Krapp publishes his two-volume The English Language in America, the first comprehensive and scholarly treatment of the subject.

1926

Henry Fowler publishes the first edition of his Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

1928

The Oxford English Dictionary is published.

1950

Kenneth Burke publishes A Rhetoric of Motives.

1957

Noam Chomsky publishes Syntactic Structures, a key document in the study of generative and transformational grammar.

1972

A Grammar of Contemporary English (by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik) is published. The first call on a personal cell phone is made. The first email is sent.

1978

The Linguistic Atlas of England is published.

1981

The first issue of the journal World Englishes is published.

1985

A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language is published by Longman. The first edition of M.A.K. Halliday's An Introduction to Functional Grammar is published.

1988

The Internet (under development for more than 20 years) is opened to commercial interests.

1989

The second edition of The Oxford English Dictionary is published.

1994

Text messaging is introduced, and the first modern blogs go online.

1995

David Crystal publishes The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.

1997

The first social networking site (SixDegrees.com) is launched. (Friendster is introduced in 2002, and both MySpace and Facebook begin operating in 2004.)

2000

The Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED Online) is made available to subscribers.

2002

Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum publish The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Tom McArthur publishes The Oxford Guide to World English.

2009

The two-volume Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary is published by Oxford University Press.

2012

The fifth volume (SI-Z) of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE ) is published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.