The Romantic period was a response to the significant social change in England, with the Industrial

Revolution seeing a move from the countryside to town and the advent of polluted, overcrowded
industrial cities. The Romantic period was also a reaction against the thoughts and ideas of the Age of
Enlightenment, in which poets, in particular, rejected the scientific rationalization of nature.

Victorian Literature (1837 – 1901) The reign of Queen Victoria saw the novel come to the fore as the
leading literary genre, and it was a period that saw the emergence of some of the country’s most
famous writers, including Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, William Thackeray, and the Bronte sisters.
Poetry was still a prominent literary genre, with Browning and Tennyson two of the most famous
Victorian poets, but this form was far less significant than during the Romantic period. Later in the
Victorian period, we see drama emerge as a substantial genre again for the first time since the
Renaissance, with Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas and the plays of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar
Wilde.

Modernism (1901-1939) Just as previous literary movements had rebelled against the attitudes of those
who had gone before them; literary Modernism reacted against the conservative attitudes of the
Victorian period; the First World War was also a key influence. An essential characteristic of Modernism
is self-consciousness, which saw a spate of literary experimentation; the stream-of-consciousness novel
was one such innovation.

Literary Realism (1820-1920) Literary Realism began in France in the mid-19th century, though a move
towards Realism had begun earlier; Jane Austen’s novels are part of the transition. Its focus was on
realistic depictions of contemporary life and society, including practical details of day-to-day life – the
kind of scenes previously shunned in favor of the idealized subjects of the Romantics.

The Renaissance Era (1500 – 1670) Stemming from the period of substantial cultural advance known as
the Renaissance (which began in Italy in the 13th century but took a while to reach England), this period
in English Literature is dominated by Elizabethan playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Christopher
Marlowe, and John Webster. Other notable writers include Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser.

Postmodernism (post-World War Two to the present) After Modernism came Postmodernism, which is
harder to define than the other periods we’ve discussed in this article because there’s little agreement
about what it means. Postmodernism can react to Modernist ideas, introducing new concepts such as
the unreliable narrator and Literature; Well-known Postmodern novels include Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.