18 Facts About British literature

British literature is literature from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands.

Anglo-Saxon literature is included, and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature.

British literature is best known for his chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae of 1136, which spread Celtic motifs to a wider audience.

British literature is generally seen as the last major poet of the English Renaissance, though his major epic poems were written in the Restoration period, including Paradise Lost.

British literature was part of a "mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease", who continued to produce their poetry in manuscripts, rather than in publication.

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British literature established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry by writing successful satires, religious pieces, fables, epigrams, compliments, prologues, and plays with it; he introduced the alexandrine and triplet into the form.

Tobias Smollett was a Scottish pioneer of the British literature novel, exploring the prejudices inherent within the new social structure of the country through comic picaresque novels.

British literature's work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects".

British literature's first play, The Rivals 1775, was performed at Covent Garden and was an instant success.

British literature went on to become the most significant London playwright of the late 18th century with plays like The School for Scandal and The Critic.

British literature was described by T S Eliot, as "the greatest master of metrics as well as melancholia", and as having "the finest ear of any English poet since Milton".

British literature founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

In Parenthesis, an epic poem by David Jones first published in 1937, is a notable work of the British literature of the First World War, that was influenced by Welsh traditions, despite Jones being born in England.

British literature was killed in action during the invasion of Normandy.

British literature's novels include Mrs Dalloway 1925, and The Waves 1931, and A Room of One's Own 1929, which contains her famous dictum; "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction".

British literature was a convert to Catholicism and his novels explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world.

Influences from earlier literary styles and techniques in English British literature is notable by writers such as Ian McEwan in his 2002 novel Atonement.

Original British literature continues to be promoted by institutions such as the Eisteddfod in Wales and the Welsh Books Council.