Nobel Prizes in English literature[edit]
Rudyard Kipling (1907): UK (born in British India)
Rabindranath Tagore (1913): India
W. B. Yeats (1923): Ireland
George Bernard Shaw (1925): Ireland
Sinclair Lewis (1930): US
John Galsworthy (1932): UK
Eugene O'Neill (1936): US
Pearl S. Buck (1938): US
T. S. Eliot (1948): UK (born in the US)
William Faulkner (1949): US
Bertrand Russell (1950): UK
Winston Churchill (1953): UK
Ernest Hemingway (1954): US
John Steinbeck (1962): US
Samuel Beckett (1969): Ireland (lived in France much of
his life)
Patrick White (1973): Australia
Saul Bellow (1976): US (born in Canada)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978): US (born in Poland)
William Golding (1983): UK
Wole Soyinka (1986): Nigeria
Joseph Brodsky (1987): US (born in Russia)
Nadine Gordimer (1991): South Africa
Derek Walcott (1992): St Lucia, West Indies
Toni Morrison (1993): US
Seamus Heaney (1995): Ireland
V. S. Naipaul (2001): UK (born in Trinidad)
J. M. Coetzee (2003): South Africa
Harold Pinter (2005): UK
Doris Lessing (2007): UK (grew-up in Zimbabwe)
Alice Munro (2013): Canada
Essential facts about English Literature
1_ The English language is split into three large time
periods, each represented by a main author or work: Old
English (Beowulf), Middle English (Geoffrey Chaucer), and
Modern English (William Shakespeare).
2_The oldest surviving English text is Caedmon’s Hymn of
Creation.
3_ When King Henry VIII had England’s monasteries
burned down in 1535, many of the
oldest texts written in English also went up in flames.
4_ The first novel wasn’t written in English (critics usually
give that honor to Cervantes’ Don Quixote), but the first
extremely successful novel was: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe.
5_ Works written in English have won twenty-six Nobel
Prizes in Literature, more than any other language. Of
those twenty-six, nine were won by authors from the United
Kingdom.
6_ Bede- the father of English learning. The first Historian.
7_ Caedmon- the first English poet.
8_ Cynewulf- first writer to sign his works.
9_ Alfred- first prose writer in English.
10_ Chaucer- father of English literature
11_ Dryden- father of English criticism
12_Bacon- father of English esaay