Shakespeare's sonnets, written ten years previously, are published

Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest, is performed

John Smith publishes A Description of New England, an account of his exploration of the region in 1614

John Donne, England's leading Metaphysical poet, becomes dean of St Paul's

John Heminge and Henry Condell publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio

George Herbert's only volume of poems, The Temple, is published posthumously

John Milton's Lycidas is published in memory of a Cambridge friend, Edward King

The poems of Massachusetts author Anne Bradstreet are published in London under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America

Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler

On the first day of the new year Samuel Pepys gets up late, eats the remains of the turkey and begins his diary

Paradise Lost is published, earning its author John Milton just £10

Samuel Pepys ends his diary, after only writing it for nine years

Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress, written during John Bunyan's two spells in Bedford Gaol, is published and is immediately popular

John Bunyan publishes The Life and Death of Mr Badman, an allegory of a misspent life that is akin to a novel

Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko makes an early protest against the inhumanity of the African slave trade

John Locke publishes his Essay concerning Human Understanding, arguing that all knowledge is based on experience

The Augustan Age begins in English literature, claiming comparison with the equivalent flowering under Augustus Caesar

The Tatler launches a new style of journalism in Britain's coffee houses, followed two years later by the Spectator

25-year-old George Berkeley attacks Locke in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock introduces a delicate vein of mock-heroic in English poetry

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, with its detailed realism, can be seen as the first English novel

Jonathan Swift launches his hero on a series of bitterly satirical adventures in Gulliver's Travels

David Hume publishes his Treatise of Human Nature, in which he applies to the human mind the principles of experimental science

Samuel Richardson's Clarissa begins the correspondence which grows into the longest novel in the English language

Henry Fielding introduces a character of lasting appeal in the lusty but good-hearted Tom Jones