Foreword / Malcolm Bradbury -- The Beginnings of English: Old and Middle English 600-1485 -- The Renaissance: 1485-1660 -- Restoration to Romanticism: 1660-1789 -- The Romantic Period: 1789-1832 -- The Nineteenth Century: 1832-1900 -- The Twentieth Century: 1900-45 -- The Twentieth Century: 1945 to the present -- British and Irish winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature