Question 1

First English epic in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Beowulf (c. 700–1000). Old English heroic poem of 3,182 alliterative lines; survives in a single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A.xv).

Question 2

First named English poet in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Cædmon (7th century). The illiterate herdsman of Whitby whose story Bede tells; Cædmon's Hymn is the oldest surviving English poem with a known author.

Question 3

First to introduce the sonnet into English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Sir Thomas Wyatt (c. 1530s). Imported and adapted the Petrarchan sonnet; published posthumously in Tottel's Miscellany (1557).

Question 4

First to use blank verse in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1540). In his translation of Books II and IV of Virgil's Aeneid. Surrey also gave the sonnet its 'English' (Shakespearean) form.

Question 5

First English sonnet sequence in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Astrophil and Stella (Sir Philip Sidney) (1591). 108 sonnets and 11 songs; sparked the Elizabethan sonnet craze. Spenser's Amoretti (1595) and Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609) followed.

Question 6

First use of the heroic couplet in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women (c. 1386). Perfected three centuries later by Dryden and Pope, who made it the signature metre of the Augustan age.

Question 7

First official Poet Laureate in English literature?

Accepted Answer

John Dryden (1668). Appointed by Charles II — and also the only Laureate ever dismissed (1688, for refusing the oath to William III).

Question 8

First woman Poet Laureate in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Carol Ann Duffy (2009). Also the first Scottish-born Laureate of the modern era.

Question 9

First English comedy in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Ralph Roister Doister (Nicholas Udall) (c. 1552). Modelled on Plautus and Terence. Gammer Gurton's Needle (c. 1553–66) is the standard 'second comedy' distractor.

Question 10

First English tragedy in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex (Sackville & Norton) (1561). A Senecan tragedy performed before Elizabeth I at the Inner Temple.

Question 11

First English play in blank verse in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Gorboduc (1561). The same play scores twice — first tragedy AND first dramatic blank verse. Examiners love this double fact.

Question 12

First revenge tragedy in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd) (c. 1587). Established the Senecan revenge formula — play-within-a-play, ghost, madness — that Hamlet perfected.

Question 13

First collected edition of Shakespeare in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The First Folio (1623). Edited by Heminges and Condell; contains 36 plays. Without it, 18 plays (including Macbeth and The Tempest) would be lost.

Question 14

First professional woman writer in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Aphra Behn (c. 1670s). Restoration playwright and author of Oroonoko (1688). Virginia Woolf: 'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn.'

Question 15

First English novel (popular claim) in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe) (1719). The common claim; the title 'first modern English novel' is usually reserved for Richardson's Pamela. Know both positions.

Question 16

First modern / epistolary English novel in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (Samuel Richardson) (1740). Told entirely in letters. Fielding parodied it twice — in Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews (1742).

Question 17

First Gothic novel in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole) (1764). Subtitled 'A Gothic Story' in its second edition — the label that named the whole genre.

Question 18

First historical novel in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Waverley (Walter Scott) (1814). Published anonymously. Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800), the first regional novel, is the recurring trap answer.

Question 19

First regional novel in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Castle Rackrent (Maria Edgeworth) (1800). An Irish 'big house' novel — Scott himself acknowledged its influence on Waverley.

Question 20

First picaresque novel in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Unfortunate Traveller (Thomas Nashe) (1594). The adventures of the rogue page Jack Wilton — Elizabethan prose fiction at its most anarchic.

Question 21

First detective novel in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins) (1868). T. S. Eliot called it 'the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels.'

Question 22

First stream-of-consciousness novel in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Pilgrimage (Dorothy Richardson) (1915 onward). May Sinclair first applied William James's phrase 'stream of consciousness' to Richardson's Pointed Roofs (1915).

Question 23

First science fiction novel (commonly cited) in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) (1818). Subtitle: The Modern Prometheus. Written for the famous ghost-story contest at Villa Diodati (1816).

Question 24

First autobiography in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1438). The dictated spiritual autobiography of a medieval mystic; rediscovered only in 1934.

Question 25

First English printer in English literature?

Accepted Answer

William Caxton (1476). Set up England's first printing press at Westminster; printed The Canterbury Tales among his earliest titles.

Question 26

First book printed in the English language in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (c. 1473). Translated and printed by Caxton at Bruges — before he brought the press to England.

Question 27

First dated book printed in England in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (1477). From Caxton's Westminster press — distinguish from the Recuyell, printed abroad.

Question 28

First English dictionary in English literature?

Accepted Answer

A Table Alphabeticall (Robert Cawdrey) (1604). About 2,500 'hard usuall English wordes'. Johnson's Dictionary (1755) is the first STANDARD dictionary — a classic two-step trap.

Question 29

First standard English dictionary in English literature?

Accepted Answer

A Dictionary of the English Language (Samuel Johnson) (1755). Nine years' work, c. 40,000 words, illustrated with literary quotations.

Question 30

First English daily newspaper in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Daily Courant (1702). Launched by Elizabeth Mallet — also, notably, a woman publisher.

Question 31

First great periodical essay in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Tatler (Richard Steele) (1709). Followed by The Spectator (Addison & Steele, 1711) with its fictional Sir Roger de Coverley. The 1709/1711 pair is endlessly examined.

Question 32

First English-language Nobel laureate in Literature in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Rudyard Kipling (1907). Still the youngest-ever Literature laureate, at 41.

Question 33

Father of English Poetry in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Geoffrey Chaucer (epithet: 1700). Dryden's title for him in the Preface to the Fables. Pair with Spenser's 'well of English undefiled'.

Question 34

Father of English Prose in English literature?

Accepted Answer

King Alfred the Great (9th century). For his translations and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Wycliffe and Mandeville are the recurring alternative claims.

Question 35

Father of English History in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Venerable Bede (731). For the Ecclesiastical History of the English People; also called the Father of English Learning.

Question 36

Father of the English Novel in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Henry Fielding (epithet). Walter Scott's title for him. Defoe and Richardson are the standard alternative claimants — know all three.

Question 37

Father of English Criticism in English literature?

Accepted Answer

John Dryden (epithet). Dr Johnson's verdict, for the Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668).

Question 38

Father of English Tragedy in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Christopher Marlowe (epithet). For making blank verse — his 'mighty line' (Jonson's phrase) — the vehicle of tragic drama.

Question 39

Father of the English Essay in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Francis Bacon (1597). His Essays (1597, enlarged 1612 and 1625) naturalised Montaigne's French invention in English.

Question 40

Father of English Hymnody in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Isaac Watts (epithet). Author of 'When I Survey the Wondrous Cross' and some 750 hymns.

Question 41

Father of Scottish Poetry in English literature?

Accepted Answer

John Barbour (1375). For The Bruce, the epic of Robert the Bruce and Bannockburn.

Question 42

The Bard of Avon in English literature?

Accepted Answer

William Shakespeare (—). Born and buried at Stratford-upon-Avon. Also 'Sweet Swan of Avon' — Ben Jonson's phrase in the First Folio.

Question 43

The Poets' Poet in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Edmund Spenser (—). Charles Lamb's title, honouring Spenser's influence on later poets through The Faerie Queene and his stanza.

Question 44

The Morning Star of the Reformation in English literature?

Accepted Answer

John Wycliffe (—). For the first complete English Bible (c. 1382), a century and a half before Luther.

Question 45

The Well of English Undefiled in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Geoffrey Chaucer (—). Spenser's tribute in The Faerie Queene, Book IV — frequently confused with Dryden's 'Father of English Poetry'.

Question 46

The Child of the Renaissance and the Reformation in English literature?

Accepted Answer

John Milton (—). Classical learning + Puritan conviction = Paradise Lost. A staple 2-marks identification.

Question 47

The Great Cham of Literature in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Dr Samuel Johnson (—). Tobias Smollett's nickname ('Cham' = Khan); Johnson ruled literary London from 'The Club'.

Question 48

The Wizard of the North in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Sir Walter Scott (—). For the spell of the anonymous Waverley Novels.

Question 49

O Rare Ben Jonson in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Ben Jonson (—). The epitaph on his grave in Westminster Abbey — where he was buried standing upright.

Question 50

First (unofficial) Poet Laureate in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Ben Jonson (1616). Granted a royal pension by James I. Dryden (1668) remains the first OFFICIAL Laureate — the two-step trap.

Question 51

First Romantic poet to become Laureate in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Robert Southey (1813). Preceded Wordsworth (1843) and Tennyson (1850). His Laureate poem A Vision of Judgement provoked Byron's parody.

Question 52

First professional woman poet in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Isabella Whitney (c. 1567). The Copy of a Letter (1567) and A Sweet Nosgay (1573) — the first Englishwoman to publish secular verse for money.

Question 53

First sonnet sequence by an Englishwoman in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (Lady Mary Wroth) (1621). Sidney's niece; appended to her prose romance Urania — itself the first by an Englishwoman.

Question 54

First epic in blank verse in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Paradise Lost (Milton) (1667). Milton's prefatory note defends 'English heroic verse without rime' against the 'bondage' of rhyming.

Question 55

Father of nonsense verse in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Edward Lear (1846). A Book of Nonsense popularised the limerick; Lewis Carroll perfected the mode in 'Jabberwocky' (1871).

Question 56

The most famous morality play in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Everyman (c. 1510). Death summons Everyman; only Good Deeds accompanies him to the grave. English version of the Dutch Elckerlijc.

Question 57

The four great mystery cycles in English literature?

Accepted Answer

York, Chester, Wakefield (Towneley) & N-Town (14th–15th c.). Craft-guild pageant cycles; the Wakefield Master's Second Shepherds' Play is the acknowledged masterpiece.

Question 58

First private (indoor) playhouse in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Blackfriars (1576). Opened for the boy companies the same year as Burbage's The Theatre; later the King's Men's winter house.

Question 59

First English opera in English literature?

Accepted Answer

The Siege of Rhodes (Davenant) (1656). Staged under the Puritan ban by presenting drama as 'recitative music' — theatre smuggled past the Commonwealth.

Question 60

First actress on the English public stage in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Traditionally Margaret Hughes (1660). As Desdemona, 8 December 1660. Before the Restoration, boys played all women's roles.

Question 61

First playwright to publish his plays as 'Works' in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Ben Jonson (1616). His Folio Workes was mocked as vanity, but made drama respectable literature — and paved the way for Shakespeare's First Folio (1623).

Question 62

Father of the comedy of manners in English literature?

Accepted Answer

George Etherege (often so called) (1660s–70s). The Comical Revenge and The Man of Mode set the pattern Congreve perfected in The Way of the World.

Question 63

First (and name-giving) utopia in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Utopia (Sir Thomas More) (1516). Written in Latin (English translation by Ralph Robinson, 1551). Greek for 'no-place' — the pun is the point.

Question 64

Earliest epistolary fiction in English in English literature?

Accepted Answer

Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (Aphra Behn) (1684–87). Half a century before Pamela, the usual textbook 'first epistolary novel' — know both claims.

Firsts & Fathers of English LiteratureEvery First · Every Father · Every Famous Epithet — Searchable

Now Place Them on the Timeline

The First / Father of…	Answer	Year	Examiner's Note
First English epic	Beowulf	c. 700–1000	Old English heroic poem of 3,182 alliterative lines; survives in a single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A.xv).
First named English poet	Cædmon	7th century	The illiterate herdsman of Whitby whose story Bede tells; Cædmon's Hymn is the oldest surviving English poem with a known author.
First to introduce the sonnet into English	Sir Thomas Wyatt	c. 1530s	Imported and adapted the Petrarchan sonnet; published posthumously in Tottel's Miscellany (1557).
First to use blank verse in English	Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey	c. 1540	In his translation of Books II and IV of Virgil's Aeneid. Surrey also gave the sonnet its 'English' (Shakespearean) form.
First English sonnet sequence	Astrophil and Stella (Sir Philip Sidney)	1591	108 sonnets and 11 songs; sparked the Elizabethan sonnet craze. Spenser's Amoretti (1595) and Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609) followed.
First use of the heroic couplet in English	Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women	c. 1386	Perfected three centuries later by Dryden and Pope, who made it the signature metre of the Augustan age.
First official Poet Laureate	John Dryden	1668	Appointed by Charles II — and also the only Laureate ever dismissed (1688, for refusing the oath to William III).
First woman Poet Laureate	Carol Ann Duffy	2009	Also the first Scottish-born Laureate of the modern era.
First English comedy	Ralph Roister Doister (Nicholas Udall)	c. 1552	Modelled on Plautus and Terence. Gammer Gurton's Needle (c. 1553–66) is the standard 'second comedy' distractor.
First English tragedy	Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex (Sackville & Norton)	1561	A Senecan tragedy performed before Elizabeth I at the Inner Temple.
First English play in blank verse	Gorboduc	1561	The same play scores twice — first tragedy AND first dramatic blank verse. Examiners love this double fact.
First revenge tragedy	The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd)	c. 1587	Established the Senecan revenge formula — play-within-a-play, ghost, madness — that Hamlet perfected.
First collected edition of Shakespeare	The First Folio	1623	Edited by Heminges and Condell; contains 36 plays. Without it, 18 plays (including Macbeth and The Tempest) would be lost.
First professional woman writer in English	Aphra Behn	c. 1670s	Restoration playwright and author of Oroonoko (1688). Virginia Woolf: 'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn.'
First English novel (popular claim)	Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)	1719	The common claim; the title 'first modern English novel' is usually reserved for Richardson's Pamela. Know both positions.
First modern / epistolary English novel	Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (Samuel Richardson)	1740	Told entirely in letters. Fielding parodied it twice — in Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews (1742).
First Gothic novel	The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole)	1764	Subtitled 'A Gothic Story' in its second edition — the label that named the whole genre.
First historical novel	Waverley (Walter Scott)	1814	Published anonymously. Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800), the first regional novel, is the recurring trap answer.
First regional novel	Castle Rackrent (Maria Edgeworth)	1800	An Irish 'big house' novel — Scott himself acknowledged its influence on Waverley.
First picaresque novel in English	The Unfortunate Traveller (Thomas Nashe)	1594	The adventures of the rogue page Jack Wilton — Elizabethan prose fiction at its most anarchic.
First detective novel in English	The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins)	1868	T. S. Eliot called it 'the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels.'
First stream-of-consciousness novel in English	Pilgrimage (Dorothy Richardson)	1915 onward	May Sinclair first applied William James's phrase 'stream of consciousness' to Richardson's Pointed Roofs (1915).
First science fiction novel (commonly cited)	Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)	1818	Subtitle: The Modern Prometheus. Written for the famous ghost-story contest at Villa Diodati (1816).
First autobiography in English	The Book of Margery Kempe	c. 1438	The dictated spiritual autobiography of a medieval mystic; rediscovered only in 1934.
First English printer	William Caxton	1476	Set up England's first printing press at Westminster; printed The Canterbury Tales among his earliest titles.
First book printed in the English language	Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye	c. 1473	Translated and printed by Caxton at Bruges — before he brought the press to England.
First dated book printed in England	Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres	1477	From Caxton's Westminster press — distinguish from the Recuyell, printed abroad.
First English dictionary	A Table Alphabeticall (Robert Cawdrey)	1604	About 2,500 'hard usuall English wordes'. Johnson's Dictionary (1755) is the first STANDARD dictionary — a classic two-step trap.
First standard English dictionary	A Dictionary of the English Language (Samuel Johnson)	1755	Nine years' work, c. 40,000 words, illustrated with literary quotations.
First English daily newspaper	The Daily Courant	1702	Launched by Elizabeth Mallet — also, notably, a woman publisher.
First great periodical essay	The Tatler (Richard Steele)	1709	Followed by The Spectator (Addison & Steele, 1711) with its fictional Sir Roger de Coverley. The 1709/1711 pair is endlessly examined.
First English-language Nobel laureate in Literature	Rudyard Kipling	1907	Still the youngest-ever Literature laureate, at 41.
Father of English Poetry	Geoffrey Chaucer	epithet: 1700	Dryden's title for him in the Preface to the Fables. Pair with Spenser's 'well of English undefiled'.
Father of English Prose	King Alfred the Great	9th century	For his translations and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Wycliffe and Mandeville are the recurring alternative claims.
Father of English History	The Venerable Bede	731	For the Ecclesiastical History of the English People; also called the Father of English Learning.
Father of the English Novel	Henry Fielding	epithet	Walter Scott's title for him. Defoe and Richardson are the standard alternative claimants — know all three.
Father of English Criticism	John Dryden	epithet	Dr Johnson's verdict, for the Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668).
Father of English Tragedy	Christopher Marlowe	epithet	For making blank verse — his 'mighty line' (Jonson's phrase) — the vehicle of tragic drama.
Father of the English Essay	Francis Bacon	1597	His Essays (1597, enlarged 1612 and 1625) naturalised Montaigne's French invention in English.
Father of English Hymnody	Isaac Watts	epithet	Author of 'When I Survey the Wondrous Cross' and some 750 hymns.
Father of Scottish Poetry	John Barbour	1375	For The Bruce, the epic of Robert the Bruce and Bannockburn.
The Bard of Avon	William Shakespeare	—	Born and buried at Stratford-upon-Avon. Also 'Sweet Swan of Avon' — Ben Jonson's phrase in the First Folio.
The Poets' Poet	Edmund Spenser	—	Charles Lamb's title, honouring Spenser's influence on later poets through The Faerie Queene and his stanza.
The Morning Star of the Reformation	John Wycliffe	—	For the first complete English Bible (c. 1382), a century and a half before Luther.
The Well of English Undefiled	Geoffrey Chaucer	—	Spenser's tribute in The Faerie Queene, Book IV — frequently confused with Dryden's 'Father of English Poetry'.
The Child of the Renaissance and the Reformation	John Milton	—	Classical learning + Puritan conviction = Paradise Lost. A staple 2-marks identification.
The Great Cham of Literature	Dr Samuel Johnson	—	Tobias Smollett's nickname ('Cham' = Khan); Johnson ruled literary London from 'The Club'.
The Wizard of the North	Sir Walter Scott	—	For the spell of the anonymous Waverley Novels.
O Rare Ben Jonson	Ben Jonson	—	The epitaph on his grave in Westminster Abbey — where he was buried standing upright.
First (unofficial) Poet Laureate	Ben Jonson	1616	Granted a royal pension by James I. Dryden (1668) remains the first OFFICIAL Laureate — the two-step trap.
First Romantic poet to become Laureate	Robert Southey	1813	Preceded Wordsworth (1843) and Tennyson (1850). His Laureate poem A Vision of Judgement provoked Byron's parody.
First professional woman poet in English	Isabella Whitney	c. 1567	The Copy of a Letter (1567) and A Sweet Nosgay (1573) — the first Englishwoman to publish secular verse for money.
First sonnet sequence by an Englishwoman	Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (Lady Mary Wroth)	1621	Sidney's niece; appended to her prose romance Urania — itself the first by an Englishwoman.
First epic in blank verse	Paradise Lost (Milton)	1667	Milton's prefatory note defends 'English heroic verse without rime' against the 'bondage' of rhyming.
Father of nonsense verse	Edward Lear	1846	A Book of Nonsense popularised the limerick; Lewis Carroll perfected the mode in 'Jabberwocky' (1871).
The most famous morality play	Everyman	c. 1510	Death summons Everyman; only Good Deeds accompanies him to the grave. English version of the Dutch Elckerlijc.
The four great mystery cycles	York, Chester, Wakefield (Towneley) & N-Town	14th–15th c.	Craft-guild pageant cycles; the Wakefield Master's Second Shepherds' Play is the acknowledged masterpiece.
First private (indoor) playhouse	Blackfriars	1576	Opened for the boy companies the same year as Burbage's The Theatre; later the King's Men's winter house.
First English opera	The Siege of Rhodes (Davenant)	1656	Staged under the Puritan ban by presenting drama as 'recitative music' — theatre smuggled past the Commonwealth.
First actress on the English public stage	Traditionally Margaret Hughes	1660	As Desdemona, 8 December 1660. Before the Restoration, boys played all women's roles.
First playwright to publish his plays as 'Works'	Ben Jonson	1616	His Folio Workes was mocked as vanity, but made drama respectable literature — and paved the way for Shakespeare's First Folio (1623).
Father of the comedy of manners	George Etherege (often so called)	1660s–70s	The Comical Revenge and The Man of Mode set the pattern Congreve perfected in The Way of the World.
First (and name-giving) utopia	Utopia (Sir Thomas More)	1516	Written in Latin (English translation by Ralph Robinson, 1551). Greek for 'no-place' — the pun is the point.
Earliest epistolary fiction in English	Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (Aphra Behn)	1684–87	Half a century before Pamela, the usual textbook 'first epistolary novel' — know both claims.
First English novel by a woman (common claim)	Oroonoko (Aphra Behn)	1688	The 'royal slave' narrative — also a foundation text for antislavery and postcolonial reading lists.
Self-proclaimed first English satirist	Joseph Hall	1597	Virgidemiarum: 'I first adventure… I am the first English satirist.' Examiners quote the boast verbatim.
The novel that named the sentimental vogue	A Sentimental Journey (Laurence Sterne)	1768	Parson Yorick feels his way through France — and fixed 'sentimental' permanently in the language.
The most famous Oriental tale in English	Vathek (William Beckford)	1786	Written in French, published in English — Gothic orientalism at full heat, admired by Byron.
The 'Great Enchantress' (Queen of the Gothic)	Ann Radcliffe	1794	The Mysteries of Udolpho; her 'explained supernatural' is parodied in Austen's Northanger Abbey.
The novel that established serial publication	The Pickwick Papers (Dickens)	1836–37	Monthly shilling numbers — the publishing model that shaped the whole Victorian novel.
First great children's classic	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)	1865	Carroll = Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Oxford mathematician; Through the Looking-Glass followed in 1871.
First Sherlock Holmes story	A Study in Scarlet (Conan Doyle)	1887	Published in Beeton's Christmas Annual; Holmes and Watson meet at St Bartholomew's Hospital.
First Angry Young Man novel (often cited)	Hurry On Down (John Wain)	1953	A year before Lucky Jim — Wain and Amis were Movement poets first, 'Angries' by press label after 1956.
First British campus novel	Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis)	1954	Jim Dixon and the 'Merrie England' lecture — the genre Lodge and Bradbury later perfected.
First complete English Bible	The Wycliffe Bible	c. 1382	Manuscript translation from the Latin Vulgate by Wycliffe's circle — a century before printing reached England.
First printed English New Testament	William Tyndale's translation	1525–26	Printed abroad and smuggled into England; the basis of the KJV's language. Tyndale was executed in 1536.
The 'Authorized Version' of the Bible	The King James Bible	1611	About 47 scholars commissioned at Hampton Court (1604); the single greatest influence on English prose.
First English magazine	The Gentleman's Magazine (Edward Cave)	1731	Coined the word 'magazine'; the young Samuel Johnson wrote its parliamentary reports.
First magazine for women by a woman	The Female Spectator (Eliza Haywood)	1744–46	The actress-novelist turned pioneering editor — the title nods to Addison and Steele.
First great children's publisher	John Newbery	1744	A Little Pretty Pocket-Book; America's Newbery Medal for children's literature bears his name.
First great quarterly review	The Edinburgh Review	1802	Francis Jeffrey's Whig quarterly — it coined the dismissive 'Lake School' label for Wordsworth's circle.
First dictionary on historical principles	The Oxford English Dictionary	1884–1928	Chief editor James Murray; 'on historical principles' is the subtitle. Johnson's (1755) is the trap answer.
First mass-market paperbacks	Penguin Books (Allen Lane)	1935	Sixpence a book — the paperback revolution that democratised serious reading.
First major work of English literary criticism	An Apology for Poetry (Sir Philip Sidney)	c. 1580	Written replying to Gosson's School of Abuse; published 1595, also titled The Defence of Poesie.
The Prince of English Essayists	Charles Lamb	—	For the Essays of Elia — the most personal and beloved of the Romantic essayists.
The Shakespeare of Divines	Jeremy Taylor	—	Emerson's epithet for the author of Holy Living and Holy Dying — Caroline prose at its most ornate.
The Morning Star of Song	Geoffrey Chaucer	—	Tennyson's phrase in 'A Dream of Fair Women' — pairs with Spenser's 'well of English undefiled'.
The Ploughman Poet (Bard of Ayrshire)	Robert Burns	—	The Kilmarnock Poems (1786); Scotland's national poet, farmer by trade.
The Peasant Poet	John Clare	—	The Northamptonshire farm labourer — the most exact rural eye among the Romantics.
The Sage of Chelsea	Thomas Carlyle	—	From his decades at Cheyne Row, Chelsea — the oracle of Victorian London.
First Booker Prize winner	P. H. Newby — Something to Answer For	1969	The prize's inaugural year; today's most-asked literary-prize fact after the Nobel.
First woman to win the Booker	Bernice Rubens — The Elected Member	1970	Only the prize's second year — a favourite 'odd-one-out' fact.
First Indian citizen to win the Booker	Arundhati Roy — The God of Small Things	1997	Rushdie (1981) was the first Indian-BORN winner; the citizenship distinction is exactly what examiners test.
The 'Booker of Bookers'	Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)	1993 & 2008	Voted the best winner of the prize's first 25 years — then again ('Best of the Booker') at 40.
First Indian English poet	Henry Louis Vivian Derozio	1827	Poems (1827); the Eurasian teacher of Hindu College, Calcutta, dead at twenty-two — the 'first' of every Indian English syllabus.
First Indian English novel	Rajmohan's Wife (Bankim Chandra Chatterjee)	1864	Bankim's only English novel, serialised in the Indian Field — before his Bengali masterpieces.
First Indian (and first non-European) Nobel laureate in Literature	Rabindranath Tagore	1913	For Gitanjali ('Song Offerings'), with W. B. Yeats's famous introduction.
The Nightingale of India	Sarojini Naidu	—	Gandhi's epithet ('Bharat Kokila'); The Golden Threshold (1905), The Bird of Time (1912).
The 'Big Three' of the Indian English novel	Mulk Raj Anand · R. K. Narayan · Raja Rao	1930s	William Walsh's term. Untouchable (1935), Swami and Friends (1935), Kanthapura (1938) — the founding trio of texts.
First Sahitya Akademi Award for English	R. K. Narayan — The Guide	1960	Also filmed (1965); the heart of his fictional Malgudi.