History of literature The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry which attempt to provide entertainment, enlightenment, or instruction to the reader/hearer/observer, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of these pieces. Not all writings constitute literature. Some recorded materials, such as compilations of data (e.g., a check register) are not considered literature, and this article relates only to the evolution of the works defined in the first sentence above. The Beginnings of Literature A stone tablet containing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh Literature and writing, though obviously connected, are not synonymous. The first writings from ancient Sumeria by any reasonable definition do not constitute literature—the same is true of some of the early Egyptian hieroglyphics or the thousands of logs from ancient Chinese regimes. Scholars always have and always will disagree concerning when the earliest records-keeping in writing becomes more like "literature" than anything else: the definition is largely subjective. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that, given the significance of distance as a cultural isolator in earlier centuries, the historical development of literature did not occur at an even pace across the world. The problems of creating a uniform global history of literature are compounded by the fact that many texts have been lost over the millennia, either deliberately, by accident, or by the total disappearance of the originating culture. Much has been written, for example, about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC, and the innumerable key texts which are believed to have been lost forever to the flames. The deliberate suppression of texts (and often their authors) by organisations of either a spiritual or a temporal nature further shrouds the subject. Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a qualifying role as literature's first stirrings. Early orally transmitted tales such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (8th century BC) or the Eve story of Lilith (16th century BC) were eventually written down. The stories in The Bible most certainly qualify as early literature, as do some other orally transmitted and subsequently transcribed epics such as the stories usually attributed to Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Another example is the so called Egyptian Book of the Dead which was eventually written down in the Papyrus of Ani in approximately 250 BC but probably dates from about the 18th century BC. Egyptian literature was not included in early studies because the writings of Ancient Egypt were not translated into European languages until the 19th century when the Rosetta stone was deciphered. In China, a mystical collection of poems attributed to Lao Tze, the Tao te Ching was assembled. The myths and legends of the Norsemen again were an orally transmitted tradition, in a culture in which poetry was highly prized: some of this vibrant oral culture survives having been written down many centuries later (in the Elder Edda, for example). See also main article: Literature Chinese literature Li Po Chanting a Poem, by Liang K'ai (13th century) The first great author on military tactics and strategy was Sun Tzu, whose The Art of War remains on the shelves of many modern military officers (and its advice has been applied to the corporate world as well). Philosophy developed far differently in China than in Greece—rather than presenting extended dialogues, the Analects of Confucius and Lao Zi's Tao Te Ching presented sayings and proverbs more directly and didactically. Some authors feel that China originated the novel form with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, although others feel that this epic is distinct from the novel in key ways. Lyric poetry advanced far more in China than in Europe prior to 1000, as multiple new forms developed in the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties: perhaps the greatest poets of this era in Chinese literature were Li Bai and Li Po. See main article: Chinese literature Indian literature Indian epics such as Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagavad Gita have influenced countless other works, including Balinese Kecak and other performances such as shadow puppetry (wayang), and many European influenced works. See main articles: Indian literature, Sanskrit literature, Tamil literature, Hindi literature, Urdu literature, Indian writing in English The Greeks and the Romans The Greeks The first society in Western civilization that emphasized literature was the ancient Greeks. Many authors consider the western literary tradition to have begun with the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, which remain giants in the literary canon for their skillful and vivid depictions of war and peace, honor and disgrace, love and hatred. Notable among later Greek poets was Sappho, who defined, in many ways, lyric poetry as a genre. A playwright named Aeschylus changed Western literature forever when he introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting. In doing so, he essentially invented "drama": his Oresteia trilogy of plays is seen as his crowning achievement. Other refiners of playwriting were Sophocles and Euripides. Sophocles is credited with skillfully developing irony as a literary technique, most famously in his play Oedipus Rex. Euripedes, conversely, used plays to challenge societal norms and mores—a hallmark of much of Western literature for the next 2,300 years and beyond—and his works such as The Bacchae and The Trojan Women are still notable for their ability to challenge our perceptions of propriety, gender, and war. Aristophanes, a comic playwright, defines and shapes the idea of comedy almost as Aeschylus had shaped tragedy as an art form—Aristophanes' most famous plays include the Lysistrata and The Frogs. Philosophy entered literature in the dialogues of Plato, who converted the give and take of Socratic questioning into written form. Aristotle, Plato's student, wrote dozens of works on many scientific disciplines, but his greatest contribution to literature was likely his Poetics, which lays out his understanding of drama, and thereby establishes the first criteria for literary criticism. See main article: Greek Literature The Romans In many respects, the writers of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire chose to avoid innovation in favor of imitating the great Greek authors. Virgil's Aeneid, in many respects, emulated Homer's Iliad; Plautus, a comic playwright, followed in the footsteps of Aristophanes; Tacitus' Annals and Germania follow essentially the same historical approaches that Thucydides devised (the Christian historian Eusebius does also, although far more influenced by his religion than either Tacitus or Thucydides had been by Greek and Roman polytheism); Ovid and his Metamorphoses explore the same Greek myths again in new ways. It can be argued, and has been, that the Roman authors, far from being mindless copycats, improved on the genres already established by their Greek predecessors. What is undeniable is that the Romans, in comparison with the Greeks, innovate relatively few literary styles of their own. Satire is one of the few Roman additions to literature—Horace was the first to use satire extensively as a tool for argument, and Juvenal made it into a weapon. The New Testament is an unusual collection of texts--Paul's epistles are the first collection of personal letters to be treated as literature, the Gospels arguably present the first realistic biographies in Western literature, and John's Revelation, though not the first of its kind, essentially defines apocalypse as a literary genre. Augustine and his City of God do for religious literature essentially what Plato had done for philosophy, but Augustine's approach was far less conversational and more didactive. His Confessions is perhaps the first true autobiography, and certainly it gives rise to the genre of confessional literature which is now more popular than ever. See main article: Latin literature Arabic literature After Rome's fall, Islam's spread across Asia and Africa brought with it a desire to preserve and build upon the work of the Greeks, especially in literature. Although much had been lost to the ravages of time (and to catastrophe, as in the burning of the Library of Alexandria), many Greek works remained extant: they were preserved and copied carefully by Muslim scribes. Among the innovations of Arabic literature was Ibn Khaldun's perspective on chronicling past events—by fully rejecting supernatural explanations, Khaldun essentially invented the scientific or sociological approach to history. See main article: Arabic literature Medieval European literature After the fall of Rome (in roughly 476), many of the literary approaches and styles invented by the Greeks and Romans fell out of favor in Europe. In the millennium or so that intervened between Rome's fall and the Florentine Renaissance, medieval literature focused more and more on faith and faith-related matters, in part because the works written by the Greeks had not been preserved in Europe, and therefore there were few models of classical literature to learn from and move beyond. What little there was became changed and distorted, with new forms beginning to develop from the distortions. Some of these distorted beginnings of new styles can be seen in the literature generally described as Matter of Rome, Matter of France and Matter of Britain. Hagiographies, or "lives of the saints", are frequent among early medieval texts. The writings of Bede—Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum—and others continue the faith-based historical tradition begun by Eusebius in the early 300s. Playwriting essentially ceased, except for the mystery plays and the passion plays that focused heavily on conveying Christian belief to the common people. Around 400 AD the Prudenti Psychomachia began the tradition of allegorical tales. Poetry flourished, however, in the hands of the troubadors, whose courtly romances and chanson de geste amused and entertained the upper classes who were their patrons. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote works which he claimed were histories of Britain. These were highly fanciful and included stories of Merlin the magician and King Arthur. Epic poetry continued to develop with the addition of the mythologies of Northern Europe: Beowulf and the Norse sagas have much in common with Homer and Virgil's approaches to war and honor, while poems such as Dante's Divine Comedy and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales take much different stylistic directions. Between Augustine and The Bible, religious authors had numerous aspects of Christianity that needed further explication and interpretation. Thomas Aquinas, more than any other single person, was able to turn theology into a kind of science, in part because he was heavily influenced by Aristotle, whose works were returning to Europe in the 1200s. See main article: Medieval literature European Renaissance Literature Had nothing occurred to change literature in the 1400s but the Renaissance, the break with medieval approaches would have been clear enough. The 1400s, however, also brought Johann Gutenberg and his invention of the printing press, an innovation (for Europe, at least) that would change literature forever. Texts were no longer precious and expensive to produce—they could be cheaply and rapidly put into the marketplace. Literacy went from the prized possession of the select few to a much broader section of the population (though by no means universal). As a result, much about literature in Europe was radically altered in the two centuries following Gutenberg's unveiling of the printing press in 1455. William Caxton was the first English printer and published English language texts including Le Morte d'Arthur (a collection of oral tales of the Arthurian Knights which is a forerunner of the novel) and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In the Renaissance, the focus on learning for learning's sake causes an outpouring of literature. Petrarch popularized the sonnet as a poetic form; Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron made romance acceptable in prose as well as poetry; François Rabelais rejuvenates satire with Gargantua and Pantagruel; Michel de Montaigne single-handedly invented the essay and used it to catalog his life and ideas. Perhaps the most controversial and important work of the time period was a treatise published by a Polish astronomer entitled De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium: in it, Nicolaus Copernicus removed the Earth from its privileged position in the universe, which had far-reaching effects, not only in science, but in literature and its approach to humanity, hierarchy, and truth. Plays for entertainment (as opposed to religious enlightenment) return to Europe's stages in the early modern period. William Shakespeare is the most notable of the early modern playwrights (and singlehandedly seems to have reinvented the tragedy and comedy that had been left almost dormant since the end of Rome's heyday), but numerous others made important contributions, including Christopher Marlowe, Molière, and Ben Jonson. In England and the rest of the British Isles Oliver Cromwell's rule temporarily banned all theatre, festivals, jesters, mummers plays and frivolities. The ban was lifted when the monarchy was restored with Charles II. Thomas Killigrew and the Drury Lane theatre were favorites of King Charles. A form of writing now commonplace across the world—the novel—dates only to this period in time. Miguel Cervantes's Don Quixote has been called "the first novel" by many literary scholars (certainly the first European novel). It might be viewed as a parody of Le Morte d'Arthur (and other examples of the chivalric romance), in which case the novel form would be the direct result of poking fun at a collection of heroic folk legends. This is fully in keeping with the spirit of the age of enlightenment which begins from about this time and delights in giving a satirical twist to the stories and ideas of the past. It's worth noting that this trend toward satirising previous writings is only made possible by the printing press. Without the invention of mass produced copies of a book it would not be possible to assume the reader will have seen the earlier work and will thus understand the references within the text. Other early novels include Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. See main article: European Renaissance Literature European Enlightenment Literature, 18th century The Age of Enlightenment refers mainly to the period beginning towards the end of the 17th century and continuing on throughout the 18th. It could also be called the Age of Revolution, for during this period scientists and mathematicians revolutionised human understanding, the Industrial Revolution got under way and the American and French political revolutions took place. During this period philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Thomas Paine were concerned with the rights of man and with the meaning of rights or right. The arts also shared in the concerns of reason, enlightenment and a new understanding of things. Literature explored themes of social upheaval, reversals of personal status, political satire, geographical exploration and the comparison between the supposed natural state of man and the supposed civilized state of man. In 1700 William Congreve's play The Way of the World premiered. In 1703 Nicholas Rowe's domestic drama The Fair Penitent, an adaptation of Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry, was pronounced by Dr Johnson to be one of the most pleasing tragedies in the language. Also in 1703 Sir Richard Steele's play The Tender Husband achieved some success. In 1704 Jonathan Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books and John Dennis published his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry. 1707 Henry Fielding born 22 April. 1710 Sarah Fielding born 8 November . In 1711 Alexander Pope began a career in literature with the publishing of his An Essay on Criticism. In 1712 Pope published The Rape of the Lock and in 1713 Windsor Forest. 1712 Jean Jacques Rousseau born 28 June. 1713 Denis Diderot Born 5 October. Daniel Defoe was publishing in the early 18th century. In 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, in 1720, Captain Singleton and, in 1722, Moll Flanders. Other authors publishing in 1722 included Sir Richard Steele, Penelope Aubin and Eliza Haywood. 1726 to 1729 Voltaire lives in exile mainly in England. In 1728 John Gay wrote The Beggar's Opera which has increased in fame ever since. In 1731 George Lillo's play The London Merchant was a success at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane. It was a new kind of play, a domestic tragedy, which approximates to what later came to be called a melodrama. 1751 Thomas Gray writes Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. 1752 a satirical short story by Voltaire. Micromégas features space travellers visiting earth. It is one of the first stories leaning toward what will later become Science fiction. Its publication at this time is indicative of the trend toward scientific thinking prevalent in the age of enlightenment. 1754 Henry Fielding dies 8 October. 1759 Voltaire publishes Candide. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller born 10 November. 1760 - 1767 Laurence Sterne writes Tristram Shandy. 1762 Rousseau publishes Émile 1766 Oliver Goldsmith publishes The Vicar of Wakefield. 1767 August Wilhelm von Schlegel born 8 September. 1768 Sarah Fielding dies. 1770 April 7 birth of William Wordsworth 1772 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel born 10 March. 1773 Oliver Goldsmith publishes She Stoops to Conquer. 1774 Goethe writes The Sorrows of Young Werther, a novel which approximately marks the beginning of the Romantic movement in the arts and philosophy. 1777 the comedy play The School for Scandal, is written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan 1778 Death of Voltaire. Death of Jean Jacques Rousseau 2 July. 1784 Denis Diderot dies 31 July. Beaumarchais writes The Marriage of Figaro. Maria and Harriet Falconar publish Poems on Slavery. 1786 Robert Burns publishes Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro) is adapted into a comic opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. August 4 1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley is born. 1793 Salisbury Plain by William Wordsworth. 1796 Denis Diderot's Jacques le fataliste is published posthumously. 1796 Charlotte Smith publishes her novel Marchmont. April 16 1796 Coleridge publishes Poems on Various Subjects. See main article: European Enlightenment Literature Modern European Literature, 19th century 1802 Sir Walter Scott publishes Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Amelia Opie publishes a volume of Poems. Anne Bannerman publishes Tales of Superstition and Chivalry. May 25 1803 Ralph Waldo Emerson is born in Boston, USA. 1804 William Blake writes Jerusalem. 1805 Sir Walter Scott publishes Lay of the Last Minstrel. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller dies 9 May. 1806 Amelia Opie Simple Tales. 1807 Thomas Moore publishes Irish Melodies. Charles and Mary Lamb publish Tales from Shakespeare. Byron publishes Hours of Idleness. 1808 Goethe publishes part one of Faust. 1809 Schlegel publishes On Dramatic Art and Literature. August 6 1809 Alfred, Lord Tennyson is born. 1810 Sir Walter Scott publishes Lady of the Lake. Percy Shelley publishes a gothic novel: Zastrozzi. 1811 Percy Shelley publishes a gothic novella: St. Irvyne. 1812 George Crabbe publishes Tales in Verse. Byron publishes Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I and II. Coleridge publishes Remorse. On February 7th Charles Dickens is born. On May 7 Robert Browning is born in London. On October 4 William Godwin and Percy Shelley meet in London. 1813 Jane Austen publishes (anonymously) Pride and Prejudice. Byron publishes The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos. January 23 Drury Lane reopens with Coleridge's Remorse. In May Percy Shelley publishes his poem Queen Mab. In September Sir Walter Scott declines the offer of being made Poet Laureate, Robert Southey accepts the post. 1814 Sir Walter Scott publishes Waverley. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park published anonymously. Robert Southey publishes Roderick, the Last of the Goths. English translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. On July 28 Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin (Mary Shelley) elope. 1816 Thomas Love Peacock publishes Headlong Hall. Coleridge publishes Christabel and Kubla Khan. Jane Austen anonymously publishes Emma. E.T.A. Hoffmann publishes Undine. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley go to Geneva and meet Byron (with his physician John Polidori). At Byron's villa they tell ghost stories and invent the basic ideas which lead eventually to Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein and Polidori's vampire novel. 1817 John Keats publishes a volume called Poems. Sir Walter Scott publishes Harold the Dauntless. Byron publishes Manfred. 1818 Mary Shelley anonymously publishes Frankenstein. Byron publishes Childe Harold Canto IV. John Keats publishes Endymion. Thomas Love Peacock publishes Rhododaphne and Nightmare Abbey. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are published posthumously. Sir Walter Scott publishes Rob Roy. 1819 John William Polidori: The Vampyre. 1820 Keats publishes Lamia, Isabella and Hyperion. Percy Shelley: Prometheus Unbound. Elizabeth Barrett: The Battle of Marathon. Sir Walter Scott publishes Ivanhoe, The Abbott and The Monastery. James Catnach: Street Ballads. 1821 February 23: John Keats dies. Percy Shelley publishes Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats and Epipsychidion. Byron: The Prophecy of Dante. Sir Walter Scott: Kenilworth. Fyodor Dostoevsky born. 1822 Thomas De Quincey: Confessions of an English Opium Eater. P. B. Shelley: Hellas. 1823 Mary Shelley: Valperga. Byron: The Age of Bronze and The Island. Charles Lamb: Essays of Elia. Sir Walter Scott: Quentin Durward. English translation of Jacob Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales. 1824 Sir Walter Scott publishes Redgauntlet. Byron dies in Greece. 1826 Mary Shelley: The Last Man. 1827 Alfred and Charles Tennyson: Poems by Two Brothers. August 12: William Blake dies. 1828 Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy born 9 September. 1829 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel dies 11 January. 1831 Sir Walter Scott: Castle Dangerous. 1832 Percy Shelley: The Mask of Anarchy. Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Faust Part II. On March 20 Goethe dies. Jerrold Douglas publishes The Factory Girl, The Golden Calf and The Rent-Day. 1833 Caroline Bowles: Tales of the Factories. Charles Lamb: The Last Essays of Elia. 1834 Frederick Marryat: Peter Simple and Jacob Faithful. Balzac: Le Pere Goriot. Birth of William Morris. July 25th Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1836 Charles Dickens publishes The Pickwick Papers, followed, in the next few years, by Oliver Twist (1837-1839), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), Barnaby Rudge (1841), A Christmas Carol (1843) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844). 1838 Elizabeth Barrett: The Seraphim. Lady Charlotte Guest: Mabinogion. 1840 Birth of Thomas Hardy. 1844 Alexandre Dumas publishes a novel The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) and writes The Count of Monte Cristo which will be published in instalments over the next two years. William Makepeace Thackeray publishes Barry Lyndon. 1845 August Wilhelm von Schlegel dies 12 May. Charles Dickens publishes Dombey and Son (1846-1848). 1846 Elizabeth Barrett marries Robert Browning. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte publish Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Edward Lear publishes his Book of Nonsense. 1847 Anne Bronte publishes Agnes Grey, Emily Bronte publishes Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Bronte publishes Jane Eyre. Rymer publishes Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood. 1848 William Makepeace Thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair published. Elizabeth Gaskell publishes Mary Barton. Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 1849 Death of Anne Bronte, Dostoyevski and Edgar Allen Poe. 1850 Alfred Lord Tennyson becomes Poet Laureate. 1851 Le Fanu: Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery. Herman Melville: Moby Dick. Charles Dickens publishes David Copperfield (1849-1850) and then Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855-1857), A Tale of Two Cities (11 July 1859) and Great Expectations (1860-1861). 1860 Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Анто́н Па́влович Че́хов) born 29 January. 1862 Victor Hugo publishes Les Misérables. Charles Dickens publishes Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865). 1870 Charles Dickens dies aged 58. Before his death he was working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood (published unfinished). 1875 Carmen, French opera by Georges Bizet, with text by Meilhac and Halévy. 1896 Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème. Chekov's play The Seagull 1897 Bram Stoker publishes Dracula. 1898 Henry James publishes The Turn of the Screw. 1899 Chekov's play Uncle Vanya. See main article: Modern European Literature Literature in the New World, 1500-1900 Washington Irving (1783-1859). James Fenimore Cooper (15 September 1789 - 14 September 1851). Robert Goldsmith (1794-1861). Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865). Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Herman Melville (1819-1891). Phillipe-Ignace Francois Aubert du Gaspe (1814-1841). Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Octave Crémazie (1827-1879). James McIntyre (1827-1906). Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel Clemens, 1835-1910). Louis Fréchette (1839-1908). Henry James (1843-1916). Grant Allen (1848-1899). Bliss Carman (1861-1929). E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913). Edith Wharton (1862-1937). Edith Maude Eaton (1865-1914). John McCrae (1872-1918). Modernism Modernist poetry Modernist poetry is a mode of writing characterised by technical innovation in the mode of versification (sometimes referred to as free verse) and by the dislocation of the 'I' of the poet as a means of subverting the notion of an unproblematic poetic 'self' directly addressing an equally unproblematic ideal reader or audience. In English, it is generally considered to have emerged in the early years of the 20th century. These two facets of modernist poetry are intimately connected with each other. The dislocation of the authorial presence is achieved through the application of such techniques as collage, found poetry, visual poetry, the juxtaposition of apparently unconnected materials, etc. In the best examples of modernist writing, these techniques are used not for their own sake but to open up questions in the mind of the reader. Modernist poetry in English is often viewed as an American phenomenon in origin, with leading exponents including Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Louis Zukofsky, but there were a number of important British modernist poets, including David Jones, Hugh MacDiarmid, Mina Loy, and Basil Bunting. The influence of modernism can be seen in such later poetic groups and movements as the Objectivists, the Beat generation, the Black Mountain poets, the deep image group, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets and the British Poetry Revival. Modernist prose needs to be added See main article: Modernism See also: western canon Modern Literature in the Americas Needs to be added See main articles in: Literature of Canada, Literature of the United States, Modern Asian Literature Needs to be added See main article: Modern Asian Literature African Literature Needs to be added See main article: African literature Structuralism, Deconstruction, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism and Post-Colonialism See: Thomas Pynchon. See main articles: Structuralism, Deconstruction, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism and Post-Colonialism Digital literature Needs to be added See main article: Digital literature See also History of science fiction FAVORITE ARTICLES: History of the World    History of the United States    History of Europe    Ancient History    History    Military History    World War I    Bombing of Dresden    California    US Constitution    Frank Sinatra    Boston    Marbury v. 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