The Library & Literary Timelines

Literary and biblical voices from early Christianity to the present — browseable by era and by genre. Timelines tracing the tradition’s movement across centuries follow below.

Era I — c. 1400 BC – AD 100

Biblical Figures

The foundation of the tradition — prophets, poets, apostles, and witnesses whose words the whole literary tradition either draws from or argues against.

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Scripture & Biblical Figures c. 1400 BC – AD 100

Church Fathers & Early Christianity AD 100 – 700

Augustine of Hippo Athanasius of Alexandria John Chrysostom Origen Tertullian Irenaeus of Lyons Justin Martyr Perpetua Polycarp of Smyrna Clement of Alexandria Gregory of Nyssa Jerome Ambrose of Milan John of Damascus Basil of Caesarea Cyril of Jerusalem Macrina the Younger Egeria

III

Medieval AD 700 – 1400

Thomas Aquinas Anselm of Canterbury Dante Alighieri Hildegard of Bingen Julian of Norwich Bernard of Clairvaux Thomas à Kempis Francis of Assisi The Venerable Bede Boethius Meister Eckhart Catherine of Siena Geoffrey Chaucer William Langland Duns Scotus William of Ockham

Pre-Reformation AD 1300 – 1500

John Wycliffe Jan Hus Desiderius Erasmus Giovanni Pico della Mirandola William Tyndale Thomas More Margery Kempe John of the Cross Teresa of Ávila Nicholas of Cusa

Reformation & Early Modern AD 1500 – 1700

Martin Luther John Calvin John Bunyan Blaise Pascal John Milton John Owen Richard Baxter George Herbert John Donne Anne Bradstreet William Shakespeare Miguel de Cervantes Francis Bacon Katherine Parr Ulrich Zwingli Thomas Cranmer

VII

Modern & Contemporary AD 1900 – Present

C.S. Lewis G.K. Chesterton J.R.R. Tolkien Dorothy L. Sayers Flannery O’Connor T.S. Eliot H.G. Wells Francis Schaeffer Walker Percy Marilynne Robinson Joy Davidman Amy Carmichael Corrie ten Boom Elisabeth Elliot Rosaria Butterfield Howard Thurman W.E.B. Du Bois Richard Wright Ralph Ellison Madeleine L’Engle Shirley Jackson H.P. Lovecraft George Orwell Virginia Woolf Franz Kafka Albert Camus Ursula K. Le Guin Pierre Boulle Richard Matheson Stephen King Toni Morrison Zadie Smith Zora Neale Hurston Walter Wangerin Jr.

Horror Evil, the supernatural, and what happens when the sacred order is violated

Edgar Allan Poe H.P. Lovecraft Shirley Jackson Richard Matheson Stephen King Robert Bloch Ira Levin

Science Fiction What it means to be human, the limits of knowledge, and what happens when those limits are crossed

Mary Shelley H.G. Wells C.S. Lewis J.R.R. Tolkien Ursula K. Le Guin Pierre Boulle Madeleine L’Engle Ray Bradbury Walter M. Miller Jr.

Fiction The novel and the short story as sustained argument about how the world is and how it ought to be

Fyodor Dostoevsky Leo Tolstoy Jane Austen Charles Dickens George MacDonald Flannery O’Connor Walker Percy Marilynne Robinson George Orwell Virginia Woolf Franz Kafka Albert Camus John Bunyan Dante Alighieri Harriet Beecher Stowe Mark Twain Toni Morrison Zora Neale Hurston Walter Wangerin Jr.

Non-Fiction Essayists, apologists, and theologians writing for the reader who is still deciding what to believe

C.S. Lewis G.K. Chesterton Dorothy L. Sayers Francis Schaeffer Joy Davidman Blaise Pascal Augustine of Hippo Thomas Aquinas Frederick Douglass Howard Thurman Corrie ten Boom Elisabeth Elliot Rosaria Butterfield

Children’s Literature Where the theological imagination is formed earliest and most durably

George MacDonald C.S. Lewis J.R.R. Tolkien Madeleine L’Engle G.K. Chesterton Walter Wangerin Jr.

Literary Timelines

Chronological maps of the tradition — showing which authors were writing simultaneously, where ideas crossed between writers, and where major theological and cultural moments intersected with the literary record.

Literary Timelines are in development. The first timeline will trace the Wells–Chesterton–Lewis exchange across the early twentieth century — three writers, one argument, and the moment the tradition turned.