This page is intended to provide some historical and literary background for the diverse texts that we study in English 234E. It is as yet very much "under construction"; keep on eye on this page for future additions, including bibliographies and more maps.

Table of Contents

Maps

The Succession, 1485-1837: The Houses of Tudor, Stuart, and Hanover

Historical and Literary Chronology

Maps

Click here for access to an interactive map of London and environs, ca. 1676. This map is designed so that users can highlight certain important features, each of which will feature its own brief historical commentary.

Click here for access to an interactive map of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland during the Civil Wars (1642-1651), available through Rump: Or an Exact Collection. (Still partially under construction).

Future additions to this section will include maps of Great Britain and London, ca. 1746.

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The Succession, 1485-1837:
The Houses of Tudor, Stuart, and Hanover

Click here for access to a detailed genealogy of the three reigning families of the British monarchy, from conclusion of the Wars of the Roses to the beginning of the Victorian Age.

A future addition to this genealogical chart will be more hyperlinks providing brief biographical notes and commentary on those monarchs ruling from 1660 to 1820.

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Historical Chronology

As currently constituted, these pages together constitute a fairly extensive chronological account of key historical and literary events, between the years 1625 and 1800. A few of the historical entries, and more of the literary ones, are "linked" to primary texts in electronic form (the vast majority of the latter are from Professor Ian Lancashire's Representative Poetry On-Line, University of Toronto).

Choose the span of years in which you are interested: