1890s: Popular poets of this decade include Emily Dickinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

1920s: Robert Frost is a popular poet in this decade, as well as Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings, and T. S. Eliot.

Today: Popular poets include Mary Oliver, Maya Angelou, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, and Louise Glück.

1890s: Realism dominates the theater of the nineteenth century. Realist playwrights of this decade include Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, and Anton Chekhov.

1920s: Harlem Renaissance literary movement flourishes during this decade and includes the playwrights Langston Hughes, Angelina Weld Grimke, and Thelma Myrtle Duncan.

Today: Absurdism, which takes hold in U.S. theater in the 1960s, continues to be a fashionable movement in playwriting. Popular absurdist playwrights are Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, and Maria Irene Fornes.

1890s: In...