British Literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Manx, Jèrriais, Guernésiais and other languages. Northern Ireland has a literary tradition in English, Ulster Scots and Irish. Irish writers have also played an important part in the development of English-language literature.

Literature in the Celtic languages of the islands is the oldest surviving vernacular literature in Europe. The Welsh literary tradition stretches from the 6th century to the 21st century. The oldest Welsh literature does not belong to the territory we know as Wales today, but rather to northern England and southern Scotland. But though it is dated to be from the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, it has survived only in 13th- and 14th-century manuscript copies.

Chroniclers such as Bede, with his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and Gildas, with his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, were figures in the development of indigenous Latin literature, mostly ecclesiastical, in the centuries following the withdrawal of the Roman Empire.

The term Anglo-Saxon is used by some historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Britain beginning in the early 5th century and the period from their creation of the English nation up to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon era denotes the period of English history between about 550 and 1066. The term is also used for the language, now known as Old English, that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in England (and part of southeastern Scotland) between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century.

The Benedictine monk Bede, writing in the early 8th century, identified the English as the descendants of three Germanic tribes:

Their language, Old English, which derived from Ingvaeonic West Germanic dialects, transformed into Middle English from the 11th century. Old English was divided into four main dialects: West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish.

The term Anglo-Saxon can be found in documents produced in the time of Alfred the Great, who seems to have frequently used the titles rex Anglorum Saxonum and rex Angul-Saxonum (king of the English Saxons). The Old English terms ænglisc ('Angle-kin') and Angelcynn ('gens Anglorum') had already lost their original sense of referring to the Angles, as distinct from the Saxons, when they are first attested. In their earliest sense they referred to the nation of Germanic peoples who settled eastern Britain from the 5th century.^{[citation needed]} The indigenous Britons, who wrote in both Latin and Welsh, referred to these invaders as 'Saxones' or 'Saeson' – the word Saeson is the modern Welsh word for 'English people'; the equivalent word in Scottish Gaelic is Sasannach and in the Irish language, Sasanach.

Stefan Collini (born 1947) is an English literary critic and academic who is Professor of English Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge. He has contributed essays to such publications as The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and the London Review of Books.

Maureen Johnson (b. February 16, 1973, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American author of young adult fiction. She has published eight young adult novels to date, including the Suite Scarlett series and The Last Little Blue Envelope.

Maureen Johnson is a graduate of the University of Delaware. Prior to that she attended an all-girl Catholic preparatory high school. In the short period between her undergraduate and graduate careers, Johnson worked in Philadelphia, London, and New York City. She was the literary manager of a Philadelphia theater company, a waitress in a theme restaurant, a secretary, a bartender in Piccadilly, and an occasional performer. She studied both writing and theatrical dramaturgy at Columbia University, where she received her MFA in Writing.

Maureen Johnson's first novel, The Key to the Golden Firebird, was published in 2004. It was followed by The Bermudez Triangle and 13 Little Blue Envelopes in 2005, Devilish in 2006, and Girl at Sea in 2007.

In June 2007, Johnson's book ''The Bermudez Triangle'' was challenged by the parent of a student in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. While book challenges are not uncommon in the United States, Johnson's response on her blog is notable for its immediacy and for its call for greater transparency in the school system's challenge process. To resolve the controversy, the school board did not officially ban the book but placed it in a restricted area of the high school's library.