English literature may be said to begin with Beowulf, a poem written over twelve hundred years ago. Composed around 700, it existed for future ages in only one original manuscript, made 300 years later. The poem presents the legendary history of the Anglo-Saxons, and its author would have been descended from the original tribes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who invaded Britain from the European continent in the fifth century. Those people spoke the Germanic language in which the poem is written.