Eminent Jain monk and scholar Hemachandra Acharya wrote a formal set of grammarian principles of the precursor of this language in the reign of the Rajput king, Siddharaj Jayasinh of Anhilwara. This treatise formed the foundation of Apabrahmsa grammar, forming a language from the combination of corrupted form of languages like Sanskrit and Ardhamagadhi. The life of Narasinha Mehta was also chronicled and composed as a long narrative ballad by Premananda, widely known as the "Mahakavi" of Gujarati, who worked in the late 17th century AD.

The Gujarati literature flourished after this period under the auspices of the "Bhakti" movement in Hinduism, a popular cultural movement to liberate the religion from entrenched priesthood. In the medieval periods of Gujarat`s history, poetry was employed to express religious sentiments. In the medieval period, poetry was actually the means of expressing religious sentiments and the first poetry of the language was Bharateswara Bahubali Rasa. Shalibhadrasuri composes this first work of poetry in Gujarati, a 7th century Jain monk. A number of Jain Sadhus followed his example and composed short storytelling poems called "Rasas" till the end of the 18th century AD.

In the 15th century, a prominent poet called Narsingh Mehta brought in a new era in Vaishnava poetry, with his portrayal of Krishna as a playful child, a lover, a friend and the poet`s muse. Narsingh Mehta`s works became a blueprint for his successors in composing devotional as well as philosophical poetry. Raje, Raghunathdas, Pritam, Ratno and Muktananda were some prime contributors to this era of devotional poetry. In the 18th century, the poet "Vallabh" created two very significant devotional songs called "Garbo" and "Garbi". They are popular even in today`s age.

Premananda the greatest medieval poet introduced a famous work called "Akhyana". He had a wonderful command over the language, treated the subject in an outstanding way and moreover had a great understanding of human nature. Jains and non-Jains have written narrative poems using Sanskrit as well as Prakrit fiction as the source. Nayasundar among the Jains and Samal amongst the non-Jains were popular narrators.

These two emerged to be very popular narrators of devotional poetry in the 18th century. Poetic literature soared to new heights in the later stages of the 18th century under the steadily strengthening British influences. In 1886, Narsingharao`s collection of lyrical poems Kusummala, was published. The noted poets of this century like Kalapi, Kant, Nanalal and Balavantrai Thakor produced significant bodies of work under various categories of poetry.

Even Gujarati literary prose in the real sense begins from the 19th century. Narmad was the leader in this field and began by writing essays to be read out before an audience. His essays dealt mainly with social revolution, but he also wrote on literary, social, political and religious subjects. Narmad coined new words and phrases, using them to explain his ideas. His contemporary was Dalpat, an essayist and dramatist. The era starting from Narmad is called the social reform era. Naval Ram of this age was a critic of distinction besides writing literary essays and book reviews. Nand Shankar was the first novelist of his time and wrote Karanghelo a historical fiction. Govardhanram is another great novelist whose Saraswati Chandra is a classic not only in Gujarati literature but also in Indian literature. It was the first social novel, which mentioned contemporary problems and their solutions.

During this period, the Gujarat Vidyapith became the centre of all literary activities where new values emerged and more emphasis was given on Indianisation. Novels, short stories, diaries, letters, plays, essays, criticisms, biographies, travel books and all kinds of prose began to flood Gujarati literature.

However, Kanhaiyalal Munshi was absolutely untouched by this change and made a mockery of the Gandhian principles, whereas Ramanlal Desai, novelist, dramatist, literary critic and short storywriter all rolled into one is the true representative of the Gandhian era. His works include `Divya Chakshu` and `Bharelo Agni`. Kaka Kalelkar was a voluminous writer and subjects included travel, culture, nature, sociology and biography. Other pioneers of this era were Kishorelal Mashruwala (essayist), Ramnarayan Pathak (critic and short story writer), and Darshak (dramatist).

After the rise of Mahatma Gandhi`s prominence in a steadily strengthening struggle for Independence and social equality, a great volume of poetry, written by poets like Umashankar, Sundaram, Shesh, Snehrasmi and Betai, among others, were centered on the existing social order, the struggle for Independence and the travails of Mahatma Gandhi himself. Highly inspired by Tagore`s dialogue poems, Umashankar Joshi enriched the existing Gujrati literature by writing in the same manner. His two such poems are Prachina and Mahaprasthan.

During the 40s, there was a rise in communistic poetry and this inspired a movement for progressive literature. Meghani, Bhogilal Gandhi, Swapnastha and others preached class conflict and hatred of religion through their writings. Post-Independence Gujarati poetry displays a higher form of subjectivity and explores newer philosophies and lines of thought and imagery. They were more subjective and brutal, discarding old imageries and symbols and replacing them with new ideas.

Prominent Gujarati poets of the post-Independence era include critically acclaimed poets like Suresh Joshi, Gulam Mohamed Sheikh, Harinder Dave, Chinu Modi, Nalin Raval and Adil Mansuri, among others. Modern exploration into Gujarat and its language is credited to British administrator Alexander Kinloch Forbes shortly after the British occupation of the region. Alexander Forbes carried out an extensive exploration of Gujarati culture and literature over the prior thousand years of history and amassed a large collection of manuscripts. An organization named after him, called the Farbas Gujarati Sabha, dedicates itself to the preservation of Gujarati language and history from its headquarters in Mumbai.

Owing to its apparent youth with respect to its written history, the Gujarati script follows the Nagari writing system. This is a derivative of the Devanagari script with one notable difference being that the horizontal line is not utilized. The Gujarati script also has a few other variations in terms of certain consonants and utilizes a slightly different set of symbols for numbers. Gujarati has also been the language spoken by two of South Asia`s greatest and most prominent leaders: the Father of the Indian Nation, Mahatma Gandhi and the Founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

In less than two hundred years, Gujarati literature has shown growth in compounded leaps and bounds, an ample demonstration of the Gujarati people`s commitment towards modern ideologies in both expression and thought. With the Gujarat Government`s new emphasis on the basics of e-governance and the development of the Information Technology sector, Gujarati is slated to attain the significance it aspires towards in this Digital Era.

The post independence prose literature had two distinct trends that of traditional and modern. The former deals more with ethical values and its main writers were Gulabdas Broker, Mansukhlal Jhaveri, Vishnuprasad Trivedi and others. While existentialism, surrealism and symbolism have influenced the latter. However, the modernists want to do away with moral values and religious beliefs.

The eminent writers of this trend are Chandrakant Baxi, Suresh Joshi, Madhu Rai, Raghuvir Chowdhury, Saroj Pathak and others.Gujarati prose has recorded growth and literary feats quite rapidly in less than two hundred years and now can be counted among the front benchers in Indian literature.