Chris Snodgrass

Chronicle of Some Important Events Bearing on Victorian Age & Aftermath

(with help from Sally Mitchell’s Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, and others)
Chris Snodgrass © 2004

1780—Rebellious hordes storm and set fire to Newgate Prison in London; poet William Blake (1757–1827) watches in support, inspired by the “Declaration of Independence.”
1787—Edward Gibbon (1737–94), History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a monumental work that was almost 25 years in the making.
1789—French Revolution begins.
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, which presents the landmark theory of self-interested utilitarianism, ostensibly leading to “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Bentham’s theories will profoundly influence English thought for much of the nineteenth century.
George Washington (1732–99) becomes first US President.
1791–92—Englishman Thomas Paine (1737–1809) publishes Rights of Man (in Britain, supporting republicanism & the ideals of the growing revolution in France.
1792—France is declared a republic.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97), “Vindication of the Rights of Women.” In 1797, a pregnant Wollstonecraft will marry novelist and political theorist William Godwin (1756–1836). She will die in the autumn, 11 days after the birth of her second daughter, Mary, who will become author of the gothic classic Frankenstein (1816).
1793—Revolutionary France declares war on Britain and allies.
1793–94—Reign of Terror under Robespierre (1758–94), who was himself guillotined on order from the Revolutionary Tribunal he had originally established.
1798—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) & Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Lyrical Ballads, which heralded the English Romantic Movement in poetry.
1802—Treaty of Amiens between Britain and France. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) is created First Consul.
1803—War breaks out again between Britain and France.
US President Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) makes the “Louisiana Purchase” from France.
1804–15—Napoleon Bonaparte reigns as Emperor of France.
1805—Battle of Trafalgar. British navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) defeats Franco-Spanish fleet.
1807—Slave trade abolished in British Empire.
1809—As his new Drury Lane Theatre burns to the ground, playwright and owner Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816), author of The School for Scandal (1777), has a drink at a neighboring coffeehouse, saying, “A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.”
1811—Jane Austen (1775–1817), Sense and Sensibility, her first novel.
1811–12—Luddite Riots, protesting industrial exploitation.
1812–14—Britain and US at war over shipping and territorial disputes.
1812–22—Germans Jakob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859) Grimm produce their Fairy Tales. [Although Germany was not created (unified) until 1871, the term “German” will be used throughout to designate figures from any of the German states.]
1812—The first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron (1788–1824) are published, causing a national sensation.
1814—Treaty of Paris ends Napoleonic Wars.
Lord Byron, The Corsair. Sells 10,000 copies the first day.
American Francis Scott Key (1779–1843) composes lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner” on board the ship Minden in Chesapeake Bay (September 13).
1815—Napoleon escapes exile from Elba and marches on Paris.
Battle of Waterloo, Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) defeats Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon exiled permanently to St. Helena.
English Corn laws restrict grain imports.
Austen, Emma.
Battle of New Orleans, ending hostilities between England and USA.
1816—Mary Shelley (1797–1851), Frankenstein.
1817—David Ricardo’s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.
1819—Victoria is born.
Peterloo Massacre: soldiers fire on political meeting of workers in Manchester, England, killing many.
John Polidori (1795–1821), The Vampyre, with his infamous Lord Ruthven.
1820—Painter John Martin (1789–1854), Belshazzar’s Feast.
1822—Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1821), 29, drowns off Viareggio, is cremated on the beach where his body washed up. Wife Mary Shelley always kept his heart, which had not burned, in a silken shroud. Shelley once wrote his occupation into a Mont Blanc hotel registry (in Greek) as “Democrat, Philanthropi, Atheist” and his destination as “L’Enfer” (Hell).
1824—Lord Byron dies, aged 36, on Easter Sunday of malarial fever contracted in a rainstorm in Missolonghi, where he had been drilling troops as part of the fight for Greek liberation from the Turkish Empire. His heart and lungs are buried in Greece, the rest of his body in England.
1826–27—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), Vivian Grey, a 5-volume anonymous novel in which he takes stylish revenge on some social and political adversaries from publisher John Murray’s circle.
1826—First photograph is taken by Frenchman Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce (1765–1833), who succeeds in fixing an image of the camera obscura by chemical means.
Painter Edwin Landseer (1802–73), The Hunting of Chevy Chase.
1827—German poet Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs), which was his first collection of poetry and will build his international reputation.
1828–30—Prime Minister: Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), Conservative Party.
1828—Noah Webster (1758-1843), American Dictionary of the English Language, which was 22 years in preparation and introduces many “Americanisms” (12,000 new words never before included in any dictionary).
1829—Catholic Emancipation Act, ending most restrictions of Catholic civil rights, ownership of property, and the holding of public office.
Metropolitan Police Act, which set up the first discipline police force for the London area, known as “Bobbies” after the author of this and other wide-ranging reforms, Robert Peel (1788–1850).
Painter John Constable (1777–1837), Salisbury Cathedral.
1830–34—Prime Minister: William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848), Whig Party.
1830–33—Charles Lyell (1797–1875), Principles of Geology, a landmark book that argued for the uniformitarian theory that geological changes occurred gradually over a vast time, fueling in turn evolutionary theory.
1830–48—“Citizen King” Louis Philippe (1773–1850), descendent of Louis XIII, becomes King of France, rules until 1848 Revolution.
1830—Passenger steam railways open.
Alfred Tennyson (1809–92), Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, his first volume of poetry.
French novelist Stendhal [Marie-Henri Beyle] (1783–1842), Red and Black.
1831—Chemist and physicist Michael Faraday (1791–1867) begins developing his theories on electromagnetic induction, which made possible the electric motor and dynamo, the telephone, and the transformer.
1832—Great Reform Act, which extends the vote to the wealthy middle class.
Tennyson, Poems, which included “The Lady of Shalott,” “The Palace of Art,” and “The Lotos-Eaters.”
1833–34— Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), Sartor Resartus. When Carlyle wed Jane Welsh in 1827, beginning a tempestuous marriage, Samuel Butler (1835–1902) summed up the event, as follows: “It was good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.”
1833— Factory Act in England outlaws employment of children under 9 in factories; set a work limit of 9 hours per day for children under 13, and a limit of 12 hours per day for children 13–18. Children 10–12 were prohibited from working more than 48 hours per week.
Slavery banned in British colonies.
Beginning of the Oxford Movement (or Tractarian Movement), which opposed religious liberalism in favor of conservative High Church positions.
Painter W. Etty, Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret.
John Henry Newman (1801–90) originates Tracts of the Times.
1834–35—Prime Minister: Robert Peel (1788–1850), Conservative Party.
1834— “Tolpuddle Martyrs”: six Dorset laborers are transported for attempting to form a trade union.
“Ten Hours” Factory Act.
1835–40—Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59), Democracy in America.
1836— Chartist movement begins in Britain. A conglomeration of protest movements, it demanded votes for all adult males and collectively aimed at eliminating social and economic injustices through political reform. Its originally violent tactics were eventually moderated.
Painter J. Constable, The Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Painter Thomas Cole (1801–48), The Oxbow.
Charles Dickens (1812–70), Sketches by Boz and Pickwick Papers, a phenomenal best seller. Over the course of its serialization, the monthly print-run for an issue grew from 400 to 40,000 copies.
1837— Victoria succeeds uncle, William IV, at age 18 (June 20). Reigns until 1901.
Registry of births becomes mandatory (Registrar General’s Office established).
First telegraph equipment is patented.
Painter E. Landseer, The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner.
Dickens, Oliver Twist, a classic that pits a pure orphaned child against urban criminality.
Disraeli, Henrietta Temple, a semi-autobiographical psychological romance.
Scottish writer T. Carlyle, The French Revolution. The study was not published until 1837 because most of the manuscript for the first volume was accidentally burned by John Stuart Mill’s servant, who mistakes it for kindling.
1837–67—Construction of neo-Gothic Houses of Parliament, designed by the
renowned English architect A. W. N. Pugin (1812–52).
1838–42—War with Afghanistan.
1838— Great Western Railway opens between London and Bristol, built beginning in 1837 by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–59).
Great Western paddle steamer crosses the Atlantic Ocean in under 20 days.
Public Records Office is established.
Regulation of licensing hours begins: pubs must close between midnight Saturday and noon Sunday.
Euston Station built.
Anti-Corn League is organized.
Painter Thomas Sully (1783–1872), Queen Victoria.
Painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), The Seraphim and Other Poems, with exotic setting and high valuations of a poet’s social role. This was the volume that first established her popular success.
Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, which satirically pillories a brutal boarding school.
Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799–1882), The Women of England, Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits, a conservative manual on women’s proper roles.
Lyell, Elements of Geology, which opposed the common opinion that geological changes have been primarily swift and catastrophic (like the fabled destruction of Atlantis) rather than evolutionary.
F[rederick]. D[enison]. Maurice (1805–72), The Kingdom of Christ, which establishes his reputation as a theologian.
American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64), Twice-Told Tales.
French writer Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma.
1839–42—“Opium War” between Britain and China.
Britain and Afghanistan at war.
1839— Frenchman Louis Daguerre (1789-1851), who developed a way of fixing pictures with a solution of common salt (dubbed the daguerreotype process), takes the first photograph of the moon (January 2).
Photographic experiments of Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77) become generally known.
Custody of Infants Act gives a woman separated from her husband the right to petition to see her children and for their temporary custody if they are under 7 years old.
First government agency is established for supervision education and distributing grants to schools.
First Chartist petition is presented to Parliament.
American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49), “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
1840— Victoria marries first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha [Prussia] (1819–61), will have 9 children.
Penny postage is instituted in Britain (January 10).
Physicist James Prescott Joule (1818–89) formulates Joule’s Law, which described the rate at which heat is produced by electric current, contributing to the development of the first law of thermodynamics, the law of conservation of energy.
Nottingham lace workers strike.
New Zealand becomes a British Crown Colony (Treaty of Waitangi).
Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria agree to limit Egyptian expansion (Treaty of London).
British navy bombards Beirut.
Painter Francis Danby (1793–1861), The Deluge.
Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop.
1841–46—Prime Minister: Robert Peel (1788–1850), Conservative Party.
1841—Founding of Punch, popular illustrated satirical periodical.
Beginning of economic depression of the “Hungry Forties.”
Treaty with Austria, France, Russia, and Prussia for suppression of African slave trade.
London Library is established.
Painter William Mulready (1786–1863), Train up the Child.
Surgeon William Acton (1813–75), A Complete Treatise on Venereal Diseases, which went through numerous editions.
Robert Browning (1812–89), Pippa Passes.
Scottish writer T. Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. When later in 1874 Prime Minister Disraeli suggested to Queen Victoria that the government bestow honors and a pension upon Thomas Carlyle, Carlyle modestly declined, claiming that such things were inappropriate for his “poor life.” He also later refused the coveted honor of being buried in Westminster Abbey.
Dickens, Barnaby Rudge.
American E. A. Poe, The Murders of the Rue Morgue.
French writer Eugène Sue (1804–75), Mathilde, a popular and sensationalist novel of Parisian low life.
1842— Founding of Mudie’s Library, Victorian Britain’s largest circulating library, by Charles Mudie (1818–90).
Illustrated London News begins publication.
Most major thoroughfares in London are lit by gas.
Railway links London and Manchester.
Mines and Collieries Act forbids underground employment in mines for women, girls, and boys under 10 years old.
Miners Association of Great Britain is formed (miners union).
Second peak of Chartist agitation.
Pentonville “model” prison opens.
Will be the year of the highest British crime rate in the nineteenth century.
London Police establish a detective department.
Boers and British at war, British victorious.
China cedes Hong Kong to Britain (Treaty of Nanking).
Webster-Ashburton Treaty settles boundary dispute between Canada and US.
Painter Daniel Maclise (1806–70), The Origin of the Harp.
Painter J. M. W. Turner, Snowstorm—Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and Going by the Lead.
Robert Browning, Dramatic Lyrics, including “My Last Duchess.”
Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Daughters of England, Their Position in Society, Character and Social Responsibilities, another of Ellis’s proscriptive treatises on proper behavior for women.
Tennyson, Poems, which includes “Ulysses” and “Locksley Hall.”
French writer E. Sue, The Mysteries of Paris, another sensationalist representation of Paris.
1843–60—John Ruskin (1819–1900), Modern Painters, a landmark 5-volume
work of art criticism that will establish Ruskin as perhaps the leading art critic of the century and one of its most powerful thinkers.
1843— Theatre Regulation Act allows spoken drama at theaters other than Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
Custom of sending Christmas cards begins.
National Temperance Society is founded.
Free Church of Scotland secedes from the established Church of Scotland.
Scottish writer T. Carlyle, Past and Present, which contrasts the coherent faith and ordered society of the medieval past with modern skepticism and alienation.
Dickens, A Christmas Carol, with Scrooge and “Tiny Tim,” and Martin Chuzzlewit, which satirically savages American boorishness.
John Stuart Mill (1806–73), A System of Logic, which set forth rules for the scientific process of induction and emphasized empiricism as the ultimate source of knowledge.
1844–45—The Count of Monte Cristo by French writer Alexandre Dumas père
(1802–70).
1844–51—Irish potato famine. Over one million die. Two million emigrate.
1844— Factory Act limited women to 12 hours of work each day and imposed a limit on children of 6.5 hours per day.
Imprisonment for debt is prohibited if the amount owed is under £20 (approximately $3000–$4000 spending power in today’s money).
Lunacy Act requires British counties to provide asylums.
Bank Charter Act controls the issue of paper money and introduces stability in banking and currency.
Great Western Railway reaches Paddington district of London.
Mathematician Charles Babbage (1792–1871) invents the modern computer (or the principles for it). His invention is not adopted, because government and industry see no practical application for it. Nor will they for another 100 years.
Robert Chambers (1802–71), The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which is one of the first publications to propose a theory of evolution and paves the way for Darwin’s landmark full theory.
American P[hineas]. T[aylor]. Barnum (1810–91) exhibits Tom Thumb in London.
Painter Richard Redgrave (1804–88), The Seamstress.
Painter J. M. W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed—The Great Western Railway.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems, which established her as among the foremost poets of her generation.
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63), Barry Lyndon, his first full-length novel, satirizing then-popular sentimental Irish novels.
French writer A. Dumas père, The Three Musketeers.
1845— Brunel builds the S. S. Great Britain, the first propeller-driven steamship.
Anglo-Sikh Wars in India, Britain annexes the Punjab, NW India.
Famed churchman John Henry Newman causes a sensation by converting to Roman Catholicism, later becoming a Cardinal.
Painter R. Redgrave, The Governess.
Disraeli, Sibyl; or the Two Nations, an allegory wedding the unifying power of religious poetry to secular political leadership.
American writer E. A. Poe, “The Raven,” published for the first time in the New York Mirror.
American writer Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) begins his 26-month stay at Walden Pond.
German writer Friedrich Engels (1820–95), The Condition of the Working Class in England.
1846–52—Prime Minister: Lord John Russell (1792–1878), Whig Party.
1846–47—Thackeray, The Book of Snobs, a brutal fictional critique of Victorian
class consciousness, serialized in Punch.
1846— Corn Laws are suspended, beginning the era of free trade. The Corn Laws regulated the importation of all cereal grains into Britain.
“Railway Mania” transforms transportation.
Pupil-teacher education system is established.
United States and Mexico at war.
Britain at war in South Africa.
German scholar David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74), Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, which largely rejected the divinity of Jesus, proposing instead a “religion of humanity.” Translated into English by George Eliot.
Painter William Edward Frost (1810–77), Diana and her Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon.
Painter Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867), On the Dogger Bankk.
Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning elope and move to Italy. Wordsworth comments upon the Brownings’ marriage: “Well, I hope they understand one another—no one else would.” Robert once wrote to Elizabeth, “I desire to write out certain things which are in me, and so save my soul.”
Dickens, Dombey & Son, about a father’s inability to appreciate his daughter, with a plausible psychological portrayal of a “poor little rich girl.”
Edward Lear (1812–88), A Book of Nonsense, first book of limericks and other comical poems, originally written for Lord Stanley’s grandchildren.
American writer H. D. Thoreau writes “Civil Disobedience,” having been jailed for protesting slavery and the U.S. involvement in the Mexican War. When asked by Emerson, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” he responded, “Waldo, what are you doing out there?”
The tales of Danish writer Hans Christian Anderson (1805–75) are translated into English. At 17, Anderson belatedly enrolled in grammar school, towering over his 11-year-old classmates.
1847–48—Thackeray, Vanity Fair, a devastating satirical masterpiece with
classic scheming villain Becky Sharp.
1847— “Ten Hours” Factory Act restricted working hours to 10 hours per day for women and for children 13–18. Working hours for men remained unrestricted. Acts in 1867 and 1878 improved working and sanitary conditions.
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, opens.
Juvenile Offenders Act makes it possible to dismiss minor charges.
Band of Hope (juvenile temperance organization) is founded.
Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906) establishes Urania College (with the help of Dickens) for the reformation of prostitutes, which is designed to teach them alternative practical skills and, if they chose, to assist them in emigrating.
United Presbyterian Church of Scotland is formed.
George Boole (1815–64), The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, which establishes algebraic methods for logical analysis.
German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94) discovers the law of the conservation of energy: that the total amount of energy in an isolated system cannot change.
Painter William Dyce (1806–64), Neptune Resigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea.
Anne Brontë (1820–49), Agnes Grey, an autobiographical novel about her lonely, melancholy experience as a governess.
Charlotte Brontë (1816–55), Jane Eyre, a semi-autobiographical classic gothic love story. Though a masterpiece, George Eliot wrote of it, “the book is interesting—only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.”
Emily Brontë (1818–49), Wuthering Heights. She comments: “If I could I would work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.” She dies of consumption the following year at age 30, three months after having taken cold at her brother Branwell’s funeral.
Disraeli, Tancred, about religious piety and noble political leadership.
Thomas Preskett Prest (1810–79) or James Malcolm Rymer (1814–84).
Tennyson, The Princess: A Medley, dealing with scientific and social issues.
Russian satirical poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–61) is exiled and forbidden to write or paint.
1848—Widespread revolutions in Europe.
1848–49—Cholera epidemic.
1848–50—Thackeray, History of Pendennis, a semi-autobiographical novel.
1848–70—Second Republic in France under Louis Napoleon, nephew of
Bonaparte. Poet-diplomat Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) was acting head of state.
1848—Public Health Act. First General Board of Health is established.
St. John’s House (Anglican order) is founded to train nurses.
Queen’s College opens higher education to women. Established with the help of F. D. Maurice.
Final Chartist petition is presented to Parliament.
Insurrection in Ireland is put down.
Founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
First Convention of Women’s Rights takes place in New York.
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto.
California gold rush begins.
F. D. Maurice (1805–72), Charles Kingsley (1819–75), and J. M. Ludlow (1821–1911) begin to form the group that becomes known as Christian socialists, which sought to avert revolution while assuring the working classes redress of their grievances.
Mathematician and natural scientist William Thomson [later, Lord Kelvin] (1824–1907) established the principle of “absolute zero,” which led to the development of the Kelvin scale, essential to the study of thermodynamics.
German expatriate Karl Marx (1818–83), Communist Manifesto, with Engels. Marx lived in London from 1849 on, is buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Painter George Frederic Watts (1817–1904), Orlando Pursuing the Fata Morgana.
Anne Brontë, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, portraying a woman married to an alcoholic and drawing on her experience caring for brother Branwell.
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65), Mary Barton, her first novel, focusing on social unrest among the working poor in Manchester.
Mill, Principles of Political Economy, which questioned the sanctity of private property and criticized capitalism for the wretched living conditions of much of the working class.
La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–95), the illegitimate son of Dumas père and Catherine Labay, a seamstress.
French writer George Sand [Aurore Dudevant] (1804–76) and the Polish composer Frederic Chopin (1810–49) meet for the last time. Their romantic relationship dated from 1837.
1849–50—Journalist and social historian Henry Mayhew (1812–87) does
hundreds of interviews with London workers about their working and living conditions for the “Labor and the Poor” series that ran in the Morning Chronicle.
1849–53—Agricultural crisis.
1849—Corn Laws are abolished.
Bedford College for Women is established.
Physician John Snow (1813–53), “On the Mode of Communication of Cholera,” which is instrumental in reducing mortality from one of the deadliest of nineteenth-century diseases. Snow was the first to deliver research data in support of the water-borne spread of disease and became famous for limiting the transmission of cholera by controlling the water source.
Painter John Everett Millais (1829–96), Isabella.
Painter Joseph Noel Paton (1821–1901), Oberon and Titania—The Quarrel.
Painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82), The Girlhood of the Virgin Mary.
Matthew Arnold (1822–88), Strayed Reveller and Other Poems, his first volume of poetry.
Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, set in the time of the Luddite Riots.
Dickens, David Copperfield, a closely autobiographical novel.
Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, which continues Ruskin’s view, applied here specifically to architecture, that art is based on national and individual morality.
For engaging in socialist activities Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81) receives the death sentence, later commuted to four years’ hard labor in Siberia.
1850— First British Public Library Act, permitting the establishment of public libraries.
Restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy; Cardinal Wiseman becomes first Archbishop of Westminster.
Christian socialists begin tailors’ cooperative.
Oxford University establishes its law school.
Frances Buss (1827–94) founds North London Collegiate School for Girls, a secondary day school that transformed education by serving as a model for subsequent widespread reform.
Painter J. E. Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents.
Painter D. G. Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini (a.k.a. The Annunciation).
Painter J. M. W. Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise.
French painter Constantin Guys (1802–92), Study of Prostitutes in the Haymarket.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Songs from the Portuguese, which includes a chronicle about the healing effects of growing love.
Dickens, Household Words is started. Ends publication in 1859.
Charles Kingsley (1819–75), Alton Locke, exploring the hardships of workers in the London tailor trade and the need for labor reform.
Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam, his masterpiece elegy to friend Arthur Henry Hallam (d. 1833), which explores the contemporary crisis of faith in the light of the new science.
Tennyson is named Poet Laureate, succeeding Wordsworth.
Scottish writer T. Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, a reform-advocating rail against the inadequacies of democracy, bureaucracy, and philanthropy.
American writer N. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
Russian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818–83), A Month in the Country (original title: The Student), a play that is considered the first Russian psychological drama.
1851–53—Gaskell, Cranford, a light comedy depicting the domestic lives and
psychology of women in a society without men.
Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, coming “moral” Gothic architecture with “corrupt” Venetian Renaissance architecture.
1851—First telegraph cable laid across the English Channel.
First cigarettes sold in Britain.
Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London.
Half of population of Great Britain lives in cities.
London population grows from 1.1 million in 1801 to 2.7 million, will reach 6.6 million in 1901.
Cambridge University adds degree examination in natural sciences.
Liverpool Children’s Hospital is established.
Amalgamated Society of Engineers (union) is founded.
First formal chess competition in London.
William Fox Talbot invents instantaneous photography.
Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
Lord Kelvin publishes first and second laws of thermodynamics.
Gold is discovered in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia.
Painter J. E. Millais, The Woodman’s Daughter and Mariana.
Painter D. G. Rossetti, How They Met Themselves (revised 1860).
German painter Emanuel Leutze (1816–68), Washington Crossing the Delaware.
E. B. Browning, Casa Guidi Windows, mourning the repression of Italian nationalism.
Kingsley, Yeast, about rural workers.
Harriet Taylor Mill (1807–58), “The Enfranchisement of Women,” published in the Westminster Review.
Irish writer (Joseph) Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73), Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery, his first collection of stories.
American novelist Herman Melville (1819–91), Moby Dick.
German H. Heine, Romanzero, composed in a Paris hospital where he was confined for the last eight years of life and considered his finest book of poetry. It was Heine who prophesied: “Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end burn human beings.”
1852–53—Second Burmese War, British victory.
1852–55—Prime Minister: Earl of Derby (Conservative Party), 2/23–12/17,
1852
Earl of Aberdeen (Aberdeen Coalition), 12/19, 1852–1/30, 1855
1852–70—Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon (1808–73), Emperor of France.
1852—Silver Jubilee, celebration of 25th anniversary of Victoria’s reign.
Register of Pharmacists is established.
Spiritualism is introduced to England.
Opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Opening of the new Houses of Parliament.
Last duel fought in England at Priest Hill, Surrey (duels had been outlawed in 1840s).
Painter Ford Madox Brown (1821–93), Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet.
Painter James Collinson (1825–61), The Emigration Scheme.
Painter Arthur Hughes (1832–1915), Ophelia.
Painter William Holman Hunt (1827–1910), The Hireling Shepherd.
Painter J. E. Millais, Ophelia.
Painter J. Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath.
Painter Franz Xavier Winterhalter (1805–73), Florinda.
Arnold, Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems, in which the protagonists express irresolvable anxiety in the face of an amabiguous universe.
Dickens, Bleak House, about the stultifying legal system. Poet and essayist Leigh Hunt was the model for the parasitic Skimpole.
Newman, The Idea of a University, which argues that moral instruction should be incorporated into a university education.
Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond, a semi-autobiographical historical novel set in the eighteenth century.
American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96), Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
1853–54—Second cholera epidemic.
1853—Smallpox vaccination becomes compulsory.
Tax duty on advertisements is abolished.
Ticket-of-leave (parole) system is established.
Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners (union) is founded.
Cheltenham Ladies’ College is established.
Noted physician John Snow administers chloroform to Queen Victoria for Prince Leopold’s birth.
Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone (1813–73) discovers Victoria Falls.
Painter Holman Hunt, The Light of the World (other versions in 1854, 1858, 1886).
Painter J. E. Millais, The Order of Release.
Painter W. Mulready, Bathers Surprised.
Arnold, Poems, containing his famous preface on the nature of great poetry, the “Marguerite” poems, and “The Scholar-Gipsy.”
Charlotte Brontë, Villette, drawing on her own experiences of unfulfilled passion for an employer.
Gaskell, Ruth, attacking the hypocrisy of social attitudes toward sexual mores.
Kingsley, Hypathia, which presents a spiritual battle in 5th-century Alexandria between Neoplatonism and the emerging medieval church.
Maurice, Theological Essays.
American writer H. Melville, “Bartleby the Schrivener.”
American writer H. B. Stowe, The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
1854–56—Crimean War.
Burdett-Coutts designs a machine fro drying hospital linen and sends it to Florence Nightingale.
1854–63—Coventry Patmore (1823–96), The Angel in the House, a popular
four-part sequence of poems celebrating married love and defining the traditional wife’s role within it.
1854— Construction of London Underground begins.
Reformatories are established for offenders under 16 years old.
Christian socialists, including F. D. Maurice, establish Working Men’s College, London.
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827–91), A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women, which serves to activate feminism.
Caroline Norton (1808–77), English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century. She was instrumental in achieving passage of the Infant Custody Act (1839) and the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act (1857).
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) goes to Crimea and organizes nursing during the war.
Earl of Cardigan (1797–1868) leads the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. As the Earl was criticized for showiness in his dress and habits, appropriately the cardigan sweater was named after him.
US Admiral Matthew Perry (1794–1858) forces Japan to make commercial treaty with US.
Orange Free State is set up in South Africa.
Ludwig Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, which largely rejected the divinity of Jesus, proposing instead a “religion of humanity.”
Painter Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience (revised 1856).
Painter Edward Lear (1812–88), The Temple of Bassae or Phigaleia, in Acadia from the Oakwoods of Mount Cotylium. The Hills of Sparta, Ithome and Navarino in the Distance. A popular landscape painter as well as a poet, Lear taught painting to Queen Victoria.
Painter R. Redgrave, An Old English Homestead.
Dickens, Hard Times, about the injustices of education, industrialization, and marriage laws. Dickens credited his conversations with activist Angela Burdett-Coutts for the origin of the novel’s attack on useless education.
Maurice, The Doctrine of Sacrifice.
Thackeray, The Rose and the Ring, his greatest Christmas story.
American writer H. D. Thoreau, Walden.
1855–58—Prime Minister: Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), Palmerston
Government.
1855–63—American Thomas Bulfinch (1796–1867), Bulfinch’s Mythology,
which long served as the standard exposition of classical mythology.
1855–81—Alexander II (1818–81) is Tsar of Russia.
1855—Balmoral Castle, Queen’s residence in Scotland, is completed.
Metropolitan Board of Works (London) is established to provide sewers.
Stamp tax is abolished (repeal of duties on newspapers).
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon forms Married Women’s Property Committee. Bodichon’s “Langham Place Circle” would be the most important group of feminists active between 1858 and 1865.
Philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Principles of Psychology, which seeks to illuminate a metaphysical system based on naturalist principles. Australian colonies become self-governing.
Australian colonies become self-governing.
Painter Henry Alexander Bowler (1824–1903), The Doubt: ‘Can These Dry Bones Live?’’
Painter F. M. Brown, The Last of England.
Painter J. Collinson, Childhood.
Painter J. Paton, The Bluidie Tryst.
Arnold, Poems Second Series, which includes “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.”
Robert Browning’s Men and Women, including “Fra Lippo Lippi” and “Andrea del Sarto.” Browning said he believed that the poet was chosen by God to receive His “great commission,” and that a sacred duty was laid upon him to speak the truth as, from his station, he alone could see it.
Dickens, Little Dorrit, on bureaucracy and imprisonment for debt.
Gaskell, North and South, about the conflict between mill owners and laborers, with a female protagonist who struggles to sympathize with both.
Kingsley, Westward Ho!, an historical novel implying that history reveals God’s continuing revelation and presenting England’s 16th-century confrontation with Spain in terms applicable to the Crimean War.
George Meredith (1828–1909), The Shaving of Shag pat, his first novel and a richly imaginative moral and political allegory in imitation of an Arabian Nights tale. Praised warmly by George Eliot.
Tennyson, Maud and Other Poems, which in addition to the masterpiece title poem also includes “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which .. celebrated the tragic Battle of Balaclava.
Thackeray, The Newcomes, narrated by Thackeray’s alter ego, Pendennis. American poet Walt Whitman (1819–92), Leaves of Grass.
1856–60—Anglo-Chinese War.
1856—Henry Bessemer (1813–98) invents blast furnace (the “Bessemer process”),
a steel purification operation that permits mass production of steel.
Rubber teats for nursing bottles become available.
New Zealand achieves self-government.
Anthony Panizzi (1797–1879) becomes principal librarian at the British Museum and transforms it from a hard-to-use miscellany to a carefully catalogued, internationally renowned research center. Requires the purchase of every book printed in the United Kingdom.
Burdett-Coutts, A Summary Account of Prizes for Common Things, which is a practical guide giving poor women information about first aid, budgets, and recipes for cheap meals.
Painter William Shakespeare Burton (1824–1916), The Wounded Cavalier.
Painter Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833–98), Broken Vows.
Painter A. Hughes, April Love.
Painter John Everett Millais, The Blind Girl and Autumn Leaves.
Painter Henry Wallis (1830–1916), Chatterton (a.k.a. Death of Chatterton).
Painter Alfred Joseph Woolmer (1805–92), Lady Godiva.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, a verse novel that gives a scathing critique of bourgeois marriage and heedless wealth, and a celebration of egalitarian marriage.
American writer H. B. Stowe, Dred: a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.
Frenchman Gustave Flaubert (1821–80), Madame Bovary, a searing classic story of failed romanticism. Flaubert is brought to trial in 1857 for producing a morally offensive book, is acquitted.
Russian writer I. Turgenev, Rudin.
1857–59—Thackeray, The Virginians, the sequel to Henry Esmond.
1857—First telegraph cable laid across the Atlantic.
Matrimonial Causes Act introduces civil divorce for adultery (men could petition, but women could not petition for divorce until 1923).
Obscene Publications Act.
Founding of National Portrait Gallery.
British Museum reading room opens, becomes legendary workroom for countless writers through the rest of the century and beyond.
Sentence of transportation is abolished, although some long-term convicts were still “deported” to Australia.
Suppression of Indian mutiny against British rule in India.
Acton, Prostitution: Considered in Its Moral, Social and Sanitary Aspects, a highly influential treatise reflecting Victorian sexual repression.
National Association for the Promotion of Social Science is formed.
Photographer Oscar Gustave Rejlander (?1813–75), The Two Ways of Life.
Painter F. M. Brown, Take Your Son, Sir!
Painter J. Collinson, For Sale.
Painter W. Dyce, Titian’s First Essay in Colouring.
Painter Emily Mary Osborn (1834–after 1913), Nameless and Friendless.
Painter D. G. Rossetti, The Wedding of St. George and Princess Sabra.
Painter Abraham Solomon (1823–62), Waiting for the Verdict.
Kingsley, Two Years Ago, about sanitation reform, the Crimean War, and the abolitionist movement in the United States.
Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, a biography of her friend written at the request of the Reverend Patrick Brontë.
Radical M.P. (Member of Parliament) and reformist Thomas Hughes (1822–96), Tom Brown’s School Days, a powerfully influential and largely laudatory fictional portrait of English public schools.
French writer Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil), after which he and his publishers are swiftly prosecuted and convicted for offending public morals.
1858–59—Prime Minister: Earl of Derby (1799–1869), Conservative Party.
1858— Government of India transferred to the British Crown from East India Company.
Big Ben bell is cast (April 10).
Explorers Richard Burton and John Speke discover Lake Tanganyika.
John Speke discovers Lake Victoria.
Launching of Brunel’s Great Eastern, largest ship yet built.
Fenian Society founded in US by Irish emigrants.
George Eliot’s Scenes from a Clerical Life.
1859—Big Ben enters service (May 31).
First women admitted to Royal Academy schools.
Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.
Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.
George Eliot’s Adam Bede, which deeply impressed Queen Victoria.
Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, a highly influential rendering of the Arthurian legend that linked the fall of Camelot to moral degeneration.
Edward Fitzgerald’s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
William Morris’s The Defence of Guenevere, a volume of lyric and dramatic verse.
1860—Introduction of trams into England (August 30).
Dickens’s Great Expectations.
George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.
Nightingale publishes first definitive textbooks on nursing.
1860–61—Dickens’s Great Expectations.
1861–65—American Civil War.
1861—Death of Prince Albert of typhoid fever at age 42.
Founding of Morris’s design firm, which produced furniture, wallpapers, textiles, glassware, stained glass, tapestries, and carpets that were epitomes of Aestheticism and reflected the Gothic Revival.
Unification of Italy.
George Eliot’s Silas Marner.
Unsure of his own poetic powers, Arthur Hugh Clough will die leaving the bulk of his work unpublished. However, his Poems will be reprinted 16 times within 40 years of his death.
1862—Speke & Grant discover sources of the river Nile.
Otto von Bismarck becomes Prime Minister of Prussia.
Flaubert’s Salammbo.
1863–65—Construction of St. Pancras train station.
1863–72—Construction of Albert Memorial.
1863— Opening of the first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway in London between Paddington and Farringdon Street (January 10).
Marriage of Prince of Wales (Bertie, who later becomes King Edward VII) and Alexandra (March 10).
Broadmoor criminal lunatic asylum opened (May 27).
US President Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery in US.
Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, which created a major scandal for displaying female figures nude in a contemporary rather than a mythical or classical setting.
George Eliot’s Romola.
1864— Cafe Royal, famous landmark restaurant, founded in London (bombed in 1940).
Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. When Dickens first read from his works in New York in 1867, people stood in two lines, almost a mile long, waiting for tickets.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground.
Robert Browning’s Dramatis Personae.
Karl Marx founds First International in London.
1864–69—Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
1865—Founding of Salvation Army by William Booth (July 2).
Completion of the metropolitan drainage system in London (began 1855), carried out by Joseph Bazalgette.
First National Association for Women’s Suffrage formed in Manchester; voting rights not achieved until 1918.
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson).
Tennyson’s Enoch Arden.
Matthew Arnold’s “Function of Criticism at the Present Time.”
Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon.
Manet’s Olympia, which created a scandal for depicting modern sexuality and parodying Titian’s Venus as a contemporary prostitute.
Joseph Lister initiates the practice of antiseptic surgery, applying carbolic acid (phenol) directly to wounds, instruments, and dressings.
1866— First Atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid by the SS Great Eastern (completed 7 September).
Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, which caused a major scandal for its explicit and sometimes perverse sexuality.
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
George Eliot’s Felix Holt, the Radical.
Matthew Arnold’s New Poems, which includes “Dover Beach.”
1867–71—Construction of Royal Albert Hall.
1867— Second Reform Act, extending vote to tax-paying males of the urban working class.
Dominion of Canada established.
Russia sells Alaska to the US.
Matthew Arnold stops writing poetry, concentrating instead on literary and cultural criticism, which makes him a lasting intellectual force worldwide. Promotes humanistic studies in the liberal arts and sciences.
Morris’s The Life and Death of Jason, a long narrative poem.
1867–68—Morris’s The Earthly Paradise.
1868— Disraeli becomes Prime Minister and is defeated within several months in another election.
Last public execution (May 26); public hangings were stopped because they caused so much crime in the crowd that watched.
Last shipment of convicts from England to Australia.
Opening of the Metropolitan District Railway in London between Mansion House and South Kensington.
British expedition to Ethiopia forces release of British diplomats.
American Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (first volume).
1868–69—Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book.
1869— Suez Canal opened, built by Ferdinand de Lesseps, dramatically cutting shipping journey to and from Australia and Far East.
Disestablishment Act passed. Irish Church ceases to exist in 1871.
Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy.
Flaubert’s L’Education sentimentale.
1870— Education Act, compulsory primary education until the age of 11. A 1p ($1) fee per day for the schooling.
Married Women’s Property Act gives women the right to earn and keep money for their own use.
Irish Land Act provides compensation for eviction, but fails to ease Irish problem.
Third French Republic (to 1914).
French novelist Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Matthew Arnold’s St. Paul and Protestantism.
1870–71—Franco-Prussian War.
1871—Darwin’s The Descent of Man.
Swinburne’s Songs Before Sunrise.
Thomas Hardy’s Desperate Remedies, his first novel.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti responds to a famous anonymous attack “The Fleshly School of Poetry” (by critic Robert Buchanan) by publishing a mocking article “The Stealthy School of Criticism.”
Institution of practice of photographing prisoners (November 2).
Publication completed of Encyclopedia Britannica (began 1768).
Opening of Royal Albert Hall (March 29).
Trade unions legalized in Britain.
German Empire formed: Wilhelm I proclaimed Emperor.
Paris Commune set up in opposition to national government and peace terms of Franco-Prussian War.
1871–72—George Eliot’s Middlemarch.
1872—Secret ballot made compulsory.
Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree.
Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.
Henry James’s first novel, Roderick Hudson.
Samuel Butler’s satire Erewhon, which foreshadows the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress.
1873— In an episode that becomes legendary, poet Paul Verlaine wounds lover and fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud with a pistol (July 10). Verlaine spent two years in prison as a result of the incident.
Walter Pater’s classic Studies in the History of the Renaissance, which became a “golden book” for late-Victorian aestheticism.
Matthew Arnold’s Literature and Dogma.
Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes.
Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days.
1873–76—Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
1874—Disraeli becomes Prime Minister for second time, governs until 1880.
First Impressionist Exhibition held in Paris.
Paul Verlaine’s Romances sans paroles, which came to mark a seminal doctrine of Symbolism.
Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd.
1875—First intelligible telephone communication made by Bell (June 5).
Disraeli buys Britain controlling interest in Suez Canal.
Third Anglo-Burmese War.
W. E. Henley’s “Invictus,” which contains the famous lines, “I am the master of my fate;/I am the captain of my soul.”
Matthew Arnold’s God and the Bible.
1876—Victoria named Empress of India.
Battle of Little Bighorn in US: Sioux Indians led by Chief Sitting Bull kill General George Armstrong Custer and his men; last major North American Indian victory.
George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.
Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta.
Morris’s The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, based on the Icelandic Volsunga Saga.
In an article for the Atlanta Constitution, Joel Chandler Harris first uses the pseudonym Uncle Remus.
1877—Founding of Truth magazine.
Telephones, invented by Scottish scientist Alexander Graham Bell, become available.
American Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, recording “Mary had a little lamb.”
Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India.
Coventry Patmore’s The Unknown Eros and Others Odes.
1878—First electric street lighting in London.
Famous trial between James McNeill Whistler and John Ruskin over art criticism.
Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. The pair collaborated on 13 operettas between 1871 and 1896.
Polish ship hand Joseph Conrad moves to England at age 20, without knowing the language in which he will later write (June 18). Becomes a British citizen in 1886.
Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native.
Henry James’s The Europeans. As James leaves after spending an awkward afternoon with George Eliot and George Henry Lewes, Lewes thrusts a pair of bluebound volumes into his hands, saying, “Take them away, please, away!”—not realizing he is talking to the author of the volumes.
1878–80—Second Anglo-Afghan War.
1879–80—Dostoyesvsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
1879—Edison invents the electric light bulb.
1880— Publication began of the St. James’s Gazette (absorbed by the Evening Standard in 1905).
First telephone directory issued in Britain (January 15).
Verlaine’s “Art poetique,” which clarified his poetic theories and became the credo of younger poets following in the Symbolist tradition.
Hardy’s The Trumpet-Major.
Helen Keller born.
1880–81—Boer uprising in South Africa.
1881—Founding of TitBits periodical by George Newnes.
Electric light first used domestically. First electric power station in England opened at Goldalming.
Savoy Theatre opened. Venue for the famous Gilbert & Sullivan operettas.
Peace declared between New Zealand settlers and Maoris.
Tsar Alexander III rules Russia (to 1894).
Hardy’s A Laodicean.
Oscar Wilde’s Poems.
Kate Greenaway’s illustrations for Mother Goose. Her illustrations of various children’s books helped create a revolution in book illustration and was praised by art critics throughout the world.
1882— British troops bombard Alexandria and occupy Cairo to suppress nationalists, leads to French withdrawal from Egypt.
Swinburne’s Tristram of Lyonesse, an erotic and Wagnerian reply to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.
Hardy’s Two on a Tower.
1883—Expansion of Married Women’s Property Act.
Founding of England’s first socialist organization, H. M. Hyndeman’s Democratic Federation (later named the Socialist Democratic Federation).
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
1884—Third Reform Act, extending voting rights to agricultural workers.
Term “Industrial Revolution,” for the period of 1760 to 1840, coined by Arnold Toynbee.
William Morris leads a large faction seceding from the Socialist Democratic Federation to form the Socialist League.
Morris’s Chants for Socialists, a song collection.
Completion of Revised Version of the Bible.
General Gordon sent to Sudan to rescue Egyptian garrisons and put down revolution. Besieged and killed at Khartoum in 1885.
Founding of the Fabian Society.
1885—Karl Benz invents the first automobile.
French chemist Louis Pasteur gives first inoculation against rabies.
Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.
Tennyson’s Tiresias and Other Poems, which includes “Vastness.”
Pater’s novel Marius the Epicurean.
Stevenson’s collection of poems for children, A Child’s Garden of Verses.
Morris’s narrative socialist poem The Pilgrims of Hope.
Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Magistrate.
1885–89—Founding of the Men’s and Women’s Club.
1886— Irish Hone Rule Bill introduced by British Prime Minister William Gladstone, is defeated.
Gold discovered in South Africa.
Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Pinero’s The Schoolmistress.
Stevenson’s Kidnapped.
Tennyson’s Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.
1886–89—Anatole Baju’s journal Le Décadent.
1887—Golden Jubilee, celebration of 50th anniversary of Victoria’s reign.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story.
Robert Browning’s Parleyings.
Hardy’s The Woodlanders.
Pater’s short stories, Imaginary Portraits.
Morris’s historical meditation A Dream of John Bull.
Pinero’s Dandy Dick.
1887–88— Wilde takes over editorship of the journal Ladies World, changing the title to Woman’s World.
1888—Unsolved London murders of East End women by “Jack the Ripper.”
County Councils created in Britain.
Founding of The Star (absorbed by The Evening News in 1960).
Wilhelm II becomes German Emperor (to 1918).
Robert Louis Stevenson makes his first voyage to the South Seas.
Matthew Arnold’s “Study of Poetry.”
Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales.
W. E. Henley’s A Book of Verses. Besides becoming one of the most influential editors and poets of the 1890s, Henley had been the model for Long John Silver in Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
Pinero’s Sweet Lavender.
1889—Founding of Women’s Franchise League by Emmeline Pankhurst.
Arthur Symons’s Days and Nights.
William Butler Yeats publishes first volume of poetry, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. Will publish six more volumes of poetry and prose in the nineties.
Pater’s Appreciations, a volume of criticism.
Wilde’s critical essay “The Decay of Lying.”
Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae.
Pinero’s socially committed play The Profligate is staged (was written in 1887), causing a sensation even though the protagonist’s suicide was replaced by a conventional happy ending.
Conan Doyle’s Micah Clarke, an historical romance.
Cecil Rhodes founds British South Africa Company.
1890—Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough.
Opening of first electric underground public railway line (December 18: City and South London Railway between King William Street and Stockwell).
First comic book, Comic Cuts.
Founding of the Rhymers’ Club, highly influential for nineties poetry.
Wilde’s landmark critical essay “The Critic as Artist.”
Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four, a Sherlock Holmes novel.
Morris’s News from Nowhere, a pastoral utopian-communist vision and probably his most influential work.
1890–91—Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
1891—Completion of New Scotland Yard by Norman Shaw.
Founding of the Romanes Lectures at Oxford University by George Romanes.
Kelmscott Press founded by William Morris. Published books that were fine art masterpieces typifying the spirit of the vibrant Arts and Crafts Movement.
Electrification of trams in England began in Leeds.
Education made free for every child.
Wilde’s critical essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” his play Salome (written in French), and two collections of stories, A House of Pomegranates and Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories.
Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Morris’s Poems by the Way.
Conan Doyle’s The White Company, an historical novel.
1892—Founding of The Westminster Gazette (absorbed by The Daily News in 1928).
Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan.
Symons’s Silhouettes.
Hardy’s The Well-Beloved.
Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Yeats’s play The Countess Cathleen.
1893—Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance.
George Egerton’s Keynotes.
Arthur Wing Pinero’s Second Mrs.Tanqueray, starring Mrs. Patrick (Beatrice Stella) Campbell, who becomes an overnight sensation and major theatrical star.
Wilde’s play Salome is banned in London (staged in Paris in 1896).
Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance.
Pater’s Plato and Platonism.
Yeats’s The Celtic Twilight
New Zealand becomes first country to give women the right to vote.
Gladstone reintroduces Irish Home Rule Bill, defeated by House of Lords.
Independent Labour Party founded in Britain by socialist Kier Hardie.
Stevenson’s Catriona (American title: David Balfour).
1893–94— Aubrey Beardsley’s striking art illustrates D. M. Dent’s edition of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur.
1894–97— The Yellow Book, notorious and classy literary magazine edited by Henry Harland (literature) and Aubrey Beardsley (art), and published by John Lane’s famous publishing house, The Bodley Head. Beardsley’s artwork is a sensation, in every sense of the term.
1894—Egerton’s Discords.
Publication of Wilde’s Salome in English, with Beardsley’s illustrations.
Stevenson’s The Ebb-Tide.
Conan Doyle’s The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
Yeats’s dramatic poem The Land of the Heart’s Desire.
French officer Alfred Dreyfus convicted of treason and deported; treatment of his case becomes a major political affair.
Nicholas II, last tsar of Russia (reigns until 1917, when executed by the Bolshevik revolutionaries).
1895—Founding of the London Promenade Concerts by Sir Henry Wood (October 6).
Wireless telegraphy brought about by Marconi.
Wilde’s plays The Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.
The three Wilde trials. Wilde sentenced to two years hard labor.
Symons’s London Nights.
D’Arcy’s Monochromes.
Pater’s Miscellaneous Studies and Greek Studies.
Yeats’s Poems.
Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.
Pinero’s The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith.
H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine.
Joseph Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly, his first novel.
Cecil Rhodes founds Rhodesia, out of territory of South Africa Company.
1896—Marconi patented wireless telegraphy (June 2).
Speed limit for cars was increased from 4 to 20 mph.
The Savoy (January–September), probably the most elegant and high-quality literary magazine of the Victorian Age. Edited by Arthur Symons (literature) and Aubrey Beardsley (art) and published by the notorious Leonard Smithers.
Beardsley illustrates Smithers’s edition of Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.
Anglo-French agreements in Siam (now Thailand).
Frenchman Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, a grotesque farce about Père Ubu, a gluttonous, greedy, and cruel individual who slaughters the royal family of Poland, opens in Paris. The play’s scatological references, pompous style, and bastardized French cause the audience to riot.
Conrad’s An Outcast of the Islands.
Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull.
American Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.
1896–98—Anglo-Egyptian forces led by General Kitchener reconquer Sudan.
1897—Official opening of the Tate Gallery, founded by Sir Henry Tate (July 21).
Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Symons’s poetry volume Amoris Victima and collection of critical essays Studies in Two Literatures.
Wilde’s meditative apologia letter De Profundis.
Wilde is released from Reading Gaol, his health ruined. When Wilde died three years later in a Paris hotel, he quipped of his room’s wallpaper: “One of us had to go.”
Conrad’s The Nigger of the “Narcissus.” In the preface to the novel, Conrad defines his task as a writer: “To make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything.”
H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man.
Yeats’s The Secret Rose, a collection of Symbolist stories.
Beardsley illustrates Smithers’s edition of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, so scandalously that it must be printed for private distribution only.
1898—Spanish-American War over Cuba.
Emile Zola put on trial for libel for his reactions to the Dreyfus Affair, flees France afterwards, on the advice of his attorneys.
H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
Hardy’s Wessex Poems.
Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Pinero’s Trelawny of the “Wells.”
Pinero collaborates with Arthur Sullivan on The Beauty Stone.
Symons’s landmark critical study Aubrey Beardsley.
1899—Symons’s classic critical study The Symbolist Movement in Literature.
Symons’s volume of poetry Images of Good and Evil.
Yeats’s The Wind Among the Reeds.
1899–1902—Second Boer War in South Africa.
1900—Boxer Rebellion in China.
Orange Free State (South Africa) annexed by Britain.
Henley’s For England’s Sake.
Conrad’s Lord Jim.
American Theodore Dreiser’s first novel, Sister Carrie. Worried about the immorality of the tale and bowing to public pressure, the publisher will recall the book from stores after 456 copies are sold, bringing Dreiser royalties of $68.40.
1901— Death of Queen Victoria at age 82 (January 22, 6:30 am). Prince of Wales becomes Edward VII, reigns until 1910, ushering in a vibrant and popular Edwardian Age.
Population of London reaches 6.6 million.
Commonwealth of Australia established.
Hardy’s Poems of the Past and Present.
Symons’s poems The Loom of Dreams.
1902—Britain forms alliance with Japan.
Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness.
Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
1903— Women’s Social and Political Union formed in Britain by suffragette Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst.
Henley’s A Song of Speed.
Conrad’s Nostromo.
Symons’s critical studies Plays, Acting, and Music and Cities.
Samuel Butler’s autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh, generally considered his masterpiece.
Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
1904—Symons’s volume of criticism Studies in Prose and Verse.
J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan opens at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London.
1904–08—Hardy’s The Dynasts.
1905—Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Conan Doyle’s The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
Symons’s Spiritual Adventures, a collection of short fiction.
1906—French officer Dreyfus declared innocent of treason upon retrial.
HMS Dreadnought, first modern battleship, launched in Britain.
Pinero’s His House in Order.
Symons’s The Fool of the World and Other Poems and his critical study Studies in Seven Arts.
1907—Entente cordiale between Britain and Russia.
Triple Entente among Britain, France, and Russia, in opposition to the Triple Alliance among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.
Rudyard Kipling becomes the first English winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Christopher Morley will say, “He writes a story ostensibly about big howitzers, and it is really a lover’s tribute to Jane Austen.”
Conrad’s The Secret Agent.
Symons’s critical studies William Blake and Cities of Italy.
1908—Austria annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Pinero’s The Thunderbolt.
1909—Old age pensions introduced in Britain.
American Robert Peary finally reaches North Pole, after seven visits to the Arctic.
American manufacturer Henry Ford begins “assembly line” production of cheap motor-cars.
Hardy’s poems Time’s Laughingstocks.
Pinero’s Mid-Channel.
1910—Conrad’s The Secret Sharer.
1911—Parliament Act reduces power of House of Lords in Britain.
British MPs receive salaries for the first time.
Norwegian Roald Amundsen reaches South Pole.
Sun Yat-sen leads revolution in China and overthrows Manchu Dynasty; republic formed in 1912.
1912—British liner Titanic sinks on maiden voyage, with loss of over 1500 lives.
Miners’ strike in Britain.
1912–13— First Balkan War: Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro unite against Turkey. Balkan states victorious, new state of Albania created.
1913— Third Irish Home Rule bill passes House of Commons, rejected by House of Lords. Threat of civil war in Ireland. Ulster Volunteers (private Protestant army) formed in opposition to proposed Home Rule Bill.
Second Balkan War: Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Turkey unite against Bulgaria. War caused by Serbian claims to Macedonia. Bulgaria defeated: Balkan states again partitioned.
Conrad’s Chance.
1914— Irish Home Rule Act provides for separate Parliament in Ireland, with some MPs at Westminster. Position of Ulster left to be decided after the WWI.
Panama Canal opened.
1914–18—World War I.
1915—Britain announces naval blockade of Germany (January 5).
Germany begins submarine blockade of Britain (February 18).
Poison gas used for first time, by Germany against Britain (April–May).
German U-boat sinks British liner Lusitania, drowning many civilians, including Americans (May 7).
Swiss physicist Albert Einstein publishes his General Theory of Relativity.
Conrad’s Victory.
Conan Doyle’s Holmes volume, The Valley of Fear.
At a court in Bow Street, London, D. H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow is judged to be obscene.
Henry James, fervent Anglophile, becomes a British citizen. George Bernard Shaw quipped, “James felt buried in America; but he came here to be embalmed.”
1916— Easter Uprising in Ireland (April 24), suppressed after one week, leaders executed.
James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published in New York. It had earlier been serialized by Ezra Pound in the Egoist during 1914 and 1915.
1917—Russian Revolution.
British soldier T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) takes over command of Arab revolt against Turkey.
Conan Doyle’s His Last Bow, another Sherlock Holmes volume.
Leonard and Virginia Woolf found the Hogarth Press.
1918—Russia adopts Gregorian calendar.
Only a week before the Armistice, poet Wilfred Owen (“Anthem for Doomed Youth”) is killed in France at 25. He has defined his subject as “War, and the Pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”
1919—General Strike in Britain.
Irish Rebellion led by Irish nationalist movement, the Sinn Fein party.
Nationalist movement formed in India. Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi begins campaign of passive resistance to Britain. Amritsar massacre: British troops fire on nationalist rioters.
Treaty of Versailles ending WWI creates independent states of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, and Yugosloavia.
Founding of the League of Nations.
Fascist movement founded in Italy by Benito Mussolini.
Sylvia Beach opens the doors of Shakespeare and Company, the first combination English-language bookshop and lending library in Paris.
1920— Civil war in Ireland; situation aggravated by British auxiliaries, the “Black and Tans.”
Jewish state of Palestine established.
Prohibition enacted in US.
1921— Irish Free State established; Irish Republican Army (IRA) continues opposition to British Rule in a divided Ireland.
PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Editors and Novelists), the international writers’ club, founded in London.
1922—Egypt becomes independent from Britain and France.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) established.
1923—Mussolini creates Fascist state in Italy.
Adolf Hitler, founder of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, attempts to overthrow Bavarian government but is imprisoned.
1924—First Labour Party government in Britain.
Death of Lenin. Stalin succeeds him.
1926—American Charles Lindbergh makes first solo transatlantic flight.
General Strike in Britain.
Frenchman Paul Eluard’s first work Capitale de la douleur, which experiments with new verbal techniques, theories on the relation between dream and reality, and the free expression of thought processes, leading to the beginning of the Surrealist movement.
1928—Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.
1929—US Wall Street Crash.
American explorer Richard Byrd flies over South Pole.
Richard Byrd flies over South Pole.
1935—India Act.