{"id":196,"date":"2021-10-26T11:57:40","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T15:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/?page_id=196"},"modified":"2026-03-19T09:03:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:03:05","slug":"snodgrasss-victorian-age-timeline","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/snodgrasss-victorian-age-timeline\/","title":{"rendered":"Snodgrass’s Victorian Age Timeline"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Snodgrass’s Victorian Age Timeline<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Chronicle of Some Important Events Bearing on Victorian Age & Aftermath<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

(with help from Sally Mitchell\u2019s Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia<\/em>, and others)
\nChris Snodgrass \u00a9 2004<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

1780<\/strong>\u2014Rebellious hordes storm and set fire to Newgate Prison in London; poet William Blake (1757\u20131827) watches in support, inspired by the \u201cDeclaration of Independence.\u201d
\n1787<\/strong>\u2014Edward Gibbon (1737\u201394), History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em>, a monumental work that was almost 25 years in the making.
\n1789<\/strong>\u2014French Revolution begins.
\nJeremy Bentham (1748\u20131832), Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation<\/em>, which presents the landmark theory of self-interested utilitarianism, ostensibly leading to \u201cthe greatest good for the greatest number.\u201d Bentham\u2019s theories will profoundly influence English thought for much of the nineteenth century.
\nGeorge Washington (1732\u201399) becomes first US President.
\n1791<\/strong>\u201392\u2014Englishman Thomas Paine (1737\u20131809) publishes Rights of Man<\/em> (in Britain, supporting republicanism & the ideals of the growing revolution in France.
\n1792<\/strong>\u2014France is declared a republic.
\nMary Wollstonecraft (1759\u201397), \u201cVindication of the Rights of Women.\u201d In 1797, a pregnant Wollstonecraft will marry novelist and political theorist William Godwin (1756\u20131836). 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<\/em> (1816).
\n1793<\/strong>\u2014Revolutionary France declares war on Britain and allies.
\n1793\u201394<\/strong>\u2014Reign of Terror under Robespierre (1758\u201394), who was himself guillotined on order from the Revolutionary Tribunal he had originally established.
\n1798<\/strong>\u2014William Wordsworth (1770\u20131850) & Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772\u20131834), Lyrical Ballads<\/em>, which heralded the English Romantic Movement in poetry.
\n1802<\/strong>\u2014Treaty of Amiens between Britain and France. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769\u20131821) is created First Consul.
\n1803<\/strong>\u2014War breaks out again between Britain and France.
\nUS President Thomas Jefferson (1743\u20131826) makes the \u201cLouisiana Purchase\u201d from France.
\n1804\u201315<\/strong>\u2014Napoleon Bonaparte reigns as Emperor of France.
\n1805<\/strong>\u2014Battle of Trafalgar. British navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758\u20131805) defeats Franco-Spanish fleet.
\n1807<\/strong>\u2014Slave trade abolished in British Empire.
\n1809<\/strong>\u2014As his new Drury Lane Theatre burns to the ground, playwright and owner Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751\u20131816), author of The School for Scandal<\/em> (1777), has a drink at a neighboring coffeehouse, saying, \u201cA man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.\u201d
\n1811<\/strong>\u2014Jane Austen (1775\u20131817), Sense and Sensibility<\/em>, her first novel.
\n1811\u201312<\/strong>\u2014Luddite Riots, protesting industrial exploitation.
\n1812\u201314<\/strong>\u2014Britain and US at war over shipping and territorial disputes.
\n1812\u201322<\/strong>\u2014Germans Jakob (1785\u20131863) and Wilhelm (1786\u20131859) Grimm produce their Fairy Tales<\/em>. [Although Germany was not created (unified) until 1871, the term \u201cGerman\u201d will be used throughout to designate figures from any of the German states.]
\n1812<\/strong>\u2014The first two cantos of Childe Harold\u2019s Pilgrimage<\/em> by Lord Byron (1788\u20131824) are published, causing a national sensation.
\n1814<\/strong>\u2014Treaty of Paris ends Napoleonic Wars.
\nLord Byron, The Corsair<\/em>. Sells 10,000 copies the first day.
\nAmerican Francis Scott Key (1779\u20131843) composes lyrics for \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d on board the ship Minden in Chesapeake Bay (September 13).
\n1815<\/strong>\u2014Napoleon escapes exile from Elba and marches on Paris.
\nBattle of Waterloo, Duke of Wellington (1769\u20131852) defeats Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon exiled permanently to St. Helena.
\nEnglish Corn laws restrict grain imports.
\nAusten, Emma<\/em>.
\nBattle of New Orleans, ending hostilities between England and USA.
\n1816<\/strong>\u2014Mary Shelley (1797\u20131851), Frankenstein<\/em>.
\n1817<\/strong>\u2014David Ricardo\u2019s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation<\/em>.
\n1819<\/strong>\u2014Victoria is born.
\nPeterloo Massacre: soldiers fire on political meeting of workers in Manchester, England, killing many.
\nJohn Polidori (1795\u20131821), The Vampyre<\/em>, with his infamous Lord Ruthven.
\n1820<\/strong>\u2014Painter John Martin (1789\u20131854), Belshazzar\u2019s Feast<\/em>.
\n1822<\/strong>\u2014Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792\u20131821), 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 \u201cDemocrat, Philanthropi, Atheist\u201d and his destination as \u201cL\u2019Enfer\u201d (Hell).
\n1824<\/strong>\u2014Lord 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.
\n1826\u201327<\/strong>\u2014Benjamin Disraeli (1804\u201381), Vivian Grey<\/em>, a 5-volume anonymous novel in which he takes stylish revenge on some social and political adversaries from publisher John Murray\u2019s circle.
\n1826<\/strong>\u2014First photograph is taken by Frenchman Joseph-Nic\u00e9phore Niepce (1765\u20131833), who succeeds in fixing an image of the camera obscura by chemical means.
\nPainter Edwin Landseer (1802\u201373), The Hunting of Chevy Chase.
\n1827<\/strong>\u2014German poet Heinrich Heine (1797\u20131856), Buch der Lieder<\/em> (Book of Songs), which was his first collection of poetry and will build his international reputation.
\n1828\u201330<\/strong>\u2014Prime Minister: Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington (1769\u20131852), Conservative Party.
\n1828<\/strong>\u2014Noah Webster (1758-1843), American Dictionary of the English Language<\/em>, which was 22 years in preparation and introduces many \u201cAmericanisms\u201d (12,000 new words never before included in any dictionary).
\n1829<\/strong>\u2014Catholic Emancipation Act, ending most restrictions of Catholic civil rights, ownership of property, and the holding of public office.
\nMetropolitan Police Act, which set up the first discipline police force for the London area, known as \u201cBobbies\u201d after the author of this and other wide-ranging reforms, Robert Peel (1788\u20131850).
\nPainter John Constable (1777\u20131837), Salisbury Cathedral<\/em>.
\n1830\u201334<\/strong>\u2014Prime Minister: William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779\u20131848), Whig Party.
\n1830\u201333<\/strong>\u2014Charles Lyell (1797\u20131875), Principles of Geology<\/em>, a landmark book that argued for the uniformitarian theory that geological changes occurred gradually over a vast time, fueling in turn evolutionary theory.
\n1830\u201348<\/strong>\u2014\u201cCitizen King\u201d Louis Philippe (1773\u20131850), descendent of Louis XIII, becomes King of France, rules until 1848 Revolution.
\n1830<\/strong>\u2014Passenger steam railways open.
\nAlfred Tennyson (1809\u201392), Poems, Chiefly Lyrical<\/em>, his first volume of poetry.
\nFrench novelist Stendhal [Marie-Henri Beyle] (1783\u20131842), Red and Black<\/em>.
\n1831<\/strong>\u2014Chemist and physicist Michael Faraday (1791\u20131867) begins developing his theories on electromagnetic induction, which made possible the electric motor and dynamo, the telephone, and the transformer.
\n1832<\/strong>\u2014Great Reform Act, which extends the vote to the wealthy middle class.
\nTennyson, Poems<\/em>, which included \u201cThe Lady of Shalott,\u201d \u201cThe Palace of Art,\u201d and \u201cThe Lotos-Eaters.\u201d
\n1833\u201334<\/strong>\u2014 Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795\u20131881), Sartor Resartus. When Carlyle wed Jane Welsh in 1827, beginning a tempestuous marriage, Samuel Butler (1835\u20131902) summed up the event, as follows: \u201cIt was good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.\u201d
\n1833<\/strong>\u2014 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\u201318. Children 10\u201312 were prohibited from working more than 48 hours per week.
\nSlavery banned in British colonies.
\nBeginning of the Oxford Movement (or Tractarian Movement), which opposed religious liberalism in favor of conservative High Church positions.
\nPainter W. Etty, Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret.
\nJohn Henry Newman (1801\u201390) originates Tracts of the Times.
\n1834\u201335<\/strong>\u2014Prime Minister: Robert Peel (1788\u20131850), Conservative Party.
\n1834<\/strong>\u2014 \u201cTolpuddle Martyrs\u201d: six Dorset laborers are transported for attempting to form a trade union.
\n\u201cTen Hours\u201d Factory Act.
\n1835\u201340<\/strong>\u2014Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (1805\u201359), Democracy in America.
\n1836<\/strong>\u2014 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.
\nPainter J. Constable, The Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
\nPainter Thomas Cole (1801\u201348), The Oxbow.
\nCharles Dickens (1812\u201370), 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.
\n1837<\/strong>\u2014 Victoria succeeds uncle, William IV, at age 18 (June 20). Reigns until 1901.
\nRegistry of births becomes mandatory (Registrar General\u2019s Office established).
\nFirst telegraph equipment is patented.
\nPainter E. Landseer, The Old Shepherd\u2019s Chief Mourner.
\nDickens, Oliver Twist, a classic that pits a pure orphaned child against urban criminality.
\nDisraeli, Henrietta Temple, a semi-autobiographical psychological romance.
\nScottish 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\u2019s servant, who mistakes it for kindling.
\n1837\u201367<\/strong>\u2014Construction of neo-Gothic Houses of Parliament, designed by the
\nrenowned English architect A. W. N. Pugin (1812\u201352).
\n1838\u201342<\/strong>\u2014War with Afghanistan.
\n1838<\/strong>\u2014 Great Western Railway opens between London and Bristol, built beginning in 1837 by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806\u201359).
\nGreat Western paddle steamer crosses the Atlantic Ocean in under 20 days.
\nPublic Records Office is established.
\nRegulation of licensing hours begins: pubs must close between midnight Saturday and noon Sunday.
\nEuston Station built.
\nAnti-Corn League is organized.
\nPainter Thomas Sully (1783\u20131872), Queen Victoria.
\nPainter Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775\u20131851), The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up.
\nElizabeth Barrett Browning (1806\u201361), The Seraphim and Other Poems, with exotic setting and high valuations of a poet\u2019s social role. This was the volume that first established her popular success.
\nDickens, Nicholas Nickleby, which satirically pillories a brutal boarding school.
\nSarah Stickney Ellis (1799\u20131882), The Women of England, Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits, a conservative manual on women\u2019s proper roles.
\nLyell, 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.
\nF[rederick]. D[enison]. Maurice (1805\u201372), The Kingdom of Christ, which establishes his reputation as a theologian.
\nAmerican writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804\u201364), Twice-Told Tales.
\nFrench writer Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma.
\n1839\u201342<\/strong>\u2014\u201cOpium War\u201d between Britain and China.
\nBritain and Afghanistan at war.
\n1839<\/strong>\u2014 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).
\nPhotographic experiments of Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800\u201377) become generally known.
\nCustody 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.
\nFirst government agency is established for supervision education and distributing grants to schools.
\nFirst Chartist petition is presented to Parliament.
\nAmerican writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809\u201349), \u201cThe Fall of the House of Usher.\u201d
\n1840<\/strong>\u2014 Victoria marries first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha [Prussia] (1819\u201361), will have 9 children.
\nPenny postage is instituted in Britain (January 10).
\nPhysicist James Prescott Joule (1818\u201389) formulates Joule\u2019s 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.
\nNottingham lace workers strike.
\nNew Zealand becomes a British Crown Colony (Treaty of Waitangi).
\nBritain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria agree to limit Egyptian expansion (Treaty of London).
\nBritish navy bombards Beirut.
\nPainter Francis Danby (1793\u20131861), The Deluge.
\nDickens, Old Curiosity Shop.
\n1841\u201346<\/strong>\u2014Prime Minister: Robert Peel (1788\u20131850), Conservative Party.
\n1841<\/strong>\u2014Founding of Punch, popular illustrated satirical periodical.
\nBeginning of economic depression of the \u201cHungry Forties.\u201d
\nTreaty with Austria, France, Russia, and Prussia for suppression of African slave trade.
\nLondon Library is established.
\nPainter William Mulready (1786\u20131863), Train up the Child.
\nSurgeon William Acton (1813\u201375), A Complete Treatise on Venereal Diseases, which went through numerous editions.
\nRobert Browning (1812\u201389), Pippa Passes.
\nScottish 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 \u201cpoor life.\u201d He also later refused the coveted honor of being buried in Westminster Abbey.
\nDickens, Barnaby Rudge.
\nAmerican E. A. Poe, The Murders of the Rue Morgue.
\nFrench writer Eug\u00e8ne Sue (1804\u201375), Mathilde, a popular and sensationalist novel of Parisian low life.
\n1842<\/strong>\u2014 Founding of Mudie\u2019s Library, Victorian Britain\u2019s largest circulating library, by Charles Mudie (1818\u201390).
\nIllustrated London News begins publication.
\nMost major thoroughfares in London are lit by gas.
\nRailway links London and Manchester.
\nMines and Collieries Act forbids underground employment in mines for women, girls, and boys under 10 years old.
\nMiners Association of Great Britain is formed (miners union).
\nSecond peak of Chartist agitation.
\nPentonville \u201cmodel\u201d prison opens.
\nWill be the year of the highest British crime rate in the nineteenth century.
\nLondon Police establish a detective department.
\nBoers and British at war, British victorious.
\nChina cedes Hong Kong to Britain (Treaty of Nanking).
\nWebster-Ashburton Treaty settles boundary dispute between Canada and US.
\nPainter Daniel Maclise (1806\u201370), The Origin of the Harp.
\nPainter J. M. W. Turner, Snowstorm\u2014Steamboat off a Harbour\u2019s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and Going by the Lead.
\nRobert Browning, Dramatic Lyrics, including \u201cMy Last Duchess.\u201d
\nSarah Stickney Ellis, The Daughters of England, Their Position in Society, Character and Social Responsibilities, another of Ellis\u2019s proscriptive treatises on proper behavior for women.
\nTennyson, Poems, which includes \u201cUlysses\u201d and \u201cLocksley Hall.\u201d
\nFrench writer E. Sue, The Mysteries of Paris, another sensationalist representation of Paris.
\n1843\u201360<\/strong>\u2014John Ruskin (1819\u20131900), Modern Painters, a landmark 5-volume
\nwork of art criticism that will establish Ruskin as perhaps the leading art critic of the century and one of its most powerful thinkers.
\n1843<\/strong>\u2014 Theatre Regulation Act allows spoken drama at theaters other than Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
\nCustom of sending Christmas cards begins.
\nNational Temperance Society is founded.
\nFree Church of Scotland secedes from the established Church of Scotland.
\nScottish writer T. Carlyle, Past and Present, which contrasts the coherent faith and ordered society of the medieval past with modern skepticism and alienation.
\nDickens, A Christmas Carol, with Scrooge and \u201cTiny Tim,\u201d and Martin Chuzzlewit, which satirically savages American boorishness.
\nJohn Stuart Mill (1806\u201373), A System of Logic, which set forth rules for the scientific process of induction and emphasized empiricism as the ultimate source of knowledge.
\n1844\u201345<\/strong>\u2014The Count of Monte Cristo by French writer Alexandre Dumas p\u00e8re
\n(1802\u201370).
\n1844\u201351<\/strong>\u2014Irish potato famine. Over one million die. Two million emigrate.
\n1844<\/strong>\u2014 Factory Act limited women to 12 hours of work each day and imposed a limit on children of 6.5 hours per day.
\nImprisonment for debt is prohibited if the amount owed is under \u00a320 (approximately $3000\u2013$4000 spending power in today\u2019s money).
\nLunacy Act requires British counties to provide asylums.
\nBank Charter Act controls the issue of paper money and introduces stability in banking and currency.
\nGreat Western Railway reaches Paddington district of London.
\nMathematician Charles Babbage (1792\u20131871) 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.
\nRobert Chambers (1802\u201371), 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\u2019s landmark full theory.
\nAmerican P[hineas]. T[aylor]. Barnum (1810\u201391) exhibits Tom Thumb in London.
\nPainter Richard Redgrave (1804\u201388), The Seamstress.
\nPainter J. M. W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed\u2014The Great Western Railway.
\nElizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems, which established her as among the foremost poets of her generation.
\nWilliam Makepeace Thackeray (1811\u201363), Barry Lyndon, his first full-length novel, satirizing then-popular sentimental Irish novels.
\nFrench writer A. Dumas p\u00e8re, The Three Musketeers.
\n1845<\/strong>\u2014 Brunel builds the S. S. Great Britain, the first propeller-driven steamship.
\nAnglo-Sikh Wars in India, Britain annexes the Punjab, NW India.
\nFamed churchman John Henry Newman causes a sensation by converting to Roman Catholicism, later becoming a Cardinal.
\nPainter R. Redgrave, The Governess.
\nDisraeli, Sibyl; or the Two Nations, an allegory wedding the unifying power of religious poetry to secular political leadership.
\nAmerican writer E. A. Poe, \u201cThe Raven,\u201d published for the first time in the New York Mirror.
\nAmerican writer Henry David Thoreau (1817\u201362) begins his 26-month stay at Walden Pond.
\nGerman writer Friedrich Engels (1820\u201395), The Condition of the Working Class in England.
\n1846\u201352<\/strong>\u2014Prime Minister: Lord John Russell (1792\u20131878), Whig Party.
\n1846\u201347<\/strong>\u2014Thackeray, The Book of Snobs, a brutal fictional critique of Victorian
\nclass consciousness, serialized in Punch.
\n1846<\/strong>\u2014 Corn Laws are suspended, beginning the era of free trade. The Corn Laws regulated the importation of all cereal grains into Britain.
\n\u201cRailway Mania\u201d transforms transportation.
\nPupil-teacher education system is established.
\nUnited States and Mexico at war.
\nBritain at war in South Africa.
\nGerman scholar David Friedrich Strauss (1808\u201374), Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, which largely rejected the divinity of Jesus, proposing instead a \u201creligion of humanity.\u201d Translated into English by George Eliot.
\nPainter William Edward Frost (1810\u201377), Diana and her Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon.
\nPainter Clarkson Stanfield (1793\u20131867), On the Dogger Bankk.
\nRobert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning elope and move to Italy. Wordsworth comments upon the Brownings\u2019 marriage: \u201cWell, I hope they understand one another\u2014no one else would.\u201d Robert once wrote to Elizabeth, \u201cI desire to write out certain things which are in me, and so save my soul.\u201d
\nDickens, Dombey & Son, about a father\u2019s inability to appreciate his daughter, with a plausible psychological portrayal of a \u201cpoor little rich girl.\u201d
\nEdward Lear (1812\u201388), A Book of Nonsense, first book of limericks and other comical poems, originally written for Lord Stanley\u2019s grandchildren.
\nAmerican writer H. D. Thoreau writes \u201cCivil Disobedience,\u201d having been jailed for protesting slavery and the U.S. involvement in the Mexican War. When asked by Emerson, \u201cHenry, what are you doing in there?\u201d he responded, \u201cWaldo, what are you doing out there?\u201d
\nThe tales of Danish writer Hans Christian Anderson (1805\u201375) are translated into English. At 17, Anderson belatedly enrolled in grammar school, towering over his 11-year-old classmates.
\n1847\u201348<\/strong>\u2014Thackeray, Vanity Fair, a devastating satirical masterpiece with
\nclassic scheming villain Becky Sharp.
\n1847<\/strong>\u2014 \u201cTen Hours\u201d Factory Act restricted working hours to 10 hours per day for women and for children 13\u201318. Working hours for men remained unrestricted. Acts in 1867 and 1878 improved working and sanitary conditions.
\nRoyal Opera House, Covent Garden, opens.
\nJuvenile Offenders Act makes it possible to dismiss minor charges.
\nBand of Hope (juvenile temperance organization) is founded.
\nAngela Burdett-Coutts (1814\u20131906) 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.
\nUnited Presbyterian Church of Scotland is formed.
\nGeorge Boole (1815\u201364), The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, which establishes algebraic methods for logical analysis.
\nGerman physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821\u201394) discovers the law of the conservation of energy: that the total amount of energy in an isolated system cannot change.
\nPainter William Dyce (1806\u201364), Neptune Resigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea.
\nAnne Bront\u00eb (1820\u201349), Agnes Grey, an autobiographical novel about her lonely, melancholy experience as a governess.
\nCharlotte Bront\u00eb (1816\u201355), Jane Eyre, a semi-autobiographical classic gothic love story. Though a masterpiece, George Eliot wrote of it, \u201cthe book is interesting\u2014only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.\u201d
\nEmily Bront\u00eb (1818\u201349), Wuthering Heights. She comments: \u201cIf I could I would work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.\u201d She dies of consumption the following year at age 30, three months after having taken cold at her brother Branwell\u2019s funeral.
\nDisraeli, Tancred, about religious piety and noble political leadership.
\nThomas Preskett Prest (1810\u201379) or James Malcolm Rymer (1814\u201384).
\nTennyson, The Princess: A Medley, dealing with scientific and social issues.
\nRussian satirical poet Taras Shevchenko (1814\u201361) is exiled and forbidden to write or paint.
\n1848<\/strong>\u2014Widespread revolutions in Europe.
\n1848\u201349<\/strong>\u2014Cholera epidemic.
\n1848\u201350<\/strong>\u2014Thackeray, History of Pendennis, a semi-autobiographical novel.
\n1848\u201370<\/strong>\u2014Second Republic in France under Louis Napoleon, nephew of
\nBonaparte. Poet-diplomat Alphonse de Lamartine (1790\u20131869) was acting head of state.
\n1848<\/strong>\u2014Public Health Act. First General Board of Health is established.
\nSt. John\u2019s House (Anglican order) is founded to train nurses.
\nQueen\u2019s College opens higher education to women. Established with the help of F. D. Maurice.
\nFinal Chartist petition is presented to Parliament.
\nInsurrection in Ireland is put down.
\nFounding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
\nFirst Convention of Women\u2019s Rights takes place in New York.
\nMarx and Engels, Communist Manifesto.
\nCalifornia gold rush begins.
\nF. D. Maurice (1805\u201372), Charles Kingsley (1819\u201375), and J. M. Ludlow (1821\u20131911) 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.
\nMathematician and natural scientist William Thomson [later, Lord Kelvin] (1824\u20131907) established the principle of \u201cabsolute zero,\u201d which led to the development of the Kelvin scale, essential to the study of thermodynamics.
\nGerman expatriate Karl Marx (1818\u201383), Communist Manifesto, with Engels. Marx lived in London from 1849 on, is buried in Highgate Cemetery.
\nPainter George Frederic Watts (1817\u20131904), Orlando Pursuing the Fata Morgana.
\nAnne Bront\u00eb, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, portraying a woman married to an alcoholic and drawing on her experience caring for brother Branwell.
\nElizabeth Gaskell (1810\u201365), Mary Barton, her first novel, focusing on social unrest among the working poor in Manchester.
\nMill, 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.
\nLa Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils (1824\u201395), the illegitimate son of Dumas p\u00e8re and Catherine Labay, a seamstress.
\nFrench writer George Sand [Aurore Dudevant] (1804\u201376) and the Polish composer Frederic Chopin (1810\u201349) meet for the last time. Their romantic relationship dated from 1837.
\n1849\u201350<\/strong>\u2014Journalist and social historian Henry Mayhew (1812\u201387) does
\nhundreds of interviews with London workers about their working and living conditions for the \u201cLabor and the Poor\u201d series that ran in the Morning Chronicle.
\n1849\u201353<\/strong>\u2014Agricultural crisis.
\n1849<\/strong>\u2014Corn Laws are abolished.
\nBedford College for Women is established.
\nPhysician John Snow (1813\u201353), \u201cOn the Mode of Communication of Cholera,\u201d 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.
\nPainter John Everett Millais (1829\u201396), Isabella.
\nPainter Joseph Noel Paton (1821\u20131901), Oberon and Titania\u2014The Quarrel.
\nPainter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828\u201382), The Girlhood of the Virgin Mary.
\nMatthew Arnold (1822\u201388), Strayed Reveller and Other Poems, his first volume of poetry.
\nCharlotte Bront\u00eb, Shirley, set in the time of the Luddite Riots.
\nDickens, David Copperfield, a closely autobiographical novel.
\nRuskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, which continues Ruskin\u2019s view, applied here specifically to architecture, that art is based on national and individual morality.
\nFor engaging in socialist activities Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821\u201381) receives the death sentence, later commuted to four years\u2019 hard labor in Siberia.
\n1850<\/strong>\u2014 First British Public Library Act, permitting the establishment of public libraries.
\nRestoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy; Cardinal Wiseman becomes first Archbishop of Westminster.
\nChristian socialists begin tailors\u2019 cooperative.
\nOxford University establishes its law school.
\nFrances Buss (1827\u201394) founds North London Collegiate School for Girls, a secondary day school that transformed education by serving as a model for subsequent widespread reform.
\nPainter J. E. Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents.
\nPainter D. G. Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini (a.k.a. The Annunciation).
\nPainter J. M. W. Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise.
\nFrench painter Constantin Guys (1802\u201392), Study of Prostitutes in the Haymarket.
\nElizabeth Barrett Browning, Songs from the Portuguese, which includes a chronicle about the healing effects of growing love.
\nDickens, Household Words is started. Ends publication in 1859.
\nCharles Kingsley (1819\u201375), Alton Locke, exploring the hardships of workers in the London tailor trade and the need for labor reform.
\nAlfred 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.
\nTennyson is named Poet Laureate, succeeding Wordsworth.
\nScottish writer T. Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, a reform-advocating rail against the inadequacies of democracy, bureaucracy, and philanthropy.
\nAmerican writer N. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
\nRussian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818\u201383), A Month in the Country (original title: The Student), a play that is considered the first Russian psychological drama.
\n1851\u201353<\/strong>\u2014Gaskell, Cranford, a light comedy depicting the domestic lives and
\npsychology of women in a society without men.
\nRuskin, The Stones of Venice, coming \u201cmoral\u201d Gothic architecture with \u201ccorrupt\u201d Venetian Renaissance architecture.
\n1851<\/strong>\u2014First telegraph cable laid across the English Channel.
\nFirst cigarettes sold in Britain.
\nGreat Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London.
\nHalf of population of Great Britain lives in cities.
\nLondon population grows from 1.1 million in 1801 to 2.7 million, will reach 6.6 million in 1901.
\nCambridge University adds degree examination in natural sciences.
\nLiverpool Children\u2019s Hospital is established.
\nAmalgamated Society of Engineers (union) is founded.
\nFirst formal chess competition in London.
\nWilliam Fox Talbot invents instantaneous photography.
\nMichael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
\nLord Kelvin publishes first and second laws of thermodynamics.
\nGold is discovered in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia.
\nPainter J. E. Millais, The Woodman\u2019s Daughter and Mariana.
\nPainter D. G. Rossetti, How They Met Themselves (revised 1860).
\nGerman painter Emanuel Leutze (1816\u201368), Washington Crossing the Delaware.
\nE. B. Browning, Casa Guidi Windows, mourning the repression of Italian nationalism.
\nKingsley, Yeast, about rural workers.
\nHarriet Taylor Mill (1807\u201358), \u201cThe Enfranchisement of Women,\u201d published in the Westminster Review.
\nIrish writer (Joseph) Sheridan Le Fanu (1814\u201373), Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery, his first collection of stories.
\nAmerican novelist Herman Melville (1819\u201391), Moby Dick.
\nGerman 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: \u201cWherever they burn books, they will also, in the end burn human beings.\u201d
\n1852\u201353<\/strong>\u2014Second Burmese War, British victory.
\n1852\u201355<\/strong>\u2014Prime Minister: Earl of Derby (Conservative Party), 2\/23\u201312\/17,
\n1852
\nEarl of Aberdeen (Aberdeen Coalition), 12\/19, 1852\u20131\/30, 1855
\n1852\u201370<\/strong>\u2014Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon (1808\u201373), Emperor of France.
\n1852<\/strong>\u2014Silver Jubilee, celebration of 25th anniversary of Victoria\u2019s reign.
\nRegister of Pharmacists is established.
\nSpiritualism is introduced to England.
\nOpening of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
\nOpening of the new Houses of Parliament.
\nLast duel fought in England at Priest Hill, Surrey (duels had been outlawed in 1840s).
\nPainter Ford Madox Brown (1821\u201393), Jesus Washing Peter\u2019s Feet.
\nPainter James Collinson (1825\u201361), The Emigration Scheme.
\nPainter Arthur Hughes (1832\u20131915), Ophelia.
\nPainter William Holman Hunt (1827\u20131910), The Hireling Shepherd.
\nPainter J. E. Millais, Ophelia.
\nPainter J. Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath.
\nPainter Franz Xavier Winterhalter (1805\u201373), Florinda.
\nArnold, Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems, in which the protagonists express irresolvable anxiety in the face of an amabiguous universe.
\nDickens, Bleak House, about the stultifying legal system. Poet and essayist Leigh Hunt was the model for the parasitic Skimpole.
\nNewman, The Idea of a University, which argues that moral instruction should be incorporated into a university education.
\nThackeray, The History of Henry Esmond, a semi-autobiographical historical novel set in the eighteenth century.
\nAmerican writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811\u201396), Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin.
\n1853\u201354<\/strong>\u2014Second cholera epidemic.
\n1853<\/strong>\u2014Smallpox vaccination becomes compulsory.
\nTax duty on advertisements is abolished.
\nTicket-of-leave (parole) system is established.
\nAmalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners (union) is founded.
\nCheltenham Ladies\u2019 College is established.
\nNoted physician John Snow administers chloroform to Queen Victoria for Prince Leopold\u2019s birth.
\nScottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone (1813\u201373) discovers Victoria Falls.
\nPainter Holman Hunt, The Light of the World (other versions in 1854, 1858, 1886).
\nPainter J. E. Millais, The Order of Release.
\nPainter W. Mulready, Bathers Surprised.
\nArnold, Poems, containing his famous preface on the nature of great poetry, the \u201cMarguerite\u201d poems, and \u201cThe Scholar-Gipsy.\u201d
\nCharlotte Bront\u00eb, Villette, drawing on her own experiences of unfulfilled passion for an employer.
\nGaskell, Ruth, attacking the hypocrisy of social attitudes toward sexual mores.
\nKingsley, Hypathia, which presents a spiritual battle in 5th-century Alexandria between Neoplatonism and the emerging medieval church.
\nMaurice, Theological Essays.
\nAmerican writer H. Melville, \u201cBartleby the Schrivener.\u201d
\nAmerican writer H. B. Stowe, The Key to Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin.
\n1854\u201356<\/strong>\u2014Crimean War.
\nBurdett-Coutts designs a machine fro drying hospital linen and sends it to Florence Nightingale.
\n1854\u201363<\/strong>\u2014Coventry Patmore (1823\u201396), The Angel in the House, a popular
\nfour-part sequence of poems celebrating married love and defining the traditional wife\u2019s role within it.
\n1854<\/strong>\u2014 Construction of London Underground begins.
\nReformatories are established for offenders under 16 years old.
\nChristian socialists, including F. D. Maurice, establish Working Men\u2019s College, London.
\nBarbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827\u201391), A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women, which serves to activate feminism.
\nCaroline Norton (1808\u201377), 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).
\nFlorence Nightingale (1820\u20131910) goes to Crimea and organizes nursing during the war.
\nEarl of Cardigan (1797\u20131868) 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.
\nUS Admiral Matthew Perry (1794\u20131858) forces Japan to make commercial treaty with US.
\nOrange Free State is set up in South Africa.
\nLudwig Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, which largely rejected the divinity of Jesus, proposing instead a \u201creligion of humanity.\u201d
\nPainter Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience (revised 1856).
\nPainter Edward Lear (1812\u201388), 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.
\nPainter R. Redgrave, An Old English Homestead.
\nDickens, 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\u2019s attack on useless education.
\nMaurice, The Doctrine of Sacrifice.
\nThackeray, The Rose and the Ring, his greatest Christmas story.
\nAmerican writer H. D. Thoreau, Walden.
\n1855\u201358<\/strong>\u2014Prime Minister: Viscount Palmerston (1784\u20131865), Palmerston
\nGovernment.
\n1855\u201363<\/strong>\u2014American Thomas Bulfinch (1796\u20131867), Bulfinch\u2019s Mythology,
\nwhich long served as the standard exposition of classical mythology.
\n1855\u201381<\/strong>\u2014Alexander II (1818\u201381) is Tsar of Russia.
\n1855<\/strong>\u2014Balmoral Castle, Queen\u2019s residence in Scotland, is completed.
\nMetropolitan Board of Works (London) is established to provide sewers.
\nStamp tax is abolished (repeal of duties on newspapers).
\nBarbara Leigh Smith Bodichon forms Married Women\u2019s Property Committee. Bodichon\u2019s \u201cLangham Place Circle\u201d would be the most important group of feminists active between 1858 and 1865.
\nPhilosopher Herbert Spencer (1820\u20131903), Principles of Psychology, which seeks to illuminate a metaphysical system based on naturalist principles. Australian colonies become self-governing.
\nAustralian colonies become self-governing.
\nPainter Henry Alexander Bowler (1824\u20131903), The Doubt: \u2018Can These Dry Bones Live?\u2019’
\nPainter F. M. Brown, The Last of England.
\nPainter J. Collinson, Childhood.
\nPainter J. Paton, The Bluidie Tryst.
\nArnold, Poems Second Series, which includes \u201cStanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.\u201d
\nRobert Browning\u2019s Men and Women, including \u201cFra Lippo Lippi\u201d and \u201cAndrea del Sarto.\u201d Browning said he believed that the poet was chosen by God to receive His \u201cgreat commission,\u201d and that a sacred duty was laid upon him to speak the truth as, from his station, he alone could see it.
\nDickens, Little Dorrit, on bureaucracy and imprisonment for debt.
\nGaskell, North and South, about the conflict between mill owners and laborers, with a female protagonist who struggles to sympathize with both.
\nKingsley, Westward Ho!, an historical novel implying that history reveals God\u2019s continuing revelation and presenting England\u2019s 16th-century confrontation with Spain in terms applicable to the Crimean War.
\nGeorge Meredith (1828\u20131909), 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.
\nTennyson, Maud and Other Poems, which in addition to the masterpiece title poem also includes \u201cThe Charge of the Light Brigade,\u201d which .. celebrated the tragic Battle of Balaclava.
\nThackeray, The Newcomes, narrated by Thackeray\u2019s alter ego, Pendennis. American poet Walt Whitman (1819\u201392), Leaves of Grass.
\n1856\u201360<\/strong>\u2014Anglo-Chinese War.
\n1856<\/strong>\u2014Henry Bessemer (1813\u201398) invents blast furnace (the \u201cBessemer process\u201d),
\na steel purification operation that permits mass production of steel.
\nRubber teats for nursing bottles become available.
\nNew Zealand achieves self-government.
\nAnthony Panizzi (1797\u20131879) 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.
\nBurdett-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.
\nPainter William Shakespeare Burton (1824\u20131916), The Wounded Cavalier.
\nPainter Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833\u201398), Broken Vows.
\nPainter A. Hughes, April Love.
\nPainter John Everett Millais, The Blind Girl and Autumn Leaves.
\nPainter Henry Wallis (1830\u20131916), Chatterton (a.k.a. Death of Chatterton).
\nPainter Alfred Joseph Woolmer (1805\u201392), Lady Godiva.
\nElizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, a verse novel that gives a scathing critique of bourgeois marriage and heedless wealth, and a celebration of egalitarian marriage.
\nAmerican writer H. B. Stowe, Dred: a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.
\nFrenchman Gustave Flaubert (1821\u201380), Madame Bovary, a searing classic story of failed romanticism. Flaubert is brought to trial in 1857 for producing a morally offensive book, is acquitted.
\nRussian writer I. Turgenev, Rudin.
\n1857\u201359<\/strong>\u2014Thackeray, The Virginians, the sequel to Henry Esmond.
\n1857<\/strong>\u2014First telegraph cable laid across the Atlantic.
\nMatrimonial Causes Act introduces civil divorce for adultery (men could petition, but women could not petition for divorce until 1923).
\nObscene Publications Act.
\nFounding of National Portrait Gallery.
\nBritish Museum reading room opens, becomes legendary workroom for countless writers through the rest of the century and beyond.
\nSentence of transportation is abolished, although some long-term convicts were still \u201cdeported\u201d to Australia.
\nSuppression of Indian mutiny against British rule in India.
\nActon, Prostitution: Considered in Its Moral, Social and Sanitary Aspects, a highly influential treatise reflecting Victorian sexual repression.
\nNational Association for the Promotion of Social Science is formed.
\nPhotographer Oscar Gustave Rejlander (?1813\u201375), The Two Ways of Life.
\nPainter F. M. Brown, Take Your Son, Sir!
\nPainter J. Collinson, For Sale.
\nPainter W. Dyce, Titian\u2019s First Essay in Colouring.
\nPainter Emily Mary Osborn (1834\u2013after 1913), Nameless and Friendless.
\nPainter D. G. Rossetti, The Wedding of St. George and Princess Sabra.
\nPainter Abraham Solomon (1823\u201362), Waiting for the Verdict.
\nKingsley, Two Years Ago, about sanitation reform, the Crimean War, and the abolitionist movement in the United States.
\nGaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, a biography of her friend written at the request of the Reverend Patrick Bront\u00eb.
\nRadical M.P. (Member of Parliament) and reformist Thomas Hughes (1822\u201396), Tom Brown\u2019s School Days, a powerfully influential and largely laudatory fictional portrait of English public schools.
\nFrench writer Charles Baudelaire (1821\u201367), Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil), after which he and his publishers are swiftly prosecuted and convicted for offending public morals.
\n1858\u201359<\/strong>\u2014Prime Minister: Earl of Derby (1799\u20131869), Conservative Party.
\n1858<\/strong>\u2014 Government of India transferred to the British Crown from East India Company.
\nBig Ben bell is cast (April 10).
\nExplorers Richard Burton and John Speke discover Lake Tanganyika.
\nJohn Speke discovers Lake Victoria.
\nLaunching of Brunel\u2019s Great Eastern, largest ship yet built.
\nFenian Society founded in US by Irish emigrants.
\nGeorge Eliot\u2019s Scenes from a Clerical Life.
\n1859<\/strong>\u2014Big Ben enters service (May 31).
\nFirst women admitted to Royal Academy schools.
\nCharles Darwin\u2019s Origin of the Species.
\nDickens\u2019s A Tale of Two Cities.
\nGeorge Eliot\u2019s Adam Bede, which deeply impressed Queen Victoria.
\nTennyson\u2019s Idylls of the King, a highly influential rendering of the Arthurian legend that linked the fall of Camelot to moral degeneration.
\nEdward Fitzgerald\u2019s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
\nWilliam Morris\u2019s The Defence of Guenevere, a volume of lyric and dramatic verse.
\n1860<\/strong>\u2014Introduction of trams into England (August 30).
\nDickens\u2019s Great Expectations.
\nGeorge Eliot\u2019s The Mill on the Floss.
\nNightingale publishes first definitive textbooks on nursing.
\n1860\u201361<\/strong>\u2014Dickens\u2019s Great Expectations.
\n1861\u201365<\/strong>\u2014American Civil War.
\n1861<\/strong>\u2014Death of Prince Albert of typhoid fever at age 42.
\nFounding of Morris\u2019s design firm, which produced furniture, wallpapers, textiles, glassware, stained glass, tapestries, and carpets that were epitomes of Aestheticism and reflected the Gothic Revival.
\nUnification of Italy.
\nGeorge Eliot\u2019s Silas Marner.
\nUnsure 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.
\n1862<\/strong>\u2014Speke & Grant discover sources of the river Nile.
\nOtto von Bismarck becomes Prime Minister of Prussia.
\nFlaubert\u2019s Salammbo.
\n1863\u201365<\/strong>\u2014Construction of St. Pancras train station.
\n1863\u201372<\/strong>\u2014Construction of Albert Memorial.
\n1863<\/strong>\u2014 Opening of the first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway in London between Paddington and Farringdon Street (January 10).
\nMarriage of Prince of Wales (Bertie, who later becomes King Edward VII) and Alexandra (March 10).
\nBroadmoor criminal lunatic asylum opened (May 27).
\nUS President Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery in US.
\nEdouard Manet\u2019s Le D\u00e9jeuner sur l\u2019herbe, which created a major scandal for displaying female figures nude in a contemporary rather than a mythical or classical setting.
\nGeorge Eliot\u2019s Romola.
\n1864<\/strong>\u2014 Cafe Royal, famous landmark restaurant, founded in London (bombed in 1940).
\nDickens\u2019s 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.
\nFyodor Dostoyevsky\u2019s Notes from the Underground.
\nRobert Browning\u2019s Dramatis Personae.
\nKarl Marx founds First International in London.
\n1864\u201369<\/strong>\u2014Leo Tolstoy\u2019s War and Peace.
\n1865<\/strong>\u2014Founding of Salvation Army by William Booth (July 2).
\nCompletion of the metropolitan drainage system in London (began 1855), carried out by Joseph Bazalgette.
\nFirst National Association for Women\u2019s Suffrage formed in Manchester; voting rights not achieved until 1918.
\nAlice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson).
\nTennyson\u2019s Enoch Arden.
\nMatthew Arnold\u2019s \u201cFunction of Criticism at the Present Time.\u201d
\nAlgernon Charles Swinburne\u2019s Atalanta in Calydon.
\nManet\u2019s Olympia, which created a scandal for depicting modern sexuality and parodying Titian\u2019s Venus as a contemporary prostitute.
\nJoseph Lister initiates the practice of antiseptic surgery, applying carbolic acid (phenol) directly to wounds, instruments, and dressings.
\n1866<\/strong>\u2014 First Atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid by the SS Great Eastern (completed 7 September).
\nSwinburne\u2019s Poems and Ballads, which caused a major scandal for its explicit and sometimes perverse sexuality.
\nDostoyevsky\u2019s Crime and Punishment.
\nGeorge Eliot\u2019s Felix Holt, the Radical.
\nMatthew Arnold\u2019s New Poems, which includes \u201cDover Beach.\u201d
\n1867\u201371<\/strong>\u2014Construction of Royal Albert Hall.
\n1867<\/strong>\u2014 Second Reform Act, extending vote to tax-paying males of the urban working class.
\nDominion of Canada established.
\nRussia sells Alaska to the US.
\nMatthew 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.
\nMorris\u2019s The Life and Death of Jason, a long narrative poem.
\n1867\u201368<\/strong>\u2014Morris\u2019s The Earthly Paradise.
\n1868<\/strong>\u2014 Disraeli becomes Prime Minister and is defeated within several months in another election.
\nLast public execution (May 26); public hangings were stopped because they caused so much crime in the crowd that watched.
\nLast shipment of convicts from England to Australia.
\nOpening of the Metropolitan District Railway in London between Mansion House and South Kensington.
\nBritish expedition to Ethiopia forces release of British diplomats.
\nAmerican Louisa May Alcott\u2019s Little Women (first volume).
\n1868\u201369<\/strong>\u2014Robert Browning\u2019s The Ring and the Book.
\n1869<\/strong>\u2014 Suez Canal opened, built by Ferdinand de Lesseps, dramatically cutting shipping journey to and from Australia and Far East.
\nDisestablishment Act passed. Irish Church ceases to exist in 1871.
\nMatthew Arnold\u2019s Culture and Anarchy.
\nFlaubert\u2019s L\u2019Education sentimentale.
\n1870<\/strong>\u2014 Education Act, compulsory primary education until the age of 11. A 1p ($1) fee per day for the schooling.
\nMarried Women\u2019s Property Act gives women the right to earn and keep money for their own use.
\nIrish Land Act provides compensation for eviction, but fails to ease Irish problem.
\nThird French Republic (to 1914).
\nFrench novelist Jules Verne\u2019s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
\nDickens\u2019s The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
\nMatthew Arnold\u2019s St. Paul and Protestantism.
\n1870\u201371<\/strong>\u2014Franco-Prussian War.
\n1871<\/strong>\u2014Darwin\u2019s The Descent of Man.
\nSwinburne\u2019s Songs Before Sunrise.
\nThomas Hardy\u2019s Desperate Remedies, his first novel.
\nDante Gabriel Rossetti responds to a famous anonymous attack \u201cThe Fleshly School of Poetry\u201d (by critic Robert Buchanan) by publishing a mocking article \u201cThe Stealthy School of Criticism.\u201d
\nInstitution of practice of photographing prisoners (November 2).
\nPublication completed of Encyclopedia Britannica (began 1768).
\nOpening of Royal Albert Hall (March 29).
\nTrade unions legalized in Britain.
\nGerman Empire formed: Wilhelm I proclaimed Emperor.
\nParis Commune set up in opposition to national government and peace terms of Franco-Prussian War.
\n1871\u201372<\/strong>\u2014George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch.
\n1872<\/strong>\u2014Secret ballot made compulsory.
\nHardy\u2019s Under the Greenwood Tree.
\nLewis Carroll\u2019s Through the Looking Glass.
\nHenry James\u2019s first novel, Roderick Hudson.
\nSamuel Butler\u2019s satire Erewhon, which foreshadows the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress.
\n1873<\/strong>\u2014 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.
\nWalter Pater\u2019s classic Studies in the History of the Renaissance, which became a \u201cgolden book\u201d for late-Victorian aestheticism.
\nMatthew Arnold\u2019s Literature and Dogma.
\nHardy\u2019s A Pair of Blue Eyes.
\nJules Verne\u2019s Around the World in 80 Days.
\n1873\u201376<\/strong>\u2014Tolstoy\u2019s Anna Karenina.
\n1874<\/strong>\u2014Disraeli becomes Prime Minister for second time, governs until 1880.
\nFirst Impressionist Exhibition held in Paris.
\nPaul Verlaine\u2019s Romances sans paroles, which came to mark a seminal doctrine of Symbolism.
\nHardy\u2019s Far From the Madding Crowd.
\n1875<\/strong>\u2014First intelligible telephone communication made by Bell (June 5).
\nDisraeli buys Britain controlling interest in Suez Canal.
\nThird Anglo-Burmese War.
\nW. E. Henley\u2019s \u201cInvictus,\u201d which contains the famous lines, \u201cI am the master of my fate;\/I am the captain of my soul.\u201d
\nMatthew Arnold\u2019s God and the Bible.
\n1876<\/strong>\u2014Victoria named Empress of India.
\nBattle 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.
\nGeorge Eliot\u2019s Daniel Deronda.
\nHardy\u2019s The Hand of Ethelberta.
\nMorris\u2019s The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, based on the Icelandic Volsunga Saga.
\nIn an article for the Atlanta Constitution, Joel Chandler Harris first uses the pseudonym Uncle Remus.
\n1877<\/strong>\u2014Founding of Truth magazine.
\nTelephones, invented by Scottish scientist Alexander Graham Bell, become available.
\nAmerican Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, recording \u201cMary had a little lamb.\u201d
\nQueen Victoria becomes Empress of India.
\nCoventry Patmore\u2019s The Unknown Eros and Others Odes.
\n1878<\/strong>\u2014First electric street lighting in London.
\nFamous trial between James McNeill Whistler and John Ruskin over art criticism.
\nGilbert and Sullivan\u2019s H.M.S. Pinafore. The pair collaborated on 13 operettas between 1871 and 1896.
\nPolish 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.
\nThomas Hardy\u2019s The Return of the Native.
\nHenry James\u2019s 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, \u201cTake them away, please, away!\u201d\u2014not realizing he is talking to the author of the volumes.
\n1878\u201380<\/strong>\u2014Second Anglo-Afghan War.
\n1879\u201380<\/strong>\u2014Dostoyesvsky\u2019s The Brothers Karamazov.
\n1879<\/strong>\u2014Edison invents the electric light bulb.
\n1880<\/strong>\u2014 Publication began of the St. James\u2019s Gazette (absorbed by the Evening Standard in 1905).
\nFirst telephone directory issued in Britain (January 15).
\nVerlaine\u2019s \u201cArt poetique,\u201d which clarified his poetic theories and became the credo of younger poets following in the Symbolist tradition.
\nHardy\u2019s The Trumpet-Major.
\nHelen Keller born.
\n1880\u201381<\/strong>\u2014Boer uprising in South Africa.
\n1881<\/strong>\u2014Founding of TitBits periodical by George Newnes.
\nElectric light first used domestically. First electric power station in England opened at Goldalming.
\nSavoy Theatre opened. Venue for the famous Gilbert & Sullivan operettas.
\nPeace declared between New Zealand settlers and Maoris.
\nTsar Alexander III rules Russia (to 1894).
\nHardy\u2019s A Laodicean.
\nOscar Wilde\u2019s Poems.
\nKate Greenaway\u2019s illustrations for Mother Goose. Her illustrations of various children\u2019s books helped create a revolution in book illustration and was praised by art critics throughout the world.
\n1882<\/strong>\u2014 British troops bombard Alexandria and occupy Cairo to suppress nationalists, leads to French withdrawal from Egypt.
\nSwinburne\u2019s Tristram of Lyonesse, an erotic and Wagnerian reply to Tennyson\u2019s Idylls of the King.
\nHardy\u2019s Two on a Tower.
\n1883<\/strong>\u2014Expansion of Married Women\u2019s Property Act.
\nFounding of England\u2019s first socialist organization, H. M. Hyndeman\u2019s Democratic Federation (later named the Socialist Democratic Federation).
\nRobert Louis Stevenson\u2019s Treasure Island.
\n1884<\/strong>\u2014Third Reform Act, extending voting rights to agricultural workers.
\nTerm \u201cIndustrial Revolution,\u201d for the period of 1760 to 1840, coined by Arnold Toynbee.
\nWilliam Morris leads a large faction seceding from the Socialist Democratic Federation to form the Socialist League.
\nMorris\u2019s Chants for Socialists, a song collection.
\nCompletion of Revised Version of the Bible.
\nGeneral Gordon sent to Sudan to rescue Egyptian garrisons and put down revolution. Besieged and killed at Khartoum in 1885.
\nFounding of the Fabian Society.
\n1885<\/strong>\u2014Karl Benz invents the first automobile.
\nFrench chemist Louis Pasteur gives first inoculation against rabies.
\nGilbert and Sullivan\u2019s The Mikado.
\nTennyson\u2019s Tiresias and Other Poems, which includes \u201cVastness.\u201d
\nPater\u2019s novel Marius the Epicurean.
\nStevenson\u2019s collection of poems for children, A Child\u2019s Garden of Verses.
\nMorris\u2019s narrative socialist poem The Pilgrims of Hope.
\nArthur Wing Pinero\u2019s The Magistrate.
\n1885\u201389<\/strong>\u2014Founding of the Men\u2019s and Women\u2019s Club.
\n1886<\/strong>\u2014 Irish Hone Rule Bill introduced by British Prime Minister William Gladstone, is defeated.
\nGold discovered in South Africa.
\nStevenson\u2019s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
\nHardy\u2019s The Mayor of Casterbridge.
\nPinero\u2019s The Schoolmistress.
\nStevenson\u2019s Kidnapped.
\nTennyson\u2019s Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.
\n1886\u201389<\/strong>\u2014Anatole Baju\u2019s journal Le D\u00e9cadent.
\n1887<\/strong>\u2014Golden Jubilee, celebration of 50th anniversary of Victoria\u2019s reign.
\nArthur Conan Doyle\u2019s A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story.
\nRobert Browning\u2019s Parleyings.
\nHardy\u2019s The Woodlanders.
\nPater\u2019s short stories, Imaginary Portraits.
\nMorris\u2019s historical meditation A Dream of John Bull.
\nPinero\u2019s Dandy Dick.
\n1887\u201388<\/strong>\u2014 Wilde takes over editorship of the journal Ladies World, changing the title to Woman\u2019s World.
\n1888<\/strong>\u2014Unsolved London murders of East End women by \u201cJack the Ripper.\u201d
\nCounty Councils created in Britain.
\nFounding of The Star (absorbed by The Evening News in 1960).
\nWilhelm II becomes German Emperor (to 1918).
\nRobert Louis Stevenson makes his first voyage to the South Seas.
\nMatthew Arnold\u2019s \u201cStudy of Poetry.\u201d
\nOscar Wilde\u2019s The Happy Prince and Other Tales.
\nW. E. Henley\u2019s 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\u2019s Treasure Island.
\nPinero\u2019s Sweet Lavender.
\n1889<\/strong>\u2014Founding of Women\u2019s Franchise League by Emmeline Pankhurst.
\nArthur Symons\u2019s Days and Nights.
\nWilliam 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.
\nPater\u2019s Appreciations, a volume of criticism.
\nWilde\u2019s critical essay \u201cThe Decay of Lying.\u201d
\nStevenson\u2019s The Master of Ballantrae.
\nPinero\u2019s socially committed play The Profligate is staged (was written in 1887), causing a sensation even though the protagonist\u2019s suicide was replaced by a conventional happy ending.
\nConan Doyle\u2019s Micah Clarke, an historical romance.
\nCecil Rhodes founds British South Africa Company.
\n1890<\/strong>\u2014Sir James Frazer\u2019s The Golden Bough.
\nOpening of first electric underground public railway line (December 18: City and South London Railway between King William Street and Stockwell).
\nFirst comic book, Comic Cuts.
\nFounding of the Rhymers\u2019 Club, highly influential for nineties poetry.
\nWilde\u2019s landmark critical essay \u201cThe Critic as Artist.\u201d
\nConan Doyle\u2019s The Sign of Four, a Sherlock Holmes novel.
\nMorris\u2019s News from Nowhere, a pastoral utopian-communist vision and probably his most influential work.
\n1890\u201391<\/strong>\u2014Wilde\u2019s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
\n1891<\/strong>\u2014Completion of New Scotland Yard by Norman Shaw.
\nFounding of the Romanes Lectures at Oxford University by George Romanes.
\nKelmscott Press founded by William Morris. Published books that were fine art masterpieces typifying the spirit of the vibrant Arts and Crafts Movement.
\nElectrification of trams in England began in Leeds.
\nEducation made free for every child.
\nWilde\u2019s critical essay \u201cThe Soul of Man Under Socialism,\u201d his play Salome (written in French), and two collections of stories, A House of Pomegranates and Lord Arthur Savile\u2019s Crime and Other Stories.
\nHardy\u2019s Tess of the d\u2019Urbervilles.
\nMorris\u2019s Poems by the Way.
\nConan Doyle\u2019s The White Company, an historical novel.
\n1892<\/strong>\u2014Founding of The Westminster Gazette (absorbed by The Daily News in 1928).
\nWilde\u2019s Lady Windermere\u2019s Fan.
\nSymons\u2019s Silhouettes.
\nHardy\u2019s The Well-Beloved.
\nConan Doyle\u2019s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
\nYeats\u2019s play The Countess Cathleen.
\n1893<\/strong>\u2014Wilde\u2019s A Woman of No Importance.
\nGeorge Egerton\u2019s Keynotes.
\nArthur Wing Pinero\u2019s Second Mrs.Tanqueray, starring Mrs. Patrick (Beatrice Stella) Campbell, who becomes an overnight sensation and major theatrical star.
\nWilde\u2019s play Salome is banned in London (staged in Paris in 1896).
\nWilde\u2019s play A Woman of No Importance.
\nPater\u2019s Plato and Platonism.
\nYeats\u2019s The Celtic Twilight
\nNew Zealand becomes first country to give women the right to vote.
\nGladstone reintroduces Irish Home Rule Bill, defeated by House of Lords.
\nIndependent Labour Party founded in Britain by socialist Kier Hardie.
\nStevenson\u2019s Catriona (American title: David Balfour).
\n1893\u201394<\/strong>\u2014 Aubrey Beardsley\u2019s striking art illustrates D. M. Dent\u2019s edition of Thomas Malory\u2019s Le Morte Darthur.
\n1894\u201397<\/strong>\u2014 The Yellow Book, notorious and classy literary magazine edited by Henry Harland (literature) and Aubrey Beardsley (art), and published by John Lane\u2019s famous publishing house, The Bodley Head. Beardsley\u2019s artwork is a sensation, in every sense of the term.
\n1894<\/strong>\u2014Egerton\u2019s Discords.
\nPublication of Wilde\u2019s Salome in English, with Beardsley\u2019s illustrations.
\nStevenson\u2019s The Ebb-Tide.
\nConan Doyle\u2019s The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
\nYeats\u2019s dramatic poem The Land of the Heart\u2019s Desire.
\nFrench officer Alfred Dreyfus convicted of treason and deported; treatment of his case becomes a major political affair.
\nNicholas II, last tsar of Russia (reigns until 1917, when executed by the Bolshevik revolutionaries).
\n1895<\/strong>\u2014Founding of the London Promenade Concerts by Sir Henry Wood (October 6).
\nWireless telegraphy brought about by Marconi.
\nWilde\u2019s plays The Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.
\nThe three Wilde trials. Wilde sentenced to two years hard labor.
\nSymons\u2019s London Nights.
\nD\u2019Arcy\u2019s Monochromes.
\nPater\u2019s Miscellaneous Studies and Greek Studies.
\nYeats\u2019s Poems.
\nHardy\u2019s Jude the Obscure.
\nPinero\u2019s The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith.
\nH. G. Wells\u2019s The Time Machine.
\nJoseph Conrad\u2019s Almayer\u2019s Folly, his first novel.
\nCecil Rhodes founds Rhodesia, out of territory of South Africa Company.
\n1896<\/strong>\u2014Marconi patented wireless telegraphy (June 2).
\nSpeed limit for cars was increased from 4 to 20 mph.
\nThe Savoy (January\u2013September), 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.
\nBeardsley illustrates Smithers\u2019s edition of Pope\u2019s The Rape of the Lock.
\nAnglo-French agreements in Siam (now Thailand).
\nFrenchman Alfred Jarry\u2019s Ubu Roi, a grotesque farce about P\u00e8re Ubu, a gluttonous, greedy, and cruel individual who slaughters the royal family of Poland, opens in Paris. The play\u2019s scatological references, pompous style, and bastardized French cause the audience to riot.
\nConrad\u2019s An Outcast of the Islands.
\nAnton Chekhov\u2019s The Seagull.
\nAmerican Stephen Crane\u2019s The Red Badge of Courage.
\n1896\u201398<\/strong>\u2014Anglo-Egyptian forces led by General Kitchener reconquer Sudan.
\n1897<\/strong>\u2014Official opening of the Tate Gallery, founded by Sir Henry Tate (July 21).
\nBram Stoker\u2019s Dracula.
\nSymons\u2019s poetry volume Amoris Victima and collection of critical essays Studies in Two Literatures.
\nWilde\u2019s meditative apologia letter De Profundis.
\nWilde is released from Reading Gaol, his health ruined. When Wilde died three years later in a Paris hotel, he quipped of his room\u2019s wallpaper: \u201cOne of us had to go.\u201d
\nConrad\u2019s The Nigger of the \u201cNarcissus.\u201d In the preface to the novel, Conrad defines his task as a writer: \u201cTo make you hear, to make you feel\u2014it is, before all, to make you see. That\u2014and no more, and it is everything.\u201d
\nH. G. Wells\u2019s The Invisible Man.
\nYeats\u2019s The Secret Rose, a collection of Symbolist stories.
\nBeardsley illustrates Smithers\u2019s edition of Aristophanes\u2019s Lysistrata, so scandalously that it must be printed for private distribution only.
\n1898<\/strong>\u2014Spanish-American War over Cuba.
\nEmile Zola put on trial for libel for his reactions to the Dreyfus Affair, flees France afterwards, on the advice of his attorneys.
\nH. G. Wells\u2019s The War of the Worlds.
\nHardy\u2019s Wessex Poems.
\nWilde\u2019s The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
\nPinero\u2019s Trelawny of the \u201cWells.\u201d
\nPinero collaborates with Arthur Sullivan on The Beauty Stone.
\nSymons\u2019s landmark critical study Aubrey Beardsley.
\n1899<\/strong>\u2014Symons\u2019s classic critical study The Symbolist Movement in Literature.
\nSymons\u2019s volume of poetry Images of Good and Evil.
\nYeats\u2019s The Wind Among the Reeds.
\n1899\u20131902<\/strong>\u2014Second Boer War in South Africa.
\n1900<\/strong>\u2014Boxer Rebellion in China.
\nOrange Free State (South Africa) annexed by Britain.
\nHenley\u2019s For England\u2019s Sake.
\nConrad\u2019s Lord Jim.
\nAmerican Theodore Dreiser\u2019s 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.
\n1901<\/strong>\u2014 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.
\nPopulation of London reaches 6.6 million.
\nCommonwealth of Australia established.
\nHardy\u2019s Poems of the Past and Present.
\nSymons\u2019s poems The Loom of Dreams.
\n1902<\/strong>\u2014Britain forms alliance with Japan.
\nConrad\u2019s The Heart of Darkness.
\nConan Doyle\u2019s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
\n1903<\/strong>\u2014 Women\u2019s Social and Political Union formed in Britain by suffragette Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst.
\nHenley\u2019s A Song of Speed.
\nConrad\u2019s Nostromo.
\nSymons\u2019s critical studies Plays, Acting, and Music and Cities.
\nSamuel Butler\u2019s autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh, generally considered his masterpiece.
\nChekhov\u2019s The Cherry Orchard.
\n1904<\/strong>\u2014Symons\u2019s volume of criticism Studies in Prose and Verse.
\nJ. M. Barrie\u2019s play Peter Pan opens at the Duke of York\u2019s Theatre, London.
\n1904\u201308<\/strong>\u2014Hardy\u2019s The Dynasts.
\n1905<\/strong>\u2014Baroness Emmuska Orczy\u2019s The Scarlet Pimpernel.
\nConan Doyle\u2019s The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
\nSymons\u2019s Spiritual Adventures, a collection of short fiction.
\n1906<\/strong>\u2014French officer Dreyfus declared innocent of treason upon retrial.
\nHMS Dreadnought, first modern battleship, launched in Britain.
\nPinero\u2019s His House in Order.
\nSymons\u2019s The Fool of the World and Other Poems and his critical study Studies in Seven Arts.
\n1907<\/strong>\u2014Entente cordiale between Britain and Russia.
\nTriple Entente among Britain, France, and Russia, in opposition to the Triple Alliance among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.
\nRudyard Kipling becomes the first English winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Christopher Morley will say, \u201cHe writes a story ostensibly about big howitzers, and it is really a lover\u2019s tribute to Jane Austen.\u201d
\nConrad\u2019s The Secret Agent.
\nSymons\u2019s critical studies William Blake and Cities of Italy.
\n1908<\/strong>\u2014Austria annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina.
\nPinero\u2019s The Thunderbolt.
\n1909<\/strong>\u2014Old age pensions introduced in Britain.
\nAmerican Robert Peary finally reaches North Pole, after seven visits to the Arctic.
\nAmerican manufacturer Henry Ford begins \u201cassembly line\u201d production of cheap motor-cars.
\nHardy\u2019s poems Time\u2019s Laughingstocks.
\nPinero\u2019s Mid-Channel.
\n1910<\/strong>\u2014Conrad\u2019s The Secret Sharer.
\n1911<\/strong>\u2014Parliament Act reduces power of House of Lords in Britain.
\nBritish MPs receive salaries for the first time.
\nNorwegian Roald Amundsen reaches South Pole.
\nSun Yat-sen leads revolution in China and overthrows Manchu Dynasty; republic formed in 1912.
\n1912<\/strong>\u2014British liner Titanic sinks on maiden voyage, with loss of over 1500 lives.
\nMiners\u2019 strike in Britain.
\n1912\u201313<\/strong>\u2014 First Balkan War: Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro unite against Turkey. Balkan states victorious, new state of Albania created.
\n1913<\/strong>\u2014 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.
\nSecond Balkan War: Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Turkey unite against Bulgaria. War caused by Serbian claims to Macedonia. Bulgaria defeated: Balkan states again partitioned.
\nConrad\u2019s Chance.
\n1914<\/strong>\u2014 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.
\nPanama Canal opened.
\n1914\u201318<\/strong>\u2014World War I.
\n1915<\/strong>\u2014Britain announces naval blockade of Germany (January 5).
\nGermany begins submarine blockade of Britain (February 18).
\nPoison gas used for first time, by Germany against Britain (April\u2013May).
\nGerman U-boat sinks British liner Lusitania, drowning many civilians, including Americans (May 7).
\nSwiss physicist Albert Einstein publishes his General Theory of Relativity.
\nConrad\u2019s Victory.
\nConan Doyle\u2019s Holmes volume, The Valley of Fear.
\nAt a court in Bow Street, London, D. H. Lawrence\u2019s novel The Rainbow is judged to be obscene.
\nHenry James, fervent Anglophile, becomes a British citizen. George Bernard Shaw quipped, \u201cJames felt buried in America; but he came here to be embalmed.\u201d
\n1916<\/strong>\u2014 Easter Uprising in Ireland (April 24), suppressed after one week, leaders executed.
\nJames Joyce\u2019s 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.
\n1917<\/strong>\u2014Russian Revolution.
\nBritish soldier T. E. Lawrence (\u201cLawrence of Arabia\u201d) takes over command of Arab revolt against Turkey.
\nConan Doyle\u2019s His Last Bow, another Sherlock Holmes volume.
\nLeonard and Virginia Woolf found the Hogarth Press.
\n1918<\/strong>\u2014Russia adopts Gregorian calendar.
\nOnly a week before the Armistice, poet Wilfred Owen (\u201cAnthem for Doomed Youth\u201d) is killed in France at 25. He has defined his subject as \u201cWar, and the Pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.\u201d
\n1919<\/strong>\u2014General Strike in Britain.
\nIrish Rebellion led by Irish nationalist movement, the Sinn Fein party.
\nNationalist movement formed in India. Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi begins campaign of passive resistance to Britain. Amritsar massacre: British troops fire on nationalist rioters.
\nTreaty of Versailles ending WWI creates independent states of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, and Yugosloavia.
\nFounding of the League of Nations.
\nFascist movement founded in Italy by Benito Mussolini.
\nSylvia Beach opens the doors of Shakespeare and Company, the first combination English-language bookshop and lending library in Paris.
\n1920<\/strong>\u2014 Civil war in Ireland; situation aggravated by British auxiliaries, the \u201cBlack and Tans.\u201d
\nJewish state of Palestine established.
\nProhibition enacted in US.
\n1921<\/strong>\u2014 Irish Free State established; Irish Republican Army (IRA) continues opposition to British Rule in a divided Ireland.
\nPEN (Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Editors and Novelists), the international writers\u2019 club, founded in London.
\n1922<\/strong>\u2014Egypt becomes independent from Britain and France.
\nUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) established.
\n1923<\/strong>\u2014Mussolini creates Fascist state in Italy.
\nAdolf Hitler, founder of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, attempts to overthrow Bavarian government but is imprisoned.
\n1924<\/strong>\u2014First Labour Party government in Britain.
\nDeath of Lenin. Stalin succeeds him.
\n1926<\/strong>\u2014American Charles Lindbergh makes first solo transatlantic flight.
\nGeneral Strike in Britain.
\nFrenchman Paul Eluard\u2019s 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.
\n1928<\/strong>\u2014Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.
\n1929<\/strong>\u2014US Wall Street Crash.
\nAmerican explorer Richard Byrd flies over South Pole.
\nRichard Byrd flies over South Pole.
\n1935<\/strong>\u2014India Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1075,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"featured_post":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-196","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1075"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":936,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196\/revisions\/936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/snod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}