EN316: Revolution and Empire: British Literature from 1660-1900

This timeline presents important dates and events from the Restoration up through the end of the Victorian period, with special reference to authors and their works we read in class.

Timeline

Chronological table

Displaying 101 - 121 of 121
Datesort descending Event Created by Associated Places
Apr 1870

Rossetti, Poems

photo of DG RossettiIn April 1870, Dante Gabriel Rossetti published his first volume of original poetry, marking the start of several decades of renewed lyric experimentation by younger poets like Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, Christina Rossetti, George Meredith, and Gerard Manly Hopkins. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print, 7 October 1863. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

Elizabeth Helsinger, “Lyric Poetry and the Event of Poems, 1870″

David Rettenmaier
9 Aug 1870

1870 Married Women's Property Act

British Coat of ArmsOn 9 August 1870, the Married Women’s Property Act was passed. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This Act established limited protections for some separate property for married women, including the right to retain up to £200 of any earning or inheritance. Before this all of a woman's property owned before her marriage, as well as all acquired after the marriage, automatically became her husband's alone. Only women whose families negotiated different terms in a marriage contract were able to retain control of some portion of their property.

Articles

Rachel Ablow, "On the Married Woman's Property Act, 1870"

Related Articles

Kelly Hager, “Chipping Away at Coverture: The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857″

Jill Rappoport, “Wives and Sons: Coverture, Primogeniture, and Married Women’s Property”

Anne Wallace, “On the Deceased Wife’s Sister Controversy, 1835-1907″

David Rettenmaier
1 Jan 1871 to 1 Jan 1871

Disestablishment of the Irish Church

The Irish Church Act of 1869, passed under the administration of William Gladstone (1809-1898), called for the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. It was formally implemented on 1 January 1871. Image: Logo of the Church of Ireland, Fair use under United States copyright law

Articles

Kimberly J. Stern, "The Publication of John Pentland Mahaffy's The Decay of Modern Preaching (1882)"

David Rettenmaier
27 Dec 1871

Publication of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass

Lewis Carroll publishes Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There,(1871) the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). In this novel, Alice finds another world of nonsense and fantasy, this time by climbing through a mirror.

Articles

Jean Little, “Algebraic Logic in Through the Looking Glass

David Rettenmaier
Sep 1873

Financial panic of 1873 begins

Jay CookeSeptember 1873 saw the beginning of the "panic of 1873," a financial crisis brought on in part by speculation in railroads. The crisis included the fall of American banking house Jay Cook & Company, which was precipitated by the failure of Northern Pacific Railway shares. The panic triggered a depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 until 1879. Image: Portrait, Jay Cooke, founder of Jay Cooke & Company. This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

Related Articles

Joshua Gooch, “On ‘Black Friday,’ 11 May 1866″

Deborah Denenholz Morse, “The Way He Thought Then: Modernity and the Retreat of the Public Liberal in Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, 1873”

David Rettenmaier
Nov 1878 to 2 May 1881

Anglo-Afghan War

Battle of KandaharThe Second Anglo-Afghan War grew out of longstanding tensions between Russia and Britain over Britain’s prized colonial possession of India. It lasted from November 1878 to May 1881. Image: Battle of Kandahar, 1880, by W. Skeoch Cumming. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

Zarena Aslami, “The Second Anglo-Afghan War, or The Return of the Uninvited”

Related Articles

Antoinette Burton, “On the First Anglo-Afghan War, 1839-42: Spectacle of Disaster”

David Rettenmaier
Jan 1880 to Jan 1880

Fog event

In January 1880, a four-day fog event in London killed some 1,100 people. Image. Photograph of Widnes (north west England in the late nineteenth century, from D. W. F. Hardie, A History of the Chemical Industry in Widnes. 1950. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Widnes_Smoke.jpg.

Articles

Nathan K. Hensley and John Patrick James, “Sooth Moth: Biston Betularia and the Victorian End of Nature.

David Rettenmaier
1 Jan 1883

1882 Married Women's Property Act

British Coat of Arms1882 Married Women's Property Act passed on 1 Jan 1883. Referred to as the 1882 MWPA, the Act came into effect at the beginning of 1883. Although still identifying some married women's property as "separate," this Act significantly increased the scope and protections for married women's acquisition and retention of property separate from their husbands. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Articles

Jill Rappoport, “Wives and Sons: Coverture, Primogeniture, and Married Women’s Property”

Anne Wallace, “On the Deceased Wife’s Sister Controversy, 1835-1907″

Related Articles

Rachel Ablow, “‘One Flesh,’ One Person, and the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act”

David Rettenmaier
14 Aug 1885

Criminal Law Amendment Act

British Coat of ArmsCriminal Law Amendment Act passed on 14 August 1885. The Act raised the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16 and introduced the misdemeanor of “gross indecency” to criminalize sexual acts between men in public or private. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Related Articles

Mary Jean Corbett, “On Crawford v. Crawford and Dilke, 1886″

Andrew Elfenbein, “On the Trials of Oscar Wilde: Myths and Realities”

David Rettenmaier
1 Jan 1887

Year of Jubilee

Portrait of Queen VictoriaThe 1887 Year of Jubilee was a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the reign of Queen Victoria. Image: George Hayter, State portrait of Queen Victoria, 1860 (oil on canvas), from the Government Art Collection of the United Kingdom. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Related Articles

Erika Rappaport, “Object Lessons and Colonial Histories: Inventing the Jubilee of Indian Tea”

David Rettenmaier
1 Nov 1887

Bloody Sunday

engraving, Bloody SundayOn 13 November 1887, “Bloody Sunday” occurred. Police charged against socialists after a Trafalgar Square protest against unemployment and the Irish Coercion Acts; 75 were wounded. At another Trafalgar Square protest on November 20, a bystander, Alfred Linnell, was trampled by a police horse and later died of wounds. Image: Bloody Sunday, 1887. This engraving from the The Illustrated London News depicts a policeman being clubbed by a demonstrator as he wrests a banner from a female protester.

Articles

Florence Boos, “The Socialist League, founded 30 December 1884″

David Rettenmaier
Jul 1888

London Matchgirls' Strike

In July 1888, the London Matchgirls' Strike occurred.

Related Articles

Heidi Kaufman, “1800-1900: Inside and Outside the Nineteenth-Century East End”

David Rettenmaier
Aug 1888 to Sep 1889

Jack the Ripper murders

From August 1888 to September 1889, the serial killer known as the Whitechapel Murderer or Jack the Ripper stalked women living in the East End of London.

Related Articles

Heidi Kaufman, “1800-1900: Inside and Outside the Nineteenth-Century East End”

Marlene Tromp, “A Priori: Harriet Buswell and Unsolved Murder Before Jack the Ripper, 24-25 December 1872″

David Rettenmaier
Nov 1890

The Yellow Peril

http://www.branchcollective.org/?attachment_id=3135
A 1913 cover of Sax Rohmer’s The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Macnhu

The Yellow Peril was a term originated in Imperial Germany in the 1890s. This term was a color-metaphor referred to Western fears that Asians, particularly the Chinese, would invade their lands and disrupt Western values, such as democracy, Christianity, and technological innovation. The term of the Yellow Peril spread through Britain with the rise of Chinese populations in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion (Nov 2, 1899 – Sep 7, 1901). The Boxer Rebellion was an uprising movement against foreigners that occurred at the end of the Qing dynasty in northern China. The Boxer did experienced suppression by allied forces in China; however, the Western anxieties continually increased, which turned into the fears of the “Yellow Peril”. The most recognizable character of “Yellow Peril” was Dr. Fu Manchu, a villain from the series of novels written by a British author Sax Rohmer. Image: A 1913 cover of Sax Rohmer’s The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Macnhu

Articles:

Shanyn Fiske, “Modeling Masculinity: Engendering the Yellow Peril in Fu-Manchu and Thomas Burke’s Limehouse Nights”

Shiqi Deng
Jan 1892

"The Yellow Wallpaper"

photo of MitchellIn January 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her semi-autobiographical short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in the New England Magazine. The tale’s heroine is a depressed new mother who goes mad while enduring a modified Rest Cure. Gilman herself underwent the Rest Cure in 1887 at the hands of Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, who is briefly mentioned in the story. Image: Photograph of Silas Weir Mitchell, 1881. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

Anne Stiles, “The Rest Cure, 1873-1925″

David Rettenmaier
6 Oct 1892

Death of Tennyson

Carbon print of TennysonOn 6 October 1892, the Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, died, beginning a heated debate about who should succeed him as Poet Laureate. Image: Julia Margaret Cameron, Carbon print of Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1869, printed 1875/79 (The Art Institute of Chicago). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

Linda Peterson, “On the Appointment of the ‘Poet Laureate to Her Majesty,’ 1892-1896”

David Rettenmaier
1894

"New Aspect of the Woman Question"

In March 1894, Sarah Grand's “The New Aspect of the Woman Question” was published. The essay in North American Review, vol.158, no.448, March 1894, pp.270–6 has been credited with identifying the "New Woman."

Articles

Meaghan Clarke, “1894: The Year of the New Woman Art Critic”

David Rettenmaier
27 Jun 1894

End of the 3-Volume Novel

"Going to Mudie's"On 27 June 1894, Mudie’s Select Library and W. H. Smith’s, the largest of the private circulating libraries that provided many Victorians with their reading material, issued simultaneous announcements specifying the new terms on which they would buy novels from publishers, beginning in the next calendar year. This change spelled the effective end of the 3-volume system; whereas 112 three-volume works were published in 1894, only two were published in 1897. Image: "Going to Mudie's," London Society v.16, no. 95, Nov. 1869. This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

Articles

Richard Menke, “The End of the Three-Volume Novel System, 27 June 1894″

David Rettenmaier
Apr 1895 to May 1895

Trials of Oscar Wilde

photo of WildeThe trials of Oscar Wilde, which occurred in April and May of 1895, have become legendary as a turning-point in the history of public awareness of homosexuality. By their close, Wilde had gone from being a triumphantly successful playwright to a ruined man, condemned to two years of hard labor for gross indecency. They garnered extensive coverage first in the London press and then in newspapers around the world; the story of the trials continues to be retold in ways that have persistent relevance for contemporary queer culture. Image: Photograph of Oscar Wilde, by Napoleon Sarony. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

Andrew Elfenbein, “On the Trials of Oscar Wilde: Myths and Realities”

David Rettenmaier
11 Oct 1899 to 31 May 1902

Second Boer War

Crane, Stop the WarOn 11 Oct 1899, war was declared between Britain and the Transvaal Republic and Orange Free State, two independent Boer nations in southern Africa. The Treaty of Vereeniging concluded the Second Boer War on 31 May 1902. The fighting had resulted in c. 45,000 British military casualties and around 40,000 combined military and civilian casualties among the Boers. Eight years later in 1910, the Union of South Africa made the region a dominion of the British Empire. Image: Walter Crane, “Stop the War,” page 297, The War Against War in South Africa, 23 February 1900, wood engraving, courtesy of Yale University.

Articles

Jo Briggs, “The Second Boer War, 1899-1902: Anti-Imperialism and European Visual Culture”

David Rettenmaier
4 Apr 1906

Aborigines Act 1905

coat of arms of Australia4 April 1906 saw the royal assent to the Aborigines Act 1905 (5 Edw. VII No. 14), in which Section 70 (which sought to protect and support the welfare of Aboriginal people) was repealed for a second time. Image: Coat of Arms of Australia. This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

Articles

Ann Curthoys, “Settler Self-Government versus Aboriginal Rights, 1883 – 2001: The Shocking History of Section 70 of the Western Australian Constitution”

David Rettenmaier

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