In April 1807, publication and translation into English of Germaine de Staël's Corinne, Or Italy. Image: François Pascal Simon Gérard, Portrait of Madame de Staël (c. 1810), Evert A. Duyckinick, Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women in Europe and America (New York: Johnson, Wilson & Company, 1873). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Corinne, a famous and influential French novel by Germaine de Staël, influenced women poets throughout the nineteenth century with its depiction of an Anglo-Italian poet-heroine, who is emblematic of Italy’s struggle for independence. The novel immediately commanded a wide audience in its original French and, through two near-immediate translations, in English. Corinne's attractions doubtless lay partly in its plot: Oswald, Lord Nelvil, a melancholy British peer, travels to Italy, falls in love with the omni-talented artist and performer Corinne, and commences a relationship that reveals both characters' secret histories and their connections to the grand events of recent European politics and history.

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Erik Simpson, "On Corinne, Or Italy"

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Alison Chapman, "On Il Risorgimento"

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by David Rettenmaier

Dec 1815 publication of Jane Austen's Emma. Austen's fourth published novel, Emma, was in press when the Prince Regent sent word that she had his permission to dedicate this or any later work to him, a permission of which she never availed herself. Image: Title page from Jane Austen's first edition of Emma, 1816 (Lilly Library, Indiana U). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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

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by David Rettenmaier

On February 1824, Sayings and Doings was published. This popular three-volume collection of “silver-fork” fiction by Theodore Hook would be followed by two further series in 1825 and 1828. Image: Engraving of Theodore Hook, circa 1830, from The Life and Remains of Theodore Edward Hook, Volume 2. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Angela Esterhammer, “1824: Improvisation, Speculation, and Identity-Construction”

Dianne F. Sadoff, “The Silver Fork Novel, 1824-41”

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by David Rettenmaier

On 6 April 1824, the novel Walladmor is fraudulently marketed at the Leipzig book fair as a German translation of Walter Scott; in October, Thomas De Quincey exposes but also perpetuates the hoax. Image: Image of Thomas De Quincey, from Project Gutenberg's Modern English Books of Power, by George Hamlin Fitch.

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Angela Esterhammer, “1824: Improvisation, Speculation, and Identity-Construction”

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On June 1824, publication of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Published anonymously, James Hogg’s Gothic-psychological-metafictional novel sells poorly. Image: "James Hogg - The Ettrick Shepherd" by Charles Rogers. Lithographed from an original Portrait in the possession of his widow by Schenck & McFarlane, Edinburgh. From The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Angela Esterhammer, “1824: Improvisation, Speculation, and Identity-Construction”

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On June 1824, The Devil’s Elixir was published. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s doppelgänger novel of 1816 appears in an English translation by R. P. Gillies. Image: Portrait of Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, c. 1822. Gallery: Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie, A II 920. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Angela Esterhammer, “1824: Improvisation, Speculation, and Identity-Construction”

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From 21 November 1846 to 28 March 1847, serial publication of The String of Pearls: A Romance (the anonymously written novel that originated the Sweeney Todd story) in 18 numbers in The People’s Periodical and Family Library, edited by Edward Lloyd.

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Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, “1847: Sweeney Todd and Abolition”

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by David Rettenmaier

On 15 November 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh was published by Chapman and Hall in Great Britain. Aurora Leigh—a verse-novel and modern epic—set off literary, social, and political reverberations in Britain, North America, and Europe up to the end of the century. Given its innovative, generically mixed form and its controversial contemporary subject matter, it figured in debates over poetry and poetics, the nature of the realist novel, class divisions and social reform, women’s rights, religion, and the politics of nations. Image: An 1871 engraving of an 1859 photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (photograph by Macaire Havre, engraving by T. O. Barlow). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Marjorie Stone, “The ‘Advent’ of Aurora Leigh: Critical Myths and Periodical Debates”

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by David Rettenmaier

In October 1858, publication of George Henry Lewes’s “Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction” in the Westminster Review 70.138. Image: Engraving of George Henry Lewes (author unknown), Popular Science Monthly, Volume 9 (1876). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Jonathan Farina, “On David Masson’s British Novelists and their Styles (1859) and the Establishment of Novels as an Object of Academic Study”

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by David Rettenmaier

In February 1859, publication of George Eliot’s Adam Bede. Image: Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade, Portrait of George Eliot. Source: University of Adelaide. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Jonathan Farina, “On David Masson’s British Novelists and their Styles (1859) and the Establishment of Novels as an Object of Academic Study”

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First issue of All the Year Round appears on 30 April 1859.

All the Year Round was the first magazine with Dickens as proprietor-editor, and home to first important sensation novel, Woman in White.

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Linda K. Hughes, "On New Monthly Magazines, 1859-60"

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by David Rettenmaier

In June 1859, publication of David Masson’s British Novelists and their Styles, which establishes novels as objects of academic study. Image: Engraved Portrait of David Masson by W. B. Hole (Edinburgh University). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Jonathan Farina, “On David Masson’s British Novelists and their Styles (1859) and the Establishment of Novels as an Object of Academic Study”

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Founding of Macmillan’s Magazine in November 1859. Macmillan’s was the first of new generation of shilling magazines emphasizing opinion and signature as well as literature.

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Linda K. Hughes, "On New Monthly Magazines, 1859-60"

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‪From 6 November to 22 December 1872, Jules Verne's ‬Around the World in Eighty Days‪ is serialized in ‬Le Temps‪. The review's circulation booms, and shipping lines and railroads vie to be mentioned in the text, a phenomenon sometimes regarded as the first example of product placement. In an example of the intersection of commerce and literature, the novel contains a host of references to contemporary businesses and products.‬ Image: Restored photograph of Jules Verne by Félix Nadar circa 1878. This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

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Claudia Nelson, “Mass Media Meets Children’s Literature, 1899: E. Nesbit’s The Story of the Treasure Seekers”

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by David Rettenmaier

From January to December 1882, Walter Besant published his novel of the East End, All Sorts and Conditions of Men imagining a People's Palace in the East End of London. A three-volume book edition appeared in October 1882.

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

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Publication of the novella Amour Dure by Vernon Lee (pseudonym of Violet Paget).

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Jill R. Ehnenn, "On Art Objects and Women's Words: Ekphrasis in Vernon Lee (1887), Graham R. Tomson (1889), and Michael Field (1892)"

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by David Rettenmaier

In May 1887, A People's Palace opened in London, prompted in part by Walter Besant's novel, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882).

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

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In May 1894, Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman was published. It is the best-known New Woman novel and draws on Dixon's own experiences supporting herself as a journalist.

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

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by David Rettenmaier

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.

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

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by David Rettenmaier

In March 1896, after the publication of Jude the Obscure, often deemed the last Victorian novel, Thomas Hardy renounced novel writing in favor of poetry. Image: Photograph of Thomas Hardy (c. 1910-15), from the George Grantham Bain Collection of the Library of Congress. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ggbain.13585. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Anna Kornbluh, “Thomas Hardy’s ‘End of Prose’”

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In September 1901, publication of M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud. This “last man” novel uses a volcanic eruption as a key plot point, alludes to Krakatoa, and incorporates some of the media and genres of communication that dominated discussions of Krakatoa. Image: Photograph of Mr. and Mrs. M. P. Shiel. Third generation image adopted from a photo published in "The Candid Friend" in 1901. Since it was published prior to 1923, it would be in the public domain under US law, and a minimum of fair use elsewhere.

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Monique R. Morgan, “The Eruption of Krakatoa (also known as Krakatau) in 1883″

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Gillen D'Arcy Wood, "1816, The Year without a Summer"

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In 1905, Elizabeth Robins, a well-known actress and feminist, published a novel about the Rest Cure called A Dark Lantern. (Exact month of publication unknown; if you have information about the correct date, please email felluga@purdue.edu with this information.) The novel fictionalized aspects of Robins’ own rest cure in 1903, including her infatuation with her physician, Dr. Vaughn Harley. Image: Albumen of Elizabeth Robins, circa 1890s, by W&D Downey, London. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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

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