A CHRONOLOGY OF CHARLES DICKENS

Dickens’s major fictions are indicated by bold type.

Life Historical and Cultural Background
1809 (13 June) John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, marries Elizabeth Barrow.
1810 (28 Oct.) Frances Dickens (‘Fanny’) born.
1811 Prince of Wales becomes Prince Regent.
W. M. Thackeray born.
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
1812 (7 Feb.) Charles Dickens born at Mile End Terrace, Landport, Portsea (now 393 Old Commercial Road, Portsmouth). Luddite riots. War between Britain and the United States. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Robert Browning and Edward Lear born. Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, i and ii (completed 1818)
1813 Robert Southey becomes poet laureate. Napoleon defeated at Leipzig. Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Byron, The Bride of Abydos, The Giaour; P. B. Shelley, Queen Mab
1814 Birth (Mar.) and death (Sept.) of Alfred Allen Dickens. Napoleon exiled to Elba.
Austen, Mansfield Park; Sir Walter Scott, Waverley; William Wordsworth, The Excursion
1815 (1 Jan.) Dickens family moves to Escape of Napoleon; Battle of Waterloo.
London. Anthony Trollope born.
Thomas Robert Malthus, An Inquiry into Rent; Scott, Guy Mannering
1816 (Apr.) Letitia Dickens born. Charlotte Brontë born.
Austen, Emma; S. T. Coleridge, Christabel and Other Poems; Thomas Love Peacock, Headlong Hall; Scott, The Antiquary, Old Mortality
1817 (Apr.) Dickens family settles in Chatham. Jane Austen dies.
Byron, Manfred; Coleridge, Biographia Literaria; John Keats, Poems; Robert Owen, Report to the Committee on the Poor Law; Scott, Rob Roy
1818 Emily Brontë born.
Austen, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion (posth.); Keats, Endymion; Peacock, Nightmare Abbey; Scott, The Heart of Midlothian; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
1819 (Sept.) Harriet Dickens born. Princess Victoria born. Peterloo ‘Massacre’ (11 deaths). A. H. Clough, Marian Evans (George Eliot), Charles Kingsley, John Ruskin born. Byron, Don Juan, i–ii (continued till 1824); Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor; Wordsworth, Peter Bell, The Waggoner
1820 Frederick Dickens (‘Fred’) born. Death of George III; accession of Prince Regent as George IV. Trial of Queen Caroline. Anne Brontë born.
John Clare, Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life; Keats, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes and Other Poems; Malthus, Principles of Political Economy; Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer; P. B. Shelley, The Cenci, Prometheus Unbound; Scott, Ivanhoe
1821 CD goes to school run by William Giles. Greek War of Independence starts. Napoleon dies. Keats dies. Clare, The Village Minstrel and Other Poems; Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater; Pierce Egan, Life in London; Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies; Scott, Kenilworth; P. B. Shelley, Adonais; Southey, A Vision of Judgement
1822 (Mar.) Alfred Lamert Dickens born; Harriet Dickens dies. CD stays in Chatham when family moves to Camden Town, London; rejoins them later, but his education is discontinued. Shelley dies. Matthew Arnold born. Byron, The Vision of Judgement
1823 (Dec.) Family moves to 4 Gower Street North, where Mrs Dickens fails in her attempt to run a school. Building of present British Museum begins.
Coventry Patmore born. Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia; Scott, Quentin Durward
1824 (late Jan. or early Feb.) CD sent to work at Jonathan Warren’s blacking warehouse, Hungerford Stairs; (20 Feb.) John Dickens arrested and imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea till 28 May; CD in lodgings; family moves to Somers Town. National Gallery founded in London. Repeal of acts forbidding formation of trades unions. Byron dies. Wilkie Collins born. James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner; Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations (completed 1829); Scott, Redgauntlet
1825 (9 Mar.) John Dickens retires from Navy Pay Office with a pension; (Mar./Apr.) CD leaves Warren’s and recommences his schooling at Wellington House Academy. Stockton–Darlington railway opens. Hazlitt, Table-Talk, The Spirit of the Age; Alessandro Manzoni, I promessi sposi
1826 John Dickens works as parliamentary correspondent for The British Press. University College London and Royal Zoological Society founded.
J. Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans; Benjamin Disraeli, Vivian Grey (completed 1827); Mary Shelley, The Last Man
1827 (Mar.) Family evicted for nonpayment of rates; CD becomes a solicitor’s clerk; (Nov.) Augustus Dickens born. Battle of Navarino. William Blake dies.
Clare, The Shepherd’s Calendar; De Quincey, ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’
1828 John Dickens works as reporter for The Morning Herald. Duke of Wellington PM. George Meredith, D. G. Rossetti, Leo Tolstoy born. Pierce Egan, Finish to the Adventures of Tom, Jerry and Logic
1829 CD works at Doctors’ Commons as a shorthand reporter. Catholic Emancipation Act; Robert Peel establishes Metropolitan Police.
1830 (8 Feb.) Admitted as reader to British Museum; (May) falls in love with Maria Beadnell. George IV dies; William IV succeeds. Opening of Manchester–Liverpool Railway. July revolution in France; accession of Louis-Philippe as emperor. Greece independent. Hazlitt dies. Christina Rossetti born.
William Cobbett, Rural Rides; Sir Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (completed 1832); Alfred Tennyson, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical
1831 Composes poem ‘The Bill of Fare’; starts work as reporter for The Mirror of Parliament. Reform Bill. Major cholera epidemic. Michael Faraday’s electro-magnetic current. Peacock, Crotchet Castle; Edgar Allan Poe, Poems; Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir
1832 Becomes parliamentary reporter on the True Sun. Lord Grey PM. First Reform Act. Jeremy Bentham, Crabbe, Goethe, and Scott die. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) born. Goethe, Faust, ii; Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village; Tennyson, Poems; Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans
1833 Concludes relationship with Maria Beadnell; first story, ‘A Dinner at Poplar Walk’ (later called ‘Mr Minns and his Cousin’), published in Monthly Magazine. First steamship crosses the Atlantic. Abolition of slavery in all British colonies (from Aug. 1834). Factory Act forbids employment of children under 9. First government grant for schools. Oxford Movement starts. Robert Browning, Pauline; John Henry Newman, ‘Lead, Kindly Light’ and (with others) the first Tracts for the Times
1834 ( Jan.–Feb.) Six more stories appear in Monthly Magazine; (Aug.) meets Catherine Hogarth; becomes reporter on The Morning Chronicle, which publishes (Sept.–Dec.) first five ‘Street Sketches’; (Dec.) moves to Furnival’s Inn, Holborn. Robert Owen’s Grand National Trades Union. ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ transported to Australia. Lord Melbourne PM; then Peel. Workhouses set up under Poor Law Amendment Act. Coleridge, Lamb, and Malthus die. William Morris born. Balzac, Eugझníe Grandet; Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus; Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy
1835 (?May) Engaged to Catherine Hogarth (‘Kate’); publishes stories, sketches, and scenes in Monthly Magazine, Evening Chronicle, and Bell’s Life in London. Lord Melbourne PM. Municipal Corporations Act reforms local government. Cobbett and James Hogg die.
Browning, Paracelsus; Alexis de Tocqueville, La Démocratie en Amérique
1836 (Feb.) Takes larger chambers in Furnival’s Inn; (8 Feb.) Sketches by Boz, First Series published; (31 Mar.) first monthly number of Pickwick Papers issued; (2 Apr.) marries Catherine Hogarth; ( June) publishes Sunday Under Three Heads; (Nov.) leaves the Morning Chronicle; (17 Dec.) Sketches by Boz, Second Series; (?Dec.) meets John Forster. Beginning of Chartism. First London train (to Greenwich). Forms of telegraph used in England and America. Augustus Pugin’s Contrasts advocates Gothic style of architecture. Browning, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’; Nicolai Gogol, The Government Inspector; Frederick Marryat, Mr Midshipman Easy
1837 (1 Jan.) First monthly number of Bentley’s Miscellany, edited by CD, published; (6 Jan.) birth of first child, Charles (‘Charley’); (31 Jan.) serialization of Oliver Twist begins in Bentley’s; (3 Mar.) Is She His Wife? produced at the St James’s; (Apr.) family moves to 48 Doughty Street; (7 May) sudden death of his sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, at 17; CD suspends publication of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist for a month; (Aug.– Sept.) first family holiday in Broadstairs; (17 Nov.) Pickwick Papers published in one volume. William IV dies; Queen Victoria succeeds. Carlyle, The French Revolution; Isaac Pitman, Stenographic Short-Hand; J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott
1838 ( Jan.–Feb.) Visits Yorkshire schools with Hablot Browne (‘Phiz’); (6 Mar.) second child, Mary (‘Mamie’), born; (31 Mar.) monthly serialization of Nicholas Nickleby begins; ( 9 Nov.) Oliver Twist published in three volumes. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western inaugurates regular steamship service between England and USA. London–Birmingham railway completed. Irish Poor Law. Anti-Corn Law League founded by Richard Cobden. People’s Charter advocates universal suffrage. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus; John Ruskin, The Poetry of Architecture; R. S. Surtees, Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities; Wordsworth, Sonnets
1839 (31 Jan.) Resigns editorship of Bentley’s; (23 Oct.) Nicholas Nickleby published in one volume; (29 Oct.) third child, Kate (‘Katey’), born; (Dec.) family moves to 1 Devonshire Terrace, Regent’s Park. Opium War between Britain and China. Chartist riots. Louis Daguerre and W. H. Fox Talbot independently develop photography. Carlyle, Chartism; Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of … Countries Visited by HMS Beagle; Harriet Martineau, Deerbrook
1840 (4 Apr.) First weekly issue of Master Humphrey’s Clock (also published monthly) in which The Old Curiosity Shop is serialized from 25 Apr.; (1 June) moves family to Broadstairs; (11 Oct.) returns to London; (15 Oct.) Master Humphrey’s Clock, Vol. I published. Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert. Maoris yield sovereignty of New Zealand to Queen Victoria by Treaty of Waitangi. Rowland Hill introduces penny postage. Fanny Burney dies.
1841 (8 Feb.) Fourth child, Walter, born; (6 and 13 Feb.) The Old Curiosity Shop concluded and Barnaby Rudge commenced in Master Humphrey’s Clock; operated on for fistula (without anaesthetic). Master Humphrey’s Clock, Vols. II and III published (Apr. and Dec.); one-volume editions of The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge published (15 Dec.). Peel PM. Hong Kong and New Zealand proclaimed British. Punch founded. W. H. Ainsworth, Old St Paul’s; Browning, Pippa Passes; Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History; R. W. Emerson, Essays. Dion Boucicault’s London Assurance acted
1842 ( Jan.–June) CD and Catherine visit North America; (Aug.–Sept.) with family in Broadstairs; (Oct.–Nov.) visits Cornwall with Forster and others; (19 Oct.) American Notes published; (31 Dec.) first monthly number of Martin Chuzzlewit published. End of wars with China and Afghanistan. Mines Act: no underground work by women or by children under 10. Chadwick report on sanitary condition of the working classes. Chartist riots. Copyright Act. Stendhal dies. Browning, Dramatic Lyrics; Gogol, Dead Souls; Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome; Tennyson, Poems
1843 (19 Dec.) A Christmas Carol published. British annexation of Sind and Natal. I. K. Brunel’s Great Britain, the first ocean screw-steamer, launched. Southey dies; Wordsworth becomes poet laureate.
Carlyle, Past and Present; Thomas Hood, ‘Song of the Shirt’; Macaulay, Essays; J. S. Mill, System of Logic; Ruskin, Modern Painters, i (completed 1860)
1844 (15 Jan.) Fifth child, Francis, born; (16 July) takes family to Genoa; one-volume edition of Martin Chuzzlewit published; (30 Nov.–8 Dec.) returns to London to read The Chimes (published 16 Dec.) to his friends. Factory Act restricts working hours of women and children. ‘Rochdale Pioneers’ found first co-operative society. Ragged School Union. William Barnes, Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect; E. B. Barrett, Poems; Disraeli, Coningsby; Dumas, Les Trois Mousquetaires; A. W. Kinglake, Eöthen
1845 Travels in Italy with Catherine before returning to London from Genoa; ( 20 Sept.) directs and acts in first performance of the Amateur Players, Ben Jonson’s Every Man In His Humour; (28 Oct.) sixth child, Alfred, born; (20 Dec.) The Cricket on the Hearth published. Disappearance of Sir John Franklin’s expedition to find a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. War with Sikhs. 1845–9: potato famine in Ireland: 1 million die; 8 million emigrate. Thomas Hood and Sydney Smith die. Browning, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics; Disraeli, Sybil; Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England; Poe, The Raven and Other Poems, Tales of Mystery and Imagination
1846 (21 Jan.–9 Feb.) Edits The Daily News; (May) Pictures from Italy published; (31 May) leaves with family for Switzerland via the Rhine; (11 June) settles in Lausanne; (30 Sept.) monthly serialization of Dombey and Son commences; (16 Nov.) family moves to Paris; (Dec.) The Battle of Life published. Corn Laws repealed; Peel resigns; Lord John Russell PM. Ether first used as a general anaesthetic. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett marry secretly and leave for Italy. Balzac, La Cousine Bette; Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (i.e. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë); Edward Lear, Book of Nonsense
1847 (28 Feb.) Returns from Paris; (18 Apr.) seventh child, Sydney, is born; ( June–Sept.) with family at Broadstairs; (27–8 July) performs in Manchester and Liverpool with the Amateurs; (Nov.) Urania Cottage, Miss Coutts’s ‘Home for Homeless Women’, in whose administration CD is involved, opened in Shepherd’s Bush. Factory Act limits working day for women and young persons to 10 hours. James Simpson discovers anaesthetic properties of chloroform. Louis Napoleon escapes to England from prison. A. Brontë, Agnes Grey; C. Brontë, Jane Eyre; E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Tennyson, The Princess. J. M. Morton’s Box and Cox acted
Life Historical and Cultural Background
1848 (12 Apr.) One-volume edition of Dombey and Son published; (May–July) the Amateurs perform in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and Glasgow; (2 Sept.) sister Fanny dies; (19 Dec.) The Haunted Man published. Outbreak of cholera in London. Public Health Act. End of Chartist Movement. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded. ‘The Year of Revolutions’ in Europe. Louis Napoleon becomes President of France. Emily Brontë, Branwell Brontë die. A. Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton; Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto; J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy; Thackeray, Vanity Fair
1849 (16 Jan.) Eighth child, Henry (‘Harry’), born; (30 Apr.) monthly serialization of David Copperfield begins; ( July–Oct.) with family at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight. Revolt against the British in Montreal. Punjab annexed. Rome proclaimed a republic; later taken by the French. Suppression of Communist riots in Paris. Californian gold rush. Anne Brontë, E. A. Poe die. C. Brontë, Shirley; Sir John Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy; Macaulay, History of England, i–ii (unfinished at his death, in 1859); Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture
1850 (30 Mar.) First issue of Household Words, a weekly journal edited and contributed to by CD; (16 Aug.) ninth child, Dora, born; (Aug.–Oct.) at Broadstairs; (15 Nov.) one-volume edition of David Copperfield published. Restoration of Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. Factory Act: 60-hour week for women and young persons. Public Libraries Act. Dover–Calais telegraph cable laid. Balzac and Wordsworth die. Tennyson becomes Poet Laureate.
E. B. Browning, ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’, in Poems; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H.; Thackeray, The History of Pendennis; Wordsworth, The Prelude (posth.)
1851 (25 Jan.) A Child’s History of England starts serialization in Household Words; (31 Mar.) John Dickens dies; (14 Apr.) Dora dies suddenly, aged 8 months; (May) directs and acts in Bulwer-Lytton’s Not So Bad as We Seem before the Queen, in aid of the Guild of Literature and Art; (May–Oct.) last family holiday at Broadstairs; (Nov.) moves to Tavistock House. Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park. Fall of French Second Republic. Gold found in Australia.
George Borrow, Lavengro; Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor; Herman Melville, Moby Dick; George Meredith, Poems; Ruskin, The King of the Golden River, The Stones of Venice, i (completed 1853)
1852 (28 Feb.) Monthly serialization of Bleak House begins; (14 Apr.) birth of tenth child, Edward (‘Plorn’); (Feb.–Sept.) provincial performances of Not So Bad as We Seem; ( July–Oct.) family stays in Dover. Lord Derby becomes PM; then Lord Aberdeen. Louis Napoleon proclaimed Emperor Napoleon III. 1852–6: David Livingstone crosses Africa. Tom Moore and the Duke of Wellington die. M. P. Roget, Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Thackeray, Henry Esmond
1853 ( June–Oct.) Family stays in Boulogne; (12 Sept.) one-volume edition of Bleak House published; (Oct.–Dec.) in Switzerland and Italy with Wilkie Collins and Augustus Egg; (10 Dec.) A Child’s History of England concluded in Household Words; (27–30 Dec.) gives public readings of A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth in Birmingham. Arnold, Poems; C. Brontë, Villette; Gaskell, Ruth, Cranford; Surtees, Mr Sponge’s Sporting Career
1854 (28–30 Jan.) Visits Preston; (i Apr.–12 Aug.) weekly serialization of Hard Times in Household Words; ( June–Oct.) family stays in Boulogne; (7 Aug.) Hard Times published in one volume; (Dec.) reads A Christmas Carol in Reading, Sherborne, and Bradford. Reform of the Civil Service. France and Britain join Turkey against Russia in the Crimean War; battles of Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman and siege of Sebastopol; Florence Nightingale goes to Scutari. Patmore, The Angel in the House, i (completed 1862); Tennyson, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’; H. D. Thoreau, Walden
1855 (Feb.) Meets Maria Winter (née Beadnell) again; (27 Mar.) reads A Christmas Carol in Ashford, Kent; (June) directs and acts in Collins’s The Lighthouse at Tavistock House; family stays in Folkestone, where CD reads A Christmas Carol on 5 Oct.; (15 Oct.) settles family in Paris; (1 Dec.) monthly serialization of Little Dorrit begins; (Dec.) reads A Christmas Carol at Peterborough and Sheffield. Lord Palmerston PM. Newspaper tax abolished. Daily Telegraph, first London penny newspaper, founded. Fall of Sebastopol. 1855–6: G. J. Mendel discovers laws of heredity. Charlotte Brontë and Mary Russell Mitford die.
R. Browning, Men and Women; Gaskell, North and South; Longfellow, Hiawatha; Tennyson, Maud and Other Poems; Thackeray, The Newcomes, The Rose and the Ring; A. Trollope, The Warden; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
1856 (Mar.) Buys Gad’s Hill Place, Kent; (29 Apr.) family returns from Paris; ( June–Sept.) family stays in Boulogne. End of Crimean War. Britain annexes Oudh; Sir Henry Bessemer patents his steel-making process. Synthetic colours invented. Henry Irving’s first stage appearance. National Gallery founded in London.
Mrs Craik (Dinah Maria Mulock), John Halifax, Gentleman; Flaubert, Madame Bovary
1857 ( Jan.) Directs and acts in Collins’s The Frozen Deep at Tavistock House; (13 Feb.) moves to Gad’s Hill Place; (30 May) Little Dorrit published in one volume; Walter leaves for service with the East India Company; ( June–July) visited by Hans Andersen; gives three public readings of A Christmas Carol; ( July–Aug.) performances of The Frozen Deep in London and, with Ellen Ternan, her sister, and mother in the cast, in Manchester. Divorce courts established in England. Arnold becomes professor of poetry at Oxford. Museum--later, the Victoria and Albert Museum—opened in South Kensington. Beginning of Indian Mutiny; siege and relief of Lucknow.
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal; C. Brontë, The Professor (posth.); E. B. Browning, Aurora Leigh; Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë; Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays; Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; A. Trollope, Barchester Towers
1858 (19 Jan.; 26 Mar; 15 Apr.) Reads A Christmas Carol for charity; (29 Apr.–22 July) series of 17 public readings; (May) separation from Catherine; (7 and 12 June) publishes ‘personal’ statement about it in The Times and Household Words; (Aug.) Reprinted Pieces published; (Aug.–Nov.) first provincial reading tour, extending to Ireland and Scotland (85 readings); (24 Dec.) first series of London Christmas readings begins. Derby PM. Indian Mutiny suppressed; powers of East India Company transferred to the Crown. Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India. Launch of I. K. Brunel’s Great Eastern. Darwin and A. R. Wallace give joint paper on evolution. R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island; Clough, Amours de Voyage; Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life; A. Trollope, Doctor Thorne
1859 (30 Apr.) Begins to edit All the Year Round in which A Tale of Two Cities appears weekly till 26 November; (28 May) final number of Household Words; (Oct.) gives 14 readings on second provincial tour; (21 Nov.) A Tale of Two Cities published in one volume; (24 Dec.) begins series of three London Christmas readings. Palmerston PM. Franco-Austrian War: Austrians defeated at Solferino. War of Italian Liberation. The abolitionist John Brown hanged for treason at Charlestown, Virginia. Thomas de Quincey, Leigh Hunt, and Lord Macaulay die. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; Eliot, Adam Bede; Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám; J. S. Mill, On Liberty; Samuel Smiles, Self-Help; Tennyson, Idylls of the King
1860 (17 July) Katey marries Charles Collins; (27 July) CD’s brother Alfred dies, at 38; (21 Aug.) sells Tavistock House; (Oct.) settles permanently at Gad’s Hill; (1 Dec.) weekly serialization of Great Expectations begins in All the Year Round, continuing till 3 Aug. 1861. Abraham Lincoln elected US president; Carolina secedes from the Union.
Collins, The Woman in White; Eliot, The Mill on the Floss; Faraday, Various Forces of Matter. Boucicault’s The Colleen Bawn acted
1861 (Mar.–Apr.) Series of 6 London readings; (6 July) Great Expectations published in three volumes; (Oct.–Jan. 1862) gives 46 readings on third provincial tour; (19 Nov.) Charley marries Elizabeth (‘Bessie’) Evans: CD refuses to be present. Abolition of Paper Tax. Prince Albert dies. Victor Emmanuel becomes King of Italy. Serfdom abolished in Russia. Outbreak of American Civil War. E. B. Browning and A. H. Clough die.
Mrs Isabella Mary Beeton, Book of Household Management; Eliot, Silas Marner; J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism; F. T. Palgrave, The Golden Treasury; Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth; A. Trollope, Framley Parsonage; Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne
1862 (Feb.–May) Exchanges Gad’s Hill Place for a house in London but also uses rooms at the office of All the Year Round; (Mar.–June) London readings; (June–Oct.) makes several visits to France; (Oct.) settles Mamie and her aunt, Georgina Hogarth, in Paris; (Dec.) returns to Gad’s Hill for Christmas. Famine among Lancashire cotton workers. Bismarck becomes Chancellor of Prussia. Thoreau dies.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret; Hugo, Les Misérables; Meredith, Modern Love; Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems; Herbert Spencer, First Principles; Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
1863 ( Jan.) Gives 3 readings for charity at British Embassy in Paris; (Feb. and Aug.) makes further visits to France; (Mar.–May) London readings; (13 Sept.) Elizabeth Dickens dies; (31 Dec.) Walter dies in Calcutta, India, aged 22. Beginning of work on London underground railway. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; emancipation of US slaves. Thackeray and Frances Trollope die.
Eliot, Romola; Margaret Oliphant, Salem Chapel
1864 (1 May) Monthly serialization of Our Mutual Friend begins; (27 June–6 July) probably in France; (Nov.) in France. Karl Marx organizes first Socialist International in London. Louis Pasteur publishes his theory of germs as the cause of disease. International Red Cross founded. John Clare, W. S. Landor, R. S. Surtees, and Hawthorne die. Sheridan Le Fanu, Uncle Silas; Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua; Tennyson, Enoch Arden and Other Poems; Trollope, The Small House at Allington, Can You Forgive Her?
1865 (Feb.–June) Three trips to France; (Feb.–Apr.) first attack of lameness from swollen left foot; (29 May) sees Alfred off to Australia; (9 June) returning from France with Ellen Ternan and her mother, is in fatal railway accident at Staplehurst, Kent; (Sept.) visit to France; (20 Oct.) Our Mutual Friend published in two volumes. Russell PM. William Booth founds Christian Mission in Whitechapel, known from 1878 as the Salvation Army. Completion of transatlantic cable. End of American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln assassinated. Elizabeth Gaskell dies. Arnold, Essays in Criticism, First Series; Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
1866 (Apr.–June) Readings in London and the provinces; ( June) CD’s brother Augustus Dickens dies in Chicago, aged 38. Derby PM. Second Reform Bill. Fenians active in Ireland: Habeas Corpus suspended. Elizabeth Garrett opens dispensary for women. Dr T. J. Barnardo opens home for destitute children in London’s East End. Peacock and John Keble die. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment; Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical; Gaskell, Wives and Daughters (posth., unfinished); Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, First Series
1867 ( Jan.–May) Readings in England and Ireland; (Nov.) begins American reading tour in Boston; (Dec.) No Thoroughfare, written jointly with Collins, published in All the Year Round. Fenian outrages in England. Second Reform Act. Factory Act. Joseph Lister practises antiseptic surgery. Building of Royal Albert Hall commenced.
Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’, ‘Thyrsis’, in New Poems; Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution; Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt; Karl Marx, Das Kapital, i; Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset; Emile Zola, Thérèse Raquin
1868 (22 Apr.) Sails home from New York, having cancelled planned readings in the USA and Canada; (26 Sept.) Plorn sails to Australia to join Alfred; (Oct.) Harry enters Trinity College, Cambridge; CD begins Farewell Reading Tour; CD’s brother Fred dies, aged 48. Disraeli PM; Gladstone PM. Trades’ Union Congress founded. Basutoland annexed. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women; Collins, The Moonstone; Queen Victoria, Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands
1869 (5 Jan.) Introduces ‘Sikes and Nancy’ into his repertoire; (22 Apr.) serious illness forces CD to break off reading tour after 74 readings. Girton College for Women founded. Suez Canal opened.
Arnold, Culture and Anarchy; R. D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone; R. Browning, The Ring and the Book; J. S. Mill, On the Subjection of Women; Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace; Trollope, Phineas Finn, He Knew He Was Right; Paul Verlaine, Fêtes galantes
1870 ( Jan.– Mar.) Farewell readings in London; (9 Mar.) received by Queen Victoria; (1 Apr.) first of six completed numbers of The Mystery of Edwin Drood issued; ( 9 June) dies, aged 58, following a cerebral haemorrhage, at Gad’s Hill; (14 June) buried in Westminster Abbey. Gladstone’s Irish Land Act. Married Women’s Property Act gives wives the right to their own earnings. Elementary Education Act for England and Wales. Outbreak of Franco-Prussian War: Napoleon III defeated and exiled; siege of Paris (till 1871).
E. C. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable; D. G. Rossetti, Poems