1795 4 December: born at Ecclefechan
1806–9 Attends Annan Academy
1814–18 Schoolteaching at Annan and Kirkcaldy
1817 Gives up intention to enter ministry
1818–19 Returns to Edinburgh, begins studying German, and contributes to the Edinburgh Encyclopædia (1820–3)
1821 Meets Jane Welsh
1822 Tutors the Bullers until 1824; reviews Goethe’s Faust for the New Edinburgh Review, and translates Legendre’s Elements of Geometry (1824)
1824 Visits London and Paris; begins correspondence with Goethe; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
1825 Life of Friedrich Schiller
1826 17 October: marries
1827 German Romance
1828 Moves to Craigenputtoch, ‘Burns’ and ‘Goethe’
1829 ‘Voltaire’ and ‘Signs of the Times’
1830 Begins writing Sartor Resartus, ‘Thoughts on History’, and writes lost translation of Saint-Simon’s Nouveau Christianisme
1831 Stays in London until March 1832, meets John Stuart Mill, and is unable to arrange for publication of Sartor; ‘The Nibelungen Lied’ and ‘Characteristics’
1832 22 January: death of his father; ‘Biography’ and ‘Boswell’s Life of Johnson’
1833 ‘Diderot’ and ‘Count Cagliostro’; visit from Emerson; Sartor Resartus serialized in Fraser’s Magazine (November 1833–August 1834)
1834 10 June: moves to 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea. Begins The French Revolution. November–December: writes ‘The Diamond Necklace’
1835 6 March: destruction of the first volume of The French Revolution while in Mill’s possession. Rewritten with great effort by August
1836 April: finishes second volume of The French Revolution; Sartor Resartus published in Boston
1837 The French Revolution finished, revised, and published by the end of May; ‘Mirabeau’, ‘The Diamond Necklace’, and ‘Parliamentary History of the French Revolution’
1838 First British edition of Sartor Resartus; first American edition of Critical and Miscellaneous Essays; ‘Scott’; April: Lectures on the Revolutions of Modern Europe (various lectures are given, 1837–40)
1839 ‘On the Sinking of the Vengeur’; first British edition of the Essays; Chartism
1840 Begins work for the foundation of the London Library (1841), and attention turns to the Cromwellian period
1841 On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
1843 Past and Present; continues work on Cromwell
1845 Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches
1848 Articles on France and Ireland
1849 First meets James Anthony Froude, his future biographer; tour in Ireland; ‘Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question’
1850 Latter-Day Pamphlets
1851 Life of Sterling, 4–7 October; ‘Excursion in Paris’, published in Last Words (1892)
1854 Turns to writing a biography of Frederick the Great
1857 May: death of Harriet Lady Ashburton, after long friendship and consequent jealousy of Jane Welsh Carlyle
1858–65 History of Frederick the Great, vols 1 and 2 (1858), vol. 3 (1863), vol. 4 (1864), vols 5 and 6 (1865)
1866 Inaugural Address as Rector of Edinburgh University; Jane Welsh Carlyle’s death, 21 April
1867 Shooting Niagara: and After?; continues writing of The Reminiscences (1881) followed by collecting and editing the Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (1883)
1875 Early Kings of Norway and The Portraits of John Knox
1881 5 February: death