| DATE | AUTHOR’S LIFE | LITERARY CONTEXT |
| 1789 | Erasmus Darwin: Botanic Garden. | |
| 1793 | ||
| 1794 | Erasmus Darwin: Zoonomia | |
| (to 1796). | ||
| 1798 | Malthus: An Essay on the | |
| Principle of Population. | ||
| 1799–1804 | ||
| 1802 | Paley: Natural Theology. | |
| 1807 | Humboldt: Voyages aux régions | |
| equinoxiales du nouveau continent. | ||
| 1809 | Born 9 February in Shrewsbury, son of Dr Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood, grandson of Erasmus Darwin the scientist, doctor, poet and polymath, and Josiah Wedgwood the potter. | Lamarck: Philosophie zoologique. Goethe: Elective Affinities. |
| 1811 | Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility. | |
| Shelley: The Necessity of Atheism. | ||
| 1812 | Byron: Childe Harold Cantos 1 & 2. | |
| Hegel: Logic (to 1816). | ||
| 1814 | Lamarck: Histoire des animaux | |
| sans vertèbres (to 1822). | ||
| Wordsworth: The Excuisian. | ||
| 1815 | ||
| 1816 | Jane Austen: Emma. | |
| Scott: Old Mortality. | ||
| 1817 | Mother died. | Georges Cuvier: Le Règne animal distribué d’après son organisation. |
| Keats: Poems. | ||
| Coleridge: Biographia Literaria. | ||
| 1818 | Sent to Shrewsbury School. | Scott: Heart of Midlothian. |
| Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire: Philosophie anatomique (to 1820). | ||
| Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. | ||
| Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey, Persuasion. |
French Revolution.
Britain declares war on France.
Naturalist Baron von Humboldt travels in South America.
Sir John Moore dies at Corunna; allied victories in the Peninsula; Napoleon captures Vienna.
Prince of Wales made Regent (George III recognized as insane). Bread riots in Nottingham; Luddite uprisings begin.
Napoleon invades Russia. Tory government under Lord Liverpool in Britain (to 1827).
Napoleon abdicates. Congress of Vienna (to 1815).
Napoleon’s Hundred Days. Battle of Waterloo. Second Bourbon restoration.
Corn Laws in Britain.
Spa Field riot. Economic depression. Holy Alliance between Russia, Prussia and Austria to preserve European status quo.
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Peterloo massacre; Six Acts. Birth of Queen Victoria. Factory Act restricts child labour.
Death of George III; accession of George IV. Trial of Queen Caroline. Repeal of Combination Acts. Westminster Review founded.
Catholic Emancipation. Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’.
Death of George IV; accession of William IV. The ‘Bourgeois Revolution’ in France: flight of Charles X and accession of Louis-Philippe.
The first great railway, between Liverpool and Manchester, opened.
First Parliamentary Reform Act.
New Factory Act introduces further reforms. Start of Oxford Movement;
Newman launches ‘Tracts for the Times’. Abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
New Poor Law abolishes outdoor relief. Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Peel’s Tamworth Manifesto. Fox Talbot: first photographic negative.
Queen Victoria comes to the throne. Electric telegraph.
Chartists demand reform, including universal suffrage. Brunel’s ‘Great Western’.
Daguerrotype photograph. Faraday’s theory of electromagnetism.
Marriage of the Queen to Prince Albert.
Newman’s Tract XC. Income tax introduced. ‘Young England’ Movement.
Joule’s theory of thermodynamics.
Irish potato famine.
Repeal of the Corn Laws under Sir Robert Peel. Railway expansion.
Revolutions in Europe; Chartist unrest in England. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded.
Mazzini’s short-lived Roman republic falls to French army. Other European revolutions suppressed and period of reaction follows. Don Pacifico incident. Public Libraries Act.
Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. Second census records a population of 17,927,609 in England and Wales as compared with 8,872,980 in 1801. Foundation of Royal School of Mines – first state institution for scientific research and teaching.
Louis Napoleon proclaimed Emperor of France.
Crimean War (to 1856). British Medical Association founded. Dissenters allowed to matriculate at Oxford.
Palmerston becomes Prime Minister (to 1858).
Indian Mutiny. Matrimonial Causes Act.
First transatlantic cable laid between Ireland and Newfoundland. Jews admitted to Parliament.
Palmerston’s second ministry (to 1865).
Garibaldi and ‘The Thousand’ conquer Sicily. Death of Prince Albert. Victor Emmanuel becomes first king of a united Italy. Emancipation of the serfs in Russia. American Civil War (to 1865). Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism.
Pasteur publishes theory of germs causing disease. First Women’s Suffrage Committee formed in Manchester.
Second Reform Bill brought in by Disraeli. First antiseptic operation performed by Joseph Lister.
First annual Trades Union Congress held in Manchester. Gladstone becomes Prime Minister (December).
Suez Canal opened. Emily Davies founds a women’s college at Hitchin, which moves to Girton, Cambridge in 1872.
Married Women’s Property Act. Education Act. Civil service in England thrown open to competitive examination. Franco-Prussian War (to 1871).
Bismarck becomes Chancellor of German Empire. Abolition of religious Tests in the Universities.
Vote by secret ballot at Parliamentary elections imposed by law. Disraeli becomes Prime Minister. Remington typewriter.
Queen assumes title of Empress of India. Bell patents telephone.
