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Life |
Historical and Cultural Background |
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1857 |
Born 30 July on the Wisconsin frontier, the sixth of twelve children of Thomas and Kari Veblen who immigrated to America from Norway in 1847. |
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1860 |
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Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 3rd edn. |
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1861 |
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Start of the American Civil War |
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1863 |
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Emigration Proclamation signed. Battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. |
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1865 |
Veblen family moves further westward into the Minnesota territory. |
Union victory in the Civil War. Assassination of President Lincoln. |
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1874 |
Taken from the family farm to be enrolled in Carleton College Academy. |
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1867 |
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Custer’s last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn. |
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1880s |
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Spread of Social Darwinism led by Herbert Spencer that encourages no-holds-barred competition in the business world. |
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1880 |
Earns BA from Carleton College; teaches mathematics at Monoma Academy, Madison, Wisconsin, for one year until the school closed down. |
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1881–4 |
After transferring to Yale University, he receives his Ph.D. in philosophy, but—as an agnostic—is unable to find a job in an academic field strongly linked to theology. |
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Accompanies elder brother Andrew to Johns Hopkins University for one semester but is denied the scholarship he needs to continue his studies in philosophy. |
Henry James, Washington Square |
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1884 |
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Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
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1886 |
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Haymarket Riot in Chicago, a random bombing incident that resulted in several deaths
and concluded with trials, prison sentences, and executions—representing increased
anger of the lower classes and the fears of the general population over class unrest. |
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1887 |
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Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Societies |
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1888 |
Marries Ellen Rolfe and moves in with her family in Iowa; lacking employment, is considered a ne’er-do-well by both the Rolfes and the Veblens. |
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000–1887 |
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1889 |
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Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth |
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1890 |
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William James’s The Principles of Psychology theorizes how instincts, habits, and our unconscious impulses shape human behaviour. |
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1891 |
Enrols at Cornell University as a student under Professor J. L. Laughlin; receives a second Ph.D. in economics. |
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1892–1906 |
Lecturer in economics when he follows Laughlin to the University of Chicago newly endowed by funds given by John D. Rockefeller. |
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1893 |
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Columbian Exposition in Chicago, site of the White City designed by Daniel Burnham in celebration of the ‘discovery’ of America in 1492; features popular displays of anthropological and technological wonders. |
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America plunged into the latest in a series of financial panics, following those of 1873–7 and 1882–5. |
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1849 |
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Founding of National American Women Suffrage Association; march by Coxey’s Army of
the unemployed to Washington DC; violent labour upheavals including the Pullman Strike;
Franz Boas as curator of Chicago’s Field Museum furthers new anthropological studies;
Lester F. Ward advances studies in the new sociology. |
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1895 |
Continues work on The Theory of the Leisure Class begun in 1891. |
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Woman’s Bible |
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1896 |
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Presidential campaign won by William McKinley, backed by business interests. |
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1898 |
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National war fever aroused by start of the Spanish-American War in Cuba, militaristic
moves that spread across the Pacific to the Philippines and China. |
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1899 |
Publication of The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of the Evolution of Institutions, title later changed to The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. |
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1900 |
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Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie |
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1901–9 |
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Progressive Era ‘muckrakers’ protest against social evils in the press; President Theodore Roosevelt attacks the Trusts; publication of Frank Norris’s The Octopus and The Pit and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle—exposés of business greed and corruption; Henry James’s The American Scene examines social consequences of the expenditure of great wealth. |
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Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery |
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1903 |
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Lester Frank Ward, Pure Sociology; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk |
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1905 |
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Albert Einstein submits his first paper on the special theory of relativity. |
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1906–9 |
Teaches at Stanford University; divorced by Ellen Rolfe in 1906; dismissed from Stanford for ‘personal affairs’. |
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1906 |
Turned down for position as head librarian at the Library of Congress; rejected by Harvard University for a faculty post; dismissed by the University of Chicago over scandals involving relations with various women. |
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1911–18 |
Teaches at the University of Missouri. |
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1911 |
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Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management |
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1914 |
Marries Anne Fessenden Bradley, divorcee with two daughters; increasing problems with ill health; publication of The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts. |
Start of First World War between Germany and the Allies (France and Great Britain). |
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1915 |
Publication of Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution. |
Albert Einstein paper on the general theory of relativity |
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1917 |
Publication of An Enquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of its Perpetration. |
The United States enters the First World War. |
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Works at the Food Administration Bureau during Woodrow Wilson’s administration before moving to New York city as contributing editor of The Dial; rise in power of labour unions (e.g. IWW), reflected by Veblen’s increasingly mordant attacks against vested business interests; publication of The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. |
Posthumous publication of Henry Adams’s The Education of Henry Adams, analysis of the roles of finance, evolution, technology, and the New Woman in American society. |
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1919 |
Publication of The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation and Other Essays, and The Vested Interests and the State of the Industrial Arts; title later changed to The Vested Interests and the Common Man; teaches at the New School for Social Research in New York. |
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1920 |
Anne Fassenden Bradley dies; Veblen adrift and supported by funds from friends. |
Nineteenth Amendment provides for women’s suffrage. |
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1921 |
Publication of The Engineers and the Price System. |
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1922 |
Leaves his teaching post at the New School; secures no further employment. |
James Joyce, Ulysses |
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1923 |
Publication of Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America. |
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1925 |
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F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby |
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1926 |
Moves back to California to live as a recluse in a mountain cabin near Palo Alto. |
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Dies on 3 August. |
Wall Street Crash on ‘Black Friday’ (29 October) begins the decade-long period of
the Great Depression. |