In assembling this timeline, the authors are indebted to the work of other scholars, notably Duncan Wu, in his ‘A Romantic Timeline 1770–1851’, in Romanticism: An Anthology, 4th edn (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), pp. li–lxxxix.
| Date | Current event | Literary or artistic landmark |
| 1743 | 20 June: Anna Laetitia Barbauld (née Aikin) is born 20 May: Toussaint Louverture, Haitian revolutionary is born |
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| 1744 | 15 March: France declares war on Great Britain | |
| 1745 | 19 August: Jacobite rising of 1745 begins at Glenfinnan in Scotland 4 December: Jacobite rising: The Scottish Jacobite army reaches Derby, England, causing panic in London; two days later it begins retreat 18 December: Jacobite rising: A Jacobite victory at the Clifton Moor Skirmish 23 December: Jacobite rising: A Jacobite victory at the Battle of Inverurie |
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| 1749 | 4 May: Charlotte Smith (née Turner) is born | |
| 1751 | 31 March: Frederick, Prince of Wales dies and is succeeded by his son, the future George III of the United Kingdom | |
| 1752 | June: Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity | |
| 1753 | 7 July: Royal assent to the Jewish Naturalization Act (British Parliament extends citizenship to Jews) | 15 July: Ann Yearsley (née Cromartie) is baptized |
| 1754 | 25 March: The Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753 comes into force in England and Wales, placing marriage in that jurisdiction on a statutory basis for the first time | |
| 1755 | 15 April: A Dictionary of the English Language is published by Samuel Johnson | |
| 1756 | 15 May: Britain declares war on France, officially starting the Seven Years War (involving many world powers, but the principal opponents were France and Great Britain) | |
| 1757 | 23 June: Battle of Plassey: 3,000 troops serving with the British East India Company defeat Nawab of Bengal’s army and allies | 28 November: William Blake is born |
| 1758 | 27 November: Mary Robinson (née Darby) is born | |
| 1759 | 1 May: Josiah Wedgwood founds the Wedgwood pottery company in England | 25 January: Robert Burns is born |
| 1762 | 9 July: Catherine II becomes empress of Russia | |
| 1763 | 10 February: Seven Years War ends | |
| 1765 | 22 March: The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Stamp Act, imposing the first direct tax levied from Great Britain on the American colonies 24 March: Great Britain passes the Quartering Act, requiring the American colonies to house British troops |
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| 1766 | 18 March: American Revolution: The British Parliament repeals the unpopular Stamp Act. The Declaratory Act claims the right to tax colonies | |
| 1768 | The first voyage (of three) of James Cook begins; the Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the South Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour takes place from 1768 to 1771 | |
| 1770 | 7 May: Marie Antoinette marries Louis Auguste (later King Louis XVI of France) | 7 April: William Wordsworth is born |
| 1771 | 25 December: Dorothy Wordsworth is born | |
| 1772 | Second voyage of James Cook begins (1772–5) | 21 October: Samuel Taylor Coleridge is born |
| 1773 | December 16: Boston Tea Party, where a group of American colonists trespass onto ships owned by the East India Company and dump their cargo of tea into Boston Harbour in order to protest against British tax policies | |
| 1774 | Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts: British Parliament pass four acts ending self‐governance of Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party | 12 August: Robert Southey is born 29 September: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, is published |
| 1775 | American Revolution begins James Watt builds a successful prototype of a steam engine |
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| 1776 | James Cook’s third and final voyage begins | |
| 1778 | 10 April: William Hazlitt is born | |
| 1779 | 14 February: Captain James Cook dies on the Sandwich Islands 21 June: Spain declares war on England, coming out on the side of the United States in the Revolutionary War |
28 May: Thomas Moore is born |
| 1780 | June: Gordon Riots (anti‐Catholic) in London | 25 September: Charles Maturin is born |
| 1781 | Immanuel Kant publishes the Critique of Pure Reason | |
| 1783 | 3 September: Treaty of Paris: A treaty between the United States and Great Britain is signed in Paris, ending the American Revolutionary War; and treaties are signed between Britain, France, and Spain at Versailles ending hostilities with the Franco‐Spanish Alliance. The treaty formally recognised America’s status as a free nation 19 December: William Pitt becomes Prime Minister (serving 1783–1801 and 1804–6) |
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| 1784 | June: Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets are published 19 October: Leigh Hunt is born 13 December: Samuel Johnson dies |
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| 1785 | June: Ann Yearsley publishes Poems, on Several Occasions August: William Cowper publishes The Task 15 August: Thomas de Quincey is born 18 October: Thomas Love Peacock is born |
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| 1786 | 26 January: Benjamin Robert Haydon is born 7 June: William Beckford’s Vathek is published, unauthorized 31 July: Robert Burns publishes Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect |
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| 1787 | 22 May: Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade is founded by Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, with support from John Wesley, Josiah Wedgwood, and others 17 September: American constitution drafted and signed |
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| 1788 | 7 June: Grenoble, France: Day of the Tiles (agitation against the government) George III’s mental health breaks down |
22 January: George Gordon Noel Byron is born |
| 1789 | 4 February: George Washington is elected the first President of the United States 14 July: Storming of the Bastille (French Revolution) |
William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence and The Book of Thel |
| 1790 | 8 January: George Washington delivers the inaugural State of the Union address 11 February: Two Quaker delegates petition the United States Congress for the abolition of slavery 17 April: Benjamin Franklin dies 14 July: Louis XVI swears oath of loyalty to the new French constitution (establishing constitutional monarchy) October: Slaves revolt in Haiti (the Ogé Rebellion) |
November: Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France; Mary Wollstonecraft anonymously publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Men |
| 1791 | French royal family are ordered to remain in Paris, try to flee France, but are prevented July–August: Slave riots in San Domingo, Haiti October: Wolfe Tone founds the United Irishmen to fight for Irish nationalism |
Anna Laetitia Barbauld publishes ‘An Epistle to William Wilberforce’ Thomas Paine publishes The Rights of Man (Part 1) Robert Burns publishes Tam O’Shanter Ann Radcliffe publishes The Romance of the Forest 5 December: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies |
| 1792 | 20 April: France declares war on Austria and Prussia (beginning French Revolutionary Wars) 21 May: Thomas Paine is charged with sedition 10 August: Mob storms royal palace and Louis XVI of France and family are arrested and taken into custody Thomas Paine escapes to France 21 September: France declares itself a republic December: Trial of Thomas Paine for seditious libel |
Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Thomas Paine publishes The Rights of Man (Part 2) 4 August: Percy Bysshe Shelley is born |
| 1793 | 21 January: Louis XVI is guillotined 1 February: France declares war on 1st Coalition of Austria, Prussia, Britain, Holland, and Spain 16 October: Marie Antoinette is executed 28 December: Thomas Paine is arrested in France |
14 February: William Godwin publishes Political Justice 13 July: John Clare is born 25 September: Felicia Hemans (née Browne) is born |
| 1794 | 4 February: France abolishes slavery in its territories (before reintroducing it in 1802) 7 May: Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (enacted on 16 May) 12 May: Radicals (including John Thelwall on 13 May) arrested 28 July: Robespierre is executed; end of the Terror 6 November: Paine released from prison November–December: All arrested radicals are found not guilty |
10 May: Ann Radcliffe publishes The Mysteries of Udolpho 12 May: William Godwin publishes Caleb Williams |
| 1795 | 18 January: Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam. William V, Prince of Orange, flees the country 8 April: The Prince of Wales marries Caroline |
31 [or 29] October: John Keats is born December: Robert Southey publishes Joan of Arc |
| 1796 | 9 March: Marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte and Joséphine de Beauharnais April: Napoleon begins Italian campaign 23 June: Peace of Bologna ends Napoleon’s first successful invasion of the Papal States 17 November: Catherine the Great dies |
Matthew Lewis publishes The Monk 16 April: Samuel Taylor Coleridge publishes his first volume, Poems 21 July: Robert Burns dies December: Ann Yearsley publishes The Rural Lyre |
| 1797 | 4 March: John Adams becomes second President of the United States 16 April–15 May: Royal Navy mutinies |
30 August: Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) born 10 September: Mary Wollstonecraft dies December: Ann Radcliffe publishes The Italian |
| 1798 | Napoleon captures Switzerland, Rome, and Naples 23 May: Uprising of the United Irishmen 1 July: Napoleon invades Egypt 1 August: Battle of the Nile. Great Britain defeats the French forces |
Thomas Malthus publishes Essay on Population William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads anonymously |
| 1799 | 9 November: Napoleon becomes First Consul 14 December: George Washington dies |
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| 1800 | January: Maria Edgeworth publishes Castle Rackrent anonymously 25 April: William Cowper dies 20 November: Mary Robinson publishes Lyrical Tales 26 December: Mary Robinson dies |
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| 1801 | 28 January: The governor of Spanish San Domingo surrenders his territory to Toussaint Louverture. Louverture forms a central assembly to write a constitution that abolishes slavery on the island and begins social reform 16 February: Pitt the Younger resigns as Prime Minister and is succeeded by Henry Addington 23 March: Tsar Paul I of Russia is assassinated. He is succeeded by his son, Alexander I June: General Enclosure Act 15 July: Napoleon signs a Concordat with Pope Pius VII |
Lyrical Ballads (1800) published under William Wordsworth’s name |
| 1802 | 27 March: The Treaty of Amiens between France and Great Britain ends the war (until May 1803) August: Napoleon becomes Life Consul of France |
24 February: Walter Scott publishes Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 18 April: Erasmus Darwin dies 14 August: Letitia Elizabeth Landon is born |
| 1803 | 7 April: Toussaint Louverture dies in prison 18 May: Great Britain declares war on France July: Robert Emmet leads a failed uprising in Ireland 20 September: Robert Emmet is executed |
30 June: Thomas Lovell Beddoes is born 15 August: Warrant issued for the arrest of William Blake for sedition |
| 1804 | 21 February: First voyage of the steam locomotive (by Richard Trevithick) 10 May: William Pitt’s second term begins 18 May: Napoleon proclaimed emperor 2 December: Napoleon’s coronation ceremony |
11–12 January: Blake tried for sedition and acquitted 12 February: Immanuel Kant dies 4 July: Nathaniel Hawthorne is born |
| 1805 | 4 March: Thomas Jefferson begins second term as President 26 May: Napoleon crowned King of Italy 21 October: Battle of Trafalgar (Lord Nelson is mortally wounded) 2 December: Napoleon defeats Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz |
9 May: Friedrich Schiller dies. 19 July: William Hazlitt publishes An Essay on the Principles of Human Action |
| 1806 | 23 January: William Pitt dies 6 August: Holy Roman Empire is dissolved 14 October: Napoleon defeats Prussian forces at Jena 21 November: Berlin Decree: Napoleon declares the blockade of Great Britain |
6 March: Elizabeth Barrett Browning is born 20 May: John Stuart Mill is born |
| 1807 | 25 March: Abolition of the Slave Trade Act receives royal assent, thereby abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire, but it did not abolish slavery itself | January: Charles and Mary Lamb publish Tales from Shakespeare February: Charlotte Smith’s Beachy Head is posthumously published 8 May: William Wordsworth publishes Poems, in Two Volumes |
| 1808 | January: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves comes into effect in the United States (passed 2 March 1807) 2 May: Peninsular War begins (lasting until 1814) where Napoleon’s empire and the allied powers of Spain, Britain, and Portugal fought for control of the Iberian Peninsula |
Thomas Moore publishes Irish Melodies (with many editions published between 1808 and 1834) 3 January: Leigh and John Hunt found The Examiner 22 February: Walter Scott publishes Marmion May: Felicia Dorothea Browne (later Hemans) publishes her first book of poetry 1 June: Coleridge publishes The Friend 20 September: Covent Garden theatre burns down December: Goethe publishes Faust, Part One; Hannah More publishes Coelebs in Search of a Wife |
| 1809 | February: Quarterly Review is founded 12 February: Abraham Lincoln is born 4 March: James Madison becomes 4th US President 13 March: Byron enters the House of Lords May: Napoleon takes Vienna 17 May: Papal States annexed to France 10 June: Pope Pius VII excommunicates Napoleon July: Napoleon arrests and imprisons Pope Pius VII |
19 January: Edgar Allan Poe is born 12 February: Charles Darwin is born March: Byron publishes English Bards and Scotch Reviewers 31 May: Joseph Haydn dies 8 June: Thomas Paine dies 2 July: Byron and John Cam Hobhouse begin their Grand Tour 6 August: Alfred Tennyson born 18 September: Covent Garden theatre reopens |
| 1810 | 9 April: Sir Francis Burdett imprisoned for libel 15 June: William Cobbett found guilty of treasonous libel |
1 March: Frédéric Chopin is born 24 March: Mary Tighe dies 8 May: Walter Scott publishes The Lady of the Lake |
| 1811 | 5 February: Prince of Wales made head of state following the recognition of the king as insane March: Luddite riots |
18 July: William Makepeace Thackeray is born 22 October: Franz Liszt is born 29 August: Shelley elopes with Harriet Westbrook 30 October: Jane Austen publishes Sense and Sensibility |
| 1812 | 11 May: Spencer Perceval (Prime Minister) assassinated 18 June: America declares war on Great Britain 22 June: Napoleon declares war on Russia 9 July: William Cobbett released from prison September: Napoleon’s forces enter Moscow 19 October: Napoleon’s forces retreat from Moscow |
January: Anna Laetitia Barbauld publishes Eighteen Hundred and Eleven 7 February: Charles Dickens is born 10 March: Byron publishes cantos 1 and 2 of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 22 March: Leigh Hunt’s article on the Prince Regent is published in The Examiner 7 May: Robert Browning is born |
| 1813 | 17 March: Prussia declares war on France 12 August: Austria declares war on France 27 August: Napoleon’s final victory at Dresden 19 October: Napoleon defeated at Leipzig 9 November: Metternich (the Austrian Empire) offers a peace settlement to Napoleon |
23 January: Coleridge’s Remorse opens at Drury Lane theatre to plaudits 28 January: Jane Austen publishes Pride and Prejudice 3 February: Leigh Hunt sentenced to two years for libel 5 May: Søren Kierkegaard is born 18 May: Wordsworth becomes the Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland 22 May: Richard Wagner is born June: Percy Bysshe Shelley privately publishes Queen Mab 11 August: Henry James Pye (poet laureate) dies October: Madame de Staël publishes De l’Allemagne 4 November: Robert Southey becomes poet laureate |
| 1814 | 31 March: Allies enter Paris 10 April: Napoleon defeated and exiled to Elba 11 April: Napoleon abdicates as French emperor 24 August: British troops occupy Washington, DC November: John Walter (proprietor of The Times) introduces the steam press 24 December: American–British hostilities cease with Treaty of Ghent |
1 February: Byron publishes The Corsair March: Frances Burney publishes The Wanderer 9 May: Jane Austen publishes Mansfield Park 7 July: Walter Scott anonymously publishes Waverley 28 July: Percy Bysshe Shelley elopes with Mary Godwin to the continent, bringing Jane (Claire Clairmont) along with them 17 August: William Wordsworth publishes The Excursion 13 September: Shelley, Mary, and Jane return from the continent |
| 1815 | 8 January: Battle of New Orleans won by Americans over British forces 3 February: Leigh Hunt released from jail 1 March: Napoleon escapes from Elba 20 March: Napoleon enters Paris after escaping from Elba, beginning his ‘Hundred Days’ rule 5–12 April: Mount Tambora (in the Dutch East Indies) erupts 18 June: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo and exiled to St Helena 22 June: Napoleon abdicates, naming Napoleon II as his successor 8 July: Louis XVIII returns to Paris to claim the French throne 9 November: Sir Humphry Davy announces his invention of the Davy lamp 20 November: Napoleonic Wars end (Treaty of Paris) |
2 January: Byron marries Annabella Milbanke 24 February: Walter Scott publishes Guy Mannering 27 April: William Wordsworth publishes his collected Poems May: William Wordsworth publishes The White Doe of Rylstone 12 May: Byron appointed to sub‐committee of management at Drury Lane theatre 1 June: John Gillray dies 1 October: John Keats enrols as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital December: Jane Austen publishes Emma; Thomas Love Peacock publishes Headlong Hall |
| 1816 | 9 July: Argentina declares independence from Spain November: Spa Fields riots in London |
10 February: Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude February: Leigh Hunt publishes Rimini 21 April: Charlotte Brontë is born 25 April: Byron leaves England for the continent 2 May: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Claire Clairmont (was Jane) leave England for Geneva 4 May: Walter Scott publishes The Antiquary 5 May: John Keats publishes his first poem, ‘To Solitude’ 25 May: Byron and Shelley meet for the first time in Sécheron, near Geneva; Samuel Taylor Coleridge publishes Kubla Khan and ‘The Pains of Sleep’ 17 June: Mary Godwin begins writing Frankenstein 7 July: Richard Brinsley Sheridan dies 8 September: Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Claire Clairmont return to England 9 November: Harriet Shelley (Westbrook) commits suicide 18 November: Byron publishes Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III 30 December: Shelley marries Mary Godwin |
| 1817 | 4 March: James Monroe becomes 5th President of the United States; habeas corpus is suspended in Great Britain June: Uprisings in provinces of Great Britain 18 June: William Hone tried for publishing blasphemous material 6 November: Princess Charlotte dies in childbirth 20 December: William Hone is acquitted |
19 January: Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ in The Examiner 13 February: Robert Southey’s Wat Tyler (composed in 1794) published in an unauthorized version 14 February: William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt publish The Round Table 1 March: John Keats publishes Poems April: Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine is founded 3 July: Byron publishes Manfred 9 July: William Hazlitt publishes Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays 11 July: Samuel Taylor Coleridge publishes Biographia Literaria and Sibylline Leaves 12 July: Henry David Thoreau is born 14 July: Madame de Staël dies 18 July: Jane Austen dies December: Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are posthumously published |
| 1818 | 28 January: Habeas corpus restored 12 February: Chile proclaims its independence from Spain 17 November: Queen Charlotte dies |
1 January: Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein anonymously 11 January: Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes ‘Ozymandias’ in The Examiner 12 January: Shelley publishes The Revolt of Islam 31 January: Walter Scott publishes Rob Roy 28 February: Byron publishes Beppo 22 April–19 May: John Keats publishes Endymion 28 April: Byron publishes Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV 29 April: William Hazlitt publishes A View of the English Stage 5 May: Karl Marx is born 18 May: Charles Lamb publishes Works (in two volumes) 30 July: Emily Brontë is born November: Thomas Love Peacock publishes Nightmare Abbey |
| 1819 | 24 May: Princess Victoria is born 16 August: Peterloo Massacre of protesters by cavalry at St Peter’s Fields, Manchester 12 October: Richard Carlile tried for blasphemy, blasphemous libel, and sedition 21 November: Carlile is sentenced to six years in prison December: Simón Bolívar becomes first President of the Republic of Gran Colombia (which includes present‐day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador) |
8 February: John Ruskin is born 1 April: John Polidori publishes The Vampyre under Byron’s name 15 April: John Hamilton Reynolds publishes Peter Bell. A Lyrical Ballad 22 April: William Wordsworth publishes Peter Bell 31 May: Walt Whitman is born 15 July: Byron publishes cantos 1 and 2 of Don Juan anonymously 1 August: Herman Melville is born 14 August: William Hazlitt publishes Political Essays |
| 1820 | January: A constitutionalist military insurrection at Cádiz leads to a revolution 29 January: George III dies and George IV ascends the throne 23 February: Cato Street Conspiracy (to kill the Cabinet) in Great Britain 9 March: King Ferdinand VII of Spain accepts the new constitution, beginning the Trienio Liberal 17 August: Trial of Queen Caroline for infidelity begins 3 December: James Monroe re‐elected US President |
1 January: London Magazine starts publishing 16 January: Leigh Hunt starts publishing The Indicator; John Clare publishes Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery 17 January: Anne Brontë is born 28 January: Robert Southey publishes Poetical Works in 14 volumes June: Thomas Love Peacock publishes ‘The Four Ages of Poetry’ 1 July: John Keats publishes Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems 6 July: William Wordsworth publishes The River Duddon 14 August: Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Prometheus Unbound…, with Other Poems 17 September: Keats leaves England for Rome |
| 1821 | March: Beginning of the Greek War of Independence 5 May: Napoleon dies in exile in St Helena 24 June: Venezuela becomes independent from Spain 19 July: George IV is crowned King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 15 September: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica gain independence from Spain by the Act of Independence of Central America 28 November: Panama declares independence from Spain 1 December: The Dominican Republic declares independence from Spain |
23 February: John Keats dies 6 April: William Hazlitt publishes the first volume of Table Talk July: Percy Bysshe Shelley publishes Adonais September: John Clare publishes The Village Minstrel 1 October: Thomas de Quincey publishes Confessions of an English Opium‐Eater (part I) in London Magazine (part II is published in November) 11 November: Fyodor Dostoyevsky is born 12 December: Gustave Flaubert is born 19 December: Byron publishes Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari, and Cain: A Mystery |
| 1822 | 3 July: Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a ‘difference engine’ (a prototype of the modern computer) 12 August: Viscount Castlereagh (UK foreign secretary) commits suicide 7 September: Brazil declares its independence from Portugal 27 December: Louis Pasteur is born |
February: William Hazlitt publishes ‘The Fight’ in New Monthly Magazine 15 June: Hazlitt publishes Table Talk, volume II 8 July: Percy Bysshe Shelley dies 16 August: Shelley is cremated 14 October: The first edition of The Liberal is published (a project devised by Hunt, Shelley, and Byron) December: Charles Lamb publishes Elia 24 December: Matthew Arnold is born |
| 1823 | 5 October: Thomas Wakley founds The Lancet in London 2 December: Monroe Doctrine introduced in the United States |
February: Mary Shelley publishes Valperga 23 April: William Hazlitt publishes ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’ in The Liberal 9 May: Hazlitt publishes Liber Amoris June: Felicia Hemans publishes The Siege of Valencia 25 August: Mary Shelley returns to England with her son, Percy Florence Shelley 12 December: Hemans’s The Vespers of Palermo performed at Covent Garden theatre |
| 1824 | 16 June: Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals founded in Great Britain | 4 January: Byron lands at Missolonghi, Greece, to fight in the Greek War of Independence March: Samuel Taylor Coleridge elected a royal associate of the Royal Society of Literature 19 April: Byron dies 7 May: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor first performed June: Mary Shelley publishes her edition of Shelley’s Posthumous Poems June: James Hogg anonymously publishes Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner July: Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s The Improvisatrice, and other Poems published September: Sir Timothy Shelley suppresses publication of Shelley’s posthumous poetry 30 October: Charles Maturin dies |
| 1825 | 4 March: John Quincy Adams begins term as US President 27 September: The world’s first modern railway, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, opens in England |
11 January: William Hazlitt anonymously publishes The Spirit of the Age 9 March: Anna Laetitia Barbauld dies 16 April: Henry Fuseli dies May: Felicia Hemans publishes The Forest Sanctuary and Other Poems June: Barbauld’s niece, Lucy Aikin, publishes Barbauld’s works anonymously 7 November: Charlotte Dacre dies |
| 1826 | 1 April: Samuel Morey patents an internal combustion engine 4 July: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson die |
23 January: Mary Shelley publishes The Last Man March: William Blake publishes Job 28 April: William Hazlitt anonymously publishes The Plain Speaker |
| 1827 | 10 April: George Canning succeeds Lord Liverpool as British Prime Minister 8 August: George Canning dies |
26 March: Ludwig van Beethoven dies April: John Clare publishes The Shepherd’s Calendar, with Village Stories and Other Poems 12 August: William Blake dies 15 December: Helen Maria Williams dies |
| 1828 | 22 January: Duke of Wellington becomes Prime Minister | January: Volumes I and II of William Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte are published 16 April: Francisco Goya dies May: Felicia Hemans publishes Records of Woman 12 May: Dante Gabriel Rossetti is born 19 November: Franz Schubert dies |
| 1829 | 4 March: Andrew Jackson becomes US President April: Catholic Emancipation Act 19 June: Metropolitan Police Service in London established by Sir Robert Peel (begin patrolling on 29 September) |
December: Samuel Taylor Coleridge publishes On the Constitution of Church and State |
| 1830 | 3 February: The London Protocol establishes the full independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire 26 June: King George IV dies and is succeeded by his brother, William IV June–July: France invades Algeria 27–9 July: The July Revolution begins in France 4 October: Belgium’s provisional government declare independence 22 November: Earl Grey succeeds the Duke of Wellington as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom |
Felicia Hemans’s Songs of the Affections, with Other Poems is published May: Volumes III and IV of William Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte are published June: Effingham Wilson publishes Alfred Tennyson’s Poems, Chiefly Lyrical 18 September: William Hazlitt dies 5 December: Christina Rossetti is born 10 December: Emily Dickinson is born |
| 1831 | May–June: Merthyr Rising: Coal miners and others riot in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales for improved working conditions 8 September: The coronation of King William IV of the United Kingdom 27 December: Charles Darwin embarks on his historic voyage aboard HMS Beagle 27 December: The Christmas Rebellion begins in Jamaica |
16 March: The Hunchback of Notre‐Dame is published by Victor Hugo 11 November: Nat Turner, American slave rebel, dies 14 November: Georg Hegel dies |
| 1832 | 4 January: The Christmas Rebellion ends in Jamaica 28 February: Charles Darwin and the crew of HMS Beagle arrive at South America for the first time May: Greece is recognized as a sovereign nation 7 June: The Reform Act becomes law in the United Kingdom 3 December: Andrew Jackson is re‐elected US President |
Edward Moxon publishes The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy, is posthumously published, with a preface by Leigh Hunt Leigh Hunt, The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt, is published by subscription 27 January: Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) is born 22 March: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dies 6 June: Jeremy Bentham dies 22 July: Napoleon II of France dies 21 September: Sir Walter Scott dies December: Faust Part 2 is posthumously published |
| 1833 | 29 July: William Wilberforce dies 1 August: British Parliament passes the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, abolishing slavery in British colonies (with exceptions) 29 August: British Parliament enacts the Factory Acts, limiting child labour December: American Anti‐Slavery Society founded |
Hartley Coleridge publishes his Poems Robert Browning anonymously publishes Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession Elizabeth Barrett anonymously publishes a translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound 15 May: Edmund Kean dies 7 September: Hannah More dies |
| 1834 | 1 August: Slaves officially freed by Slavery Abolition Act 1833 14 August: British Parliament passes the Poor Law Amendment Act 16 October: Fire destroys Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) |
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poetical Works, is published Felicia Hemans publishes National Lyrics, and Songs for Music and Scenes and Hymns of Life 17 February: John Thelwall dies 24 March: William Morris is born 25 July: Samuel Taylor Coleridge dies 27 December: Charles Lamb dies 29 December: Thomas Malthus dies |
| 1835 | 7 January: HMS Beagle anchors off the Chonos Archipelago on her second voyage 18 April: Lord Melbourne succeeds Sir Robert Peel as British Prime Minister |
Robert Browning’s Paracelsus is published Thomas Moore, The Fudges in England, published William Wordsworth, Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems, published March: Mary Shelley publishes Lodore July: John Clare, The Rural Muse, published 16 May: Felicia Hemans dies 21 November: James Hogg dies |
| 1836 | 23 February–6 March: The Battle of the Alamo 2 October: Charles Darwin returns to England aboard HMS Beagle 7 December: Martin Van Buren wins United States presidential election |
March: First monthly part of Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers is published 7 April: William Godwin dies |
| 1837 | 20 June: King William IV dies 20 June: Queen Victoria accedes to the throne of the United Kingdom |
10 February: Alexander Pushkin dies 5 April: Algernon Charles Swinburne is born |
| 1838 | 28 June: Coronation of Queen Victoria 13 May: The People’s Charter, demanding universal suffrage, is presented to British Parliament (to be rejected) |
Elizabeth Barrett publishes The Seraphim, and Other Poems William Wordsworth’s The Sonnets of William Wordsworth is published 15 October: Letitia Elizabeth Landon dies |
| 1839 | First Opium Wars begin between Britain and China | January to May: The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (in four volumes), edited by Mary Shelley, is published by Edward Moxon 19 January: Paul Cézanne is born February: De Quincey publishes the first of his ‘Lake Reminiscences’ in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine 4 August: Walter Pater is born |
| 1840 | 10 February: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom marries her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe‐Coburg and Gotha 30 September: The frigate Belle‐Poule arrives in Cherbourg, bringing back the remains of Napoleon from Saint Helena to France 4 November: William Henry Harrison elected President of the United States |
Matthew Arnold publishes Alaric at Rome Robert Browning publishes Sordello William Wordsworth publishes The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth in six volumes The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, in 10 volumes, published starting in 1840 and ending in 1841 6 January: Frances Burney dies 2 June: Thomas Hardy is born 5 October: John Addington Symonds is born |
| 1841 | 26 January: Britain occupies Hong Kong 4 April: William Henry Harrison dies; he is succeeded by Vice President John Tyler (sworn in 6 April) 21 May: New Zealand becomes a British colony |
Robert Browning publishes Pippa Passes 25 February: Pierre‐Auguste Renoir is born 9 November: Edward VII of the United Kingdom is born |
| 1842 | Alfred Tennyson, Poems, is published Robert Browning publishes Dramatic Lyrics William Wordsworth, Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, is published Leigh Hunt publishes The Palfrey 11 January: William James is born 18 March: Stéphane Mallarmé is born 23 March: Stendhal dies |
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| 1843 | 7 April: The Indian Slavery Act, 1843 abolishes slavery within the territories of the East India Company | 21 March: Robert Southey dies 4 April: William Wordsworth becomes poet laureate 15 April: Henry James is born 7 June: Friedrich Hölderlin dies 16 October: Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is published |
| 1844 | 27 February: The Dominican Republic becomes independent from Haiti April: The Fleet Prison for debtors in London is closed 28 August: Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx meet for the first time 4 December: James K. Polk elected President of the United States |
Elizabeth Barrett publishes Poems Leigh Hunt publishes Imagination and Fancy 30 March: Paul Verlaine is born 28 July: Gerard Manley Hopkins is born 15 October: Friedrich Nietzsche is born 23 October: Robert Bridges is born |
| 1845 | Friedrich Engels publishes The Condition of the Working Class in England in Leipzig 26 July to 10 August: Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s steamship Great Britain makes its first transatlantic crossing from Liverpool to New York 9 September: Potato blight breaks out in Ireland, heralding the beginning of the Great Famine |
Robert Browning publishes Dramatic Romances and Lyrics Edgar Allan Poe publishes The Raven and Other Poems 10 January: Robert Browning sends Elizabeth Barrett the note that begins their courtship May: Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is published by the Boston Anti‐Slavery Society |
| 1846 | Cholera epidemic in England 14 February: James K. Polk annexes the Republic of Texas to the United States 13 May: America declares war and officially begins the Mexican–American War 15 May: Corn Laws are repealed in the United Kingdom 10 June: The California Republic declares independence from Mexico 23 September: Discovery of the planet Neptune |
Edward Lear publishes A Book of Nonsense 7 January: John Hookham Frere dies May: The Brontë sisters publish Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell 22 June: Benjamin Robert Haydon commits suicide 12 September: Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning get married |
| 1847 | 11 February: Thomas Edison is born | Christina Rossetti publishes Verses by Christina G. Rossetti Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mary Shelley, is posthumously published The Princess, by Alfred Tennyson, is published Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Poems 20 May: Mary Lamb dies 19 October: Charlotte Brontë publishes Jane Eyre (as Currer Bell) 14 December: Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë publish Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey in a three‐volume set (as Ellis Bell and Acton Bell) |
| 1848 | February: The French Second Republic is proclaimed 2 February: Mexican–American War officially ends 21 February: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto 15 March: The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 begins 10 April: Chartist ‘Monster Rally’ held in London 23 June to 26 June: The June Days Uprising in France 7 November: Zachary Taylor elected President of the United States 10 December: Prince Louis‐Napoleon Bonaparte is elected first President of the French Second Republic |
Pre‐Raphaelite Brotherhood is founded by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats is published in two volumes, edited by Richard Monckton Milnes 7 June: Paul Gauguin is born 24 September: Branwell Brontë dies October: Elizabeth Gaskell’s first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life, is anonymously published 19 December: Emily Brontë dies |
| 1849 | 8 February: The new Roman Republic is proclaimed 13 August: Hungarian Revolution fails |
Matthew Arnold publishes The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (published under ‘A’) Robert Browning publishes Poems A. H. Clough (with Thomas Burbidge) publishes Ambarvalia 6 January: Hartley Coleridge dies 6 January: Hartley Coleridge dies 26 January: Thomas Lovell Beddoes dies 22 May: Maria Edgeworth dies 28 May: Anne Brontë dies 7 October: Edgar Allan Poe dies 1 November: Wordsworth’s Poetical Works (six volumes) begins publishing De Quincey publishes ‘The English Mail‐Coach’ (anonymously) in Blackwood’s (October and December issues) |
| 1850 | 18 March: American Express founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo 9 July: President Zachary Taylor dies (Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes US President) 9 September: California becomes 31st state of the United States |
Thomas Lovell Beddoes’s Death’s Jest‐Book, or, The Fool’s Tragedy is posthumously published (with a memoir by T. F. Kelsall) 26 January: Francis Jeffrey dies 8 February: Kate Chopin is born 16 March: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is published 7 April: William Lisle Bowles dies 23 April: William Wordsworth dies May: Alfred Tennyson anonymously publishes In Memoriam A.H.H. July: William Wordsworth’s The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind: An Autobiographical Poem, on which he has worked since 1798, is posthumously published 18 August: Honoré de Balzac dies November: A new edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Poems, including Sonnets from the Portuguese, is published 19 November: Alfred Tennyson becomes poet laureate |