| |
Timelines
Romantics Timeline
|
Romantics and Their Contemporaries
Timeline
|
|
1765
|
Culture
|
Industrial Revolution
|
James Hargreaves invented the "spinning jenny," a machine that
turned cotton fiber into yarn and effectively doubled its
production. This advance, followed in 1769 by James Watt's
invention of an important new type of steam engine, came toward the
beginning of what has come to be called "The Industrial
Revolution," conventionally dated from 1760 to 1832.
On the Web:
|
|
1772
|
Politics
|
Mansfield Decision
|
Lord Mansfield, a judge, effectively abolished slavery in
England, ruling that there was no legal basis for it, when he
"discharged" James Somerset, a slave who was brought to England
from Virginia by his master and refused to return. Sir William
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England had in 1765 proclaimed "that a slave or
negro, the instant he lands in England, becomes a freeman."
Mansfield's decision to free Somerset made that comment a legal
reality. Approximately 20,000 Anglo-Africans, concentrated in
London, took the Mansfield decision as an emancipation
proclamation. Furthermore, it stimulated much Afro-British writing.
Though this decision abolished slavery in England proper (and
stimulated a similar ruling in Scotland in 1778), it did not, of
course, abolish the slave trade nor slavery in the British
colonies; they were not abolished until 1807 (the slave trade) and
1833-8 (colonial slavery).
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade
On the Web:
|
|
1773
|
Literature
|
Barbauld's Poems
|
Poems (dated "1773," but
actually published in December 1772) by Anna Letitia Barbauld
(1743-1825)—at that point still Anna Aikin—contained "A
Summer Evening's Meditation," introducing readers to the kind of
sublimity characterizing what has been called "the greater romantic
lyric." Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poet who worked with William
Wordsworth to develop that kind of poetry, made a sort of
"pilgrimage" to Barbauld, walking 40 miles, from Stowey to Bristol,
in order to meet her.
In the Anthology:
On the Web:
|
|
1775
|
Politics
|
American Revolution
|
War with the American Colonies began, and the Americans declared
independence a year later. This successful revolution led many
Romantic poets to believe that the millennium was coming, and that
Christ would reign on an earth peopled with equals.
On the Web:
|
|
1781
|
Politics
|
Zong Incident
|
Luke Colingwood, captain of the slave ship Zong, ordered 133
weak and diseased slaves ejected into shark infested waters in
order to collect on a policy that held an insurer liable for
jettisoned cargo. In a 1783 insurance trial, Lord Mansfield ruled
for the captain. This is ironic given that Lord Mansfield was the
judge responsible for having effectively liberated slaves in
England through his 1772 judgment, known as the Mansfield
Decision.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade
On the Web:
|
|
1784
|
Literature
|
Smith's Elegiac Sonnets
|
The Elegiac Sonnets written by Charlotte Smith, represent very sad
scenes—poor or insane people suffering misery in desolate
landscapes—as a way of expressing Smith's own inner turmoil.
Her text thus provides a model for much Romantic poetry, and in his
letters William Wordsworth later acknowledged his debt to Smith.
Smith's collection also participated in a sonnet revival during the
Romantic period, as described in the first chapter of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. Smith's Elegiac Sonnets went through a total of ten editions in
17 years, by 1800 appearing in a two-volume collection illustrated
by Thomas Stothard.
In the Anthology:
- Companion Readings to William Wordsworth, Sonnets
On the Web:
|
|
1789
|
Politics
|
French Revolution Begins
|
The Third Estate—that is, the parliamentary body
representing professional and tradespeople left out of the first
two privileged orders (clergy and nobles)—declared itself in
June "the National Assembly," thus assuming parliamentary power.
After the Fall of the Bastille in July, the National Assembly,
renamed the Constituent Assembly, ratified The Declaration of the
Rights of Man, abolished Feudalism, and drafted a constitution
limiting the monarchy. (A Declaration of the Rights of Woman
followed, but was not widely supported.) In response to events in
France, Dissenting Minister Richard Price lauded the French people
in "A Discourse on the Love of Our Country," a sermon he gave at a
meeting of the London Revolution Society.
In 1793, France declared war on Britain. In response to food
riots, fear of invasion by foreign powers, and an intensified
counter-revolution, the French Revolutionary government set up a
Revolutionary Tribunal to judge traitors. It also established the
Committee of Public Safety, led by Maximilien Robespierre. The
latter is usually given responsibility for the mass murders known
as "The Terror." Some estimate that as many as 200,000 suspects
were arrested as alleged enemies of the state. Thousands of people
were guillotined, among them the King, Louis XVI (January 21,
1793), and the Queen, Marie Antoinette (October 16, 1793). Shortly
after Robespierre himself was executed (July 27, 1794), public
reaction against such brutality curtailed the violence. The
outbreak of violence in France, and France's declaration of war,
caused a reaction against radicalism in Britain, including
suspension of the law of Habeas Corpus which had protected British
citizens against being imprisoned without being charged for a
crime.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: The Right of Man and the Revolution
Controversy
On the Web:
In Images:
|
|
1790
|
Politics
|
Revolution Controversy
|
Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in
France, provided an angry
response to Richard Price's sermon, "A Discourse on the Love of Our
Country" (1789), which praised the French people for standing up
against despotism. Burke's attack on Price stimulated publication
of a slew of pamphlets for and against the French Revolution. Mary
Wollstonecraft was the first radical to respond to Burke in her
pamphlet Vindication of the Rights of Man, which was published anonymously at
first—until people clamored for further editions, at which
point she made her authorship public. In The Rights of
Man: Part I (Part
II appeared in 1792), Thomas
Paine responded with such a radical assertion of equality that he
was forced to flee England to avoid prosecution.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: The Right of Man and the Revolution
Controversy
- Edmund Burke
On the Web:
|
|
1791
|
Politics
|
Abolition Movement
|
100,000 slaves and ex-slaves revolt against planters and the
local government in French-controlled San Domingo, the wealthiest
colony of the West Indies and main source of sugar and coffee in
Europe; Toussaint L'Ouverture, later called "The Black Napoleon,"
makes his military reputation during this revolt, and begins his
ascendancy as a leader in the campaign for liberating colonial
slaves in Haiti. William Wilberforce's Bill for Abolition is
defeated 163 to 88.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Wordsworth, "To Toussaint L'Ouverture"
|
|
1792
|
Politics
|
Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman
|
May Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of
Woman, argues that women are
unequal to men only as a result of being poorly educated. In
response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's contention that women are
naturally weaker and more passive than men, Wollstonecraft
responds, "What nonsense!"
In the Anthology:
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Perspectives: The Wollstonecraft Controversy and The Rights of
Women
On the Web:
|
|
1792
|
Politics
|
Blake's "Negro Hung Alive"
|
"A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows," designed and
engraved by William Blake, was printed in John Gabriel Stedman's
Narrative, of a Five Years' Expedition, Against Revolted Negroes
of Surinam.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade
- William Blake
On the Web:
|
|
1794
|
Literature
|
Blake's Illuminated Works
|
Although the Songs of Innocence were originally written in 1789, William Blake
printed and watercolored several copies of The Songs of
Experience in 1794 and combined
them with Innocence in order to produce the Songs of
Innocence and of Experience. The Songs are a series of poems written for or spoken by
children. The handwriting in which they were first printed was
carefully interwoven with pictures that appeared on the same plate.
They depict what Blake called "the two contrary states of the human
soul," innocence and experience. Also that year Blake produced
plates and paper copies of two of his "prophetic works,"
Europe: A Prophecy and The First Book of Urizen, longer poems that build up Blake's own
mythological system which is akin to, but very critical of, the
cosmology informing the Bible.
In 1809, Blake put on his first and only one-man show of 16
paintings. Held in his brother's shop, it featured heroic-satiric
allegories of Pitt and Nelson and a huge painting, "The Ancient
Britons." The exhibit was accompanied by A Descriptive
Catalogue.
In the Anthology:
On the Web:
In Images:
|
|
1798
|
Culture
|
Godwin's Memoir
|
William Godwin edited the Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, published the year
after she died from complications due to the birth of her child
Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley). This publication included
Godwin's scandalous Memoir of the Author of a Vindication
of the Rights of Woman, a text
that, in its brutal honesty about Wollstonecraft's boldness, set
feminism back a few decades.
In the Anthology:
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Perspectives: The Wollstonecraft Controversy and the Rights of
Women
On the Web:
|
|
1798
|
Literature
|
Lyrical Ballads; Baillie's Plays on the Passions
|
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge collaboratively
produced Lyrical Ballads,
which contained poems of two sorts: those (by Wordsworth) that
ennobled or romanticized common things, and those (by Coleridge)
filled with supernatural events and characters. This collection
includes Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and Coleridge's "Rime of the
Ancyent Marinere." The "Introductory Discourse" to A
Series of Plays in Which it is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger
Passions of the Mind, by Joanna
Baillie, was widely believed at the time to have been written by a
man; that she wrote it and the plays accompanying it was not
revealed until the third edition of volume 1 was published in 1800.
Volume II was published in 1802 and Volume III in 1812. A preface
added to an enlarged edition of Lyrical Ballads, appearing in 1800, written by
Wordsworth, reveals affinities with Baillie's 1798 preface, since
Baillie wishes to describe "the plain order of everyday things in
this world," and Wordsworth "ordinary life."
In the Anthology:
- Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads
- Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere"
- Joanna Baillie
On the Web:
In Images:
|
|
1802-4
|
Literature
|
Wordsworth's Intimations; Coleridge's "Dejection"
|
William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood," and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
"Dejection: An Ode" were written in conversation with each other,
both analyzing how aging and dejection threaten to undermine poetic
power.
In the Anthology:
- Wordsworth, "Intimations Ode"
- Coleridge, "Dejection"
|
|
1804
|
Politics
|
Napoleon Becomes Emperor
|
Napoleon crowned himself emperor. The Napoleonic wars cost
Britain many resources and lives; they were wars waged by and
against France from 1803 to 1815.
On the Web:
In Images:
|
|
1805
|
Literature
|
Wordsworth's Prelude
|
While in Germany in 1799, William Wordsworth completed writing
what has come to be called The Two-Part Prelude, a shorter version of the long,
13-book poem that he completed one version of in 1805. Throughout
his life, he kept revising this poem about his childhood and the
formation of his mind and feelings—everything that went into
making him a poet—and a very different, 14-book version which
was published in 1850 by his widow, who gave the poem its name.
This 1805 version of William Wordsworth's The
Prelude, not published
until 1926, reveals his earlier, less orthodox, and even more
politically radical attitudes.
In the Anthology:
On the Web:
|
|
1807
|
Politics
|
Abolition Movement
|
The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807. Though
trading was abolished, slavery was still legal in the British
Colonies. In 1833-1844, colonial slaves became "apprentices" to
their former masters and thus were still required to work for them
for a number of years. Finally, in 1838, colonial slaves were freed
unconditionally.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade
On the Web:
In Images:
|
|
1811
|
Politics
|
Regency Period Begins
|
Having become King of Great Britain (England and Scotland) in
1760 and later, after the Act of Union (1800), King of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, George III weathered two
bouts of insanity before going permanently insane in 1810. The
Prince of Wales, the future George IV, became Prince Regent in
1811—hence historians call these years "The Regency Period."
George IV finally became king in 1820 upon the death of his insane
father, but only held the throne for 10 years more, until 1830,
when it was taken over by his brother, William IV, who himself died
seven years later.
On the Web:
|
|
1811
|
Literature
|
Austen's Sense and Sensibility
|
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility satirizes Romantic sensibilities in the figure
of Marianne who dutifully disdains neoclassical poetry such as that
written by Alexander Pope and prefers the poetry of sentiment such
as that being written by Austen's contemporaries, Charlotte Smith
and William Wordsworth; Marianne is cured of her wildly Romantic
ideals by the end of the novel.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Popular Prose/Jane Austen
On the Web:
|
|
1812
|
Literature
|
Barbauld, Hemans,
Byron
|
Anna Letitia Barbauld's "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven," was a
poem written in the classical form of serious satire, as was Samuel
Johnson's "London." It prophesied England's demise as a world
power. Published the same year but ambitious in a different way was
Felicia Hemans' third volume of poems, Domestic
Affections. It celebrated
domesticity for women rather than stepping into the arena of
politics, as had Barbauld's poem. Hemans was only 19 at the time.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, published the first two cantos of
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
a poem that describes the physical and spiritual pilgrimage of
Harold, a thinly-veiled stand-in for Byron himself. Upon
publication, Byron wrote that he "awoke one morning and found
myself famous."
In the Anthology:
- Anna Laetitia Barbauld
- Felicia Hemans
- George Gordon, Lord Byron
On the Web:
In Images:
|
|
1813
|
Culture
|
Beethoven's Symphony No. 7
|
Celebrating the Duke of Wellington's victories against Napoleon
in the Peninsular war, Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7,
"Wellington's Victory," was performed at University Hall; a
classical composer, Beethoven's later works initiated the Romantic
era in music.
On the Web:
|
|
1814
|
Literature
|
Scott's Waverley
|
Published anonymously, Sir Walter Scott's Waverley is often regarded as the first novel of
historical fiction. However, in his "Postscript, which should have
been a Preface" to the novel, Scott credits Maria Edgeworth with
inventing the form. Scott had written popular poetry until he
published Waverley;
all of his subsequent novels are collectively called "The Waverley
Novels" because the title page of each one said "by the Author
of Waverley". Scott
published one and sometimes two novels a year until he finally
acknowledged authorship in 1827.
In the Anthology:
On the Web:
|
|
1815
|
Politics
|
Waterloo
|
After being defeated by von Blucher and Wellington in the Battle
of Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena.
On the Web:
|
|
1816
|
Literature
|
The Shelley Circle
|
After having eloped and traveled with Percy Bysshe Shelley in
1814, Mary Godwin Shelley again traveled with Percy and her
step-sister Claire Clairmont (at that moment pregnant with Byron's
child) to Geneva where they moved into Maison Chapuis. Byron (with
his traveling physician John Polidori) rented a neighboring house
on the shore of Lake Geneva at Cologny; Byron, the Shelleys,
Claire, and Dr. Polidori met regularly at Byron's Villa Diodati,
competing to tell the most frightening ghost story—an event
for which Mary Shelley invented Frankenstein and Polidori his gothic novel. In June, Mary
began writing Frankenstein, a novel about Victor Frankenstein's creation
of a monster via the animation of dead bodies. Percy Shelley wrote
"Mont Blanc"—his answer to Wordsworth's question, posed in
"Tintern Abbey," as to whether the mind imposes or finds meaning in
nature—and "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," a poem about the
poet's relation to the "spirit of beauty." Byron wrote Canto III
of Childe Harold, a
thinly-veiled spiritual autobiography. After touring the Alps with
Percy Shelley, Byron left for Italy at the end of the year. Both
Fanny Imlay, first daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary's
half-sister, and Harriet Shelley, Percy's wife, committed suicide
in 1816. The latter event made it possible for Mary and Percy to
legally marry. At the end of the year, they returned to England and
stayed with the Godwins, then reconciled with Mary and
Percy.
Percy Shelley published "Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude," a
poem analyzing why someone chooses to love the ideal instead of the
real and the pain caused by that choice. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
published his poems "Christabel," an unfinished poem about the
effects of a mysterious witch on the innocent young woman
Christabel; "Kubla Khan," a poem describing Coleridge's
opium-induced dream, and two Lay Sermons, also known as The
Statesman's Manual which
outlines the role of intellectuals in public life.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Popular Prose / Mary Shelley
- George Gordon, Lord Byron
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
On the Web:
In Images:
|
|
1817
|
Literature
|
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
|
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is an account of the author's "literary
life" which takes issue with William Wordsworth's ideas about
poetry, articulated in his prefaces. Sibylline Leaves
contains a revised version of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"
Coleridge's poem about the spiritual odyssey of a tale-teller,
perhaps a poet-figure; this version included a gloss to help
readers follow the intricate plot.
In the Anthology:
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria and "Rime of the Ancient
Mariner"
On the Web:
|
|
1819
|
Politics
|
Peterloo Massacre
|
In what came to be called "the Peterloo Massacre," mounted
troops charged on a public meeting, killing and maiming many
people; it was a large, orderly and peaceful group of 60,000 that
met at St. Peter's Fields, Manchester, to demand Parliamentary
Reform and repeal of the 1815 Corn Laws, which kept up the price of
bread. The British government justified breaking up the meeting
based on the various "Combination Acts" passed throughout the first
three decades of the 19th century. After the "massacre" in St.
Peter's Fields, the Six Acts were passed, enabling suppression of
what were considered "seditious" publications.
In the Anthology:
- P. B. Shelley, "England in 1819"
On the Web:
|
|
1820
|
Literature
|
Keats' and Clare's Poems
|
In a burst of creative energy after the death of his brother
Tom, John Keats spent 1819 writing the title poems of his
collection, published in 1820, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.
Agnes, and Other
Poems, as well as the Great
Odes. Lamia describes a man's seduction by a
snake-like witch, Isabella a
woman's inconsolable mourning for a lost lover, and "The Eve of St.
Agnes," the blossoming love and elopement of two
lovers whose families oppose each other. The Odes include "Ode on a
Grecian Urn" and "To a
Nightingale," poems meditating on the relation between art and
life, fantasy and reality. In 1821, Keats died from tuberculosis in
Rome.
John Clare, a natural genius or "uneducated poet," as Robert
Southey called him, published Poems Descriptive of Rural
Life. Like Ann Yearsley, the
milk-maid poet (who was publicly declaimed by her patron Hannah
More in 1785 when Yearsley asked for control of her own earnings
from publication) Clare was ignored by the public when his poetry
turned from pure description to social criticism.
In the Anthology:
On the Web:
|
|
1825
|
Politics
|
Abolition Movement
|
Women joined the abolition movement in large numbers with
increasing influence and visibility: three women's antislavery
societies were formed at Birmingham, Sheffield, and Calne; by 1830,
there were 40 more.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade
On the Web:
|
|
1826
|
Culture
|
Martin's "Belshazzar's Feast"
|
John Martin painted "Belshazzar's Feast," a popular picture typical of his compositions
which were fantastic and often about religious topics (for
instance, he painted a series of pictures of scenes from
Milton's Paradise Lost).
In the Anthology:
- John Keats's letter to Hamilton Reynolds, [On Wordsworth,
Milton, and Dark Passages]
- Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell
On the Web:
|
|
1828
|
Literature
|
Hemans' Records of Woman
|
Felicia Hemans dedicated to Joanna Baillie her Records of
Woman, a collection of poems
that celebrate but also undercut the ideal of the domestic
woman.
In the Anthology:
On the Web:
|
|
1831
|
Politics
|
History of Mary Prince
|
The History of Mary Prince, an autobiography about the abuses Prince
suffered as a female slave, caused a sensation after it was
published due to questions about its truth. Mary Prince's editor,
Thomas Pringle, editor of the Anti-Slavery Society, launched
several libel suits against journals which had called Prince's tale
fraudulent.
In the Anthology:
On the Web:
|
|
1832
|
Politics
|
Reform Act
|
The Reform Act was passed, eradicating some of the inequities in
the British voting system, such as "rotten boroughs." Universal
suffrage, however, was not inaugurated; only landed men with a
specific amount of property could vote.
In the Anthology:
On the Web:
|
|
1833
|
Politics
|
Abolition Movement
|
The Emancipation Act abolished slavery throughout the British
Empire. 800,000 slaves were freed and their owners were compensated
with over 20 million pounds. The Bill took effect in 1834.
Unfortunately, the Bill included a clause requiring slaves to serve
an apprenticeship, a clause which was first abolished in various
colonies of the West Indies and then revoked entirely in the
Immediate Abolition Act of 1838.
In the Anthology:
- Perspectives: Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade
On the Web:
|
Back to Introduction
|
