Rhys, Jean Timeline

Year Historical Literary Author
1890 First underground railway in London
Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough (first two vols; complete 13 vols., -1915)
First of the Jim Crow laws passed to segregate blacks from whites in the South
Southern states pass series of laws to restrict black voting rights
William Morris' News from Nowhere
Emily Dickinson, Poems
Born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams on August 24th in Dominica, West Indies (Some biographies give 1894, which is a date Rhys herself supplied for Who's Who)
1891 William Morris, Kelmscott Press Gissing's New Grub Street
1892 Daimlers sell their first motor car
1893 Independent Labour Party formed
1895 Oscar Wilde arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality
1897 Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee
1899 ( - 1902) Second Boer War
Irish Literary Theatre founded
Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken
Pinero's Trelawney of the 'Wells'
Symons' The Symbolist Movement in literature
Wells' Tales of Space and Time
Attends convent school in Roseau
1900 Most children under eleven attending elementary school
Daily Express founded
Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams
1901 Queen Victoria dies. Edward VII king
First transatlantic radio communication by Marconi
Wells' The First Men in the Moon
1902 Balfour Education Act establishes state system of secondary schools
Second Boer War ends
Bennett's Anna of the Five towns
Mare's Songs of Childhood
Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles
Kipling's Just So Stories
1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright make first powered flight
New York-London news service begins using wireless telegraphy
Emmeline Pankhurst founds the Women's Social and Political Union
Butler's The Way of All Flesh
James' The Ambassadors
The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. du Bois
1904 Entente Cordiale settles colonial differences between UK and France
Offset printing invented
Abbey Theatre, Dublin, founded
Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
Hardy's The Dynasts, Part I published
J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan first performed on stage
James' The Golden Bowl
1905 Start of suffragette agitation and first suffragettes imprisoned
Einstein's special theory of relativity
Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Doyle's The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Wells' Kipps
1906 Liberal landslide in general election; 29 Labour MPs elected and Labour Party constituted Mare's Poems
1907 Pablo Picasso introduces cubism Age 17, leaves Dominica for school in England. Attends the Perse School, Cambridge (briefly)
1908 Old Age Pensions Act introduces state pensions for the over-seventies
Ford's first Model T car sold in Britain
Pathe's first regular newsreel
First aeroplane flight in Britain
Edmund Gosse's Father & Son published
Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale
Wells' The War in the Air
Leaves school to go to the Trees School, later Academy of Dramatic Art (which later became RADA) in London.
Father dies, she leaves the Academy after two terms
1909 North Pole reached by Robert Peary (US)
NAACP founded 
Galsworthy's Strife
Pound's Personae
Goes on the stage as a chorus girl in musical comedies in London and touring the provinces
1910 Edward VII dies. George V becomes king
South Wales Miners' strike
First post-impressionist exhibition in London
First feature-length films
Freud's On Psychoanalysis
Collapse of cotton farming due to boll weevil damage
Galsworthy's Justice
Wells' The History of Mr Polly
First love affair, with a man twice her age who leaves her, pensioning her off
1911 Ford Model T assembly plant opened in Manchester
Beatrice and Webb's Poverty
Der Blaue Reiter group of expressionist artists formed in Munich
Frazer's The Golden Bough (11 vols.-1915; first two vols., 1890)
Roald Amundsen reaches South Pole
Suffragette riots in London
Wells' The New Machiavelli
1912 First Post-Impressionism Exhibition in London
Titanic sinks
Widespread strikes in Britain
Women's Franchise Bill rejected by the House of Commons; suffragettes riot in London
Some 400 cinemas in London; establishment of British Board of Film Censors
Bridges' Poetical Works
Mare's The Listeners
Georgian Poetry, ed. Edward Marsh
Pound's Ripostes
Mann's Death in Venice
Enters a kind of life considered disreputable by the conventional standards of the day. As an economically unsupported woman, she takes work on the borders of prostitution and is kept by wealthier men.
Her attempts to carry on a stage career are unsuccessful
1913 Suffragette Emily Davies dies after throwing herself under the King's horse at the Derby
Freud's Totem and Taboo; also Interpretation of Dreams
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring
'Cat and Mouse' Act
House of Commons passes Irish Home Rule Bill but rejected by the House of Lords
Suffragette deonstrations
Marcel Proust publishes first of the seven volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) (last volume, 1927)
1914 August: Great War breaks out (to November 1918)
Irish Home Rule Act passed but later suspended because of war
World War One - although segregated, black soldiers enlisted to fight in US armed forces
Pound's Des Imagistes
1915 War intensifies with huge losses
Zeppelin attacks on London
Sinking of Lusitania
Einstein's general theory of relativity
Second Battle of Ypres
Brooke's 1914 and Other Poems
Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps
Kafka's Metamorphosis
Maugham's Of Human Bondage
Some's Imagist Poets: An Anthology, ed. Amy Lowell (further Imagist anthologies followed in 1916 and 1917)
Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier
Volunteers for work in a soldiers' canteen
1916 Easter Rising, Dublin
Conscription introduced
Battle of the Somme
Theories of shell-shock develop
Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious
Battle of Verdun
Lloyd George becomes Prime Minister
The Great Migration to the north begins (US) 
Brighouse's Hobson's Choice
Wells' Mr Britling Sees it Through
1917 USA enters war
Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele)
Russian Revolution (March)
Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Abdication of Czar Nicholas II
Russian Revolution (October)
1918 End of the Great War: Armistice, 11 November
Rutherford splits atom
Representation of the People Act (4th Reform Bill) gives the vote to all men over twenty-one and women over thirty
Stopes' Married Love; Parenthood
Fisher Education Act raises school-leaving age to fourteen
Influenza pandemic, kills over 20 million people world-wide by 1920
Execution of Czar Nicholas II
Vote given to all men over twenty-one and women over thirty
Joyce's Exiles
Thomas' Last Poems
Works in a pensions office
Meets Jean Lenglet, a Dutch writer and journalist
1919 Treaty of Versailles
Anglo-Irish War begins
Nancy Astor becomes first woman MP
Flu pandemic
Peace conference at Versailles
Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence Marries Jean Lenglet and moves to Holland, then to Paris and Vienna
Birth of their son William, who lives only 3 weeks
1920 Partition of Ireland
League of Nations founded (precursor of the United Nations)
Oxford admits women to degrees (1880 at London University)
Jung's Psychological Types
Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Mansfield's Bliss
Strachey's Eminent Victorians
Hardy's Collected Poems
1921 Economic slump
Marie Stopes opens first birth-control clinic in London
Irish Free State formed
Huxley's Crome Yellow
Pirandello Six Characters in Search of an Author
1922 Unemployment stands at 2 million: first of many 'hunger marches' organised by the NUWM throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Irish Civil War breaks out (ends 1923)
Mussolini comes to power in Italy
Radio broadcasting begins; British Broadcasting Company formed
Frazer's The Golden Bough (one-volume abridged edn)
Establishment of the USSR
Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga
Mansfield's The Garden Party
Richards' Principles of Literary Criticism
Birth of daughter Maryvonne
Jean Rhys meets the writer Ford Madox Ford who encourages her writing
1923 Matrimonial Causes Act (allows women to sue for divorce on same grounds as men, including adultery) Sitwell's Façade published
Cummings' Tulips and Chimneys
Huxley's Antic Hay
Cane, Jean Toomer (Harlem Renaissance author)
Jean Lenglet arrested for illegal entry into France and currency offences, then extradited to Holland
Rhys and Ford start an affair
1924 Paris Exhibition
First Labour government in Britain under Ramsay MacDonald (January)
Housing Act provides for subsidised public housing (generates over half a million new homes by 1932)
Freud's The Ego and the Id
Ramsay Macdonald forms first Labour government
Ford publishes his novel Some Do Not, the first volume of his tetralogy Parade?s End
First published story Vienne appears in Ford?s magazine the transatlantic review under the name Jean Rhys
1925 Pensions Act provides pensions at sixty-five Coward's Hay Fever
Hemingway's In Our Time
1926 General Strike
Television first demonstrated by John Logie Baird; British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established
T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1927 Trade Disputes Act makes general strikes illegal
Charles Lindbergh, first solo transatlantic flight
German financial and economic crisis
Rise of Stalin in USSR
Graves and Riding's A Survey of Modernist Poetry The Left Bank and Other Stories published. Ford Madox Ford writes the preface
1928 Universal suffrage for men and women
Minimum voting age for women in Britain reduced to twenty-one from thirty years
Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin (fully exploited from 1940)
First films with sound in Britain
Blunden's Undertones of War
Huxley's Point Counter Point
Isherwood's All the Conspirators
Quartet, her first novel published (also called Postures)
1929 General election returns minority Labour government; Margaret Bondfield becomes first woman Cabinet member
Wall Street Crash and start of international economic depression
Margaret Bondfield becomes first woman Cabinet member
Graves' Goodbye to All That
Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms
Priestley's The Good Companions
Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (film version, 1930)
1930 Jet engine invented
11th May: Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to complete a solo flight from England to Australia
The Great Depression
Nazis begin rise to power in Germany
Foundation of the Nation of Islam (black national separatist organisation)
Blunden's Collected Poems
Coward's Private Lives
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
Maugham's Cakes and Ale

After Leaving Mr Mackenzie published

1931 Woolf's The Waves
1932 Hunger marches in Britain
British Union of Fascists formed
Huxley's Brave New World
Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes
Lives in London with her agent, Leslie Tilden-Smith
Divorces Jean Lenglet

Translates Barred by Edward de Neve. This was Lenglet's pen-name

1933 Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany Auden's The Dance of Death
Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris
1934 British Union of Fascists addressed by Oswald Mosley
Adolf Hitler becomes Führer
John Masefield becomes Poet Laureate
James' The Art of the Novel
Pound's Make it New
Priestley's English Journey
Voyage in the Dark published
Marries Leslie-Tilden Smith
1935 Radar & nylon invented
Italy invades Ethiopia
Launch of first Penguin paperbacks
1936 Death of George V
Accession, then abdication of Edward VIII
Spanish Civil war begins
Jarrow March of the unemployed
Accession of George VI
Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza
Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Thomas' 25 Poems
Visits the Caribbean including Martinique and Dominica. This is her only visit after leaving in 1907
1937 British policy of appeasement towards Italy and Germany
Mass Observation Project starts
Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier
Priestley's Time and the Conway's
Woolf's The Years

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

1938 Munich agreement with Hitler
Supreme Court rules Missouri must provide access to public schooling for blacks as well as whites
Waugh's Scoop
Day-Lewis' Overtures to a Death
Greene's Brighton Rock
1939 End of Spanish Civil War
Start of the Second World War
Evacuation of children from London
Thomas' Twenty-Six Poems
Eliot's The Family Reunion
Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin
Joyce's Finnegan's wake
Orwell's Coming up for Air
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
Good Morning, Midnight published
1940 Churchill becomes Prime Minister
Evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk
Start of the Blitz
Thomas' Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
Greene's The Power and the Glory
At some point during the war, Lenglet is arrested and sent to a concentration camp
During the war, Lenglet, and her daughter, remain in occupied Holland and take part in resistance activities

1940 - 45 Spends the war years in London and the South West of England

1941 Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour
USA declares war on Germany and Italy
Coward's Blithe Spirit
Eliot's Little Gidding
1942 US involvement in Second World War
1944 D-Day Landings in Normandy
Butler Education Act
Eliot's Four Quartets
1945 Yalta Conference
Death of Hitler
USA drops nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrenders
End of Second World War
Clement Atlee becomes Labour Prime Minister
Mitford's The Pursuit of Love
Orwell's Animal Farm
Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
Priestley's An Inspector Calls
Tilden-Smith dies

At some point during the war, Jean Rhys burnt the typescript of 'Le Revenant', an early version of Wide Sargasso Sea

1947 Independence of India and Pakistan
The UK school leaving age is raised to 15
Princess Elizabeth – later Queen – marries the Duke of Edinburgh
Compton-Burnett's Manservant and Maidservant
The Diary of Anne Frank is published
The Maids, Jean Genet
All My Sons, Arthur Miller
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
Marries Max Hamer, a cousin of Tilden-Smith
1948 British Citizenship Act gives Commonwealth citizens subject status
Policy of apartheid started in South Africa
State of Israel founded
Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
Leavis' The Great Tradition

Around this time, Jean Rhys begins or returns to work on Wide Sargasso Sea

1949 Orwell's 1984
Miller's Death of a Salesman
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
Selma Vaz Dias advertises for information on Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys arrested for being drunk and disorderly and assaulting her neighbours. Spends a week in Holloway Prison for assessment
1950 Korean War begins Greene's The Third Man
Lessing's The Grass is Singing
1950-52 Max Hamer imprisoned for fraud. On his release, Jean Rhys and Hamer go to live in Cornwall
1951 Festival of Britain
Churchill becomes Conservative Prime Minister
Spies Burgess and Maclean defect to USSR
Larkin's Poems
Manning's School for Love
1952 George VI dies
Accession of Elizabeth II
Britain produces an atomic bomb
Christie's The Mousetrap
Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea
Thomas' Collected Poems

On Hamer's release, Jean Rhys and he go to live in Cornwall

1953 Death of Stalin
Coronation of Elizabeth II
Ascent of Everest
Hartley's The Go-Between
Fleming's Casino Royale
Miller's The Crucible
1954 End of post-war food rationing
US Supreme Court declares racially segregated education is unconstitutional
Amis' Lucky Jim
Rattigan's Separate Tables
Golding's Lord of the Flies
Thomas' Under Milk Wood
1955 Rosa Parks, Civil Rights activist in USA, refuses to give up her seat on a bus Beckett's Waiting for Godot
1956 Suez Crisis
Russian invasion of Hungary
Rosa Parks defies bus segregation in Montgomery Alabama
Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
Osborne's Look Back in Anger
Wilson's Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
Beckett, Waiting for Godot
1957 Wolfenden Report on Prostitution and Homosexuality
Independence of Ghana
Obscene Publications Act
Martin Luther King elected President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 
Larkin's A Girl in Winter
Hughes' The Hawk in the Rain
Murdoch's The Sandcastle
MacInnes' City of Spades
Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur
Osborne's The Entertainer
Rhys and Selma Vaz Dias adapt Good Morning Midnight for a radio broadcast
Moves to Cheriton Fitzpaine in Devon
1958 Notting Hill race riots
Aden state of emergency
CND founded
Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Pinter's The Birthday Party
Delaney's A Taste of Honey
Bates' The Darling Buds of May
Murdoch's The Bell
Silitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Betjeman's Collected Poems
Jean Rhys signs a contract with the publisher Deutsch for Wide Sargasso Sea
1959 First section of M1 motorway opened
State of emergency in Kenya
Wesker's Roots
Lee's Cider with Rosie
Braithwaite's To Sir with Love
Waterhouse's Billy Liar
Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance
Silitoe's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansbury
1960 John F. Kennedy wins US election
CND demonstrations in Trafalgar Square
Penguin wins the right to publish D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover
Banks' The L Shaped Room
Lessing's In Pursuit of the English
Pinter's The Caretaker
Barstow's A Kind of Loving
Plath's The Colossus
1961 Commonwealth Immigrants Act restricts right to settle in UK
Structure of DNA discovered
Building of Berlin Wall
Osborne's Luther
Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy
Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas
1962 End of national military service
Jamaica, Trinidad and Uganda become independent from UK
Burgess' A Clockwork Orange
Al Alvarez (ed), The New Poetry
Carson's Silent Spring
Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1963 US President John F. Kennedy assassinated
Kenya becomes independent
Martin Luther King makes his 'I have a dream' speech
1960-1963 Wilson Harris publishes The Guyana Quartet
Plath's The Bell Jar
Theatre Workshop, Oh! What a Lovely War
Dunn's Up the Junction
1964 Beatles become popular
Labour PM, Harold Wilson
Harlem race riots in USA
Martin Luther King awarded Nobel Peace Prize
Nelson Mandela sentenced to life in prison
US Congress passes the Civil Rights Act banning segregation
Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane
Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings
1965 Vietnam war escalates
Abolition of the death penalty (UK)
Rhodesia declares independence from UK
Race riots across America
Osborne's A Patriot for Me
Pinter's The Homecoming
Plath's Ariel
Bond's Saved
Manning's The Balkan Trilogy
1966 England wins the World Cup
Guyana becomes independent from UK
Television drama Cathy Come Home highlights homelessness in UK
In China, Mao Zedong launches his Cultural Revolution
Orton's Loot
Fowles' The Magus
Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Jubilee, Margaret Walker

The Concubine, Elechi Amadi
Max Hamer dies.
Wide Sargasso Sea published
1967 Legalisation of abortion (UK)
Homosexuality decriminalized (UK)
First heart transplant
Gough, Patten, Henri, The Mersey Sound
Carter's The Magic Toyshop
Dunn's Poor Cow
1968 National Front formed (UK)
Race Relations Bill declares race discrimination illegal in the UK
Student uprising in Paris
Martin Luther King assassinated
USA passes Civil Rights Bill
Enoch Powell makes 'Rivers of Blood' speech in Birmingham
National Front formed (UK)
Hines' A Kestrel for a Knave
Bond's Early Morning
End of theatre censorship in Britain
When Rain Clouds Gather, Bessie Head
Collected Short Stories: Tigers Are Better Looking published
1969 'Winter of Discontent'
Americans land on the moon
Start of Northern Ireland ‘troubles’
Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Greene, Travels with my Aunt

1970
Formation of Women’s Liberation Movement in UK

Equal Pay Act, UK
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Ted Hughes, Crow
1971 Decimalisation of UK currency
Anti Vietnam war demonstrations
Bond's Lear
1972 Terrorist attack at Munich Olympic Games
Equal Opportunity Act extends 'affirmative action' to colleges and universities in USA
Drabble, The Needle’s Eye

Stoppard, Jumpers
1973 Abortion legalised in USA
USA pulls out of Vietnam
Britain enters EEC
Alan Ayckbourn, The Norman Conquests
Sula, Toni Morrison

Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers

Greene, The Honorary Consul
1974 President Richard Nixon resigns
Larkin, High Windows

Murdoch, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

1975 End of Vietnam war
Sex Discrimination Bill (UK)
North Sea oil comes on line
Griffiths' Comedians
Bradbury's The History Man
Jhabvala's Heat and Dust
Scott's The Raj Quartet
Lodge's Changing Places
Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time

Three autobiographical pieces published in Vogue magazine

1976 Notting Hill (race) riots
Advent of punk rock
UK Race Relations Act strengthens anti-discrimination laws
Edgar's Destiny Sleep It Off Lady (short stories) published
1977 Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee is celebrated
Strikes by firefighters and riots against Far Right groups take place across the UK
Public Works Employment Act - 10% of contractors to be from minorities

First Virago Press publication

First recognised AIDS death, New York
Dennis Potter, Brimstone and Treacle
 Our Sister Killjoy, Ama Aidoo
Stoppard, Professional Foul
1978 The first 'test tube' baby Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea
Weldon's Praxis
McEwan's The Cement Garden
Hare's Plenty
Jean Rhys awarded a CBE
1979 Conservative party wins General Election (first female British Prime Minister)
'Winter of Discontent'
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran flees Iran with his family
Churchill's Cloud Nine
Naipaul's A Bend in the River
Jean Rhys dies on May 14th
Smile Please, a collection of autobiographical pieces is published after her death.
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