The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Timeline

Year	Historical	Literary	Author
1896			F. Scott Fitzgerald born on 24 September
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
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
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	Fitzgerald moves to St Paul, Minnesota
1909	North Pole reached by Robert Peary (US) NAACP founded	Galsworthy's Strife Pound's Personae
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
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
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)	Fitzgerald studies English at Princeton University (but does not complete his degree)
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
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)		F. Scott Fitzgerald joins the US Army
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	Meets Zelda Sayre whilst stationed in Alabama
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	Gets engaged to Zelda, an engagement which she later breaks off F. Scott Fitzgerald is discharged from the US Army, never having been deployed. Briefly works in advertising, New York
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	Fitzgerald publishes This Side of Paradise Marries Zelda Sayre on 3 April
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	Fitzgerald produces Flappers and Philosophers (short stories) Birth of Frances Scott Fitzgerald
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	Fitzgerald writes The Beautiful and the Damned and Tales of the Jazz Age (short stories)
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)	Fitzgerald writes The Vegetable: or, From President to Postman (play)
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		Fitzgeralds live in Paris (until 1931)
1925	Pensions Act provides pensions at sixty-five	Coward's Hay Fever Hemingway's In Our Time	Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Meets Ernest Hemingway
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
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
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	Zelda admitted to a mental hospital (repeated discharge then re-admittance until her death in 1948)
1931		Woolf's The Waves
1932	Hunger marches in Britain British Union of Fascists formed	Huxley's Brave New World Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes
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	Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
1935	Radar & nylon invented Italy invades Ethiopia	Launch of first Penguin paperbacks	Fitzgerald, Taps at Reveille (short stories)
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
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	Fitzgerald writes movie scripts in Hollywood for MGM
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	MGM contract halted
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
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	Fitzgerald writes The Pat Hobby Stories (first published individually between January 1940 and May 1941 and later collected into an edition in 1962) Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack, aged 44, on 21 December
1941	Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour USA declares war on Germany and Italy	Coward's Blithe Spirit Eliot's Little Gidding	Fitzgerald’s The Love of the Last Tycoon (published posthumously)
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
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
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	Death of Zelda Fitzgerald in a mental hospital fire

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