The Mayor of Casterbridge: context links Timeline

Year Historical Literary Author
1840 Penny post begins
Queen Victoria marries her cousin Albert, who becomes Prince Consort.
Thomas Hardy born on 2 June
1841 The Tories come to power. Sir Robert Peel becomes Prime Minister
Punch begins
1842 Jowett becomes tutor at Balliol College, Oxford
Chartist riots. Report on Sanitary Conditions of Labouring Population
Mudie's Lending Library opens
Illustrated London News begins
1843 Theatre Regulation Act Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present
Ruskin's Modern Painters (vol. 1)
1844 Co-operative Society founded in Rochdale
Factory Act (women and children)
Expansion of railways across Britain
Disraeli's Coningsby, or The New Generation published
1845 John Henry Newman converts to Catholicism
Financial speculation in Railways
Onset of the Irish potato famine
The first Anglican sisterhood, Park Village, is founded in the Christ Church parish
Disraeli's Sybil, or The Two Nations published
E. A. Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination
1846 Repeal of Corn Laws
Famine in Ireland
Whigs come to Power
1847 Railway reaches Dorchester
Ten Hours' Factory Act
Disraeli's Tancred
1848 Chartist demonstrations in London following by the collapse of the Chartist movement
Democratic Revolutions in Europe.
Cholera epidemic
Public Health Act
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded
Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto
Newman's Loss and Gain
Thomas Hardy attends village school
1849 Bedford College for Women founded Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke
1850 Roman Catholic hierarchy established
Public Libraries Act
Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Thomas Hardy attends school in Dorchester
1851 Great Exhibition in London
Taylor Mill's The Enfranchisement of Women
Ruskin's Stones of Venice

Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

1853 Cholera epidemic
Crimean War
Yonge's Heir of Redclyffe
1854 Onset of Crimean War
1855 Daily Telegraph
Repeal of stamp duty on newspapers
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
1856 Crimean War ends Dickens, Little Dorrit Thomas Hardy apprenticed to architect in Dorchester
1857 Railway extended to Weymouth
Indian Mutiny
Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act
Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary
Hughes' Tom Brown's School days
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
1858 Ballantyne's Coral Island
English Woman's Journal begins
George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life
1859 Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species published
Rise of movement for Home Rule in Ireland
Smiles' Self Help published
Mill's On Liberty
1860 Cornhill Magazine begins
1861 Death of Prince Consort
American Civil War begins
Dickens, Great Expectations
Beeton's Book of Household Management
Wood's East Lynne
1862 Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret Hardy draughtsman in London
1863 The Oxford Declaration published Kingsley's The Water Babies
1864 John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua
1865 American Civil War ends
Women's Suffrage Campaign
Transatlantic cable laid
Joseph Lister establishes antiseptic surgery
Completion of St. Pancras' railway station
Slavery is abolished in the USA
Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism
1866 Cholera epidemic
Former slaves granted citizenship and equal rights in America
Ku Klux Klan founded
Swinburne's Poems and Ballads (dedicated to Rossetti) published
1867 Second Reform Act
Fenian Rising in Ireland
Marx's Das Kapital published
George Eliot's Felix Holt, the Radical
Hardy returns to Dorchester as architect
1868 Gladstone becomes Prime Minister Hardy's 1st novel, The Poor Man & the Lady, not published
1869 Opening of Suez Canal
Mill's The Subjection of Women
Arnold's Culture and Anarchy
Blackmore's Lorna Doone
1870 Education Act: free education in new board schools
First Married Women's Property Act
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Poems Hardy meets Emma Gifford in St.Juliot's, north Cornwall
1871 Trade Union Act
Darwin's The Descent of Man
Hardy's Desperate Remedies published
1872 MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree well received
1873 Mill's Autobiography
Pater's Studies in the Renaissance
Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes serialised and published
1874 Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd published
Hardy marries Emma Gifford and moves back to London
1875 Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial by Jury Hardy living in Swanage, Dorset
1876 Invention of telephone by Alexander Graham Bell
Queen Victorian proclaimed Empress of India
Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta published, Hardy settles at Sturminster Newton, Dorset
1878 Gramophones first produced by Thomas Edison
Newman made Cardinal
Revolutions in Europe
Hardy's Return of the Native published
Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore
Hardy's Return of the Native published. Hardy living in London again
1879 Electric lightbulb invented George Meredith's The Egoist published
1880 (-1881) First Boer War, also known as the Transvaal War Hardy's The Trumpet Major is published Hardy's The Trumpet Major is published. Hardy meets Browning, Tennyson
1881 First Anglo-Boer War Hardy's A Laodicean published
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ballads and Sonnets
Uncle Remus series, J C Harris 
Hardy's A Laodicean published. Hardy returns to Dorset.
1882

First commercial production of electricity


Married Women's Property Act, enables women to buy, own and sell property and to keep their own earnings
Hardy's Two on a Tower published
1883 Fabian Society founded

Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathrustra

1884 Ruskin's Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth-Century
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Hardy's 'Max Gate' being built
1885 Haggard's King Solomon's Mines Hardy's move into 'Max Gate'
1886 Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge published. Hardy continues to meet literary figures in London
1887 Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee celebrating 50 years of her reign Haggard's Allan Quartermain Hardy's The Woodlanders published
1888 Jack the Ripper murders five women in London
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society
Arnold's Essays in Criticism (Second Series) Hardy's Wessex Tales published
1889 Newman dies Death of Gerard Manley Hopkins
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
Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles serialised
1891 William Morris, Kelmscott Press Gissing's New Grub Street Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles published
1892 Daimlers sell their first motor car Hostile reviews to Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles. Hardy's father dies. Relationship with Emma increasingly difficult
1893 Independent Labour Party formed Hardy forms close friendship with society hostess Florence Henniker
1895 Oscar Wilde arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality Hardy's Jude the Obscure published. Hardy working on uniform edition of his works
1896 Hardy's Jude the Obscure severely criticised. Revises other novels, especially The Well-Beloved
1897 Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Hardy's first uniform edition published, but gives up novel-writing
1898 Hardy's Wessex Poems and Other Verses published
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 Hardy's Poems of the Past and Present published
Hardy's Poems of the Past and Present
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
Macmillans become Thomas Hardy's publisher
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
Hardy's The Dynasts, Part I published. Hardy's mother dies
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
Florence Dugdale, 26, becomes Thomas Hardy's secretary
1906 Liberal landslide in general election; 29 Labour MPs elected and Labour Party constituted Mare's Poems Hardy's The Dynasts, Part 2 published
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
Hardy's The Dynasts, Part 3 published
1909 North Pole reached by Robert Peary (US)
NAACP founded 
Galsworthy's Strife
Pound's Personae
Hardy's Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses published
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
Thomas Hardy awarded Order of Merit
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
Hardy's 24 volume Wessex Edition published. Hardy's wife Emma dies 27 November
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) Thomas Hardy receives Litt.D. from Cambridge University. Revisits Cornwall
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 Hardy's Satires of Circumstance published. Hardy marries Florence Dugdale
Hardy's Satires of Circumstance
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
Hardy's sister Mary dies
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
Hardy's Selected Poems published
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)
Hardy's Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous published
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
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 Hardy's Mellstock Edition published in 37 volumes. Hardy meets Siegfried Sassoon
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
Hardy receives D.Litt. from Oxford University. Meets Robert Graves
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
Hardy's Late Lyrics and Earlier published
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)
Hardy is visited by the Prince of Wales
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
Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles dramatised and performed in Dorchester
1925 Pensions Act provides pensions at sixty-five Coward's Hay Fever
Hemingway's In Our Time
Hardy's Human Shows published
1926 General Strike
Television first demonstrated by John Logie Baird; British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established
T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom Hardy's Mayor of Castorbridge dramatised and performed in Weymouth
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
Thomas Hardy dies 11 January. Memorial services in Westminster Abbey and Stinsford Parish Church. Hardy's Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres published. Florence Hardy publishes Life of Thomas Hardy in 2 vols
Hardy's Winter Words
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