Events Timeline

Orlando includes short event entries, freestanding and embedded in author profiles, about moments and processes relevant to literary history and organized into four categories: Women writers, Writing Climate, Political Climate, and Social Climate. Explore the timelines by searching for date(s) and/or words or phrases associated with them.

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1772: William Hooper published Memoirs of the Year...

Writing climate item

1772

William Hooper published Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred, translated from Louis-Sébastien Mercier 's L'An deux mille quatre cent quarante, 1771.
Alkon, Paul. “Review of Gregory Claeys, ed., Modern British Utopias, 1700-1850, 1997”. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol.
12
, No. 4, July 2000, pp. 578-83.
581-2

8 June 1783-February 1784: Successive eruptions of poisonous gases and...

Building item

8 June 1783-February 1784

Successive eruptions of poisonous gases and particles of dust and lava from the Laki volcanic fissure in Iceland created severe damage and hardship across and beyond northern Europe.
Neale, Greg. “How an Icelandic volcano helped spark the French Revolution”. The Guardian, 16 Apr. 2010, p. 4.
4

1 May 1786: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Le Nozze...

Writing climate item

1 May 1786

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 's opera Le Nozze di Figaro (in English The Marriage of Figaro) opened on stage in Vienna.
Brockway, Wallace, and Herbert Weinstock. The World of Opera. Methuen, 1963.

14 July 1790: Richard Price, speaking at a Bastille Day...

National or international item

14 July 1790

Richard Price , speaking at a Bastille Day tavern dinner, praised the French revolutionary authorities for intending to renounce war as an instrument of policy, and looked forward to a United States of the World.
Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Revised, Penguin, 1992.
123
Goodwin, Albert. The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. Hutchinson, 1979.
124

Ann Jebb: 31 August 1790

Women writers item
Author event in Ann Jebb

31 August 1790

AJ commented to Thomas Brand Hollis on the progress of the French Revolution, You see the fire is spreading every where. I tell you the world is a good world, as the Doctor [John Jebb

4 November 1790: Members of the London Revolution Society...

National or international item

4 November 1790

Members of the London Revolution Society and of the local Jacobin Society attended a joint festival at Nantes in Brittany, commemorating English and French revolutionary dates (1688 and 1788).
Goodwin, Albert. The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. Hutchinson, 1979.
127

Germaine de Staël: January 1791

Writing climate item
Author event in Germaine de Staël

January 1791

GS began holding salons which gathered together moderates in the days after the French Revolution; much of the new constitution was written in her house before the end of May this year.
Winegarten, Renee. Mme de Staël. Berg, 1985.
119

Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis: 1791

Writing climate item

1791

SFG visited England for a third time, but she came in exile because of the French Revolution.
Broglie, Gabriel de. Madame de Genlis. Librairie Académique Perrin, 1985.
235
Trousson, Raymond. Romans de femmes du XVIIIe siècle. Robert Laffont, 1996.
776

11 March 1791: Pope Pius VI condemned the French Revolution,...

National or international item

11 March 1791

Pope Pius VI condemned the French Revolution, in particular the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Kafker, Frank A., and James M. Laux, editors. The French Revolution: Conflicting Interpretations. 4th ed., R. E. Krieger, 1989.
xi
Lefebvre, Georges. The French Revolution. Routledge and K. Paul, 1962.
170
Soboul, Albert. The French Revolution 1787-1799. Translators Forrest, Alan and Colin Jones, Vintage, 1975.
211

31 December 1791: The Aliens Act was passed by Parliament....

National or international item

31 December 1791

The Aliens Act was passed by Parliament. It was a reaction to the increase in refugees after the French Revolution. The British government was given powers of deportation.
The Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Printed by J. Bentham, 1762–2024.
292-9
Irvine, Sherry. “Immigrants to England, 1550 to 1850”. Ancestry.com.

Helen Maria Williams: Mid-1792

Women writers item
Author event in Helen Maria Williams

Mid-1792

HMW published her second instalment of Letters from France, titled Letters from France, Containing Many New Anecdotes Relative to the French Revolution and the Present State of French Manners.
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon, 1993.
43

14 June 1792: Robert Bage anonymously published his radical...

Writing climate item

14 June 1792

Robert Bage anonymously published his radical novel Man As He Is, in which a young baronet learns to rise above the vices of his class.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 562

Mariana Starke: October 1792

Women writers item
Author event in Mariana Starke

October 1792

MS , travelling with one or more consumptive relations, reached Nice just in time to see it fall to the French revolutionary armies; they then backtracked, crossing the Alps to Geneva.
Starke, Mariana. Letters from Italy. R. Philips, 1800, 2 vols.
1: 25
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
29 (1800): 195

Young, Mary Julia : 1793

Women writers item
Author event in Young, Mary Julia

1793

MJY published with her name Adelaide and Antonine: or The Emigrants: A Tale (in verse), whose protagonists flee from the French Revolution to England.
Young, Mary Julia. Adelaide and Antonine: or The Emigrants: A Tale. Debrett, Booker, Keating, Lewis, and Robinsons, 1793.
Adelaide and Antonine

1793: The Jardin des Plantes, the world's first...

Building item

1793

The Jardin des Plantes , the world's first public zoo, opened in Paris, France.
Rothfels, Nigel. Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
18-19

Hannah More: By May 1793

Women writers item
Author event in Hannah More

By May 1793

HM published, with her name, an attack on the atheism of the French Revolution: Remarks on the Speech of M. Dupont . . . on the Subjects of Religion and Public Education.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2d ser. 8 (1793): 54

Helen Maria Williams: 12 October 1793

National or international item
Author event in Helen Maria Williams

12 October 1793

HMW , because of her English citizenship and her pro-Girondin, anti-Jacobin stance in the French Revolution, was arrested and sent to the Luxembourg in Paris (at this time a prison), along with her mother and sister .
Williams, Helen Maria. “Introduction and Chronology”. Letters Written in France, in the Summer 1790, edited by Neil Fraistat and Susan Sniader Lanser, Broadview, 2001, pp. 9-52.
24
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon, 1993.
55
Woodward, Lionel D. Hélène-Maria Williams et ses amis. Slatkine Reprints, 1977.
91-2

28 May-16 June 1794: Edmund Burke made his nine-day speech, spread...

Writing climate item

28 May-16 June 1794

Edmund Burke made his nine-day speech, spread over the course of this period, in reply to the defence offered at the trial of Warren Hastings .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Burke

Mary Wollstonecraft: Late summer 1794

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Wollstonecraft

Late summer 1794

Johnson published MW 's Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, written during her affair with Imlay .
Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. Macmillan, 1992.
152-3
Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Revised, Penguin, 1992.
210, 214
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Editor Poston, Carol H., 2nd edition, Norton, 1988.
359

Helen Craik: November 1796

Women writers item
Author event in Helen Craik

November 1796

HC dated the dedication of her first, anonymous published work, Julia de St Pierre: A Novel (set during the French Revolution), to an unnamed female friend.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 669
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

27 April 1799: The Irish poet Thomas Campbell, aged twenty-one,...

Writing climate item

27 April 1799

The Irish poet Thomas Campbell , aged twenty-one, published a poem entitled The Pleasures of Hope (on the model of The Pleasures of Memory by Samuel Rogers , 1792).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Grace Elliott: Probably 1802

Women writers item
Author event in Grace Elliott

Probably 1802

GE 's posthumous editor says that Elliott was moved to begin writing down her memories of the French Revolution, at Twickenham in Middlesex, after returning from France on the signing of the Treaty of...

By August 1802: An English translation appeared: Interesting...

Building item

By August 1802

An English translation appeared: Interesting Anecdotes of the heroic Conduct of Women, during the French Revolution, from the French of a Monsieur du Broca .
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2nd ser. 35 (1802): 360
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

12 February 1818: Chile (after chafing against the rule of...

National or international item

12 February 1818

Chile (after chafing against the rule of Spain since the Spanish monarchy was engulfed in the wake of the French Revolution) was proclaimed an independent republic with Bernardo O'Higgins as first president.
“Library of Congress Country Studies”. Country Studies/Area Handbook Series, 2003.

Mary Berry: By April 1828

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Berry

By April 1828

MB published the first of her mainstream, comparative cultural histories: A Comparative View of the Social Life of England and France from the Restoration of Charles the Second, to the French Revolution.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.