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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Jane Austen: 16 December 1775

Women writers item
Author event in Jane Austen

16 December 1775

JA was born at Steventon in Hampshire, a month after her mother had calculated that the birth was due.
This, coincidentally, was the birthday of Elizabeth Carter . Austen's birthplace no longer survives, though...

Anna Letitia Barbauld: Probably January 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Anna Letitia Barbauld

Probably January 1776

ALB met Hannah More , and they began a correspondence. The year after this More visited the Barbaulds at Palgrave.
McCarthy, William et al. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, University of Georgia Press, 1994, p. xxi - xlvi.
xliv
Rodgers, Betsy. Georgian Chronicle: Mrs Barbauld and her Family. Methuen, 1958.
81
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
226

William Beckford: 1776-7

Building item
Author event in William Beckford

1776-7

The teenage WB began planning with leading architect James Wyatt to replace his late father's Palladian mansion at Fonthill in Wiltshire with a Gothic extravaganza topped with an immensely tall tower.
Chapman, Guy Patterson. Beckford. Jonathan Cape, 1937.
264-5

Mary Deverell: 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Deverell

1776

The second, revised, edition of MD 's Sermons was published at London with a better subscription list than before.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire: 1776

Women writers item

1776

Elizabeth Hervey, later Duchess of Devonshire , was married (against her will, she later claimed) to her first husband, John Thomas Foster , a family friend and member of the Irish parliament.
Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. HarperCollins, 1998.
99-100

Mary Wollstonecraft: 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Wollstonecraft

1776

MW 's family moved from Hoxton in London to Laugharne in Wales.
Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Revised, Penguin, 1992.
27

Janet Schaw: After 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Janet Schaw

After 1776

JS transcribed her letters from her Caribbean, American, and Portuguese journey as Travels in the West Indies and South [sic] Carolina. It seems that the manuscript circulated widely; three copies are known today.
Andrews, Evangeline Walker et al. “Introduction, Appendices”. Journal of a Lady of Quality, Third Edition, Yale University Press, 1923, pp. 1 - 19, 256.
2-3
Bohls, Elizabeth A. Slavery and the Politics of Place. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
148

1776: Josiah Tucker and John Cartwright, in the...

Building item

1776

Josiah Tucker and John Cartwright , in the course of a printed exchange on the topic of taxation and representation, raised the issue of representation of women.
Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Revised, Penguin, 1992.
342-3

1 January 1776: The first American flag was raised, at Cambridge,...

National or international item

1 January 1776

The first American flag was raised, at Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Coakley, Robert, and Stetson Conn. The War of the American Revolution. Center of Military History, 1975.
96
Thomas, Peter David Garner. Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773-1776. Clarendon, 1991.
298

1776: A group of upper-class men founded the Concert...

Building item

1776

A group of upper-class men founded the Concert of Antient Music , to put on performances of Purcell , Handel (who was by now out of fashion), and seventeenth-century Italian composers.
Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997.
400-2

1776: Maria Maddelena Morelli, or Corilla Olimpica,...

Building item

1776

Maria Maddelena Morelli , or Corilla Olimpica, a member of the Italian Accademia degli Arcadi , was crowned on the Capitoline Hill in Rome (as Petrarch had been before her).
Dixon, Susan M. “Women in Arcadia”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
32
, No. 3, 1999, pp. 371-5.
372-3

1776: William Withering deliberately bowdlerised...

Building item

1776

William Withering deliberately bowdlerised the accustomed sexual language for describing plant reproduction in his Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain.
Shteir, Ann B. Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
21-3

1776: Members of the Society of Friends who were...

National or international item

1776

Members of the Society of Friends who were slave-owners were ordered to free their slaves; this was two years after Quakers had been forbidden to deal with slave traders, on penalty of expulsion from the...

Elizabeth Gilding: 8 January 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Elizabeth Gilding

8 January 1776

EG dated her Advertisement to her single volume, The Breathings of Genius. Being a Collection of Poems; to Which are Added, Essays, Moral and Philosophical, which was in print with her name by May...

Hannah Cowley: 15 February 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Hannah Cowley

15 February 1776

HC 's first play, the comedy The Runaway, opened at Drury Lane , as the only new mainpiece of David Garrick 's final season; it had the successful run of seventeen nights.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968, 5 vols.
4: 1952
Link, Frederick M., and Hannah Cowley. “Introduction”. The Plays of Hannah Cowley, Vol.
1
, Garland, 1979, p. v - xlxx.
vii, x

17 February 1776: Edward Gibbon published the first volume...

Writing climate item

17 February 1776

Edward Gibbon published the first volume of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; its mockingly sceptical fifteenth and sixteenth chapters caused a storm of controversy.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
46 (1776): 365
Pocock, John Greville Agard. “The Ironist”. London Review of Books, 14 Nov. 2002, pp. 13-17.
13

Elizabeth Sarah Gooch: 20 February 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Elizabeth Sarah Gooch

20 February 1776

ESG bore the elder of her two sons, William Thomas, at York; he may have been a fragile baby, since he was christened the day after his birth.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Gooch, Elizabeth Sarah. The Life of Mrs Gooch. Printed for the authoress and sold by C. and G. Kearsley, 1792, 3 vols.
1: 88

27 February 1776: A woman's artificial mountain of powdered...

Building item

27 February 1776

A woman's artificial mountain of powdered and ornamented hair saved her from serious injury when she was hit by a liquor keg thrown from the upper gallery at Covent Garden Theatre .
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968, 5 vols.
4: 1955-6

Frances Brooke: March 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Frances Brooke

March 1776

FB wrote a poem to commemorate her son 's graduation from St Paul's School .
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press, 1983.
121
Brooke, Frances. “Introduction”. The Excursion, edited by Paula R. Backscheider and Hope D. Cotton, University Press of Kentucky, 1997, p. ix - xlix.
xlix

Lady Mary Walker: By March 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Lady Mary Walker

By March 1776

Calling herself a Lady, LMW published her first identified novel, Letters from the Duchess de Crui and Others.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 250

By March 1776: James Fordyce, in The Character and Conduct...

Building item

By March 1776

James Fordyce , in The Character and Conduct of the Female Sex, used women's virtue and status as an index of civilized society, but denounced learned women.
Guest, Harriet. Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750-1810. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
156-7
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
41 (1776): 208

9 March 1776: Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the...

Writing climate item

9 March 1776

Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Sales were much higher than expected by the publisher, William Strahan , who had produced a print-run of 500...

28 March 1776: The Russian Bolshoi ballet and opera company...

Building item

28 March 1776

The Russian Bolshoi ballet and opera company was founded in Moscow.
Gentleman, Amelia. “Bolshoi at a critical stage”. Guardian Weekly, 30 Mar. 2000, p. 24.
24

Abigail Adams: 31 March 1776

Writing climate item
Author event in Abigail Adams

31 March 1776

In a famous letter to her husband, John Adams , AA wrote: I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and proposed legal reform to better the lot of married women.
Akers, Charles W. Abigail Adams: An American Woman. Little, Brown, 1980.
43-4

Ellis Cornelia Knight : Spring 1776

Women writers item
Author event in Ellis Cornelia Knight

Spring 1776

ECK and her mother left England with the intention of remaining abroad for three years. In the event their time abroad was eight times longer than that: it lasted until 1800.
Knight, Ellis Cornelia. The Autobiography of Miss Knight. Editor Fulford, Roger, William Kimber & Co., 1960.
35