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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1778: Joseph Bramah took out a patent (first of...

Building item

1778

Joseph Bramah took out a patent (first of his total of eighteen) on an improved water-closet.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2026, 22 vols. plus supplements.

1778: Gilbert Stuart published his major work,...

Writing climate item

1778

Gilbert Stuart published his major work, A View of Society in Europe.
O’Brien, Karen. Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
135

1778: The House of Commons barred women from attending...

National or international item

1778

The House of Commons barred women from attending debates to listen from the gallery, as they had often done until then.
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.
248

1778: The Female Jester, or Wit for the Ladies...

Writing climate item

1778

The Female Jester, or Wit for the Ladies re-packaged the jestbook format with the idea of appealing to women readers: the standard mixture of jokes, fables, and maxims remained much the same.
Dickie, Simon. “Hilarity and Pitilessness in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: English Jestbook Humor”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
37
, No. 1, 2003, pp. 1-22.
20n22

1 January 1778: A print by John Collet was published, showing...

Building item

1 January 1778

A print by John Collet was published, showing two cheerful sportswomen, Miss Trigger and Miss Wicket, who excel respectively at the unfeminine sports of shooting and cricket.
Williams, Carolyn. “’Half a Charge, and No Wadding’: Women and Guns in the Eighteenth Century”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
25
, No. 2, 1 Sept.–30 Nov. 2002, pp. 247-65.
252-4

1778: When William Caslon (the second to bear that...

Writing climate item

1778

When William Caslon (the second to bear that name) died, his famous type-foundry passed to his widow Elizabeth Caslon , whose business acumen was particularly admired.
Barker, Hannah. “Women, work and the industrial revolution: female involvement in the English printing trades, c. 1700-1840”. Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, edited by Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, Longman, 1997, pp. 81-100.
93

January 1778: John Wesley and others began publishing the...

Building item

January 1778

John Wesley and others began publishing the Arminian Magazine: consisting of extracts and original translations on universal redemptions.
Watson, George, and Ian Roy Wilson, editors. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Cambridge University Press, 1969, 5 vols., http://U of A, HSS Ruth N Flr 1 Ref.

15 January 1778: A Scottish court found in favour of Joseph...

Building item

15 January 1778

A Scottish court found in favour of Joseph Knight , a slave of African origin who had been brought to Scotland and now sued for his liberty. In effect this abolished slavery in Scotland: a...

Catharine Macaulay: By February 1778

Women writers item
Author event in Catharine Macaulay

By February 1778

CM published at Bath her single work of more recent history, A History of England from the Revolution to the Present Time in a Series of Letters to the Rev. Dr. Wilson, Rector of St...

February 1778: Franz Anton Mesmer, inventor of animal magnetism,...

Building item

February 1778

Franz Anton Mesmer , inventor of animal magnetism, arrived in Paris to promote his theory.
Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism: and the End of the Enlightenment in France. Harvard University Press, 1968.
3-4

6 February 1778: Representatives of France and the United...

National or international item

6 February 1778

Representatives of France and the United States signed treaties of alliance and of amity and commerce.
Coakley, Robert, and Stetson Conn. The War of the American Revolution. Center of Military History, 1975.
111

Mary Jones: 10 February 1778

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Jones

10 February 1778

MJ , writer and postmistress of Oxford, died there at 16 Fish Street (now St Aldate's).
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.

Judith Sargent Murray: 25 February 1778

Writing climate item
Author event in Judith Sargent Murray

25 February 1778

Judith Stevens (later JSM ) wrote to her brother Winthrop (then encamped with Washington 's army at Valley Forge, at a low point in the War of Independence) to express her fears and her...

Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore: By February 1778

Women writers item

By February 1778

Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore , wrote for her second husband , apparently under duress, a 15,000-word volume of Confessions.
Arnold, Ralph. The Unhappy Countess and her Grandson John Bowes. Constable, 1957.
82, 85
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.

Ann Thicknesse: Biography: By March 1778

Women writers item

By March 1778

AT published with her name Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France, a biographical dictionary whose title includes the boast that it is Addressed to Mrs Elizabeth Carter.
Thicknesse, Ann. Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France. J. Dodsley, E. and C. Dilly, R. Cruttwell, and T. Shrimpton, 1778.
title-page
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
46 (March 1778): 218

Clara Reeve: March 1778

Women writers item
Author event in Clara Reeve

March 1778

CR published, with her name, a revised version of her gothic novel The Champion of Virtue, now entitled The Old English Baron.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 262
Trainer, James, and Clara Reeve. “Introduction”. The Old English Baron, Oxford University Press, 1977.
xii

9 March 1778: The British Parliament approved proposals...

National or international item

9 March 1778

The British Parliament approved proposals from Lord North , the Prime Minister, for conciliation with the United States.
Coakley, Robert, and Stetson Conn. The War of the American Revolution. Center of Military History, 1975.
111

20 March 1778: Louis XVI of France received American commissioners...

National or international item

20 March 1778

Louis XVI of France received American commissioners Benjamin Franklin , Silas Deane , and Arthur Lee .
Coakley, Robert, and Stetson Conn. The War of the American Revolution. Center of Military History, 1975.
111

Lady Eleanor Butler: 30 March 1778

Women writers item
Author event in Lady Eleanor Butler

30 March 1778

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby eloped with the firm intention of spending their lives together: both wore men's clothes; Ponsonby escaped out of a window with a pistol and her little dog.
Mavor, Elizabeth. The Ladies of Llangollen. Michael Joseph, 1971.
36

Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy: By April 1778

Writing climate item
Author event in Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy

By April 1778

The Memoirs of the Countess of Dunois: written by herself before her retirement (initially published in 1699 and reissued in two volumes in London), woke no memory of MCA in the reviewer for the...

Phillis Wheatley: 1 April 1778

Writing climate item
Author event in Phillis Wheatley

1 April 1778

PW married John Peters , who was, like her, a free black.
Wheatley, Phillis, and Henry Louis, Jr Gates. The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. Editor Shields, John C., Oxford University Press, 1988.
339

William Hazlitt: 10 April 1778

Writing climate item
Author event in William Hazlitt

10 April 1778

WH , essayist and critic, was born at Maidstone in Kent, a middle one among seven children.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Lady Mary Walker: By April 1778

Women writers item
Author event in Lady Mary Walker

By April 1778

LMW published her best-known work, Munster Village, A Novel, a utopian, part-epistolary, didactic work.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 270-1

Grace Elliott: By 25 April 1778

Building item
Author event in Grace Elliott

By 25 April 1778

Thomas Gainsborough painted GE (already publicly known to be a courtesan) and caused scandal by exhibiting her portrait at the Royal Academy .
This painting is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York.
Conway, Alison. Private Interests. University of Toronto Press, 2001.
fig. 2
Conway, Alison. Private Interests. University of Toronto Press, 2001.
40, 227n83

Ann Fisher : 25 April 1778

Women writers item
Author event in Ann Fisher

25 April 1778

AF died in Newcastle of asthma.
Horsley, P. M. “Some Local Ladies of the Eighteenth Century”. Heaton Works Journal, Vol.
6
, No. 33, C A Parsons and Company, pp. 131-8.
138
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Horsley, P. M. “Some Local Ladies of the Eighteenth Century”. Heaton Works Journal, Vol.
6
, No. 33, C A Parsons and Company, pp. 131-8.
138