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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Mary Deverell: After July 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Deverell

After July 1781

MD published at London, with a distinguished subscription list, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. Her dedication is dated 10 July.
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.

Maria Edgeworth: Summer 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Maria Edgeworth

Summer 1781

At Mrs Devis's school ME suffered a painful affliction of the eyes which also made her face swell: one doctor told her she would go blind.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon, 1972.
75

2 July 1781: At the Haymarket Theatre the final performance...

Building item

2 July 1781

At the Haymarket Theatre the final performance was given of The Genius of Nonsense, a play which mocked James Graham , health-and-sex pundit, as the Emperor of Quacks.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2026, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–1993.

Frances Reynolds : By 21 July 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Frances Reynolds

By 21 July 1781

FR showed a draft of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste and of the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty, &c to Samuel Johnson : he pressed her to publish it, but to revise...

Ann Gomersall: 21 July 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Ann Gomersall

21 July 1781

Ann Richardson entered on her marriage in London to a linen-draper of that city, William Gomersall .
Ashfield, Andrew. Emails to Isobel Grundy about Ann Gomersall, Ann Hawkshaw, J. S. Anna Liddiard, Plumptre Sisters, Mary Ridgway Stockdale, Medora Gordon Byron. 8 Jan. 2016.
Raven, James. Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750-1800. Clarendon, 1992.
113

Anne Francis: After July 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Anne Francis

After July 1781

In her early forties AF published her first book, through Dodsley , by subscription, with her name (spelled Ann): A Poetical Translation of the Song of Solomon, from the Original Hebrew, with a Preliminary...

Jemima Kindersley: 28 July 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Jemima Kindersley

28 July 1781

JK received £25 from James Dodsley for her recently published translation of An Essay on Women, from the French of Antoine Leonard Thomas (dating from 1772).
Dodsley, Robert. The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley 1733-1764. Editor Tierney, James E., Cambridge University Press, 1988.
562

Eliza Fay: August 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Eliza Fay

August 1781

EF , in India, acquired a deed of legal separation from her husband: the final straw was her discovery that he had an illegitimate child.
Fay, Eliza, and E. M. Forster. Original Letters from India. Hogarth Press, 1925.
200
Forster, E. M., and Eliza Fay. “Introductory Note”. Original Letters from India, Hogarth Press, 1925, pp. 7-24.
11

8 August 1781: At the Haymarket Theatre, a transvestite...

Writing climate item

8 August 1781

At the Haymarket Theatre , a transvestite Beggar's Opera (in which most of the male parts were played by women and the female parts by men) garnered such favourable audience response that its performance was...

Susanna Blamire: 20-28 August 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Susanna Blamire

20-28 August 1781

SB stayed with her future sister-in-law (then Jane Christian ) at the sociable resort of Gilsland Spa.
Maycock, Christopher. A Passionate Poet: Susanna Blamire, 1747-94: A Biography. Hypatia, 2003.
80

Anna Letitia Barbauld: 22 August 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Anna Letitia Barbauld

22 August 1781

ALB followed up the success of Lessons for Children with Hymns in Prose for Children, which Joseph Johnson entered in the Stationers' Register on this date.
McCarthy, William et al. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, University of Georgia Press, 1994, p. xxi - xlvi.
xliv
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
193

September 1781: The slave ship Zong left Africa for Jamaica...

National or international item

September 1781

The slave ship Zong left Africa for Jamaica loaded with people captured to be sold into slavery, even more of whom than usual were doomed to die on the voyage.
Walvin, James et al. “Ignatius Sancho: The Man and His Times”. Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters, National Portrait Gallery, 1997, pp. 93-113.
106

Deborah Norris Logan: 6 September 1781

Writing climate item
Author event in Deborah Norris Logan

6 September 1781

Deborah Norris , an heiress of not quite twenty-one, married George Logan , who was then a practising physician.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

William Beckford: 28 September 1781

Building item
Author event in William Beckford

28 September 1781

Guests began arriving at Fonthill Abbey for WB 's coming-of-age on the next day; the orgiastic party lasted three days.
Chapman, Guy Patterson. Beckford. Jonathan Cape, 1937.
96-7

Mary Wollstonecraft: Autumn 1781-April 1782

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Wollstonecraft

Autumn 1781-April 1782

MW nursed her mother through her last illness.
Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Revised, Penguin, 1992.
34

Cassandra, Lady Hawke: 17 October 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Cassandra, Lady Hawke

17 October 1781

Cassandra Hawke became Lady Hawke when her father-in-law died and her husband acceded to his title as second Baron Hawke.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Edward Hawke

19 October 1781: A British force of about 10,000 under Cornwallis...

National or international item

19 October 1781

A British force of about 10,000 under Cornwallis surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia.
Coakley, Robert, and Stetson Conn. The War of the American Revolution. Center of Military History, 1975.
132

Ann Thicknesse: Biography: By November 1781

Women writers item

By November 1781

AT completed the publication, this time by subscription, of another version or a continuation of her biographical dictionary Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France, now in three volumes of...

Elizabeth Gilding: November 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Elizabeth Gilding

November 1781

Elizabeth Turner (formerly EG ) published in the Westminster Magazine a poem entitled Written on the Coffin of an Infant, aged one Month and Two days, by her Mother.
Pitcher, Edward W. “Eliza Gilding (Mrs. Daniel Turner): Some Facts and Inferences”. ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, Vol.
12
, No. 1, 1 Dec. 1999–28 Feb. 2000, pp. 6-22.
19

Lucy Aikin: 6 November 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Lucy Aikin

6 November 1781

LA was born in Warrington, Lancashire.
William McCarthy, biographer of her famous aunt, suggests that she and her brother Edward may perhaps have been christened (with names not traditional in their family) after Ed...

Mary Bosanquet Fletcher: 12 November 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Bosanquet Fletcher

12 November 1781

Mary Bosanquet , already past forty, married the Rev. John Fletcher (vicar of Madeley in Staffordshire) at Batley church in Yorkshire.
Fletcher, Mary Bosanquet. The Life of Mrs. Mary Fletcher. Editor Moore, Henry, 1751 - 1844, T. Mason and G. Lane, 1837.
136
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Vignettes. Alexander Strahan, 1866.
434

Mary Delany: 13 November 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Mary Delany

13 November 1781

Queen Charlotte , a personal friend of MD , recorded Delany's gift to her of one of her most remarkable artefacts, an album of cut-paper portrait silhouettes, which Delany had done from life.
Pelling, Madeleine. “Crafting Friendship: Mary Delany’s Album and Queen Charlotte’s Pocketbook”. Journal 18, a journal of eighteenth-century art and culture, 1 Sept.–30 Nov. 2018.

Anna Jane Vardill: 19 November 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Anna Jane Vardill

19 November 1781

AJV , an only child, was born in London. She was baptised in Marylebone just over a month later.
Ancestry.co.uk. http://www.ancestry.co.uk.

Judith Cowper Madan : 7 December 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Judith Cowper Madan

7 December 1781

JCM died after twenty-five years as a widow, at her London home in Stafford Row (which is now part of Buckingham Gate).
Madan, Falconer. The Madan Family. Oxford University Press, 1933.
90
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Hannah More: Late 1781

Women writers item
Author event in Hannah More

Late 1781

HM 's sisters got up a subscription to help the mother and sister of the poet Chatterton , after his untimely death.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press, 1952.
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