Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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21 July 1773
The Order of Jesuits
was abolished by Pope Clement XIV
; they took refuge in Prussia, where their presence fed English anti-Catholicism.
30 October 1899
The siege of Ladysmith began: General Sir George Stuart White
, besieged by Boer forces at this Transvaal town, decided to hold the town and await relief from more British troops under Sir Redvers Buller
.
October 1830
In Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania) the Black Line was formed: thousands of able-bodied male colonists (convict or free)
McGrath, Ann, editor. Contested Ground: Australian Aborigines under the British Crown. Allen and Unwin, 1995.
320
formed a human chain to drive the remaining Aborigine (or Pallawah) population off their lands.
Author profile
Margaret Atwood
Well before the end of the twentieth century MA
had become one of Canada's leading writers in multiple genres. She now writes for a global audience who read her more than forty novels , poetry,short...
Author profile
Catharine Trotter
Since the late twentieth century CT
has been known chiefly for her early writings, shortly before and after the year 1700, which include tragedies, poetry, a comedy, and a short fiction. Though this first phase...
1 June 1839
John Conolly
became the resident physician at Hanwell Lunatic Asylum
; he proved that a large mental institution could be managed without physical discipline.
19 February 1820
Madame Vestris
starred in a comic opera at Drury Lane Theatre
to mixed reviews; she did not achieve fame until she started playing male roles.
John Lindley
gave his inaugural lecture as the first professor of botany at the newly established London University
.
5 July 1962
Algeria was proclaimed an independent country two days after France officially recognized its sovereignty.
1684-5
During these years (called the Killing Times) seventy-eight Scots Covenanters
were executed on the spot for refusing to deny their religious allegiance; others were executed after trial.
1856
The first thread sewing machine for bookbinding was invented by David McConnell Smyth
of Hartford, Connecticut.
Alfred Tennyson
anonymously published his poetic sequence In Memoriam.
27 August 1950
The BBC
made its first live television broadcast from the Continent (from Calais) using outside broadcast equipment.
About 9 September 1985
Race riots occurred at Handsworth in Birmingham and at Chapeltown in Leeds.
12 November 1975
The UK's Sex Discrimination Act legislated against non-contractual discrimination on the basis of sex, and established the Equal Opportunities Commission
to monitor progress.
1662
An Act of Settlement confirmed that poor relief could be received only in one's parish of settlement (that is, in one's birthplace).
5 May 1821
The Manchester Guardian began publication in Manchester; the newspaper ran until 22 August 1959, when it changed its title to the Guardian and moved its offices to London.
6 July 1924
Hans Berger
developed the electro-encephalogram (EEG) for monitoring brain waves. He published his developments five years later.
By January 1754
Richard Glover
's Short History of Boadicea, the British Queen, was published (staged at Drury Lane
late the previous year).
Before 1638
William Page
, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
, created a proto-feminist text entitled Womens Worth: A Treatise proveing by sundrie reasons that woemen do excell men.
10 March 1812 to September 1818
Byron
published the first two cantos of his narrative-reflective poemChilde Harold's Pilgrimage.
1931
Hamish Hamilton
established his own publishing house at 90 Great Russell Street, London.
Kingsley Amis
published his novelThe Old Devils, which won the Booker Prize from a strong field after a tie with What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
was broken by a casting...
The iPhone, launched by Apple
at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas combined a mobile phone with touch-screen, web browser, camera, and MP3 player.
Author profile
Jane Williams
JW
's eight books and several periodical publications appeared from the pre-Victorian to the mid-Victorian period in a number of genres, including poetry, literary criticism (of women writers in particular), and an account of her...
29 October 1858
Telegraphic communication was established between the major Australian cities of Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
23 April 1979
Blair Peach
, a London teacher, suffered a fractured skull when he was hit on the head by a police officer as he was leaving an anti-National Front
demonstration at Southall. He died...
17 July 1837
The Offences Against the Person Act re-stated that abortion was illegal in England, Wales, and Ireland; it made no distinction between abortion before and after the quickening of the foetus.
Margaret Leeson
, alias Peg Plunkett, who was well-known for her thirty years as a courtesan and brothel-keeper, mostly in Dublin, set out to raise cash by publishing Memoirs of Mrs. Margaret Leeson.
28 October 2008
Nina Sankovitch
, an American woman with a law degree, a job, and a family, embarked on her forty-sixth birthday on a year of reading a book a day and posting an online review of...
1349
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch
), Italian father of the sonnet, circulated in manuscript his Canzoniere or Rime sparse or Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, which include his most famous love poems to Laura (who, he wrote, had recently died).
By December 1919
Peggy Webling
published Verses to Men, a collection of her poetry.
Author profile
Lucy Knox
LK
published two volumes of poetry, mainly sonnets, in the late 1800s. Her poems included some on political and social issues, exploring marriage, religion, Anglo-Irish relations, and the Woman Question with a directness and clarity...
Newsmen and tv cameras recorded a brutal attack by state troopers at Selma, Alabama, on marchers peacefully protesting against earlier violence (and a death) during a drive to register black voters.