Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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1831
Members of the female auxiliary were allowed to attend Bible Society
public meetings.
31 December 1865
Fredrika Bremer
, author and activist for women's rights, died in Årsta, Sweden.
Late October 1862
John William Colenso
, Bishop of Natal, published the first volume of his controversial The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined, challenging the literal truth of the Bible on scientific grounds.
Author profile
Margaret Forster
Margaret Forster
's tally of books, which began to appear in the later twentieth century, neared forty. They run the gamut from novels at one end to history and biography at the other, emphasising the...
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.
1953
The Collected Works of C. G. Jung was published; it included discussions, originally published in two essays in 1917, on introversion and extroversion.
By mid-1933
Walter Greenwood
published Love on the Dole, a novel about life in depression Britain which sold 46,290 copies by 1940.
By late June 1999
J. M. Coetzee
became the first author to win the Booker Prize a second time, with Disgrace; his Life & Times of Martin K. had won in 1983.
25 August 2012
According to an announcement by scientists at NASA
after more than a year of examining the data (though even then a few other space scientists remain sceptical) the spacecraft Voyager 1 (launched from the Earth...
There was published The Female Soldier; or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell, who claimed to have served undetected for five years in the army, wearing men's clothes.
Church bells (which quite recently had stood ready to signal invasion) were rung all over Britain, in the wake of the battle of El Alamein, to celebrate the defeat of Rommel
.
1683
John Bunyan
published a tract examining the relation of women to the church: A Case of Conscience Resolved.
Author profile
Amelia Beauclerc
AB
's half-dozen novels, all published within a decade of the early nineteenth century and of oddly varying quality, centre on the theme of bad parenting. Many include travel and several touch the fringes of...
24 May 1675
Anthony Wood
, passionate collector of historical ephemera, carried off for his collection a petition to parliament which he found provided as toilet paper in a London privy.
Parliament
passed the Septennial Act, which set the maximum duration of a British government at seven years before an election had to be called (more than twice the previous three-year term).
1724
The first volume of Gilbert Burnet
's History of His Own Times (begun in 1683) was posthumously published by his son Sir Thomas Burnet
.
21 September 1931
Britain abandoned the gold standard.
1 May 1746
A Penal Law passed by the British Parliament
in 1745 declared that from this date any marriage of a Protestant solemnised by a Catholic priest (whether to a Catholic or Protestant) was null and void.
Late June 1862
The Council of the College of Physicians
in Edinburgh decided, by a vote of eighteen to sixteen, against admitting women.
1736
The first lying-in hospital in Great Britain was established in Edinburgh.
1925
The Black US singer Josephine Baker
, aged nineteen, met with phenomenal success in Paris; she was seen as exemplifying the Jazz Age on one hand and a new racial consciousness on the other.
16 April 1912
Harriet Quimby
became the first woman to fly the English Channel: from Deal in England to Cape Gris-Nez in France.
The Endowed Schools Act effected educational reform and improved funding for girls' schooling.
By May 1790
Sir John Sinclair
circulated to Church of Scotland
clergymen his questionnaire about their parishes: their history, geography, antiquities, natural history, demography, commerce, industry, and manners.
MS
, long known almost exclusively for Frankenstein, is now being read for her later novels and her plays, as well as for her journals and letters. Her editing, reviewing, biographical, and journalistic work...
1860
Jacob Burckhardt
published Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien.
Josephine Saxton
published two science fictionstories, The Consciousness Machine and Jane Saint and the Backlash: The Further Travails of Jane Saint, in a single volume from Women's Press.
1797
William Taylor
wrote the first recorded instance of the word autobiography (in a Monthly Review notice of Isaac D'Israeli
's Miscellanies).
November 1909
The Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Review began quarterly publication in London.
10 October 1891
The newspaper of the emerging Independent Labour Party
, The Labour Leader, first appeared. It ran until 28 September 1922, after which the title changed to the New Leader.
1725
Francis Hutcheson
published anonymously, in two separate forms, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, in two treatises, one on aesthetics (beauty, order, harmony, design) and one...
1857
A skeleton of the first known remains of the people subsequently named Neanderthals (an ice age subspecies of Homo sapiens) was found in the Neander Valley, near Düsseldorf.
Author profile
Sir James George Frazer
SJGF
was a late Victorian academic, anthropologist and investigator of aboriginal peoples' religious beliefs and practices. His book The Golden Bough made a huge impact on writers as well as scientists.
1789
Jeremy Bentham
's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was published.
10 August 1876
The first telephone conversation over a significant distance (eight miles) was made by Alexander Graham Bell
.
3 November 1957
Sputnik 2 was launched by the Soviet Union, carrying a dog named Laika, the first animal to reach orbit around the earth.
June 1999
Suzanne Berne
of the USA won the Orange Prize for Fiction with her novelA Crime In The Neighborhood.
1853
Londoner Isabella Rushton Preston
published anonymously, through John Murray
, her Handbook of Familiar Quotations from English Authors. This became a leading source for the better-known, American Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 1855.
Shapiro, Fred R. “Anonymous was a Woman”. Yale Alumni Magazine.
January 1800
The British Magazine, a leading conservative periodical, began publication.
November 1867
Émile Zola
published Thérèse Raquin, a naturalistic novel treating adultery, murder, and poetic justice.
Author profile
Jane Austen
JA
's unequalled reputation has led academic canon-makers to set her on a pedestal and scholars of early women's writing to use her as an epoch. For generations she was the first—or the only—woman to...
3 March 1851
John Ruskin
published The Foundations, the first volume of his influential study of architecture and culture entitled The Stones of Venice.
1934
New Zealand pilot Jean Batten
flew a Gypsy Moth from England to Australia. She beat British pilot Amy Johnson
's 1930 record by five days, and became the fist woman to complete the return trip.
Author profile
Kathleen Nott
KN
was a philosophical writer, novelist, translator, poet, and critic of the mid twentieth century. Her importance for literary history lies in the position she took up in The Emperor's Clothes, 1953, which challenged...