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About 1800: By now more than 70% of peers' eldest sons...

Building and people item

About 1800

By now more than 70% of peers' eldest sons were educated at one of four top public schools: Eton , Harrow , Westminster , and Winchester .
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.
167

Late 1951: Winston Churchill's Conservative government...

Building and people item

Late 1951

Winston Churchill 's Conservative government decided to remove the last traces of wartime austerity by ending the rationing system: it took them until 1954 to complete this process with the end of meat rationing.
Roberts, Clayton, and David Roberts. A History of England: 1688 to the Present. Prentice-Hall, 1980.
820
Mount, Ferdinand. “The Doctrine of Unripe Time”. London Review of Books, 16 Nov. 2006, pp. 28-30.
28

4 July 1829: George Shillibeer's horse-drawn omnibus began...

Building and people item

4 July 1829

George Shillibeer 's horse-drawn omnibus began service in London: from Paddington to the Bank.
Adburgham, Alison. Shops and Shopping 1800-1914: Where, and in What Manner the Well-Dressed Englishwoman Bought Her Clothes. Allen and Unwin, 1964.
79
Barker, Theodore Cardwell, and Dorian Gerhold. The Rise and Rise of Road Transport, 1700-1990. Macmillan, 1993.
66
Haydn, Joseph. Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates and Universal Information. Editor Vincent, Benjamin, 23rd ed., Ward, Lock, 1904.

25 February 1948: A nationalist riot broke out in the Gold...

National or international item

25 February 1948

A nationalist riot broke out in the Gold Coast.
Langer, William L., editor. An Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged. 4th ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
1235

1893: The Women's Co-operative Guild (WCG) held...

National or international item

1893

The Women's Co-operative Guild (WCG) held its first independent Congress at Leicester.
Webb, Catherine. The Woman with the Basket: The History of the Women’s Co-operative Guild 1883-1927. Co-operative Wholesale Society’s Printing Works, 1927.
146-8
Scott, Gillian. Feminism and the Politics of Working Women: The Women’s Cooperative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War. UCL Press, 1998.
76

1798: What is called the first Sunday school for...

Building and people item

1798

What is called the first Sunday school for adults was established in Nottingham by William Singleton , a Methodist, helped by Samuel Fox , a Quaker tradesman.
Purvis, June. A History of Women’s Education in England. Open University Press, 1991.
17
Laqueur, Thomas. Religion and Respectability. Yale University Press, 1976.
34-5
Curtis, Stanley James. History of Education in Great Britain. Seventh, University Tutorial Press, 1967.
468

September 1964: The University of Essex opened in Colchester,...

Building and people item

September 1964

The University of Essex opened in Colchester, Essex, as a utopian experiment designed to accommodate both expanding numbers and expanding knowledge, and to break down barriers between disciplines and between students and teachers.
Dent, Harold Collett. 1870-1970: Century of Growth in English Education. Longmans, 1970.
155
Whitaker’s Almanack. 119th ed., J. Whitaker, 1987.
506
Warner, Marina. “Diary”. London Review of Books, Vol.
36
, No. 17, 11 Sept. 2014, pp. 42-3.
42

March 1981: Activist Darcus Howe led about 10,000 people...

Building and people item

March 1981

Activist Darcus Howe led about 10,000 people in a protest march to 10 Downing Street (London headquarters of of the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher ) to protest about alleged racism both of criminals and of...

14 July 1742: Horace Walpole was diverted by the great...

Building and people item

14 July 1742

Horace Walpole was diverted by the great physical strength of a servant-maid helping to rescue goods in danger of burning in a house fire; he thought it particularly comic that she had the pastoral name...

7 June 1786: During the absence abroad of William Beckford,...

Writer or writing item

7 June 1786

During the absence abroad of William Beckford , his tutor Samuel Henley anonymously published his own English translation of Vathek, an Oriental gothic tale which Beckford had originally written in French.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
James, Jamie. “The Caliph of Fonthill”. The American Scholar, Vol.
72
, No. 1, 1 Dec. 2003–28 Feb. 2004, pp. 67-79.
70

7 July 1975: The first work by the Afro-American writer...

Writer or writing item

7 July 1975

The first work by the Afro-American writer Ntozake Shange opened off Broadway in New York: the choreopoem (or verse sequence for musical performance with dance) For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When...

By April 1774: Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son Philip...

Writer or writing item

By April 1774

Lord Chesterfield 's Letters to his Son Philip Stanhope were posthumously published by his daughter-in-law Eugenia ; her omission of all material relating to herself gave rise to the story that he had not known...

1911: Cambridge University Press published its...

Writer or writing item

1911

Cambridge University Press published its eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Clair, Colin. A Chronology of Printing. Cassell, 1969.
172
Mumby, Frank Arthur, and Ian Norrie. Mumby’s Publishing and Bookselling in the Twentieth Century. 6th ed., Bell and Hyman, 1982.
41

1 August 1944: The battered Polish resistance movement mobilised...

National or international item

1 August 1944

The battered Polish resistance movement mobilised 40,000 armed insurgents against the Nazi occupiers of Warsaw (which was the final obstacle between the advancing Red Army and Berlin).
MacQueen, Angus. “Stuck in the middle of great-power games”. Guardian Weekly, 27 Nov. 2003, p. 16.
16

20 October 1909: Helen Alexander Archdale, a leading Scottish...

National or international item

20 October 1909

Helen Alexander Archdale , a leading Scottish WSPU member, with Adela Pankhurst and three others, went on hunger strike in prison after arrest for causing a disturbance in Dundee at a meeting featuring Winston Churchill .
Crawford, Elizabeth. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928. Routledge, 2001.
under Archdale

16 December 1843: Thomas Hood's poem The Song of the Shirt...

Writer or writing item

16 December 1843

Thomas Hood 's poem The Song of the Shirt was published anonymously in the Christmas issue of Punch.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
Jerrold, Walter. Thomas Hood: His Life and Times. Greenwood Press, 1969.
365

November 1921: Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts...

Writer or writing item

November 1921

Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts began publishing monthly from Rome, Berlin, and New York.
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1910-1940. Women’s Press, 1987.
276

Evelyn Sharp

ES , whose career occupied the end of the nineteenth century and the first several decades of the twentieth, wrote books for children, journalism, polemic (on behalf of suffragist, internationalist, pacifist, and other movements), novels...
Evelyn Sharp Black-and-white photo of Evelyn Sharp at her home, standing in front of a bookcase and holding a book open in front of her, 16 February 1951.

15 November 1739: The first number appeared of The Champion,...

Writer or writing item

15 November 1739

The first number appeared of The Champion, an Opposition periodical by Henry Fielding and James Ralph .
Graham, Walter. English Literary Periodicals. Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1930.
156

Elizabeth Strutt

As a novelist and travel-writer and in one book of at least semi-feminist debate, ES seems to be addressing women; but when she writes on religion she takes men as her subject. With only one...

Anna Maria Porter

Though she also wrote poetry and other genres, AMP 's name rests on her almost thirty historical romances (totalling 54 volumes). Many had US editions and French translations. She tends to focus on male rather...
Anna Maria Porter Photograph of an engraving of Anna Maria Porter from a portrait by George Henry Harlow, c. 1805. She is seated, seen from the waist up, and seems to be wearing costume: a dress with puffed sleeves, a high collar that stands back from her shoulders, and a flower pinned in the centre of the bust. She holds a small stringed instrument in her lap, and her dark hair is pulled back and decorated with flowers. National Portrait Gallery.

January 1849-March 1850: Frank Smedley's Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes...

Writer or writing item

January 1849-March 1850

Frank Smedley 's Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil was serialised, in monthly parts, in Sharpe's London Magazine.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Smedley, Frank. Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil. A. Hall, Virtue, and Co., 1850.
prelims

1799: Women weavers, many of whom had replaced...

Building and people item

1799

Women weavers, many of whom had replaced men enlisted in the war against France, declared that they were better off than with their men at home.
Christie, Ian. Stress and Stability in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain: Reflections on the British Avoidance of Revolution. Clarendon, 1984.
84

20 June 2006: The BBC cancelled its flagship pop music...

Building and people item

20 June 2006

The BBC cancelled its flagship pop music programme, Top of the Pops, after forty-two years on the air.
“BBC Calls Time on Top of the Pops”. BBC News: Entertainment, 20 June 2006.

August 1936: In one of the most notorious of the show...

National or international item

August 1936

In one of the most notorious of the show trials that marked Stalin 's purging of ex-colleagues, Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed after reciting fabricated confessions.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/.