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2 September 1483: William Caxton dated his edition of John...

Writer or writing item

2 September 1483

William Caxton dated his edition of John Gower 's only poem in English, Confessio Amantis.
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
2 September 2008

By May 1968: James D. Watson published The Double Helix,...

Building and people item

By May 1968

James D. Watson published The Double Helix, an account of the discovery of the structure of DNA, the basis of human genetic material; he dedicated it to Naomi Mitchison .
Smith, John Maynard. Did Darwin Get It Right? Essays on Games, Sex and Evolution. Penguin, 1993.
4-5, 258

2 July 1969: Newpapers reported that (following the Abortion...

Building and people item

2 July 1969

Newpapers reported that (following the Abortion Act of October 1967) abortion trips to England were being organized by the Danish Association for the Individual and Society .
Hindell, Keith, and Madeleine Simms. Abortion Law Reformed. Peter Owen, 1971.
219-20
Hordern, Anthony. Legal Abortion: The English Experience. Pergamon, 1971.
136

17 February 1856: Heinrich Heine, German-Jewish lyric poet,...

Writer or writing item

17 February 1856

Heinrich Heine , German-Jewish lyric poet, died after intense suffering from tuberculosis of the spine.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
90

10 May to 14 August 1813: The British Institution held a retrospective...

Building and people item

10 May to 14 August 1813

The British Institution held a retrospective exhibition of 141 paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds at its Pall Mall Picture Galleries: a major event of the social season, both cultural and patriotic.
Barchas, Janine. What Jane Saw. 2013, http://www.whatjanesaw.org.

6 June 1381: While the Peasants' Revolt was unfolding...

National or international item

6 June 1381

While the Peasants' Revolt was unfolding in London, a court at Thorrington in Essex found two serfs guilty of arranging marriages for their daughters without permission from their feudal lord.
Carpenter, David. “Promises, Promises”. London Review of Books, Vol.
38
, No. 11, 2 June 2016, pp. 31-2.
33

15 May 1958: The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 3, nicknamed...

National or international item

15 May 1958

The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 3, nicknamed the flying laboratory for all its scientific equipment.
Bruno, Leonard. On the Move: A Chronology of Advances in Transportation. Gale Research, 1993.
275

Zoë Fairbairns

ZF wrote and published her first novel before she went to university at the end of the 1960s. In a career closely linked to the feminist movement, she has published novels, short stories, poetry, plays...

Marie Stopes

MS was best known for her early-twentieth-century writing on motherhood and birth control, and for her strong commitment to educating women in the practice of contraception. In order to communicate detailed instructions on topics that...
Marie Stopes Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Marie Stopes, c. 1918. She has short curly hair, and wears a dress with dark sleeves and broad white collar, a necklace of large beads, and a white Panama-style hat with a dark bow.

28 February 1976: A charity gala performance, Tribute to the...

Building and people item

28 February 1976

A charity gala performance, Tribute to the Lady, was staged for the last night of the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic before its move to the South Bank.
Billington, Michael. Peggy Ashcroft, 1907-1991. Mandarin, 1991.
243-4

4 December 2008: Investigators from the office of the Russian...

Writer or writing item

4 December 2008

Investigators from the office of the Russian general prosecutor confiscated hard drives containing the archives compiled by the human rights and research centre Memorial , housed at St Petersburg.
Figes, Orlando. “Did the Kremlin make my book on Stalin disappear?”. Guardian Weekly, 13 Mar. 2009, p. 7.
7

October 1956: The International Atomic Energy Agency was...

National or international item

October 1956

The International Atomic Energy Agency was established.
Kinder, Hermann, and Werner Hilgemann. The Anchor Atlas of World History. Translator Menze, Ernest A., Vol.
2
, Anchor, 1978.
II: 273

Elizabeth Ham

Though almost forgotten, EH is remarkable as an autobiographer and even more remarkable as a the author of a single novel. Writing and publishing in the earlier nineteenth century, she also produced a grammar textbook...
Elizabeth Ham Colour photograph of North Perrott in Somerset, the village of Elizabeth Ham's birth. This is the centre of the village, known as the Cross Tree, with the pub to the right of the picture and pub sign to the left.

1877: The Elizabeth Stone who published as Sutherland...

Women writers item

1877

The Elizabeth Stone who published as Sutherland Menzies issued under her pseudonym a two history books this year in the CollinsSchool Series.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

1650: The Polish astronomer Maria Cunitz, sometimes...

Building and people item

1650

The Polish astronomer Maria Cunitz , sometimes called the second Hypatia, published her Urania Propitia, which builds on the work of Johannes Kepler .
Mulvihill, Margaret E. “Old Books / New Editions. Part III of III. New Work on Margaret Cavendish’s ‘The Blazing World’ (1666; 2016)”. Rare Book Hub, Dec. 2016.

1874: The Anglican Community of St Laurence was...

Building and people item

1874

The Anglican Community of St Laurence was founded in Norwich, Norfolk.
Anson, Peter F. The Call of the Cloister: Religious Communities and Kindred Bodies in the Anglican Communion. Editor Campbell, A. W., Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1964.
452

17 July 1798: Radical publisher Joseph Johnson stood trial...

Writer or writing item

17 July 1798

Radical publisher Joseph Johnson stood trial for publishing the allegedly seditious Reply to Some Parts of the Bishop of Llandaff's Address.
Waters, Mary A. “’The First of a New Genus’: Mary Wollstonecraft as Literary Critic and Mentor to Mary Hays”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
37
, No. 3, 1 Mar.–31 May 2004, pp. 415-34.
428

1874: James Starley of Coventry patented the first...

Building and people item

1874

James Starley of Coventry patented the first women's bicycle.
Singer, Charles et al., editors. A History of Technology. Clarendon, 1958, 8 vols.
5: 414-15

Catharine Macaulay

CM is best known as a radical historian (the only historian of England from a republican point of view for almost two centuries after she wrote). The eight volumes of her History of England took...
Catharine Macaulay Portrait of Catharine Macaulay by Robert Edge Pine, c. 1776. Pine had already done a full-length painting which renders Macaulay's head and shoulders very similarly, but clearly shows her dressed as a Roman matron with the sash of a Roman senator. (The dress was blue and the sash purple; now the colours are reversed.) Macaulay, still rests an arm on a volume of her monumental "History of England", but now within a painted oval, without the classical backdrop of the larger, more political picture. There she

Later 1783: The first Anti-Slavery Committee was founded...

Writer or writing item

Later 1783

The first Anti-Slavery Committee was founded (a precursor to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade , composed chiefly of Quakers ) and The Case of our Fellow Creatures, the Oppressed Africans was published.
Dickson, Mora. The Powerful Bond: Hannah Kilham 1774-1832. Dobson, 1980.
90

23 June 1931: Lili de Alvarez became the first woman to...

Building and people item

23 June 1931

Lili de Alvarez became the first woman to wear shorts while playing in the tennis championships at Wimbledon.
Brakeman, Lynne, and Susan Gall, editors. Chronology of Women Worldwide: People, Places and Events that Shaped Women’s History. Gale Research, 1997.
364

1691: William Walsh published anonymously A Dialogue...

Writer or writing item

1691

William Walsh published anonymously A Dialogue Concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex, Written to Eugenia.
Walsh, William, d. 1708. A Dialogue Concerning Women. Printed for R. Bentley and J. Tonson, 1691.
32, 34
Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Poets. Editor Lonsdale, Roger, Clarendon Press, 2006, 4 vols.
2: 305n10

Cassandra Cooke

From her girlhood in the later eighteenth century, CC had the habit of writing meditations, prayers, and poems on occasions in her life. As an adult she published a single historical novel. She planned to...
Cassandra Cooke Colour photograph of St Nicholas Church in Great Bookham, Surrey, where Cassandra Cooke's husband was vicar. She lived in the village for more than fifty years..

1939-44: During the war years books were exempt from...

Writer or writing item

1939-44

During the war years books were exempt from purchase tax, and book sales per head of population in Britain went up by fifty per cent. At the same time bombed-out libraries developed the need to...

: Each adult in England, of either sex, was...

National or international item

Spring 1554

Each adult in England, of either sex, was required by their bishop to make a formal statement of Catholic faith before they were eligible to make their Easter Communion.
Duffy, Eamon. “Rolling Back the Reformation”. London Review of Books, Vol.
30
, No. 3, 7 Feb. 2008, pp. 27-9.
28