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1902: The Marmite Food Company was set up at Burton-on-Trent...

Building and people item

1902

The Marmite Food Company was set up at Burton-on-Trent to manufacture a savoury spread, marmite, which became a quissentially English foodstuff.
Barton, Laura. “’It must be spread thinly. T-h-i-n-l-y. . .’”. The Guardian, 4 Jan. 2002, p. G2 6.
6

1500: British female literacy rates at this time...

Writer or writing item

1500

British female literacy rates at this time have been estimated as 1%, against a male rate of 10%.
Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997.
167

7 June 1594: Dr Roderigo Lopez, a Portuguese Jew who had...

National or international item

7 June 1594

Dr Roderigo Lopez , a Portuguese Jew who had lived thirty-five years in England, most of them at the head of the medical profession, was executed for his alleged part in a plot to...

By February 1741: A monument was erected by subscription to...

Writer or writing item

By February 1741

A monument was erected by subscription to the memory of Shakespeare in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
11 (1741): 105

1897: Artisan Phoebe Traquair completed her lavishly...

Building and people item

1897

Artisan Phoebe Traquair completed her lavishly illustrated manuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 's Sonnets from the Portuguese.
The National Library of Scotland, where the manuscript is housed, notes that the transcriptions are from Traquair's...

Mary Cholmondeley

MC wrote mainly popular fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that was often both melodramatic and satiric. Her corpus includes novels, short stories, family memoirs, and some articles. It was largely ignored...

1812: The Wesleyan Conference split from the Church...

National or international item

1812

The Wesleyan Conference split from the Church of England to form the Methodist Church .
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
49

1933: In this year, under Stalin, the Russian gulag...

National or international item

1933

In this year, under Stalin , the Russian gulag or concentration camp system was occupied by two and a half million prisoners, most of them accused of sabotage or of owning land.
Netz, Reviel. “Barbed Wire”. London Review of Books, 20 July 2000, pp. 30-5.
34

23 April 1993: The new Globe Theatre on London's South Bank...

Building and people item

23 April 1993

The new Globe Theatre on London's South Bank (masterminded by Sam Wanamaker and designed as a modified replica of Shakespeare 's theatre), although still a building site, put on its first production.
“Designing Shakespeare Collection—Performance Details”. ahds performing arts.

1990: Penelope Gilliatt published this year both...

Women writers item

1990

Penelope Gilliatt published this year both Lingo, a short-story volume, and To Wit: In Celebration of Comedy, a study of the genre.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

1810-February 1812: During these years the price of wheat in...

Building and people item

1810-February 1812

During these years the price of wheat in Britain and Ireland (which had been rising steeply since the 1790s) averaged an unprecedented 102 shillings a hundredweight.
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.
158
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
82 (1812): 199
Richards, Eric. Debating the Highland Clearances. Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
221
A hundredweight (a measure...

1991: Much discussion was provoked by Ridley Scott's...

Building and people item

1991

Much discussion was provoked by Ridley Scott 's film Thelma and Louise, which depicts two women walking out of their domestic routine into a life of crime and freedom.
Williams, Neville et al. Chronology of the 20th Century. Helicon, 1996.
507

31 March 1832: William Tait published the first issue of...

Writer or writing item

31 March 1832

William Tait published the first issue of Tait's Edinburgh Magazine.
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press, 1966–1989, 5 vols.
4: 475-6
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press, 1966–1989, 5 vols.
4: 475-7

1839: The Casket of Fate, a small collection of...

Writer or writing item

1839

The Casket of Fate, a small collection of verse by Frances Osgood , appeared in London.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
250

6 November 1817: Princess Charlotte died at 2.30 a.m. after...

National or international item

6 November 1817

Princess Charlotte died at 2.30 a.m. after delivering a stillborn son. Poor clinical judgement was to blame; intense national mourning and controversy followed.
Towler, Jean. Midwives in History and Society. Croom Helm, 1986.
142-4
Bynum, William F. Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
205
Macalpine, Ida, and Richard Hunter. George III and the Mad-Business. Allen Lane, 1969.
241-2
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
2 (1817): 449

Mercy Otis Warren

MOW has been called First Lady of the American Revolution. She was its historian—the only writer to fill this role at an early date from anything like a revolutionary point of view—but she was also...
Mercy Otis Warren Painting of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley. She stands in an outdoor background of trees and flowers, holding one hand out, and wearing a deep blue gown with quantities of lace at the wrists, frills and more lace elsewhere, and a silver bow in the centre of the bodice. She has a lacy white cap tied with a silver ribbon on her brown hair.

4 September 1867: The first volume of Karl Marx's analysis...

Writer or writing item

4 September 1867

The first volume of Karl Marx 's analysis of social and economic history, Das Kapital, was published.
Draper, Hal. The Marx-Engels Chronicle: A Day-by-Day Chronology of Marx and Engels’ Life and Activity. Schocken Books, 1985.
138, 239, 286

9 March 1949: A National Theatre Act was passed by the...

Building and people item

9 March 1949

A National Theatre Act was passed by the British Parliament , which allowed the Treasury to contribute towards national theatre costs.
Billington, Michael. Peggy Ashcroft, 1907-1991. Mandarin, 1991.
177-8
Woodward, Richard, and Isobel Grundy. Email about National Theatre Act of 1949 to Isobel Grundy. 22 Aug. 2003.

18 October 1929: The Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy...

National or international item

18 October 1929

The Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council ruled in the Persons Case that women were eligible to sit in the Canadian Senate .
Keller, Helen, editor. The Dictionary of Dates. Macmillan, 1934, 2 vols.
II: 511
White, Anne. “Persons Case: A Struggle for Legal Definition & Personhood”. Alberta History, Vol.
47
, No. 3, 1 June 1999–2026, pp. 2-9.
2-9

1726-7: Only eight per cent of the plays staged at...

Building and people item

1726-7

Only eight per cent of the plays staged at Drury Lane this season dated from as recently as the last twenty years; this, obviously, was bad news for practising playwrights.
Hume, Robert D. Henry Fielding and the London Theatre, 1728-1737. Clarendon, 1988.
15

May 1977: The Scottish Women's Liberation Journal began...

Building and people item

May 1977

The Scottish Women's Liberation Journal began publication from Edinburgh.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
145-6

June 1965: The poet Michael Horovitz successfully brought...

Writer or writing item

June 1965

The poet Michael Horovitz successfully brought poetry to a mass audience at the Albert Hall in London for a poetry festival evening of reading by Underground poets, jazz poets, Liverpool poets, and protest poets.
Drabble, Margaret. “Pressure to Perform”. The Author, Vol.
cxii
, No. 4, 1 Dec. 2001–28 Feb. 2002, pp. 162-4.
163

12 June 2006: On this day, The Guardian began publishing...

Writer or writing item

12 June 2006

On this day, The Guardian began publishing news stories first to the World Wide Web, ending the primacy of the printed newspaper.
Fletcher, Kim. “The Web Trail”. Guardian Unlimited, 12 June 2006.
Fletcher, Kim. “The Web Trail”. Guardian Unlimited, 12 June 2006.