Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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Writer or writing
Author profile
Dervla Murphy
DM
, cosmopolitan Irishwoman, is primarily a travel writer, with more than twenty books to her credit. She excels at vivid rendering of human international contact (often made over drinks), at trenchant and well-informed...
Around 1878: The Albemarle Club was formed with the plan...
Building and people item
Around 1878
The Albemarle Club
was formed with the plan of admitting equal numbers of men and women.
Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press, 2004.
262
March 1792: The Gentleman's Magazine printed an anonymous...
Building and people item
March 1792
The Gentleman's Magazine printed an anonymous Protest against all the Petitions for the Abolition of the Slave Trade: more than 500 this year, from all over Great Britain.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
62 (1792): 239
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.
354
Writer or writing
Author profile
Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë
collaborated with her siblings on a body of juvenilia, and by herself wrote a small number of poems and a single surviving novel. Wuthering Heights is established as one of the most original...
3 February 1731: The Daily Advertiser was launched in London:...
Writer or writing item
3 February 1731
The Daily Advertiser was launched in London: one of four newspapers (only two dailies) which dominated publishers' book advertising until nearly the century's end.
Tierney, James E. “Advertisements for Books in London Newspapers, 1760-1785”. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, edited by Timothy Erwin and Ourida Mostefai, Vol.
30
, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 153-64.
154-5, 157-8, 159-61
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.
The British Library Catalogue dates the first...
May 1742: William Shenstone (poet and landscape gardener,...
Writer or writing item
May 1742
William Shenstone
(poet and landscape gardener, creator of a famous ferme ornée, The Leasowes at Halesowen in Shropshire) anonymously published his supposedly Spenserian
poem The Schoolmistress.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
16 April 1946: The BBC Quarterly was first published....
National or international item
16 April 1946
The BBC Quarterly was first published.
Briggs, Asa. The BBC: The First Fifty Years. Oxford University Press, 1985.
379
May 1828: The Test and Corporations Act was repealed;...
National or international item
May 1828
The Test and Corporations Act was repealed; the act had stipulated that holders of public office be members of the Church of England, excluding dissenters, Catholics, and Jews from these positions.
Machin, George Ian Thom. Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1832-1868. Clarendon, 1977.
21
Evans, Richard J. The Penguin Dictionary of Nineteenth Century History. Editors Belchem, John and Richard Price, Penguin, 1996.
608
Later May 1924: The Workers' Birth Control Group was formed....
Building and people item
Later May 1924
The Workers' Birth Control Group
was formed. The group's formation was intended to bring birth control supporters in the Labour and Co-operative ranks together.
Fryer, Peter. The Birth Controllers. Secker and Warburg, 1965.
260
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.
193
1873: The Churchman's Family Magazine ceased publication...
Writer or writing item
1873
The Churchman's Family Magazine ceased publication after ten years in print.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
127
1643: Mrs Perwich founded an academy for girls...
Building and people item
1643
Mrs Perwich
founded an academy for girls in Hackney.
Smith, Hilda L. Reason’s Disciples: Seventeenth-Century English Feminists. University of Illinois Press, 1982.
24
Reynolds, Myra. The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760. Houghton Mifflin, 1920.
42
30 June 1965: Wolfson College at Cambridge University was...
Building and people item
30 June 1965
Wolfson College
at Cambridge University was founded, under its original name of University College
, as a college for graduate students.
Little, Bryan. The Colleges of Cambridge, 1286-1973. Adams and Dart, 1973.
168-70
Whitaker’s Almanack. 119th ed., J. Whitaker, 1987.
NC
was an early twentieth-century modernist poet, journalist, anthologist, biographer, and political activist whose life and literary career were closely intertwined. She was significant as a publisher as well as in these other roles.
Summer 2005: News broke that one of the bestselling nonfiction...
Women writers item
Summer 2005
News broke that one of the bestselling nonfiction books of the year, Judith Kelly
's Rock Me Gently, included passages almost verbally identical with passages by other authors.
Leith, Sam. “Sounds familiar? When ’memories’ seem to spring from other literary sources”. Telegraph.co.uk, 6 Aug. 2005.
1888: The Trades Union Congress passed its first...
Lawrence, Elizabeth. Gender and Trade Unions. Taylor and Francis, 1994.
3
Writer or writing
Author profile
Agnes Wheeler
AW
was one of several women who wrote during the eighteenth century about dialect forms of English. She published two books and left unpublished writings as well. She wrote plays and sketches of local life...
July 1977: Splendid Lives: Stories by Penelope Gilliatt...
24 December 1810: The Paris dispensary for the registering...
Building and people item
24 December 1810
The Parisdispensary for the registering of prostitutes (set up by the police in 1802) was expanded; registration and medical checks were first made mandatory.
Norberg, Kathryn. “From Courtesan to Prostitute: Mercenary Sex and Venereal Disease 1730-1802”. The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France, edited by Linda E. Merians, University Press of Kentucky, 1996, pp. 34-50.
44-5
1905: Two years after the invention of the first...
Building and people item
1905
Two years after the invention of the first disposable safety-razor blade, the American Safety Razor Company
began to produce razors and blades for Britain.
Harris, Melvin. ITN Book of Firsts. Michael O’Mara Books, 1994.
240-1
Tenner, Edward. “A Place for Hype”. London Review of Books, 10 May 2007, pp. 33-4.
33
1905: The Theatre of Ireland was formed as an offshoot...
Hartnoll, Phyllis, editor. The Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 1983.
1
By 8 June 1725: The criminal Jonathan Wild was hanged: Daniel...
Building and people item
By 8 June 1725
The criminal Jonathan Wild
was hanged: Daniel Defoe
wrote a hasty account of his life, and eighteen years later Henry Fielding
made him a mock-heroic over-reacher.
Defoe, Daniel. “Introduction”. Selected Poetry and Prose of Daniel Defoe, edited by Michael F. Shugrue, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968, p. v - xxvi.
xxii
McDowell, Paula. “Narrative Authority, Critical Complicity: The Case of Jonathan WildStudies in the Novel, Vol.
30
, No. 2, 1 June 1998–2026, pp. 211-31.
225
The date is that of Defoe's catchpenny biography.
28 October 1939: The first modern-times ghetto for the residence...
National or international item
28 October 1939
The first modern-times ghetto for the residence of Jews, removing their legal right elsewhere, was live set up by the Nazis
in Piotrkow, Poland.
1730: The first cotton stockings were knitted on...
Building and people item
1730
The first cotton stockings were knitted on a frame in Nottingham; thus began the industrial manufacture of hosiery.
Chambers, Jonathan David. Nottinghamshire in the Eighteenth Century, a study of life and labour under the squirearchy. 2nd edition, Frank Cass, 1966.
xii
June 2018: The US organization VIDA found in its annual...
Building and people item
June 2018
The US organization VIDA
found in its annual survey of literary reviewing that female writers accounted for less than 40 percent of articles and reviews at more than half of major publications.
Flood, Alison. “Vida survey of gender bias in literary criticism shows ’stubborn imbalance’”. theguardian.com, 19 June 2018.
