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3 May 1834: William Harrison Ainsworth published his...

Writer or writing item

3 May 1834

William Harrison Ainsworth published his hugely successful first novel, Rookwood.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
11-12
Turner, Ernest Sackville. “Delightful to be Robbed”. London Review of Books, 9 May 2002, pp. 32-3.
33-4
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.

Q. D. Leavis

In her socio-anthropologicalcritical monographs and essays, QDL evaluates literature by examining it in the context of the culture from which it emerges. She focuses on intellectual, social, and moral elements of literary work, and...

21 January 1994: A court in Virginia, USA, found that Lorena...

Building and people item

21 January 1994

A court in Virginia, USA, found that Lorena Bobbitt had acted in self-defence when she cut off her husband's penis the previous June, and cleared her of charges against her.
Williams, Neville et al. Chronology of the 20th Century. Helicon, 1996.
523

Anna, Lady Miller

Anna, Lady Miller, is best-known as a patron of poetry during the later eighteenth century. She published a travel book, and a serial collection of the poems entered for the performance-oriented contests at which...

December 1927: Three months after the dancer Isadora Duncan...

Building and people item

December 1927

Three months after the dancer Isadora Duncan died at nearly fifty, as melodramatically as she had lived, her autobiography, My Life, appeared from the new publishing firm Gollancz . It became an immediate best-seller...

1 February 1942: Vidkun Quisling became Minister President...

National or international item

1 February 1942

Vidkun Quisling became Minister President of Norway; he supported Hitler so fervently (although most Norwegians identified with the other side) that his name has come to mean a traitor.
Mazower, Mark. “One of Hitler’s Inflatables”. London Review of Books, 20 Jan. 2000, pp. 30-1.
30-1

1857: Before this date, women artists were represented...

Building and people item

1857

Before this date, women artists were represented in higher proportion in provincial rather than London galleries.
Nunn, Pamela Gerrish. Victorian Women Artists. Women’s Press, 1987.
71

1866: Music hall singer George Leybourne became...

Building and people item

1866

Music hall singer George Leybourne became famous for his swell song entitled Champagne Charlie.
Bratton, Jacqueline S., editor. Music Hall: Performance and Style. Open University Press, 1986.
49-50
Russell, Dave. Popular Music in England, 1840-1914: A Social History. Manchester University Press, 1987.
79, 88-9

Late 1588: A series of anonymous anti-episcopal publications...

Building and people item

Late 1588

A series of anonymous anti-episcopal publications called the Marprelate Tracts provoked new licensing to restrain the press. The controversy dragged on, and one of the authors, John Penry , was hanged on 29 May 1593...

1477: William Caxton printed an edition of Geoffrey...

Writer or writing item

1477

William Caxton printed an edition of Geoffrey Chaucer 's composite narrative poem The Canterbury Tales.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.

April 1794: Thomas Walker, leading Manchester cotton...

National or international item

April 1794

Thomas Walker , leading Manchester cotton merchant and founder of the Constitutional Society there, was acquitted on a trumped-up charge of conspiring to subvert the constitution.
Goodwin, Albert. The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution. Hutchinson, 1979.
139

Edith J. Simcox

A writer of remarkable versatility, EJS was a prolific contributor to several major periodicals. She also published three monographic works (a series of thinly-disguised fictional vignettes, a lengthy essay on ethics, and a historical text)...

August 2006: A portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots was given...

Building and people item

August 2006

A portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots was given a prominent place in the National Portrait Gallery after it was recently discovered to date from Mary's lifetime.
National Portrait Gallery. http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp.
“Mary, Queen of Scots portrait likely authentic”. CBC Arts and Entertainment, 17 Aug. 2006.

1 October 1785: The year after Johnson's death, Boswell published...

Writer or writing item

1 October 1785

The year after Johnson 's death, Boswell published The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
Boswell, James, 1740 - 1795. Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785-1789. Editors Lustig, Irma S. and Frederick A. Pottle, Heinemann, 1986.
4

1890: The year following Irish nationalist Ellen...

Women writers item

1890

The year following Irish nationalist Ellen O'Leary 's death from breast cancer on 15 October 1889, her Lays of Country, Home and Friends (many of them political) were collected and published.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Delarivier Manley

DM was a pioneer in many fields: poetry, drama, journalism, and fiction, and the genres with which the fiction of her period interlocked: letters, soft pornography, satire, secret history, romance autobiography, and political polemic...
Delarivier Manley Mythological frontispiece to the "New Atlantis", showing three female figures. Astrea, goddess of justice, sits on a cloud holding her scales and sword, bare-breasted Truth deploys her trumpet in mid air, and Virtue reclines on earth in the guise of the Duchess of Ormonde. An inscription invokes "Sacred Truth" and the reforming power of satire.

October 1913: The Central Board of Co-operative Union refused...

National or international item

October 1913

The Central Board of Co-operative Union refused to give the Women's Co-operative Guild its annual grant unless the Guild withdrew its support for divorce law reform.
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.
154-7
Gaffin, Jean et al. “Women and Cooperation”. Women in the Labour Movement: The British Experience, edited by Lucy Middleton, Croom Helm, 1977, pp. 113-42.
134-6

Mary Sewell

MS wrote during the nineteenth century, predominantly in verse, often in ballad form, to instruct and improve children and members of the working classes. Her poems combine simplicity of language and structure with clear moral...

1885: Matron Ethel Manson developed the St Bartholomew's...

Building and people item

1885

Matron Ethel Manson developed the St Bartholomew's Hospital Trained Nurses' Institute to protect nurses' rights and independence.
McGann, Susan. The Battle of the Nurses: A Study of Eight Women who Influenced the Development of Professional Nursing, 1880-1930. Scutari, 1992.
36

Early July 1820: Keats published Lamia, Isabella, The Eve...

Writer or writing item

Early July 1820

Keats published Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and other Poems.
Keats, John. “Introduction”. The Poetical Works of John Keats, edited by Harry Buxton Forman, Oxford University Press, 1921, p. ix - lxxxii.
lxxxli

29 May 2002: The British government's Women and Equality...

National or international item

29 May 2002

The British government's Women and Equality Unit (WEU) , set up in 1997, was transferred from the Cabinet Office to the Department of Trade and Industry .
“Plans for 2003-06 and Managing the Department”. Department of Trade and Industry (UK): Departmental Report 2003: Section A: Delivering Better Public Service: 2.
Ward, Lucy. “Campaigner Heads Women’s Unit”. Guardian Unlimited, 22 Nov. 2002.

Anna Margaretta Larpent

AML wrote a diary from the age of fifteen, which extended to span fifty years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She became a commentator on every kind of social and cultural activity...
Anna Margaretta Larpent Photograph of a painting of Anna Margaretta Larpent by Sir Martin Archer Shee. Larpent is seated in a red upholstered chair, with stacked books in the background. She is wearing a gauzy white dress with a blue sash around the waist. She has a wide halo of curly hair with a blue band tied around it.

26 November 1607: Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear was registered...

Writer or writing item

26 November 1607

Shakespeare 's tragedy King Lear was registered with the Stationers' Company for publication in a quarto edition the following year.
Kay, Dennis. Shakespeare: His Life, Work, and Era. William Morrow, 1992.
313
Neill, Michael. “Glimpsed in the Glare”. London Revew of Books, Vol.
37
, No. 24, 17 Dec. 2015, pp. 39-41.
40

1946: Rosalind Wade published her novel As the...

Women writers item

1946

Rosalind Wade published her novel As the Narcissus.
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.

19 January 1885: A circular was distributed informing readers...

Writer or writing item

19 January 1885

A circular was distributed informing readers that the Modern Review would no longer be published.
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press, 1966–1989, 5 vols.
3: 98-9