TIMELINE: The Victorian Period (1832 or 1837 -1901)

TEXTS 1828 Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times” 1830 Alfred Tennyson Poems, Chiefly Lyrical Charles Babbage, Reflections on the Decline of Science 1832 Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology Many popular ‘penny’ magazines begun 1833 Funding for Babbage’s difference engine cancelled 1835 Andrew Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures 1836 Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers and early journalism 1842 Robert Browning, Dramatic Lyrics 1843 John Ruskin, Modern Painters 1845 Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil Friedrich Engels, Condition of the English Working Class 1847 Alfred Tennyson, The Princess Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights Babbage begins work on Difference Engine No. 2

CONTEXTS 1830 William IV becomes king Opening of Liverpool and Manchester Railway 1832 First Reform Bill 1833 Funding for Babbage’s difference engine cancelled 1834 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire New Poor Law passed (results in workhouses and more restrictions) 1835 Telegraph invented 1837 Victoria becomes queen 1838 “People’s Charter” issued by the Chartist movement 1839 Anglo-Chinese Opium War 1840 Q. Victoria marries Prince Albert Penny Post 1842 Chartist Riots Copyright Act Mudie’s Circulating Library 1845-46 Potato famine in Ireland; Mass emigration to North America 1846 Repeal of Corn Laws (Free Trade instituted due to the high cost of food) Railway boom begins 1847 Ten Hours Factory Act

TEXTS 1848 Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton Charles Dickens, Dombey & Son William Thackeray, Vanity Fair 1850 Tennyson, In Memoriam Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 1854 Charles Dickens, Hard Times 1859 Charles Darwin, Origin of Species J. S. Mill, On Liberty Samuel Smiles, Self-Help 1865 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 1867 Karl Marx, Capital 1868 Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy 1871 Charles Darwin, Descent of Man George Eliot, Middlemarch 1872 Samuel Butler, Erewhon 1891 Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles 1896 Rudyard Kipling, “.007” 1900 Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams

CONTEXTS 1848 Revolution on the Continent. Second Republic est. in France Public Health act passed 1851 Great Exhibition (in London) 1853-56 Crimean War 1854 Working Men’s College, London 1857 Indian Mutiny 1861 Death of Prince Albert 1861-65 American Civil War 1867 Second Reform Bill Disraeli made Prime Minister 1869 Suez canal 1871 Newnham College (first women’s college) founded at Cambridge 1877 Q. Victoria made empress of India 1878 Electric street lighting in London 1890 First subway line in London 1891 Free elementary education 1898 Discovery of radium 1899-1902 Boer War 1901 Death of Q. Victoria; succession of Edward VII