Chronology of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth
Centuries
??? Rubrics?
- 1703:
- 1707:
- 1712:
- 1715:
- Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit develops the temperature scale that
bears his name.
- 1727:
- 1731:
- 1737:
- Linnaeus publishes his
classification of plant life.
- 1738:
- 1741:
- P. L. M. de Maupertuis publishes the Essai de
cosmologie in which he suggests the notion of "survival of
the fittest."
- 1742:
- Charles Marie de Lacondamine establishes the Celsius temperature scale.
- 1744:
- 1746:
- Benjamin Franklin performs
his experiments confirming that lightning is a form of electricity.
- 1748:
- John Turberville Needham publishes Observations upon
the Generation, Composition, and Decomposition of Animal and
Vegetable Substances, demonstrating spontaneous generation of
life.
- 1749:
- 1751:
- Pierre de Maupertuis, in Système de la Nature,
challenges Needham's demonstration of spontaneous generation.
- 1755:
- 1756:
- 1757:
- 1759:
- 1762:
- 1765:
- 1766:
- John Dalton born.
- Henry Cavendish, an English chemist, studies the effect
of lightning on soil and duplicates the process to produce
nitrogen.
- Jean-Jacques
Rousseau publishes the Confessions.
- Goldsmith
publishes The Vicar of Wakefield.
- 1767:
- 1768:
- Joseph Wright paints Experiment with the Air Pump. ???
- Samuel Hearne begins a two-year walking tour from Hudson Bay
to the Arctic Ocean, searching for the Northwest Passage.
- Laurence Sterne publishes A Sentimental Journey through
France and Italy.
- 1769:
- James Watt patents his steam engine.
- August: Napoleon born.
- 1770:
- Goethe completes the
first part of Faust.
- Goldsmith
publishes The Deserted Village.
- April: William
Wordsworth born.
- Paul Henri Dietrick d'Holbach publishes
Système de la nature, denying any cosmic plan in
nature.
- 1771:
- The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
published.
- December: Dorothy Wordsworth born.
- 1772:
- Coleridge born.
- Diderot publishes the last of 280 volumes of the
Encyclopédie.
- William Murray, Britain's Lord Chief Justice, rules in
the Somersett case that "as soon as any slave sets foot in
England he becomes free."
- 1773:
- January: Captain Cook is the first to cross the Antarctic
Circle.
- March: Goldsmith's
She Stoops to Conquer performed in London.
- December: The Boston Tea Party.
- 1774:
- 1775:
- Johann Kaspar Lavater
publishes the first part of Physiognomische Fragmente, inaugurating
the pseudo-science of physiognomy.
- April: American Revolution begins with the battles of
Lexington and Concord.
- 1776:
- Adam Smith publishes An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
- July: American Declaration of
Independence signed.
- Thomas Paine publishes The Crisis. ???
- Edward Gibbon publishes the first
volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
- 1777:
- 1778:
- 1779:
- 1780:
- 1781:
- 1782:
- 1783:
- Godwin meets Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt.
- Luigi Galvani develops the first electric cell from two
strips of metal and the fluids from a dissected frog, and
determines the energy must proceed from the frog.
- 1784:
- Antoine Lavoisier studies the
role of oxygen and carbon dioxide in respiration.
- Henry Cavendish publishes Experiments on Air.
- 1785:
- 1786:
- Robert Burns publishes Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish
Dialect.
- William Beckford publishes Vathek.
- Two French mountaineers, Jacques Balmart and
Michel-Gabriel Paccard, are the first to scale Mont Blanc.
- 1787:
- American Constitution
ratified.
- William Wilberforce begins agaitating against slavery in
the British colonies.
- October: James Madison and Alexander Hamilton begin
publication of The Federalist Papers.
- 1788:
- British penal colony opened in Botany Bay, Australia.
- Byron born.
- April: New Yorkers riot for three days, accusing physicians
of grave-robbing.
- 1789:
- Erasmus Darwin
publishes "The Loves of Plants."
- The French Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of
Man.
- July: Storming of the Bastille begins the French Revolution.
- William Blake
publishes Songs of Innocence.
- Jeremy Bentham publishes An Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation, arguing that "the
greatest happiness of the greatest number" is the goal of all
legislation.
- Antoine Lavoisier publishes the
Traité élémentaire de chimi, the first
textbook on modern chemistry.
- Russian explorers found Odessa on the Black Sea.
- Edmund Burke criticizes the
French Revolution; Thomas Paine responds with "The Rights of Man."
- December: America ratifies the Bill of Rights.
- 1790:
- Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution
in France.
- Mary
Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of
Man.
- 1791:
- 1792:
- 1793:
- January: Louis XVI of France executed.
- February: Godwin
publishes An Enquiry Concerning
Political Justice. The French Republic declares war on
England, Holland, and Spain.
- October: Marie Antoinette executed.
- November: France legislates against belief in God.
- 1794:
- Mary
Wollstonecraft publishes the first volume of A View of the
French Revolution.
- Fanny Imlay born to Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert
Imaly.
- Erasmus Darwin
begins publication of Zoonomia.
- Thomas Paine publishes The Age of Reason. ???
- May: Godwin publishes
Caleb Williams.
- August: Robespierre is executed, ending the Reign of Terror
in France.
- 1795:
- Keats born.
- Condorcet publishes the Tableau historique des
progrés de l'esprit humain, arguing for the
perfectability of mankind.
- Goethe publishes
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.
- Wordsworth meets
Godwin and Coleridge.
- Napoleon becomes the
commander of France's Armée d'Interieur.
- November: Mary
Wollstonecraft attempts suicide.
- 1796:
- 1797:
- 1798:
- February: Napoleon occupies Rome.
- Charles Brockden Brown publishes Alcuin: A Dialogue
on the Rights of Women and Wieland, or the
Transformation, a Gothic novel.
- Maria Edgeworth publishes Practical Education.
- Godwin publishes
Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft.
- Wordsworth and
Coleridge publish
Lyrical Ballads. ???
- Thomas Robert Malthus publishes his Essay on the
Principles of Population.
- Baron Cuvier publishes the
Tableau elementaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux, the first
modern work of comparative anatomy.
- 1799:
- Erasmus Darwin
publishes Phytologia.
- Godwin publishes
St. Leon.
- November: Wordsworth
and Coleridge make a
walking tour of the Lake District.
- December: William and Dorothy Wordsworth move to Dove
Cottage, Grasmere.
- 1800:
- Alessandro Volta develops the electric battery.
- Alexander von Humboldt explores the Orinoco River in
South America.
- Humphry Davy publishes
Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, Chiefly Concerning
Nitrous Oxide.
- Franz Joseph Gall invents phrenology.
- 1801:
- Southey publishes the Oriental romance Thalaba the
Destroyer.
- January: Wordsworth
and Coleridge publish the
two-volume edition of Lyrical Ballads.
- December: William Godwin
and Mary Jane Clairmont marry.
- 1802:
- Gian Domenico Romagnosi explores the relationship
between electricity and magnetism.
- Spring: Wordsworth
begins Intimations of Immortality.
- 1803:
- May: The British and French renew hostilities; fears of a
French invasion of England run high.
- John Dalton proposes the
atomic theory of matter.
- 1804:
- January???: Wordsworth finishes
Intimations of Immortality, Ode to Duty, and
Daffodils.
- March: The Code Napoleon declares accused people guilty until
proven innocent.
- May: Napoleon proclaimed Emperor.
- Spain declares war on Britain.
- 1805:
- Godwin publishes
Fleetwood and opens a publishing house for children's
books.
- October: The Battle of Trafalgar.
- 1806:
- Sir Humphry Davy publishes an
important essay on chemical agency, earning him international recognition.
- 1807:
- Charles Bell distinguishes the body's sensory nerve system from
the motor nerves.
- England's Parliament outlaws the slave trade.
- Charles and Mary Lamb publish Tales from
Shakespear with Godwin's publishing house.
- Humphry Davy publishes
On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity.
- 1808:
- Coleridge writes
To William Wordsworth.
- Walter Scott publishes
Marmion.
- John Stearns develops analgesics to ease labor pains.
- Mary Shelley, at the age
of ten, publishes Mounseer Nongtongpaw.
- John Dalton publishes A New
System of Chemical Philosophy.
- 1809:
- Charles Darwin born.
- Goethe publishes
Elective Affinities.
- Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet publishes
Philosophie Zoölogique, an investigation into
heredity.
- 1810:
- Wordsworth
publishes Guide to Lakes.
- Spring: Percy Shelley
publishes Zastrozzi, a Gothic novel.
- October: Percy
Shelley enters University College, Oxford, where he meets
Thomas Jefferson Hogg.
- 1811:
- Jane Austen publishes
Sense and Sensibility.
- Charles Bell publishes Anatomy of the Brain,
distinguishing sensory from motor nerves.
- January: Percy
Shelley meets Harriet Westbrook.
- February: Percy Shelley publishes The Necessity of Atheism.
- March: Percy Shelley expelled from Oxford for the publication
of The Necessity of Atheism.
- August: Percy Shelley elopes with Harriet Westbrook to
Edinburgh.
- 1812:
- Byron publishes
Child Harold's Pilgrimage. ???
- January: Percy
Shelley writes to William Godwin, beginning their
correspondence.
- June: Mary Shelley
visits the Baxters in Dundee, Scotland.
- October: First meeting of Godwin and Percy Shelley.
- November: Mary Shelley returns from Dundee and meets Percy
and Harriet Shelley.
- 1813:
- Jane Austen publishes
Pride and Prejudice.
- Byron publishes The
Bride of Abydos.
- Augustin Pyrame de Candolle publishes his
Théorie Elémentaire de la Botanique.
- May: Percy Shelley
publishes Queen Mab.
- June: Ianthe Shelley born. ???
- 1814:
- Walter Scott publishes
Waverley.
- Jane Austen publishes
Mansfield Park.
- The French legislature passes a law prohibiting abortion
except "when it is required to preserve the life of the mother
when that is gravely threatened."
- Wordsworth
publishes The Excursion.
- Byron publishes The
Corsair.
- Talleyrand leads the
restoration of the French monarchy.
- April: Napoleon abdicates and
retires to Elba.
- May: Second meeting of Mary and Percy Shelley.
- July: The Shelleys elope to the Continent, accompanied by
Claire Clairmont.
- September: The Shelleys and Claire Clairmont return to
England.
- November: Charles Shelley born to Harriet.
- 1815:
- The Brothers Grimm publish their Fairy Tales.
- Wordsworth
publishes collected Poems.
- February: A premature daughter born to Mary and Percy
Shelley.
- March: The premature daughter dies.
- June: The Battle of Waterloo.
- 1816 (see also the entry on the Shelleys in the summer of 1816:
- Jane Austen publishes
Emma.
- Walter Scott publishes Old
Mortality.
- Leigh Hunt publishes Rimini.
- Byron publishes The
Siege of Corinth.
- Godwin travels to
Scotland and meets Sir Walter Scott.
- January: William Shelley born.
- February: ??? Percy Shelley heads for Switzerland, where he
spends the summer. First meeting of Percy Shelley and Byron.
- March: Percy
Shelley publishes Alastor, and Other
Poems.
- May: ??? Percy and Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont travel
to the Continent; they meet Byron and Polidori in Geneva.
- June: Mary Shelley begins Frankenstein.
- September: Percy and Mary Shelley return to England.
- October: Fanny Imlay commits suicide.
- November: Harriet Shelley drowns herself in the Serpentine.
- December: Percy and Mary Shelley marry.
- 1817:
- 1818:
- Thomas Blundell makes an early attempt at blood transfusion. ???
- John Ross searches for the
Northwest Passage and explores Baffin Bay.
- Percy Shelley
publishes Ozymandias.
- Keats publishes Endymion.
- James Blundel, a London surgeon, performs the first
successful human blood transfusion.
- January: Mary Shelley
publishes the first edition of Frankenstein; Percy Shelley reissues
Laon and Cythna as The Revolt
of Islam.
- March: The Shelleys set out for Italy with Claire Clairmont
and Allegra.
- June: The Shelleys move to Bagni di Lucca.
- September: Clara Shelley dies.
- November: The Shelleys move to Rome.
- December: Shelleys settle in Naples.
- Percy Shelley composes Prometheus Unbound, Act I.
- 1819:
- Hans Christian Oersted
publishes the results of his research on the relationship between
electricity and magnetism.
- Walter Scott publishes
Ivanhoe.
- Keats publishes Ode to a Nightingale.
- Byron publishes
Mazeppa.
- Percy Shelley completes
Prometheus Unbound ??? and Julian and Maddalo; writes The Cenci, The Mask of
Anarchy, Peter Bell the Third, and "Ode to the West Wind."
- March: The Shelleys move to Rome.
- June: William Shelley dies. The Shelleys move to Livorno
(Leghorn).
- August: Mary Shelley
beings Mathilda.
- September: Mary Shelley finishes Mathilda (first
published in 1959); the Shelleys move to Florence.
- November: Percy Florence Shelley born.
- 1820:
- January: George III of England dies and is succeeded by
George IV.
- André Marie
Ampère publishes the results of his research on the
relationship between electricity and magnetism.
- Antarctica discovered.
- Sir Joseph Banks dies.
- Keats publishes The Eve of St. Agnes, La
Belle Dame Sans Merci, and the Ode on a Grecian Urn.
- January: The Shelleys move to Pisa.
- February: Mary
Shelley completes Mathilda.
- Percy Shelley
writes "The Sensitive Plant," "Ode to Liberty," "To a Skylark,"
and "The Witch of Atlas."
- April-May: Mary Shelley writes Proserpine and
Midas.
- June: The Shelleys move to Livorno (Leghorn).
- August: The Shelleys move to Bagni di San Giuliano.
- October: The Shelleys move to Pisa.
- November: The Shelleys meet Emilia Viviani.
- 1821:
- De Quincey publishes Confessions of an English Opium
Eater.
- January: The Shelleys meet Edward and Jane Williams.
- January-February: Percy
Shelley writes Epipsychidion.
- February: Death of Keats; Greece begins its war for
independence.
- February-March: Percy Shelley writes A Defence of
Poetry.
- April: The Shelleys move to Bagni di San Giuliano.
- May: Napoleon dies.
- October: Percy Shelley writes Hellas; the Shelleys
move to Pisa.
- November: Byron joins the
Shelleys in Pisa.
- 1822:
- The Chevalier de Lamarck
develops his theory of evolution in
Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres.
- January: Edward John Trelawny joins the Shelleys and Byron in
Pisa.
- April: Allegra Byron dies.
- May: The Shelleys move to Lerici.
- June: Mary Shelley
miscarries.
- July: Percy Shelley
and Edward Williams drown in the Gulf of Spezia.
- September: Mary Shelley moves to Genoa.
- 1823:
- William Sturgeon creates the first electromagnet.
- January: Percy
Shelley's ashes interred in Rome's Protestant Cemetery.
- February: Mary
Shelley publishes Valperga.
- Godwin publishes the
second edition of Frankenstein.
- July-August: Mary Shelley returns to London.
- August: Mary Shelley sees Presumption.
- 1824:
- April: Byron dies in
Greece.
- June: The publication of Mary Shelley's edition of Percy Shelley's
Posthumous Poems is suppressed by Percy Shelley's father.
- 1826:
- André Ampère
publishes Electrodynamics.
- January: Mary Shelley
publishes The Last Man.
- September: Charles Bysshe Shelley (son of Percy and Harriet)
dies.
- 1827:
- August: William Blake dies.
- 1828:
- April: Mary Shelley
leaves for Paris.
- May: Mary Shelley returns from Paris.
- 1829:
- Edinburgher William Burke is hanged for murdering people
to provide corpses for dissection.
- Mary Shelley assists
in the publication of the Galignani edition of Percy Shelley's poems in
Paris.
- Humphry Davy dies.
- 1830:
- Godwin publishes
Cloudesley.
- May: Mary Shelley
publishes Perkin Warbeck.
- June: Britain's George IV dies and is succeeded by William
IV.
- Stendhal publishes Le Rouge et le Noir.
- Tennyson publishes Poems, Chiefly Lyrical.
- 1831:
- John and James Clark Ross discover the magnetic North
Pole.
- Charles Darwin sets out for
South America and the Galápagos Islands on the Beagle.
- Godwin publishes
Thoughts on Man.
- November: Mary
Shelley publishes the third edition of Frankenstein
and Proserpine.
- 1832:
- Goethe publishes the
second part of Faust.
- England's Parliament outlaws body-snatching for medical
research.
- September: William Godwin, Jr., dies; Percy Florence Shelley
enters Harrow.
- 1833:
- 1834:
- 1835:
- February: Mary
Shelley publishes the first volume of Lives of the Most
Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and
Portugal.
- March: Mary Shelley publishes Lodore.
- October: Mary Shelley publishes the second volume of Lives
of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain
and Portugal.
- 1836:
- 1837:
- February: Mary
Shelley publishes Falkner.
- June: Britain's William IV dies and is succeeded by Queen
Victoria.
- October: Percy Florence Shelley enters Trinity College,
Cambridge.
- November: Mary Shelley publishes the third volume of Lives
of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain
and Portugal.
- 1838:
- August: Mary Shelley
publishes the first volume of Lives of the Most Eminent
Literary and Scientific Men of France.
- 1839:
- January-May: Mary
Shelley publishes her four-volume edition of Percy Shelley's Poetical
Works.
- August: Mary Shelley publishes the second volume of Lives
of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France.
- November: Mary Shelley publishes her one-volume edition of
The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
- December: Mary Shelley publishes her edition of Percy
Shelley's Essays and Letters.
- 1840:
- Johannes Peter Müller, in Handbuch der Physiologie
der Menschen, argues in favor of spontaneous generation.
- Charles Darwin publishes
Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle.
- 1844:
- 1845:
- John Franklin leads a disastrous expedition to the Arctic
Circle in search of the Northwest Passage.
- 1847:
- Marx and Engels publish The Communist Manifesto. ??? 1848?
- 1848:
- February: French revolutionaries force Louis Philippe to abdicate and
name Louis Napoleon Bonaparte president of the new republic.
- 1850:
- April: Wordsworth
dies.
- July: Wordsworth's Prelude published posthumously.
- 1851: