1800
Beginning of Romanticism in visual arts, music and literature
1800
Maria Edgeworth publishes her historical novel, Castle Rackrent
1801
The US Library of Congress is founded; Napoleon invades Italy; discovery of Ultraviolet rays
1801
The Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland merge to form the United Kingdom; Thomas Jefferson wins presidential election
1801
William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge publish their landmark collection of Romantic poetry, Lyrical Ballads
1802
Thomas Young discovers light waves; Britain declares war on France
1802
The American Academy of Fine Arts is founded
1803
Louisiana Purchase secures over 828,000 square miles of former French territory to USA; Dalton's Atomic theory is established; rebellion in Ireland
1803
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
1804
Napoleon crowned Emperor; Lewis and Clark expedition departs, crossing America overland to the Pacific; birth of Benjamin Disraeli
1804
Birth of Nathaniel Hawthorne; William Blake writes his poem Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Great Albion
1805
Battle of Trafalgar; the first steam locomotive hauls a train of wagons; Battle of Austerlitz; Treaty of Pressburg formally dissolves the Holy Roman Empire
1805
Birth of Hans Christian Andersen; Sir Walter Scott becomes better known with his narrative poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel
1806
British reacquire the Cape Colony in South Africa from the Dutch, French destroy Prussian army at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt
1806
Elizabeth Barrett Browning is born Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett at Coxhoe Hall, County Durham. She is the oldest of twelve children to parents Edward Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke
1807
Abolition of slavery in British Empire; first commercial steamboat is built; first gas street lights in London; Geological Society founded in Britain
1807
Beethoven completes his Symphony No. 5
1808
Law bans importation of slaves into US; French occupy Spain, starting the Peninsular War
1808
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion
1809
Neoclassicism emerges in British architecture with architect Sir Robert Smirke's Covent Garden Theatre; Joseph Haydn, one of the leading composers of the classical style, dies in Vienna; birth of Charles Darwin
1809
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's family relocate to Hope End in Herefordshire, where she is educated at home with her brothers and proves a precocious student
1809
Alfred Tennyson born on 6th August in Somersby, Lincolnshire, one of eight children in the household of local vicar, George Clayton Tennyson and his wife, Elizabeth Fytche Tennyson
1810
Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake; birth of Elizabeth Gaskell
1811
The Prince of Wales becomes Regent dues to the madness of George III
1811
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility; birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe
1811
William Makepeace Thackeray is born in Calcutta on 18 July, the son of an East India Company administrator
1812
Outbreak of the American War of 1812 between US and British forces in North America; Napoleon invades Russia; James Madison is elected US President; Luddites attack wool factory in England
1812
Lord Byron's immensely popular poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, makes him an instant celebrity; birth of Edward Lear
1812
Robert Browning is born in Camberwell, South London, to a family of religious dissenters
1812
Charles Dickens is born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Office, and his wife Elizabeth
1813
Battle of Leipzig-Prussian forces defeat Napoleon's army
1813
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab; Robert Southey appointed Poet Laureate
1814
First permanent white settlement founded in New Zealand; Congress of Vienna takes place; Treaty of Ghent ends the war of 1812 between the US and the UK; Stephenson invents the first steam locomotive
1814
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park; Sir Walter Scott publishes his first novel, Waverley, Or, Tis Sixty Years Since, to immediate and enormous success; death of Charles Burney; birth of Ellen Price (later Mrs Henry Wood)
1815
Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo, concluding the Napoleonic Wars; end of the American War of 1812
1815
Birth of Anthony Trollope
1815
Tennyson attends Louth Grammar School
1816
The British Museum acquires the Elgin Marbles
1816
Jane Austen, Emma; Richard Brinsley Sheridan dies
1816
Charlotte Brontë born on 21 April at Thornton, Yorkshire, the third daughter of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell
1816
Robert Browning briefly studies at the newly established University of London
1816
Thackeray's father dies
1817
James Monroe sworn in as US president
1817
Death of Jane Austen and posthumous publication of Persuasion; Lord Byron, Manfred; Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy
1817
Birth of Branwell Brontë
1817
Charles Dickens' family moves to Chatham, Kent
1817
Thackeray comes to England to live with an aunt, attending school in Chiswick Mall
1818
The engineer Thomas Telford proposes his plan for the Menai Suspension Bridge in Wales
1818
Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa becomes an icon of French Romanticism; birth of Karl Marx
1818
Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Mid-Lothian; 19-year-old Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, conceived during a holiday in Switzerland with lover Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron
1818
Emily Brontë born on 30 July at Thornton, Yorkshire
1819
First steamship crosses the Atlantic; the 'Peterloo' Massacre occurs when cavalry charge at a demonstration for parliamentary reform at St Peter's Field, Manchester, killing 15 people; birth of Princess (later Queen) Victoria and Albert (later Prince Consort)
1819
Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe ; Lord Byron, Don Juan
1819
George Eliot is born Mary Ann Evans at Arbury, Warwickshire on 22 November
1819
John Ruskin is born on 8 February in London, the only child of prosperous wine merchant John James Ruskin, and his wife Margaret
1820
George IV becomes King; birth of Florence Nightingale
1820
Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer is one of the last high Gothic novels; Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
1820
Anne Brontë born on 17 January at Thornton, Yorkshire. The family soon move to Haworth, where Patrick Brontë has become rector
1820
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's first volume of poetry, The Battle of Marathon, is privately published by her father
1820
Alfred Tennyson leaves Louth to be educated by his father
1821
Death of Napoleon; US purchases Florida from Spain; Greek War of Independence; Mexico gains independence
1821
Death of John Keats; birth of Fyodor Dostoevsky; Sir Walter Scott, Kenilworth; Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais
1821
Maria Branwell, mother of The Brontës, dies. Aunt Elizabeth Branwell arrives to run the household
1822
Charles Babbage designs the 'difference engine', an early computing machine; Brazil gains independence from Portugal
1822
Hegel's Philosophy of History lectures begin.
1822
Matthew Arnold born on 24th December in Laleham, Surrey, the son of Thomas Arnold, the renowned headmaster of Rugby School who was famously depicted in Tom Brown's Schooldays
1822
Charles Dickens' family relocates to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town, London
1822
William Thackeray attends Charterhouse School, the 'Slaughterhouse' and 'Grey Friars' of his fiction
1823
Rugby football is invented at Rugby school
1823
Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley; Thomas De Quincy, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
1824
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner; death of Lord Byron
1824
Elizabeth, Maria, Charlotte and Emily attend the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire (later to be Charlotte's model for the school in Jane Eyre). The harsh conditions contribute to Elizabeth and Maria's deaths from consumption
1824
Wilkie Collins is born on 8 January 1824 in London, son of the well-known Royal Academician and landscape painter William Collins
1824
Dickens's father is imprisoned at Marshalsea debtor's prison. Charles is put to work in Warren's blacking factory in London. On John Dickens's release, Charles is sent to Wellington House Academy
1825
John Adams becomes US president; first stock market crash in London; the Stockton and Darlington railway in North East England is the world's first public passenger railway
1825
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
1825
Charlotte and Emily Brontë return home from school. With brother Branwell and sister Anne, the siblings develop the imaginary worlds of Gondal and Angria, which inspire their first writings
1826
James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
1826
Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes her first volume of verse, An Essay on Mind
1827
Lord Liverpool retires as Prime Minister after a stroke; John McAdam oversees the building of McAdam roads in Britain, using tarmac instead of soil
1827
Death of Ludwig van Beethoven; death of William Blake; birth of William Holman Hunt
1827
Charles Dickens leaves the Wellington Academy in North London, and becomes a clerk in the law office of Ellis and Blackmore
1827
Alfred Tennyson enters Trinity college, Cambridge in November and forms a close friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam. His first publication is Poems by Two Brothers, a collection of "his boyish rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles"
1828
Andrew Jackson elected US president; the Duke of Wellington forms Tory administration
1828
Death of Goya; death of Franz Schubert
1828
Birth of George Meredith; Margaret Oliphant; George Augustus Sala; Henrik Ibsen; Jules Verne and Leo Tolstoy
1828
Matthew Arnold moves to Rugby School in Warwickshire when his father is appointed headmaster
1828
Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's mother
1828
George Eliot attends Miss Wallington's Boarding School in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. She is taught by Miss Maria Lewis, whose keen interest in Eliot's education, and strong evangelical religious beliefs are a strong influence
1828
Dante Gabriel Rossetti born in London, son of Neapolitan political exile Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti, and brother of poet Christina Rossetti, critic William Michael Rossetti and author Maria Francesca Rossetti
1829
Western Australia founded; Stephenson's Rocket is a landmark in the development of steam trains; Metropolitan police formed in London; the Catholic Emancipation Act is enforced in Britain
1829
Charles Dickens becomes a court reporter at Doctors' Commons
1829
William Thackeray enters Trinity College, Cambridge, where he spends two dissolute years before leaving without a degree in 1830. He travels in Europe, visiting Paris
1830
William IV is crowned King in England; Revolution in France; Indian Removal Act becomes law in US; resignation of Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington
1830
Delacroix's famous Liberty Leading the People commemorates the French Revolution
1830
Charles Dickens meets and falls in love with Maria Beadnell; her parents' disapproval of the courtship is to end it after four years
1830
William Thackeray spends six months at Weimar, where he meets Goethe
1831
Cholera epidemic in UK; Charles Darwin sails from England aboard HMS Beagle; Belgium declares independence
1831
Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris
1831
Charlotte Brontë briefly attends Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head
1831
Charles Dickens becomes a shorthand reporter with his uncle's publication, the Mirror of Parliament.
1831
Alfred Tennyson's father dies, and Tennyson leaves university without a degree
1831
Thackeray briefly studies law at Middle Temple, London
1832
Samuel Morse invents his code; the Reform Act is introduced in the UK
1832
Many popular 'penny' magazines begin; Edouard Manet born; Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy
1832
Frances Trollope, mother of Anthony, comes to notice as a writer with her Domestic Manners of the Americans ; birth of Lewis Carroll
1832
Poems Chiefly Lyrical is published, including 'Claribel', 'Lucretius', 'Mariana', 'The Kraken', 'The Lady of Shalott' and 'The Palace of Art'. Its negative reception, including a critical mauling in the Quarterly Review, leads to Tennyson's 'Ten Years' Silence', during which he refuses to publish. Arthur Hallam becomes engaged to Alfred Tennyson's sister, Emilia Tennyson
1833
Slavery outlawed in British Empire; Birth of Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite
1833
Start of the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church; birth of Edward Burne-Jones
1833
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus; death of Hannah More
1833
Matthew Arnold's father builds a summer cottage in the Lake District, where Arnold meets Dorothy and William Wordsworth
1833
Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes Prometheus Unbound, translated from Aeschylus, but it receives no critical attention. Robert Browning publishes his first work, Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession
1833
Charles Dickens works as a parliamentary journalist for The Morning Chronicle. Under the pen name 'Boz', Dickens publishes his first piece of fiction, 'Dinner at Poplar Walk', in the same magazine
1833
Arthur Hallam's death is a devastating shock to Alfred Tennyson
1834
The New Poor Law Act establishes the workhouse system in Great Britain; Spanish inquisition ends
1834
Edgar Degas, James MacNeil Whistler and William Morris born; death of Thomas Malthus
1834
Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb
1834
Alfred Tennyson falls in love with Rosa Baring
1834
William Thackeray studies art in London and Paris
1835
Charles Darwin arrives on the Galapagos Islands; Robert Peel resigns and Lord Melbourne forms a Whig ministry
1835
Daguerre and Niépce produce the daguerreotype photograph
1835
Charlotte Brontë returns to Roe Head as a teacher until 1838. Emily briefly attends the school
1835
Elizabeth Barrett Browning moves with her family to London. Robert Browning publishes Paracelsus, which receives critical praise
1836
Samuel Colt patents the revolver; Martin Van Buren sworn is as US President; Texan war of Independence and the siege of the Alamo
1836
Ralph Waldo Emerson establishes the principles of Transcendentalism in his essay Nature; birth of Isabella Beeton; Augustus Pugin publishes his influential book Contrasts, in which he promotes Gothic architecture and condemns classicism
1836
Frances Trollope The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw; or Scenes on the Mississippi; birth of Walter Besant
1836
Wilkie Collins moves to Italy with his parents for two years, a period which will prove greatly influential
1836
Charles Dickens marries Catherine Hogarth. He accepts the job of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a position that he would hold until 1839. Dickens publishes his first book Sketches by Boz, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. In April, serial publication of The Pickwick Papers begins
1836
George Eliot's mother dies
1836
John Ruskin, accompanied by his mother, attends Christ Church, Oxford
1836
William Thackeray publishes his first book, Flore et Zephyr, lithograph caricatures of the ballet 'La Sylphide'. On 20 August he marries Isabella Gethin Shawe
1837
Queen Victoria ascends to the throne
1837
Birth of Algernon Charles Swinburne
1837
Charles Dickens' son Charles is born, the first of seven sons and three daughters. The family move to Doughty Street. The Adventures of Oliver Twist continues in monthly parts in Bentley's Miscellany until April 1839
1837
Dante Gabriel Rossetti enters King's College School, London
1837
John Ruskin publishes a series of articles entitled 'The Poetry of Architecture' in the Architectural Magazine
1837
The Tennyson family moves to High Beech, Epping
1837
William Thackeray returns from Paris to London, where his daughter Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie is born. He writes for the Times, the New Monthly Magazine and Punch. The Yellowplush Papers is published in Frazer's magazine between 1837-1838
1838
People's Charter issued by the Chartist movement; first Afghan War
1838
Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
1838
Charlotte Brontë returns to Haworth; Emily Brontë briefly teaches at Miss Hatchett's school
1838
Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes The Seraphim and Other Poems, which is favourably received and marks the beginning of a successful literary career. Her poor health requires her to move to Torquay, accompanied by her favourite brother, Edward ('Bro')
1838
Charles Dickens publishes The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Monthly serial, April 1838 to October 1839)
1838
Alfred Tennyson becomes engaged to Emily Sellwood
1838
William Thackeray's second daughter Jane is born, but dies eight months later
1839
First Opium War in China
1839
Thomas Carlyle, Chartism; The New York Philharmonic is established; birth of Walter Pater
1839
Ouida is born; Harriet Martineau, Deerbrook; Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher
1839
Charlotte Brontë rejects a marriage proposal from the Rev. Henry Nussey and becomes a governess to various families in Yorkshire. Anne Brontë becomes a governess for the Ingham family at Blake Hall, near Mirfield, but is dismissed and returns home in December
1839
John Ruskin wins the Newdigate Prize for poetry at Oxford
1839
William Thackeray's parody of the Newgate novel, Catherine, is published in Frazer's magazine from 1839-1840
1840
Queen Victoria marries Albert, who becomes Prince Consort; Britain annexes New Zealand; penny postage is introduced in Britain
1840
Fox Talbot patents the Calotype photographic process; The Barbizon art movement leads to a revival of landscape painting; Claude Monet is born
1840
Anne Brontë becomes governess to the children of the Reverend Edmund Robinson, at Thorp Green, near York
1840
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's favourite brother, Edward, is drowned off Torquay, where she has been invaliding. Elizabeth returns to London. Robert Browning publishes Sordello
1840
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
1840
Thomas Hardy is born on 2 June in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset
1840
John Ruskin meets JMW Turner. He falls ill and leaves Oxford with an honorary fourth class degree for a foreign tour with his parents
1840
Alfred Tennyson's engagement to Emily Sellwood is broken off and the Tennyson family move to Tunbridge Wells
1840
William Thackeray's third daughter Harriet Marian is born. His wife Isabella goes insane and is confined in a home near Paris, where she remains until 1893. A Shabby Genteel Story is published in Frazer's magazine in 1840.
1841
Birth of Edward VII of England, son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; Britain claims Hong Kong; beginning of the second Afghan War
1841
Edgar Allen Poe writes the Masque of the Red Death and the Murders in the Rue Morgue.
1841
Robert Browning's series Bells and Pomegranates begins publication
1841
Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
1841
George Eliot's father retires and they both go to live at Foleshill near Coventry, where Eliot moves in an intellectual circle that includes Charles Bray and Charles Hennell, as well as Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The influence of this circle leads Eliot towards religious scepticism
1841
John Ruskin writes his novelette The King of the Golden River for the twelve-year-old Euphemia Gray, whom he later marries
1841
William Thackeray's The Great Hoggarty Diamond and The Paris Sketch Book published
1842
First use of anaesthetic in a medical operation; the Mine Act takes effect in the UK forbidding employment of boys under ten and women underground; British troops retreat from Afghanistan ending the war; First Opium War ends; Gold is discovered in Australia; Chartist Riots occur
1842
Verdi's first performance of Nabucco takes place; The British Copyright Act stimulates the music market
1842
Thomas Arnold, Matthew Arnold's father, dies
1842
Emily Brontë begins work as a governess at Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law Hill School, near Halifax, leaving after about six months due to homesickness. Charlotte and Emily travel to Brussels to enrol in a pensionnat run by Constantin Heger, returning when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell dies in October 1842
1842
Charles Dickens travels with his wife to the USA, where he arrives to an enthusiastic welcome in Boston. American Notes: For General Circulation
1842
George Eliot refuses to attend church with her father, causing a rift between herself and her family
1842
Dante Gabriel Rossetti leaves King's College School to attend F. S. Cary's Academy of Art
1842
Alfred Tennyson publishes his Poems, a two volume edition formed of revised and new poems, including 'Break, break, break', 'Morte d'Arthur', 'Locksley Hall', 'St. Agnes' Eve', 'Ulysses' and 'St. Simeon Stylites'
1842
William Thackeray, The Fitz-Boodle Papers
1843
Mass migration westward via the Oregon Trail in the US
1843
Theatre Regulation Act abolishes the monopoly of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres in London and extends the censorship powers of the Lord Chamberlain
1843
William Wordsworth appointed Poet Laureate; Thomas Hood, The Song of the Shirt
1843
At Balliol College, Oxford, Matthew Arnold wins the Newdigate Prize for poetry with 'Cromwell'
1843
Charlotte Brontë returns to Brussels in January
1843
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol; The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
1843
Henry James is born in New York on 15 April. In October the family sails for Europe - they will travel back and forth throughout his childhood. He is educated by private tutors until the age of 12
1843
John Ruskin publishes the first volume of his seminal Modern Painters,
1843
Alfred Tennyson makes a disastrous investment, losing his entire fortune of £3500 on a project to make wood carvings by steam
1843
The Irish Sketch book is Thackeray's first work to appear under his own name
1844
Samuel Morse despatches the first telegraph message from Washington to Baltimore
1844
Friedrich Nietzsche born
1844
Birth of Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844
Matthew Arnold leaves Balliol College, Oxford with second class honours. Arnold takes a year-long post at Rugby, as an assistant teacher
1844
Charlotte Brontë returns to Haworth, unsuccessfully attempting to start a school
1844
Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes her two volume Poems, which receives widespread acclaim
1844
Charles Dickens goes to Italy
1844
Alfred Tennyson has an emotional breakdown
1844
William Thackeray's first real novel, the picaresque Barry Lyndon, displays a masterful use of the unreliable narrator
1845
First Sikh War; the pneumatic tyre invented; potato famine in Ireland begins
1845
Frederick Douglass, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
1845
Arnold becomes a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford
1845
Anne Brontë leaves her post with the Robinson household after Branwell's affair with its mistress is discovered. Branwell returns to Haworth for a life of addiction and substance abuse
1845
Robert Browning visits Elizabeth Barrett Browning after reading her poetry. Her father's opposition to the marriage of any of his children requires their courtship to be carried out in secret. Elizabeth begins work on her Sonnets from the Portuguese during this period
1845
The Cricket on the Hearth
1846
Mexican-US war begins; repeal of the British Corn Laws; railway boom begins
1846
Charlotte, Emily and Anne publish their first work Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which passes largely unnoticed
1846
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are married secretly in London, before settling in Florence
1846
Wilkie Collins becomes a law student in London
1846
Charles Dickens edits the newly founded Daily News for 17 numbers before a disagreement with the publishers, Bradbury and Evans, causes him to resign. Dombey and Son
1846
George Eliot completes her translation of Strauss's Life of Jesus
1846
In July Dante Gabriel Rossetti leaves Cary's Academy and is admitted as a student to the Antique School of the Royal Academy
1846
John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume II
1846
Serialisation of William Thackeray's highly successful Book of Snobs (1846-7) for Punch
1847
Matthew Arnold is appointed as private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, a liberal peer
1847
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is published, followed two months later by Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights , then Anne's Agnes Gray. The novels are published under the sisters' pseudonyms, and the works receive much public interest, although rumours that they are written by a single author persist. Jane Eyre is an immediate critical success, although Wuthering Heights is attacked by some critics
1847
Dante Gabriel Rossetti writes the first draft of his 'The Blessed Damozel'
1847
Alfred Tennyson's poem 'The Princess' is published
1847
William Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair (1847-8), published in monthly parts, is an immediate critical and popular success
1848
Gold discovered in California; First Women's Rights Convention held at Seneca Falls, US; Cholera epidemic takes hold in Britain; The Health Act is passed
1848
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of English artists is founded; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
1848
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
1848
Anne Brontë The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Branwell's alcoholism contributes to his early death in September. Emily dies of tuberculosis on 19 December after catching a cold during the funeral of her brother
1848
Wilkie Collins' first publication, Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A.
1848
Charles Dickens' final Christmas book, The Haunted Man
1848
Thomas Hardy attends his first school at Bockhampton
1848
After leaving the Royal Academy, Dante Gabriel Rossetti studies under Ford Madox Brown, with whom he is to retain a close relationship throughout his life. Rossetti settles with Holman Hunt in joint studio at 7 Cleveland Street, London
1848
John Ruskin marries Euphemia Gray, a distant cousin
1848
The History of Pendennis (1848-50). Thackeray becomes attached to Jane Brookfield, the wife of a Cambridge friend
1849
The first female physician graduates in Geneva; The Frankfurt Parliament is established in Germany
1849
Arnold publishes his first volume of verse, The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems
1849
Anne Brontë dies of consumption at Scarborough on 28 May. Charlotte Brontë publishes her second novel, Shirley
1849
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning have a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning or 'Pen'
1849
David Copperfield begins running
1849
George Eliot travels with the Brays on the Continent
1849
Ruskin's book The Seven Lamps of Architecture awakens interest in Gothic architecture. He travels to Venice to study the city's architecture from November to March 1850
1849
Tennyson renews his correspondence with Emily Sellwood
1850
Levi Strauss invents blue jeans
1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; William Wordsworth publishes his final version of The Prelude
1850
Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes a further volume of Poems, including the Sonnets from the Portuguese. Robert Browning publishes Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
1850
Wilkie Collins' first novel, Antonina; or, The Fall of Rome
1850
Charles Dickens founds his own magazine, Household Words which runs until 1859
1850
George Eliot moves to London with the intent of becoming a writer. She is assistant editor at John Chapman's Westminster Review
1850
Thomas Hardy is sent to a private school in nearby Dorchester
1850
Dante Gabriel Rossetti meets Elizabeth Siddal, a milliner's assistant, who becomes an important model for many of his artworks. The periodical The Germ (later renamed Art and Poetry), is established by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
1850
John Ruskin publishes his Collected Poems
1850
In Memoriam, Alfred Tennyson's elegy for Hallam, is published. He is appointed Poet Laureate and marries Emily Sellwood