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
1851
First telegraph cable laid under English Channel
1851
The Great Exhibition, or Crystal Palace, opens in South London, celebrating the latest industrial technology and design; Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor
1851
Death of Mary Shelley; Hermann Melville, Moby Dick; Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford
1851
Matthew Arnold marries Frances Lucy Wightman, with whom he will have six children. He takes a job as an inspector of schools, a position which he will hold for thirty-five years
1851
Charlotte Brontë meets Elizabeth Gaskell, her future biographer, and Thackeray, to whom she had dedicated Jane Eyre. She rejects another marriage proposal, this time from James Taylor
1851
Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes Casa Guidi Windows
1851
Wilkie Collins is introduced to Charles Dickens, the start of a lifelong friendship
1851
The first volume of John Ruskin's The Stones of Venice is published, containing his most famous essay 'The Nature of Gothic'. Ruskin meets with members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and champions their art, which is heavily influenced by his writings
1851
William Thackeray's relationship with Jane Brookfield ends. Gives a series of lectures on 'the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century' (published 1853)
1852
Louis Napoleon proclaims the Second French Empire
1852
Matthew Arnold publishes his second volume of verse, Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems
1852
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
1852
Alfred Tennyson's son Hallam is born
1852
William Thackeray begins his first lecture tour of the United States. Publishes his historical novel Henry Esmond
1853
Start of the Crimean War between Russia and Britain
1853
Giuseppe Verdi, La Traviata
1853
Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth
1853
Matthew Arnold, Poems
1853
Charlotte Brontë's Villette
1853
Wilkie Collins tours Italy with Augustus Egg and Charles Dickens
1853
Charles Dickens tours Italy with Augustus Egg and Wilkie Collins
1853
George Eliot co-habits with the married George Henry Lewes
1853
William Thackeray, The Newcomes
1854
Florence Nightingale works in army hospitals during the Crimean War
1854
Henry David Thoreau, Walden ; birth of Oscar Wilde
1854
Charlotte Brontë marries her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, at Haworth church. The couple live with Patrick Brontë at the parsonage
1854
Charles Dickens' Hard Times begins weekly serialisation in Household Words
1854
George Eliot publishes a translation of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, her only book to bear her real name, Marian Evans
1854
John Ruskin's marriage to Euphemia Gray is annulled on the grounds of non-consummation. Ruskin begins lecturing on art at the new Working Men's College in North London
1854
Alfred Tennyson's son Lionel is born
1855
Charge of the Light Brigade; Crimean War ends
1855
The artist Gustav Courbet leads the Realist movement in French painting
1855
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
1855
Matthew Arnold, Poems, Second Series
1855
Charlotte Brontë dies of complications during pregnancy at the age of 38
1855
Robert Browning's Men and Women is published
1855
Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens collaborate on the melodrama The Lighthouse
1855
Charles Dickens publishes Little Dorrit and collaborates with Wilkie Collins on the melodrama The Lighthouse
1855
Dante Gabriel Rossetti joins John Ruskin at the Working Men's College
1855
John Ruskin's former wife Euphemia Gray marries John Everett Millais
1855
Alfred Tennyson publishes Maud and Other Poems which includes 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington'
1855
William Thackeray publishes his Christmas book The Rose and the Ring and begins his second lecture tour of the United States
1856
Sigmund Freud born; Giuseppe Verdi's, La Traviata opens in London
1856
Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes Aurora Leigh
1856
Thomas Hardy's schooling ends at the age of 16 when he becomes apprenticed to John Hicks, a local architect
1856
Dante Gabriel Rossetti meets William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones
1857
Indian Mutiny against the British East India Company leads to the beginning of the British Raj period
1857
Baudelaire publishes his influential poetry collection Les Fleurs du Mal; Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
1857
Charlotte Brontë's The Professor
1857
Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's father, who remained unreconciled to her marriage to Robert Browning
1857
Wilkie Collins, The Dead Secret . The Frozen Deep, co-written with Charles Dickens, is first performed at Tavistock House
1857
Joseph Conrad born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Podolia in the Ukraine
1857
Charles Dickens' play The Frozen Deep, co-written with Wilkie Collins, is first performed at Tavistock House. In the spring Dickens moves to Gad's Hill in Kent
1857
George Eliot makes her fiction debut with the serialization in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', 'Mr Gilfil's Love-Story' and 'Janet's Repentance'. She adopts the pseudonym George Eliot
1857
George Gissing is born in Wakefield, Yorkshire
1857
John Ruskin, "A Joy Forever" and its Price in the Market, or the Political Economy of Art; The Elements of Drawing and The Political Economy of Art
1857
The Virginians (1857-9), William Thackeray's sequel to Henry Esmond, is published. He stands unsuccessfully as an independent reform candidate for Parliament
1858
London's sewage system is designed by Joseph Bazalgette
1858
Covent Garden Opera House opens
1858
R. M. Ballantyne The Coral Island
1858
Matthew Arnold, Merope, a Tragedy. Arnold becomes professor of poetry at Oxford
1858
Wilkie Collins begins living with the widowed Mrs Caroline Graves
1858
Charles Dickens begins his first series of paid public readings from his own works. He separates from his wife Catherine, with considerable publicity
1858
George Eliot, Scenes from Clerical Life
1858
John Ruskin meets and falls in love with the ten year old Rose La Touche. He publishes The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion
1859
Charles Darwin publishes the Origin of Species; The English Philosopher John Mill publishes the radical work On Liberty; Samuel Smiles publishes Self-Help which influences the New Thought Movement
1859
Birth of Havelock Ellis, AE Housman, Jerome K Jerome and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1859
Charles Dickens' periodical Household Words closes. Dickens founds his magazine All The Year Round and publishes A Tale of Two Cities
1859
George Eliot, Adam Bede and The Lifted Veil
![[Idylls of the King: The coming of Arthur]. Holograph draft of 25 lines near the end of the poem](media/tennyson_idylls.jpg)
1859
Alfred Tennyson, The Idylls of the King
1860
Abraham Lincoln elected President of the US; Kingdom of Italy founded; Second Opium Wars begin
1860
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's volume of political poetry, Poems before Congress is badly received
1860
Wilkie Collins' first sensation novel The Woman in White is published in book form, following its great success in serialisation
1860
Great Expectations
1860
The Mill on the Floss
1860
Henry James starts to devote himself to writing and to translation of French authors
1860
Dante Gabriel Rossetti marries Lizzie Siddal
1860
John Ruskin criticises capitalism in his economic work Unto This Last
1860
William Thackeray is a founding editor of the phenomenally successful literary journal The Cornhill Magazine
1861
Death of Prince Albert; the American Civil War begins
1861
The first known permanent colour photograph is taken by James Clerk Maxwell
1861
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret ; death of Arthur Hugh Clough
1861
Matthew Arnold publishes his essay 'On Translating Homer'. His childhood friend and poet Arthur Hugh Clough dies. Arnold writes 'Thyrsis' as an elegy
1861
Elizabeth Barrett Browning dies at Casa Guidi. Robert Browning prepares her Last Poems for publication. Browning and son Pen move to London
1861
George Eliot, Silas Marner
1861
Dante Gabriel Rossetti publishes The Early Italian poets, a set of poetry translations
1862
Emancipation Proclamation issued by Lincoln
1862
Sarah Bernhardt's illustrious stage career begins
1862
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems
1862
Wilkie Collins, No Name
1862
George Eliot, Romola
1862
Thomas Hardy moves to London, enrolling as a student at King's College and joining the architectural offices of the celebrated Arthur Blomfield
1862
Henry James enters Harvard Law School but withdraws after a year
1862
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's wife Lizzie Siddal dies from an overdose of laudanum
1862
Alfred Tennyson has first audience with Queen Victoria
1862
William Thackeray resigns as editor of The Cornhill Magazine due to ill health
1863
Maxwell extends the theory of electromagnetism; First underground steam railway in London opens; Battle of Gettysburg
1863
Napoleon III institutes the Salon des Refusés, containing all the works that the Paris Salon had rejected that year
1863
Elizabeth Gaskell, Sylvia's Lovers ; Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Aurora Floyd; Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies
1863
William Thackeray suffers a stroke and dies, leaving Denis Duval unfinished. He is buried on 29 December at Kensal Green Cemetery in London
1864
Pasteurization invented
1864
Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters
1864
Robert Browning, Dramatis Personae
1864
Joseph Conrad's father Apollo Korzeniowski is exiled to Vologda, Russia, for his involvement in the January Uprising of 1863-64. His wife, Ewelina Korzeniowska and four-year-old son follow him into exile
1864
Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
1864
Henry James moves to Boston and publishes 'A Tragedy of Error in the Continental Monthly, works on other stories, and is employed by the North American Review
1864
John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies. Ruskin's father dies, leaving him considerable wealth
1864
Alfred Tennyson, Enoch Arden
1865
End of US Civil War; President Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth; 13th Amendment to US constitution abolishes slavery
1865
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
1865
Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism
1865
Joseph Conrad's mother dies of tuberculosis
1865
Charles Dickens is involved in the Staplehurst rail crash
1865
Thomas Hardy's first published work appears in print with the short story 'How I Built Myself a House'
1865
John Ruskin proposes to Rose La Touche, now seventeen, but her parents refuse the marriage due to concerns about his atheism
1865
Alfred Tennyson refuses a baronetcy
1866
Alfred Nobel invents dynamite
1866
Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset
1866
Wilkie Collins, Armadale
1866
George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical
1866
John Ruskin, The Ethics of the Dust; The Crown of Wild Olive: Three Lectures on Work, Traffic and War
1867
Canada becomes a Dominion of the British Empire; the second Reform Act increases the number of people allowed to vote in Britain; Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable laid
1867
The modern typewriter is invented; Japanese art is exhibited for the first time in Paris; Das Kapital by Karl Marx is published
1867
Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn, the Irish Member
1867
Matthew Arnold, 'The Study of Celtic Literature'. Arnolds resigns chair at Oxford
1867
Thomas Hardy returns to Dorset and assists architect John Hicks with church restorations. He begins his first and never published novel The Poor Man and the Lady
1867
John Ruskin, Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne: Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work
1868
Disraeli becomes Prime Minister for the first time in February but resigns by December; First Trade Union Congress in Britain; The last public execution is carried out in England
1868
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women; Anthony Trollope, He Knew He Was Right; Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
1868
Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book is a popular success
1868
Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, often described as the first detective novel. Mrs Graves leaves Collins to marry Joseph Clow
1868
George Eliot, The Spanish Gipsy, a dramatic poem
1868
Thomas Hardy finishes The Poor Man and the Lady in January, but it is rejected by publishers Chapman and Hall
1869
First American transcontinental railroad is completed; Suez Canal opened
1869
Siegfried Wagner and Henri Matisse born
1869
Matthew Arnold writes his great prose work Culture and Anarchy
1869
Wilkie Collins fathers the first of three children with Martha Rudd
1869
Joseph Conrad's father dies in Kraków, leaving Conrad orphaned at the age of eleven
1869
Henry James sails to Liverpool, England where he stays in London, then Malvern and Oxford, then travels the Continent
1869
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's dead wife Lizzie Siddal is exhumed, and the manuscript poems placed in her coffin by Rossetti at her funeral are retrieved
1869
John Ruskin is appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University. The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm
1869
Alfred Tennyson The Holy Grail and Other Poems which includes 'The Coming of Arthur', 'The Holy Grail' and 'Pelleas and Ettarre'.
1870
Franco-Prussian war; Periodic table is developed; Education Act in Britain provides state education for all; Siege of Paris begins; Battle of Sedan; Unification of Italy is completed
1870
Edward Lear, Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets
1870
Matthew Arnold Saint Paul and Protestantism
![Man and wife. Act I[and II]. Holograph draft.](media/collins_man_and_wife.jpg)
1870
Wilkie Collins, Man and Wife. Mrs Graves returns to Collins, who thereafter maintains two households
1870
Charles Dickens suffers a stroke at Gads Hill. He dies on 9 June and is buried at Westminster Abbey. His unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood is serialised, despite only six of twelve planned numbers being completed
1870
George Gissing's father dies in December, leaving behind a young wife, three sons, and two daughters
1870
Henry James returns to Cambridge, Massachusetts after receiving a letter from his mother on March 26 informing him that his cousin Minnie has died
1870
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Poems
1871
First women's college founded at Cambridge University
1871
Charles Darwin Descent of Man; dry plates are invented, revolutionizing photography
1871
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
1871
Matthew Arnold, Friendship's Garland
1871
Robert Browning, Balaustion's Adventure; Prince Hohnstiel-Schwangau
1871
George Eliot, Middlemarch
1871
George Gissing, along with his brothers, William and Algernon, is educated at the Quaker boarding school Lindow Grove, at Alderley Edge, Cheshire
1871
Thomas Hardy publishes his sensation novel Desperate Remedies
1871
Henry James publishes his novella A Passionate Pilgrim in The Atlantic Monthly
1871
Dante Gabriel Rossetti leases Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire with William Morris and his wife, Jane Burden, with whom Rossetti has a lasting affair
1871
John Ruskin purchases Brantwood near Coniston in the Lake District, England. He becomes mentally and physically ill. Death of his mother
1872
The secret ballot is introduced in Britain and the third public Health Act is passed; Brooklyn suspension bridge opens
1872
Claude Monet's painting 'Impression, Sunrise' lends its name to the emerging Impressionist movement
1872
Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds
1872
Robert Browning, Fifine at the Fair
1872
Wilkie Collins, Poor Miss Finch: A Novel
1872
George Gissing wins a scholarship for three years to Owens College, Manchester
1872
Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree
1872
Henry James travels in Europe with his sister Alice and Aunt Kate, and writes travel sketches for The Nation
1872
Dante Gabriel Rossetti overdoses on laudanum
1872
Alfred Tennyson, Gareth and Lynette
1873
Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance
1873
Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma
1873
Robert Browning, Red Cotton Night-Cap Country
1873
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes
1873
Barbed wire is invented
1874
Disraeli becomes Prime Minister for the second time after the resignation of Gladstone
1874
Verdi's Requiem premieres in Milan; first Impressionist art exhibition is held
1874
Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now
1874
Joseph Conrad goes to Marseilles and is employed by the shipping firm Delestang
1874
Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd. Hardy marries Emma Lavinia Gifford
1874
Henry James publishes his novella Madame de Mauves
1875
The premiere of Bizet's opera Carmen in Paris
1875
Anthony Trollope The Prime Minister; Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer
1875
Matthew Arnold, God and the Bible
1875
Robert Browning, Aristophanes' Apology; The Inn Album
1875
Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady
1875
George Gissing moves into private lodgings in Manchester and wins honours in English and Latin
1875
Henry James publishes his novel Roderick Hudson
1875
The love of John Ruskin's life, Rose La Touche dies in a Dublin nursing home
1875
Alfred Tennyson produces his first play, Queen Mary
1876
Telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell; Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India
1876
Tchaikovsky completes Swan Lake; First symphony by Brahms
1876
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
1876
George Gissing falls in love with prostitute Marianne Helen (Nell) Harrison. He is caught stealing, convicted of theft, and expelled from university. He serves one month in prison before sailing to the United States
1876
Thomas Hardy and his wife move to Yeovil. The Hand of Ethelberta
1876
Henry James moves to London, which will be his base for the next twenty years
1877
Russo-Turkish war begins
1877
Eadweard Muybridge invents the first moving pictures
1877
Harriet Martineau, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography ; Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
1877
Matthew Arnold, Last Essays on Church and Religion
1877
Robert Browning publishes his translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon
1877
George Gissing teaches briefly in a public school at Waltham, Massachusetts before going to Chicago where his first published fiction, "The Sins of the Fathers," appears in The Chicago Tribune. In September Gissing sails from Boston and settles in London
1877
Henry James, The American
1878
Russo-Turkish war ends with an Ottoman surrender to the Russians
1878
Gilbert and Sullivan open the comic opera HMS Pinafore in London
1878
Wilkie Collins, My Lady's Money: An Episode in the Life of a Young Girl
1878
Joseph Conrad attempts suicide in Marseille. His career as a sailor begins with the British merchant navy, on a variety of English ships. His first ship is bound for Constantinople, before its return to Lowestoft, his first landing in Britain
1878
George Eliot's common law partner, George Henry Lewes, dies. Eliot spends the next two years editing his final work Life and Mind for publication.
1878
George Gissing receives his share of a trust fund (about £500) left by his father
1878
Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native. Hardy and his wife move to Upper Tooting, in South London
1878
Henry James, The Europeans
1878
Ruskin founds the utopian charitable trust The Guild of St. George. The artist JM Whistler successfully sues Ruskin after a scathing review of the painting Nocturne in Black and Gold. Ruskin is unable to testify due to increasing mental instability
1879
Thomas Edison invents the light bulb
1879
Wilkie Collins, The Fallen Leaves
1879
George Eliot's last work, Impressions of Theophrastus Such
1879
George Gissing seeks out and then marries Nell Harrison. He begins work on his first novel while earning a living as a tutor
1879
Henry James, Daisy Miller
1879
Dante Gabriel Rossetti is increasingly ill due to chloral addiction
1879
John Ruskin resigns the Slade Professorship at Oxford
1880
In this period the music hall became widely popular
1880
Eliot marries John Walter Cross in May, but dies in December aged 61
1880
Gissing's brother William dies from tuberculosis. His first novel, Workers in the Dawn is published
1880
The Trumpet-Major
1880
Henry James, Washington Square. James meets American novelist Constance Fennimore Woolson, who becomes a close friend
1880
Alfred Tennyson, Ballads and Other Poems which includes 'The Battle of Brunanburh', 'The Voyage of Maeldune', 'Rizpah', 'The Revenge' and 'The Defence of Lucknow'
1881
The Browning Society is formed for the study and appreciation of Robert Browning's works
1881
Wilkie Collins, The Black Robe
1881
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
1881
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ballads and Sonnets
1882
British troops occupy the Suez Canal; incandescent electric lights are introduced in London
1882
Death of Anthony Trollope
1882
George Gissing finishes his second novel Mrs. Grundy's Enemies in September. It is accepted for publication but is never published
1882
Dante Gabriel Rossetti dies shortly before his fifty-fourth birthday and is buried at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent
1883
The Metropolitan Opera House opens in New York; "Buffalo Bill" Cody opens his "Wild West" entertainment show in Nebraska USA; death of Karl Marx
1883
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island; birth of Franz Kafka
1883
Matthew Arnold goes on first lecture tour of America
1883
George Gissing and his wife Nell separate and she returns to prostitution. Gissing does not see her alive again
1883
John Ruskin resumes his Professorship at Oxford
1883
Alfred Tennyson eventually accepts baronetcy and takes his seat in the House of Lords
1884
Sino-French war; The third Reform Act gives more men the vote in Britain
1884
J.K Huysmans decadent novel A Rebours creates a sensation; Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1884
Wilkie Collins, I Say No
1884
George Gissing, The Unclassed
1884
John Ruskin, The Art of England; The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century
1885
Karl Benz invents the first practical automobile powered by an internal combustion engine
1885
Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean
1885
Thomas Hardy moves into Max Gate, which Hardy himself designed and built on the outskirts of Dorchester
1885
Alfred Tennyson, Tiresias, and Other Poems which includes 'Balin and Balan'
1886
Johannesburg is founded in South Africa
1886
Impressionism has its final show in Paris; Rodin finishes his sculpture "The Kiss"; The first Coca-Cola drink is sold in Atlanta USA
1886
Matthew Arnold retires from school inspection and makes his second trip to America
1886
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius: A Domestic Story
1886
Joseph Conrad becomes a naturalized British subject and officially changes his name to Joseph Conrad
1886
George Gissing, Demos: A story of English Socialism; Isabel Clarendon
1886
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
1886
Henry James, The Bostonians
1886
John Ruskin publishes his autobiography Praeterita
1886
Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall, sixty years after. Tennyson's son Lionel dies
1887
Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee
1887
H. Rider Haggard - She; Walter Pater, Imaginary Portraits
1887
George Gissing, Thyrza
1887
Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders
1888
Jack the Ripper murders at least five women in Whitechapel, East London
1888
George Eastman's "Kodak" camera goes on the market; Strauss writes Don Juan
1888
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
1888
Matthew Arnold dies suddenly of heart failure. His second series of Essays in Criticism are published posthumously
1888
Wilkie Collins, The Legacy of Cain
1888
George Gissing, A Life's Morning. Gissing's wife Nell dies
1888
Thomas Hardy, The Withered Arm; Wessex Tales
1888
Henry James, The Aspern Papers
1888
John Ruskin, who had been deteriorating steadily, collapses during a Continental trip and is taken home to Brantwood in the Lake District
1889
The London Dock Strike illustrates the power of the labour movement
1889
Robert Browning publishes his last work, Asolando, and dies in Venice
1889
Wilkie Collins dies and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, West London
1889
Joseph Conrad visits central Africa and reaches the Congo Free State as captain of a steamboat
1889
George Gissing, The Nether World
1890
The first electric underground trains run in London
1890
Art Nouveau emerges, led by artists like Gustav Klimt; Death of Van Gogh
1890
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
1890
Blind Love is completed by Walter Besant after Collins's death
1890
George Gissing, The Emancipated. Gissing meets Edith Underwood
1890
Anna, Lady Baxby' (1890)
1891
Free elementary education is introduced in the UK
1891
Gauguin travels to Tahiti and leads the Post-Impressionist art movement
1891
William Morris, News from Nowhere; Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, and Other Stories and The Picture of Dorian Gray
1891
Joseph Conrad starts writing his first novel Almayer's Folly
1891
George Gissing, New Grub Street. Gissing marries Edith Underwood and they move from London to Exeter, Devon. Their first son, Walter Leonard, is born
1891
Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles is widely criticised for its depiction of a 'fallen woman'
1892
Denzil Quarrier; Born In Exile
1892
Death of Alfred Tennyson
1893
New Zealand grants female suffrage
1893
Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' inspires the Expressionist art movement
1893
George Gissing, The Odd Women
1894
Sino-Japanese war; Gladstone resigns and Lord Rosebery becomes Prime Minister
1894
The influential Aesthetic journal The Yellow Book is first published, featuring illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley
1894
George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man; Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book; Oscar Wilde, Salomé; death of Christina Rossetti and Robert Louis Stevenson
1894
George Gissing, In the Year of Jubilee
1894
Henry James' close friend Constance Woolson commits suicide in Venice
1895
Roentgen discovers X-rays
1895
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
1895
Joseph Conrad's first novel, Almayer's Folly, is published
1895
George Gissing, Eve's Ransom
1895
Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure is published to a hostile reception. The outcry causes Hardy to give up writing novels
1895
Henry James's play Guy Domville receives boos and catcalls when he is called on stage. He returns to writing fiction
1896
Olympic games start; The first Nobel peace prizes are awarded
1896
H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau
1896
Joseph Conrad marries Jessie George with whom he has two sons, John and Borys
1896
George Gissing's second son, Alfred Charles, is born
1897
Diesel engines invented; electrons are discovered and named
1897
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee
1897
Bram Stoker, Dracula
1897
Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
1897
George Gissing, The Whirlpool. Gissing separates from his wife, Edith, who is mentally unstable
1897
Thomas Hardy, The Well-Beloved (first published as a serial from 1892)
1897
Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton; What Maisie Knew. James leases Lamb House in Rye, East Sussex
1898
Spanish-American War
1898
George Gissing, The Town Traveller; Charles Dickens: A Critical Study. Gissing meets Gabrielle Fleury in the home of H. G. Wells, and they move to France
1898
Thomas Hardy publishes his first verse edition, Wessex Poems and Other Verses
1898
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
1899
The start of the Boer War; Zeppelin invents the airship
1899
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband,; HG Wells, When the Sleeper Wakes
1899
Joseph Conrad writes Heart of Darkness
1899
George Gissing, The Crown of Life
1899
Henry James, The Awkward Age
1900
Labour Party founded; Russia annexes Manchuria
1900
Sigmund Freud publishes the Interpretation of Dreams, inaugurating his theory of dream analysis; Pablo Picasso begins his career; the Paris Metro opens, with art nouveau entrances designed by Hector Guimard
1900
Death of Oscar Wilde
1900
Lord Jim
1900
John Ruskin dies from influenza